| Movie | Rating | Review | Date | Your Rating | Match | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Departed - R | July 23, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Notes on a Scandal - R | July 23, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Run Lola Run (Lola rennt) - R | July 21, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| American History X - R | July 21, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| American Beauty - R | July 21, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Forrest Gump - PG-13 | July 21, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| The People Vs. Larry Flynt - R | July 21, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| A Beautiful Mind - PG-13 | July 21, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Bad Guy - Unrated | July 21, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Tonari no Totoro (My Neighbor Totoro) - G | Wow. Just wow. This is the most adorable cartoon I've ever seen. It's beautifully animated (by the master Hayao Miyazaki) and the two kids portrayed seem uncannily accurate. I highly recommend NOT watching the English dubbed version. Dubbing might seem like less of an issue with animation than with real people, but I saw a dual audio version and flipped back and forth and for some reason the English voices made it seem less magical. It's a simple story about a father and his two young daughters who move, and must adapt, to the country, but it's executed perfectly. You will feel happy after watching this movie. It's soothing, and as a friend says, it seems almost healing. I agree. | July 21, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Long Weekend (Nature's Grave) - PG | July 21, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Ching yan (The Beast Stalker) - Unrated | There wasn't one single monster in this (what's up with that?), although Nick Cheung possessed some über-human qualities like always being out of the blue and into the right place always at the right time, moving at speeds faster than light, and getting bashed in the face with a rock and not bleeding. I loved the (contrived) story construction and liked Nicholas Tse's performance, as well as that of the little girl and Cheung. All the acting was pretty good when you could actually see what was going on. I had to stop frame and inch through the scene on the bridge/overpass where they hung that little girl over the edge. I wonder what the film could have been without being a stylized action pic. | July 20, 2009 | N/A | |||
| San suk si gin (The Shinjuku Incident) - Unrated | Somehow tractor mechanic Jackie Chan bounces between two beauties Jinglei Xu and Bingbing Fan but doesn't give them much to do in this manly movie except translate grunts for the men. It's helpful if you can distinguish Mandarin from Cantonese from Japanese in order to better follow the machinations of the various gangs. There is a decent drama and some interesting issues buried underneath the testosterone bullshit here and of course the movie ends with twenty minutes of ho-hum violence. Too bad. This movie could have been better if it had fully thrown off it's genre clothing and worked the themes of unity, power, betrayal, and the Chinese immigrant experience in Japan a little more thoroughly--and given the two fine actresses something more substantial. | July 16, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Doppelganger (Dopperugengā) - R | Often, I find films that play on some grand metaphor to be more fun to think about than they are to sit through. Such was the case with Doppleganger for me. In typical Kurosawa fashion there is a sense of dread that lingers throughout the film but once it gets going it plays more like a comedy caper than a drama, and this is not a horror movie by any stretch of the imagination. But it's also not a very funny movie either except in a weird sort of way--in a Kurosawa sort of way. It's not a bad film and it does have a satisfactorily meaningful resolve but I was kind of annoyed with the lead character yelling at his Doppleganger all the time so I grew impatient waiting for that resolve. YMMV | July 15, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Gaichu (Harmful Insect) - Unrated |
Aoi Miyazaki plays a thirteen year old girl whose mother attempts suicide after her father abandons the family. Her classmates gossip in the bathrooms about a supposed affair she had with her sixth grade teacher. She skips school and her only friend is killed by a gang. Her mom's new boyfriend attempts to rape her. It's seems awful to take such a cute and accomplished young actress and punish her for ninety minutes and call it a film, but it's the strength of Miyazaki's performance that makes Harmful Insect such a powerful and haunting experience. Her alienation is palpable and yet she wanders through the film with such strength of character it's mesmerizing. The vision the director sets out to explore: bad things happen to good people and the alienation of youth is a train wreck of self-multiplying disasters that once begun is impossible to stop. It's a shame that redemption is withheld from a character so deserving of it. If you are a fan of Aoi Miyazaki you should watch this film just to see what she was capable of at age sixteen. It's pretty powerful. sitenoise at the movies: Harmful Insect (Gaichu) [2001] Japan |
July 15, 2009 | N/A | |||
| The Hangover - R |
So the first joke is a taylor measuring a guy's inseam. The guy screams and jumps: "He was getting awfully close to my shaft!" Boy, who saw that one coming, huh? Then there's a little bonding talk followed by the fat idiot guy giving his soon to be brother-in-law a touchy feely hug. That always makes 'em laugh. Of course the fat guy is wearing a jock strap (he knew he was going to get his inseam measured) so we get to see his big fat ass. How funny!! The Hangover is a comedy gold mine! |
July 15, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Tada, kimi wo aishiteru (Heavenly Forest) - Unrated |
