| Movie | Rating | Review | Date | Your Rating | Match | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| X-Men Origins - Wolverine - PG-13 |
My three star rate is for Hugh Jackman. Just him, alone. Mainly because he fits the character most. Of course not. My rating is more for his energy and stamina he contributed to this film.
Everyone knows that a story based on comic book characters should be fairly easy to understand, but I found myseld confused early on in this blockbuster. Though Jackman is great as the mutant Logan aka Wolverine, and though this is supposed to be his story, it gets overcrowded on screen. The purpose of the film is to give us some background on Logan/Wolverine and to do that we go way back to Canada in the 1850's when the young James Logan and his brother, Victor Creed (Schreiber), who becomes Sabretooth, run away after Logan kills their biological father who murdered Logan's adoptive father (there's probably some comic book logic to this but I didn't understand). There are twists and turns aplenty and mutants all over the place. By the end of the film, I was so perplexed by the storyline and by trying to work out who was who, what powers they had and why, that I went to the kitchen and made myself a cup of brewed coffee to enjoy. I presumed I'd lost my interest altogether. |
December 3, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Gilda - PG | November 28, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Russian Ark - Unrated | November 27, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Genova - PG |
If you want action, complex plot and driving narrative with plenty of twists and turns, then maybe, you have to forget this film.
Co-written by director Winterbottom, the facts of this story are fairly straightforward. Widower Joe (Firth), an English academic living in America, loses his wife, Marrianne (Davis), in a car accident. After months of bereavement he sees a chance for some renewal in a teaching contract in Genova, Italy, and takes his daughters Kelly (Holland) and Mary (Haney-Jardine) with him. Here he is shown the ropes by Barbara (Keener), an old university friend who is sweet to him, though he only has eyes for Rosa (Romeo), a student. In Genova, daughter Kelly rebels and stays out late partying while younger sister Mary deals with her grief wandering the streets, with sadness and constant nightmares about her mother's death. Joe tries to keep what's left of his family together as he rediscovers life and love again in an exotic setting-- Genova, a northern Italian port city that is steeped in history and stunningly beautiful. With its architectural splendours, the city is itself a wonderful setting. And the performances are solid and nuanced. Colin Firth is an adept actor, if somewhat understated, and both Haney-Jardine and Holland also give performances as his daughters. The film resonates with emotional truth and is compelling despite the apparent lack of action. This may lead some to ask: so what's it all about? Life, I guess, as simple as that. |
November 27, 2009 | N/A | |||
| La Règle du Jeu (The Rules of the Game) - Unrated | November 26, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| The Stars Look Down - Unrated | November 26, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| The Boys Are Back - PG-13 |
The Boys Are Back is based on the memoir by Simon Carr, who found himself raising two young sons singlehandedly, and occasionally making a complete hash of it.
Sportswriter Joe Warr (Owen) would appear to be living the ideal life: he and his second wife Katy (Fraser) are the parents of a young son, Artie (McAnulty), and while Joe's job keeps him away from home a fair bit he's still a loving husband and father. But when Katy dies, Joe is left feeling adrift--he's mourning the loss of his wife while coming to grips with his new duties as a single-parent, a job he's not all that sure how to perform. And just as he's finding his feet as a father, he's visited by Harry (MacKay), his teen-age son from his first marriage. And it becomes clear that if the boys are ever going to become men, Joe, the father is going to have to grow up as well. A surface reading of The Boys Are Back could give the impression it's a sickly-sweet story of personal growth or, even worse, a tacky tale of Peter Pan who learns to straighten up and fly right for the sake of the kids. Yet Shine director Scott Hicks handles this delicate- adaptation of Carr's memoir, capturing the turbulent rush of emotions that overcome Joe, as he doesn't excuse Joe's mistakes but sensitively convey his main character's state of mind. And it doesn't hurt that Owen's understated and perhaps 'truthful' performance gives the audience just as much insight to Joe's sadness, frustration, hope and joy as he embarks on his new life as a family man. |
November 23, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Capitalism: A Love Story - R |
This film may not be the first exploration of the causes and effects of the global financial crisis, but it's probably the first to get cinema release. And the reason for that is the name Michael Moore.
Capitalism: A Love Story is a mostly engaging and interesting exploration of consumerism in America and its undoing. Moore starts back in the 1950's when capitalism was the best thing and life was easy. An intriguing piece of footage that Moore presents is the face of President Jimmy Carter talking about how greed and consumerism will bring America undone--but he was saying that in 1979/80 and that wasn't a message of the USA wanted to hear. So the people who actually bothered to vote booted him out and took up with Ronald Reagan and his low taxing ways (for the rich anyway). Moore pieces together lots of information that is available in this film, including Captain Sullenberger, the Hero of the Hudson, and his evidence before a Senate inquiry. It will make you think twice about flying in America when you know that pilots earn about as much as a cashier at McDonalds. The really scariest thing in the film is watching the guys behind the various presidents and realising where the power lies. It looks like the bankers, not the ballot box, rule the world. |
November 19, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Gake no ue no Ponyo (Ponyo) (Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea) - G |
Openly aimed at young children, Ponyo is one of the most whimsical and wide-eyed tales in Hayao Miyazaki's catalogue.
