| Movie | Rating | Review | Date | Your Rating | Match | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Hurt Locker - R | I don't understand all the love for this film. Kathryn Bigelow is a fine director and all, but the script for this is terrible. It's cliché from top to bottom. There's nothing here that isn't predictable macho nonsense. Given that it is purported to be written by someone embedded with real access to these army guys, I couldn't believe how unbelievable it all is. Team players don't turn off radio contact and do things the other players don't know about unless they're dumb movie characters. Generals don't then praise them for doing it, either. Of course butch boy befriends Iraqi boy for cheap shot at character depth and I call bullshit. This film is insufferably boring unless you get a rush from fantasy testosterone games. The narrative barely rises above the limits of a Powerpoint presentation. | August 18, 2009 | N/A | |||
| A West Lake Moment - Unrated |
This is a ONE STAR film without Zhou Xun. She is a joy to watch even with a co-star (Kun Chen) who is frighteningly bad. The guy's not an actor, he thinks he's a gift. The direction is almost silly at times probably because the script is immature and, frankly, stupid. I can't get behind a story that sets up a charming and beautiful woman with an adorable best (male) friend (Yim Linq) who desires her and is good to her but she won't reciprocate because she's got the hots for some pig of a selfish man. This film not only resolves with the woman and the asshole getting together--without redeeming the jerkball at all--it also kills off the good guy! This is one really gross male fantasy. Whoever wrote this movie is an idiot. sitenoise at the movies: A West Lake Moment |
August 16, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Urga (Close to Eden) (Territory of Love) - Unrated | If you ever wanted to visit the steppes of Mongolia but were afraid to ask, this film will take you there. The gorgeous landscapes almost pale in comparison to the beauty of the sheperding family of four, plus grandma, who live in a tent there. Imagine watching a five year old kid help his dad gut a lamb for dinner and finding it moving and gentle rather than creepy and gross. I would have been happier if the film had remained a simple portrait of the family rather than involving a story about the onslaught of civilization. But that story *is* part and parcel of that family's portrait today. Some drunken Russian road builder dude brings some harsh to their mellow, and the film drifts out of focus a bit ... but I guess that's the point. The final shot sees a smokestack instead of an urga rising from the horizon. | August 4, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Wo de fu qin mu qin (The Road Home) - G | A simple story carved from Chinese culture. Traditions and history are on display here as much as the inner and outer lives of the characters. The visual embellishments are mostly restrained but you can see them waiting, wanting to burst out. This is Zhang Ziyi's feature film debut and she is lovely to behold, dressed in her fuschia red coat against the sprawling rural landscapes, flapping her arms like a child when she runs, but she has an oddly shaped head. I found this feature of hers a little weird, kept wondering where the back of her head ran off to. All said and done, a minor distraction in what is another touching and very human tale from director Zhang Yimou. I love the way the love is grounded, given foundation, in the schoolhouse the father helped build and his legacy helped rebuild. Sad though, that the mother remained illiterate. | August 4, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Not One Less (Yi ge dou bu neng shao) - G | Somehow, thirteen year old Wei Minzhi, who appears unable to act her way out of a paper bag turns in the performance of a lifetime. Blushing, awkward body language, a drifting gaze, and an pre-adolescent thespian's grasp of dialog pacing, filmed docu-realistically, come together to create the most endearing character I've seen in a long time. The film employs nonprofessional actors throughout, mostly children, to amazing effect. It's painful to think that this film portrays a reality of rural China so the story all by itself will probably make you cry. Seeing the story presented by a cast of real people makes it all the more powerful. The stubborn persistence of Wei's character, at first unrealistic, becomes poetic and inspiring. The ending might seem a little contrived but if ever there was a story that deserved a happy ending it's this one. A remarkable film. | August 4, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Raise the Red Lantern (Da hong deng long gao gao gua) - PG | Four women live in separate apartments in a beautiful castle. Three of them like to eat meat, one is a vegetarian. They're all married to the same guy, the master of the castle. Whomever the master chooses to stay with on any given night gets a foot massage and gets to call the shots at dinnertime, decide the menu. Seems like an environment ripe for jealousies and fighting. Seems like a season of DALLAS but it's tweaked out to 1920s Chinese concubine culture. It's a beautiful film because the castle is beautiful. Gong Li is beautiful. But it's too easy to see where things are going, and an obvious girly cat fight isn't that interesting. Or is it a veiled allegory against Chinese communist authoritarianism, or the culture of patriarchy? If so, we have to call it good. That's the rule. Damn chicks, allegorically speaking, should have banded together and thrown off their oppressors instead of fighting each other. The film, in foreshadowing irony, is divided into "Summer, Fall, Winter, Spring ... Summer." | August 2, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Nanayo (Nanayomachi) - Unrated |