I was a bit surprised by the sometimes frank and honest dialog coming from Aoi Miyazaki's character in what for the most part is a very family friendly bit of Japanese young love/first love cinema. But it is appropriate for her character, a set-to-mature-at-any-moment young woman deficient in some necessary growth hormones needed to push her over the edge (that when triggered by a first kiss could ultimately be her ... undoing) and seems trapped in young adolescence. It's a very cute and cute-funny, and really sad, sad, film. Miyazaki teeters the edge between coy and seductive so well it made me dizzy ... with delight. The film is beautifully photographed. The 'heavenly' forest is fairy-tale gorgeous, as are the three young actors we spend time with. The story is engaging too, clearly a novel-adapted one. |
July 11, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Aoi kuruma (A Blue Automobile) - Unrated | The hip and contemporary soundtrack, which I liked very much, seems at odds with the wannabe arthouse stylings of the film. There are a number of nice directorial choices made here (an interaction takes place, then one of the participants is shown in extreme close up thinking or dreaming, and then we see what's in their mind and how it informs or colors that initial interaction) but the overall vision of the film isn't very strong. Three very good performances from Arata, Aoi Miyazaki, and Kumiko Aso, but the whole seems a whole lot less than the sum of its parts. I was not engaged by the story or moved by the exposition of the characters' motivations. Pain, as a game changer, just didn't swing hard enough here. | July 11, 2009 | N/A | |||
| What Time Is It There? (Ni na bian ji dian) - Unrated | This is the best plotless film where nothing happens I've ever seen. The film focuses on three characters, their loss and loneliness. If there is a story arc it's that each of them finally reaches out to make a connection, a sexual connection, with varying degrees of success. Throughout the film we simply observe them doing, well ... not much of anything, but practically every scene is cut so that you wish you could stay with it for at least a moment longer, to be with that person in that situation for just a bit more time. You can't make a film like this without masterful execution of the crafts of acting, cinematography, and direction. Check, check, and check. I was stunned by this film ... even without considering its symbolisms and allegories. | July 10, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Stranger of Mine (Unmei janai hito) - Unrated | This is one of those films that uses the device of repeating scenes from different perspectives to embellish a simple story and it does it in spectacular fashion. There are a couple lonely hearts, a couple con artists and a very well-mannered Yakusa boss who all intermingle over the course of one evening and a suitcase full of money. The scene where the Yakusa boss hiding under a bed sees only the shy dance of feet of the initial interaction between the two lonely hearts that we had seen earlier from a different perspective is one of the most hilarious and sweet scenes I've witnessed in a while. It's all handled in a lighthearted and charming manner. The film is chuckle friendly all the way through and the whole cast is perfect. Very highly recommended. | July 7, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Neui yan fau pui (All About Women) (Nu ren bu huai) - Unrated | The main thread in this visual shenanigan belongs to the ever watchable Zhou Xun. She's a frigid geeky scientist who invents a 'love potion', essentially extracting pheromones and wearing them like a smoker's patch. The patches get tossed around among the three ladies and/or the objects of their desire. Lunmei Kwai is great as a 'punk' rocker who eventually meets her imaginary boyfriend, and a pleasant surprise is Kitty Zhang Yuqi (from CJ7) who plays a high powered sexuality exuding executive who wants to market the patches. This is a goofy film full of sight gags, not to be taken seriously. An average film, flawed, but worth wasting time on just to watch three lovely ladies having fun. | July 6, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Zui yao yuan de ju li (The Most Distant Course) - Unrated | This is one of those very slow and dreamy ones but the story is interesting enough to stay engaged and Lunmei Kwai is wonderful. She receives cassette tapes of nature and community sounds from a guy who thinks he is sending them to the girl who broke his heart. He is capturing sounds from all the places he had hoped to visit with her before she broke up with him. Lunmei Kwai sets out to visit all the places the sounds come from with the outside hope of maybe meeting the guy who is sending them. Very bittersweet ending that's neither happy nor sad but wide open to possibility. | July 6, 2009 | N/A | |||
| The International - R | I guess I'm not smart enough to get this film. I was enjoying it quite a bit until the final act. Then I got lost. I wasn't sure any more who were the bad guys and who were the good guys. And then it just ended, completely wiping out any interest that had built up. It's got a great cast and all the acting is very good. I enjoyed Clive and Naomi a lot. Everybody mentions the big shootout in the Guggenheim as a high point. It must have taken more than half the budget of the film. I can't tell you if it was worth it because shootouts are always totally and completely stupid so I fast-forwarded through it. | July 6, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Julia - R | This would be five stars off the charts awesome if all it was about was Tilda Swinton's acting, but it's not. The story starts off pretty well and sets the agenda for making you accept that things won't always make sense or go according to plan but then the second half veers off into a new film of its own. It tries to stay connected to the first half but just unravels to the point that it's hard to stay on board. The film could have been edited by a third to make a tight thriller but then we'd miss out on much of Swinton's great performance. I loved every minute of her but the plot comes up short (by being too long!) and the ending fails miserably. | July 3, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Watchmen - R | July 2, 2009 | N/A |
752 ratings
301 reviews