A re-telling of the Little Mermaid, Ponyo is a young goldfish girl living in the ocean with her cranky father who believes humans are nothing but a sea-polluting annoyances (Miyazaki's environmental concerns are as apparent here as they are in the majority of his works). Rescued from a jar by Sosuke--a young boy living on a cliff by the seaside with his aged-care nurse mother--Ponyo becomes infatuated and decides she wants to become human. Born of a magician and an ocean goddness, Ponyo is small but powerful, and in the process of becoming human unleashes a tsunami that submerges an entire town and reverts the waters to the Devonian age (about 400 million years ago), replete with prehistoric aquatic life. The beauty of the film is in the detailed and stylised realisation of both the fantasy aspects and the real world. With wonderul hand-drawn and painted animation, Miyazaki weaves realism and magic with deft ease. Everything is infused with a sense of childlike wonder. |
November 14, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Die Geduld der Rosa Luxemburg - Unrated |
Among the many virtues of Rosa Luxemberg is the aesthetic and political sense it makes of the beliefs and behaviour of people who once lived to make a better world. The film personifies the ideals of the radical movements that swept Europe at the turn of the century.
The film directed by perhaps the best-known female director Margarethe von Trotta and featuring Barbara Sukowa as Luxemberg, avoids what might have been mere propaganda, not only to deal with history in all its messy complexities but also portray its heroine as a tragic figure who inadvertently unleashed the forces that destroyed her. Rosa Luxemberg (1871-1919) was one of the most talented women of her era. Having been born in Russian Poland to a family of wealthy merchants, she became interested in socialism and, at 18, was forced to flee to Switzerland because of her revolutionaty activities. A symbol of courage and rectitude, she fought against every prejudice and handicap. Born with a deformed foot, Luxemberg walked with a limp , and in the film she refers to herself as a 'lame duck' and was regarded as too young to be a serious political thinker. Despite its focus on complex theoretical matters, the film however makes numerous transitions from the political to the personal. In one scene, Luxemberg is marched blindfolded into a room and forced to stand against a wall as the order "Fire!" is given. She flinches and her thoughts flash back to her childhood. |
November 12, 2009 | N/A | |||
| The Grapes of Wrath - Unrated | November 7, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| La Vie en Rose (La Mome) - PG-13 | November 5, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Edith Piaf - A Passionate Life - Unrated | November 5, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| The Last of the Mohicans - R |
Michael Mann's The Last of the Mohicans is a third-generation fiction: a film adapted from a film that was adapted from a novel.
Chingachgook (Russell Means), his son Uncas (Eric Schweig), and Hawkeye (Daniel Day-Lewis), his adopted white son; Cora Munro (Madeleine Stowe) and her sister Alice (Jodhi May), their father, Colonel Edmund Munro (Maurice Roëves), and a native guide named Magua (Wes Studi) are all creations of James Fenimore Cooper and his novel of the same title. What everybody read about in the Last of the Mohicans was a romance of the forest, of Indians and Natty Bumppo (the white man who learned from them), of a society barely gone. The 1992 movie, however, is a romance, with a mixture of period setting and fictional characters, and a dose of twentieth-century spirituality to bring the noble savages up-to-date. It's a film with history as vivid and real and immediate as if it were being lived right now. Mann's new plot now explains, for instance why it needed a revolution: to protect the democratic, freedom-loving, interracial society from supercilious twits. Nathaniel (Day-Lewis), the white raised by Indians, is the emblem of this egalitarian society. Cora symbolizes the rejection of her dead (quite literally, by the end) European past. In its place, she embraces Nathaniel and America. |
November 3, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Alice in Wonderland - Unrated | October 23, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Bedtime Stories - PG |
Monday, you're a knight in shining armour. Tuesday, you're a gun-toting outlaw of the Wild West, and Wednesday--well, you could be just about anything, even an alien. Anything is possible when you're telling a bedtime story.
Skeeter Bronson (Sandler) is a hard-done-by hotel janitor who dreams of one day becoming the manager of the hotel his father once owned. Unfortunately, Skeeter is up against some tough competition in the form of sleazy suit Kendall (Pearce). But when Skeeter has to babysit his young niece and nephew, he discovers some magic that might solve his problems and protect the interests of his family. In this flick, fairytales do come true. Indeed! I am a quasi conservative when it comes to family entertainment. And in a time when so much emphasis is placed on super-duper effects and loud action noises, it's kind of "cute" and "nice" to see something that is literally about the oldest form of entertainment--storytelling! The 'little guy versus the big meanies' plot is worked to the end and in true Disney style, all baddies receive their comeuppance. The Actors, especially the kids, are super cute and the animated guinea pig will surely be a big hit. This is a Disney kids' movie through and through--but still enjoyable for the adults too. Just don't expect the extremely outrageous Adam Sandler of days gone by. |
October 23, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Here Comes the Groom - Unrated | October 17, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Tora! Tora! Tora! - G | October 17, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| A Chorus Line - PG-13 | October 17, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Lust for Life - Unrated |
Who hasn't heard of the (supposedly) crazy Dutchman who cut off his ear, and then shot himself in a wheat field while painting his last work?
