Saran's Talk

Sorority Row

Pretty good flick! For the horror fans there are some good and gruesome death scenes for ya!

Extract

Funny and Original .See it.

The Count of Monte Cristo

Great Film!! Wish I had not waited so long to see this one!

Der Blaue Engel (The Blue Angel)

My first experience watching a film on The Auteurs site. The quality was great. The subtitles were mixed up only a couple times.

I loved it!! The German style cinematography and art decoration. The style that would be lost in Germany and taken to Hollywood when Hitler came to power. This movie takes place from 1925 to 1929 before the Nazis took over. It is a closer to real life look at the same time and culture that Cabaret portrays.

Emil Jannings was the first actor honored with the best actor Academy Award. I have only seen one other performance of his. But it was impressive and so was this role. Dietrich is seductive and husky voiced as Lola, but younger and not as husky voiced as she was in Witness for the Prosecution. The staff at the burlesque club Der Blaue Engel is like a family. Jannings is a professor at a local University and the dynamics of his classroom show that nothing much has changed. Three of his students are regulars at The Blue Angel. Professor Immanuel Rath is the picture of repression and routine. He tries so hard to keep the young men in his class in line and goes himself to the club to kick them out. He is so out of his element at the club and interacting with Lola. These early scenes have a lot of humor. Through chance circumstances he must return to the club and he ends up acting the part of a knight coming to the rescue of the lady's honor, at least the honor he imagines Lola has. Ultimately it is a tragic story, as Rath never finds his backbone and loves/trusts Lola too innocently. He falls into the "family" business, at first selling pinup postcards of his new wife, then inheriting the degrading clown assistant position for the magician/manager.

The dialog as translated in the subtitles surprised me with its natural flow and sophistication. The dialog strongly reveals the attitude of the culture before restrictions, whether from Germany or Hollywood, limited how sexuality particularly could be shown or mentioned in the movies.

District 9

ok,I am pretty sure I am gonna have my ass handed over to me on this one,However WTF? This is another one of my Trailer Train wrecks.What Happened?I am disappointed with this one.I will say the last hour was better than the first hour but thats about it,Like I said I am braced for a shit storm on this one but I am sure that there are a few out there that feel the way that I do and think that the trailer blew this up to be something that it was never capable of being.

Tetro

Life imitates Art imitates Life imitates Art imitates Life... or something like that in this vaguely autobiographical work. Maybe I've got that backwards!

Coppola draws explicit inspiration from Powell's and Pressburger's The Tales of Hoffman. I think he also rips a shot (involving a puzzling ax) from his own Dementia 13 that he did for Roger Corman. Though he transplants his artistic family's Italian heritage to the Argentinian art scene, the movie still feels very European. With the use of black and white photography for the present plot developments mixed with fanciful dance scenes telling Tetro's story, the movie seemed inspired by Fellini too. And Bennie Tetrocini has a surprise connection with Luke Skywalker.

I thought the camera work was very artsy. Right up until the last 5 or 10 minutes I thought the story was well developed. It left me feeling unsatisfied in those last moments. The performances were strong across the board. Gallo plays a writer who has distanced himself from his family and taken on the nickname Tetro. He has some dark troubling memories that he attempts to therapeutically turn into a script, but he will not publish the work, so the demons of his family stay closed up inside him as the script stays closed up inside some suitcases. Ehrenreich (his face will likely remind you of a couple other actors) plays Bennie. Bennie comes to visit his brother Tetro, whom he wants to emulate, and to uncover the family history that caused Tetro to leave. It is Bennie who finds Tetro's coded script in a suitcase. Verdu was wonderfully strong and nurturing as Tetro's girlfriend (practically wife), Miranda. Miranda fills a motherly role to both men. Brandauer is properly intimidating and sympathetic (in a dual role) as the patriarch of the family, Carlo Tetrocini, and his brother, Alfie Tetrocini. Lastly I'd like to mention Maura plays the snooty and mysterious critic, Alone, well too.

The plot involves Bennie slowly learning about Tetro's life in the present and the past. On the surface, it's a coming of age adventure for Bennie. But there's more than that. When Bennie reads Tetro's script the movie shifts to flashbacks in color and often ballet sequences that illustrate the conflicts and loves of the Tetrocini family past. The story involves three major male relationships: the brothers, Alfie and Carlo; father and son, Carlo and Tetro; and the "brothers," Tetro and Bennie. The movie is really about how the relationships parallel in interesting ways. In each relationship, one man has stolen something from the other. In the most developed and troubled relationship between Tetro and his father, both men steal things of extreme value from each other. It is all very intriguing to uncover this family mystery and see if history will repeat itself yet again. I expected something more explosive to happen at the end, but it surprisingly never materialized, so the movie felt a little unfulfilled. Still there were many excellent things about it.

Spread

This was ok I really wanted it to be better but it was like the little train that couldn't.Your call on this one.

Spread

This was ok I really wanted it to be better but it was like the little train that couldn't.Your call on this one.

Seven Years in Tibet

Beautiful and unforgettable,If you have not seen this yet you should!

The Purple Rose of Cairo

This and Pleasantville are both about disrupted routine and comparing the fictional world of 30's movies or 50's TV to real life. Woody Allen doesn't appear in this one. But a year after Broadway Danny Rose, Mia Farrow turns in another excellent performance. Dianne Wiest is on hand too in her first Allen film. Jeff Daniels plays a dual role with a lot of youthful energy. I was tickled by Allen's recreation of Depression Era life and 1930's high society movie fantasy! Farrow as Cecilia escapes her poor hum-drum existence by going to the movies. Daniels as Tom Baxter is an "honest, dependable, courageous, romantic" movie character in a pith helmet. During one "performance" he notices Cecilia out in the audience and steps off the screen into the real world. The adventures of the fictional character trying to adjust to the real world are hilarious. Later, Daniels as Gil Shepherd, the actor, is brought to Cecilia's town by the movie's producers to find his creation and convince him to go back in the movie to finish the story. The actor's self-absorption and ability to charm Cecilia makes for an interesting shift between Daniels' two characters. Meanwhile, the rest of the movie cast is lost and unable to continue with the scene, they sit around making witty comments about the lives of movie characters and heckling the audience as some audience members heckle back. It's a puzzling situation for the fictional characters and curious audience members alike, actually interacting with each other. Cecilia falls in love with both versions of Jeff Daniels and must choose between the fictional and the real. But, is the real life man any less fictional in the end?

Pride and Glory

Ahhhh remember I love the dirty cop movies.This was excellent,highly recommend it.

Hooking Up

Ugh! Just don't bother!! =(

G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra

Why the hell are all the critics hating on this movie so much???With 767 explosions how can you go wrong?? J/K.Anyway Pretty good summer action flick I thought the best stand out performance by far was Joseph Gordon Levitt,WOW 2 thumbs up to him and his make up people cause that was amazing.Anyway I would definitely say check this one out! =)