| Movie | Rating | Review | Date | Your Rating | Match | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Cave of the Yellow Dog (Die Hohle des gelben Hundes) - G | September 22, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Kanaria (Canary) - Unrated |
Another film by Akihiko Shiota, director of Harmful Insect. It had some moments but nothing special for me. I'm not sure what to think of Shiota at this point. I appreciate what he is trying to explore: disaffected, abused and neglected youth and all that, but I'm not convinced he's good at it yet. Harmful Insect would have been a lot less interesting without Aoi Miyazaki. I think Mitsuki Tanimura did a good job in Canary, Hoshi Ishida not so much, but his character was the brooding, doesn't-say-much type, which is difficult for a teenager to pull off (unless you're Aoi Miyazaki). I will confess that the cultural pointers were lost on me ... so there's that, I mean, if they were supposed to be specific. Cultural historians and professional film critics (and Japanese folks) might enjoy this film more than I did. I'm not giving upon Shiota but I'm also not ready to call him a director to look out for. |
September 21, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Sophie's Revenge - Unrated | There's one really great sight gag in this film where the live action set becomes a life-size photograph that Zhang Ziyi rips apart but that's the only redeeming moment of the whole film. The humor is cheap and predictable and not funny. So much of it is playing out a scene only to cut to--ha ha--it was only a daydream. And there's a bunch of falling down and banging into other people, really bad physical comedy. Zhang Ziyi produced this junk and I think it was only because she wanted to do a film where she isn't dead before the film ends. She's rarely cute in it, though. Bad haircut, bad character, horrible script. This is a groaner from beginning to end. | September 21, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Eastern Promises - R | September 19, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| City of Life and Death - Unrated | Maybe the color palette confines itself to a too small range of gray but it is effective. Maybe a few scenes are overly dramatized for effect but I can hardly imagine anything comparing to the real events that transpired. This isn't a documentary and it's not a perfect film but it is an incredibly moving one. There was a bit of an uproar in China over this film claiming it did not demonize the Japanese enough. A member of the Politburo intervened on behalf of the film to keep it in theaters. There's that to chew on. I honestly can't separate recommending the film from recommending being aware of this ugly bit of history. You could just read a wikipedia entry on the Rape of Nanjing but you could also just watch Dr. Phil or Oprah instead of ever going to the movies. It's about like that. | September 16, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Nanking - R | September 16, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| The Ice Storm - R | September 13, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Living in Oblivion - R | September 13, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Punch-Drunk Love - R | September 13, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Red Rock West - R | September 13, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Surveillance - R | September 13, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Map of the Human Heart - R | September 13, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Kicking and Screaming - R | September 13, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Last Seduction - R | September 13, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Salo (Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma) - NC-17 | September 12, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Last Summer - R | September 12, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Hatsuyuki no koi: Virgin snow - Unrated | September 11, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Ai no mukidashi (Love Exposure) - Unrated | It's worth noting that director Sono Sion is a also a street poet and musician. There is a guerilla-art quality to this film. One gets the impression it's being made up on the spot, while your watching it, yet there isn't the slightest hint of improvisation and the film betrays an intricate construction. Contradictions abound. There's a mature adolescence in heady ideas about original sin and up-skirt, "peek-a-panty", photography. I can't call this a 'weird' film because it's not, even though I smiled through most of it thinking "This can't be serious." I was amazed by the entire cast's chameleon like ability to move convincingly among different levels of sanity. Everyone in the film is so earnestly bizarre. If you like Sono's work you will not be disappointed by this. If you haven't seen anything by him, why not start with a four hour movie? The music is great. | September 10, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Une liaison pornographique (An Affair of Love) (A Pornographic Affair) - R |
A cute 40ish French couple recount the stages of their 'pornographic' affair to an interviewer. I say cute because most of the acting they both do is thoughtful, sincere reflection and they are quite sweet doing it. BIG SPOILER: We are never told nor shown what kind of kinky sex constitutes the affair. Instead, the focus is on how they come to really like each other and then sadly decide to stop seeing one another. Even though I liked the characters I think the film is a cheap tease and tries to pull on the heartstrings too much. I don't know what the goal is for the film and the ride by itself isn't good enough to compensate. It is neither erotic nor sexy, and for a 'talkie' film it has a little too much yardage between the goal posts. |
September 10, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Shonen merikensakku (The Shonen Merikensack) - PG | I'll watch anything with Aoi Miyazaki in it but it was extremely tough this time. She's fabulous, of course, and the film starts off with a refreshingly bizarre sense of humor, but it quickly devolves into toilet humor. I can't imagine who this movie is aimed at. Young people (who are into punk) will recognize it as fake and older people (who may have been punks) will too. The film confuses punk with childishness and fails to create characters that anyone will care about. For every quick and funny moment that works, and there's a bunch of them, there's umpteen that don't. And the sibling rivalry, family drama subplot is painfully uninteresting. I'm a huge Aoi Miyazaki fan but a two hour fart joke is a bad vehicle for her. | September 8, 2009 | N/A | |||
| The Dreamers - NC-17 | September 8, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| The Da Vinci Code - PG-13 | September 8, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Marie Antoinette - PG-13 | September 8, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Amadeus - R | September 8, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Immortal Beloved - R | September 8, 2009 | N/A |
750 ratings
299 reviews