Starts off well, as Kyoko Hasegawa arrives in Thailand (for reasons never explained) improvising her way around, dealing with language issues, in a tank top, sweaty and very sensual. She's accosted by her taxi driver who drives into the woods when she falls asleep. Hasegawa flees and ends up in the arms of a french guy who's chillin' in Thailand learning the art of massage from some motherly type and staying with her family. Turns out the taxi man is the motherly type's brother. From then on it's a cultural diversity essay, pointless and painfully poorly acted sprinkled with attempts at maintaining some semblance of sensuousness. This film is clearly half improvised and half scripted, the former interesting, the latter, embarrassing and without explanation. It feels creepy. sitenoise at the movies: Nanayo |
July 31, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Joze to tora to sakana tachi (Josee, the Tiger and the Fish) - Unrated |
Big surprise. Comparatively speaking, this is a plain and simple love story from Japan. One of the participants has legs that don't work so her granny pushes her around in a baby carriage but that comes off as beside the point. She's suffered and she's not expecting love to be a part of her life. She's not looking for it, but when it shows up, she gets it. She understands and appreciates it even though she knows with certainty that she will be lonely again. Chizuru Ikewaki brings a poet's depth to her role and Satoshi Tsumabuki is puppy dog cute as the boy who falls, surprisingly and so naturally, in love with her. This film could have been manipulative but it isn't, not in the least, and that's what is so refreshing about it. This is a bittersweet gem. sitenoise at the movies: Josee, the Tiger and the Fish |
July 31, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Suzhou River - Unrated |
Sometimes these "Look at me, I'm indie" projects deliberately frustrate so they don't accidentally get mistaken for commercial fare. Dirty locations, slow pace, downplaying of 'events' should they happen to occur, and dizzying handheld camerawork. Love must be lost, memories muddled, but hope will hang on by a thin thread. Zhou Xun is captivating as usual but her story is designed to disappoint rather than engage. This is a quality film to keep your street cred intact but not very pleasant to experience even if you do want alternative. It has a lot of great moments when it focuses itself enough for you to enjoy them. A director doesn't have to giggle and whip the camera around all the time to create an effect of intimacy or collusion with the viewer. Lou Ye overdid it with this one. sitenoise at the movies: Suzhou River |
July 31, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Crank 2: High Voltage - R | July 29, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Fîmeiru ,(Female) - PG | July 27, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Hakase no aishita sûshiki (The Professor and His Beloved Equation) - Unrated | It's remarkable how math equations and numbers work out to be the most interesting elements of this story. The film looks nice and has endearing and adorable characters but no ooomph! The 'gimmick' of the film, that the professor's memory only lasts 80 minutes (except for events that happened prior to 1973), barely gets any mileage and doesn't seem too stringently enforced. The film won't offend anyone but is not likely to excite too many either. It's just a tone poem to niceness and a restrained passion for numbers. Not that there's anything wrong with that. There was drama waiting to explode but never addressed: the real relationship between the professor and his "sister-in-law". | July 26, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Wo hu cang long) - PG-13 | July 24, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress - Unrated | July 24, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Days of Being Wild (A Fei zheng chuan) - Unrated | July 24, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Fallen Angels - Unrated | July 24, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| 13 Tzameti - Unrated | July 24, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Mou gaan dou (Infernal Affairs) - R | July 24, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Memento - R | July 24, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Downfall (Der Untergang) - R | July 24, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Perfume: The Story of a Murderer - R | July 24, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| V for Vendetta - R | July 24, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Children of Men - R | July 24, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Léon (The Professional) - R | July 24, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| The Squid and the Whale - R | July 24, 2009 | N/A |
750 ratings
299 reviews