This film spans the last seven years of Vincent Van Gogh's life (c1883-90), the period of his almost unbearably intense development as an artist. Much of it was filmed at the actual locations, as well as many of his original paintings are shown and the film faithfully recreates many of the scenes in some of his most famous works. The performances by Douglas and Quinn (as Gaugin) and the supporting actors reflect the level of commitment of all those who were involved in the production. Gauguin, another eccentric, was far more famous at the time than Van Gogh, and his approach to art was diametrically opposed to Van Gogh's. He painted what was in his mind, not the glories of nature that absorbed Van Gogh. Touching and tragic, this is a glorious, brilliant film that memorializes the world's greatest painter. |
October 16, 2009 | N/A | |||
| The King and I - G |
The King and I is an absolute delight, magical, and spectacular in every way.
After the death of her husband, Anna Owens (Kerr) moves from England to Siam with her son Louis to become a teacher for the children of the king of Siam (Brynner). She threatens to leave when the house she had been promised is not available. She also finds Siamese customs to be quite different from English ones, which brings her often in conflict with the king. The King is troubled - he craves truth, but how can he learn the truth when different cultures say different things? ("Is A Puzzlement") Deborah Kerr and Yul Brynner give spirited performances in 'The King and I', a musical adaptation of Margaret Landon's book. |
October 14, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Up - PG |
This film is sweet, subtle, melancholic and memorable.
It might be a kid's film, yet it's central themes are dense, layered and poignant--like most of the Pixar's stable: WALLE's message was to save the planet; Cars told us to slow down and enjoy the scenery, and this latest UP, is about that adult adage that marriage is the greatest adventure of one's life. Widower, and 78 years old Carl Fredericksen (Asner) lives in an old house under threat of redevelopment, surrounded by high-rises. But his loving memories of his wife mean he isn't keen to leave the marital home. When he's forced out, he decides to take it all with him, attaching thousands of helium balloons to his chimney and soaring up, up and away in search of Paradise Falls in the company of cheery boyscout Russell (Nagai). As we've come to expect from the film, the animation in Up is top-class, and Pixar should be applauded for making an old fella the hero of an animated flick. It has a genuine, honest emotional beats and wonderful symbolism (like the house-as-manifestation-of-relationship metaphor) and it's so moving, and those magical first ten minutes (such concepts as infertility, infirmity and death) set up Fredericksen as a central character with whom we can truly emote and identify. |
October 9, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Entre les Murs (The Class) - PG-13 |
For those who have recently been high school students, Entre les Murs (The Class) is almost humurous in its familiarity. For those in education, it offers a complex picture of the problems that need to be overcome, without putting forward any simple solution. For all others, this is a rich classroom drama to remedy the simplicity of 'Dangerous Minds' and 'Freedom Writers.'
It would be quite easy to mistake this film for a documentary. Its story of classroom challenges comes straight from a teacher who has experienced this all first-hand. The performances of teachers and students alike are pitch-perfect, genuine and rich, and the 'fly-on-the-wall' style of filmmaking is perfectly appropriate for capturing the tedium of modern teaching. Essentially, the film simply charts one teacher's futile attempts to reach a class of mixed-race 14-year-olds in inner city Paris. Francois Begaudeau, the teacher who wrote the book on which this film is based, plays Mr. Marin. His sincere attempts to educate this class ( and to reach the smarter students amongst the group) are continuously thwarted, mainly by student insolence, and those many, mind-numbing, endlessly cyclical conversations that consume classroom time and teacher attention. For most part, the film is simply a document of these struggles, though it reaches a sort of climax after tempers flare in the classroom and one student's future education is put on the line. At times, the film does drag a little, but this only contributes to its slowly-building impact. In the end the film's effect will take audience by suprise... |
October 8, 2009 | N/A | |||
| The Gay Divorcee - Unrated |
Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire were the very personification of the Hollywood dancing team. The film is a comedy of mistaken identitties in which Rogers mistakenly thinks Astaire. in the guise of her supposed lover, is the man who will help her get a divorce.
The film is driven by many wonderful dance sequences. The climax of all Astaire's dancing scenes is the one where his steps seduce Rogers to the strains of Cole Porter's "Night and Day" song and where she finally falls in love with him. Ginger and Fred are exceptionally and truly are Hollywood's legendary dancing partners. |
October 8, 2009 | N/A | |||
| The Merry Widow - Unrated | Based on Franz Lehar's operetta, The Merry Widown is an amusing and intelligent film. | October 8, 2009 | N/A |
771 ratings
117 reviews
