| Movie | Rating | Review | Date | Your Rating | Match | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Cowboys - PG |
The movie tells the story of a cattle rancher who can't find anyone to help him drive his cattle because a nearby gold rush has sucked up all the local labor. His friend talks him into hiring eleven local schoolboys, none over the age of fifteen, most closer to ten.
While the movie is rated PG and is a coming-of-age movie about young boys, this isn't a children's movie. It's dark and violent with some grim moments and some racial slurs and would probably get an R rating if it were filmed today. The pacing is slow; despite moments of action, this isn't an action movie. In the first ten or fifteen minutes I still wasn't sure if I was going to like the movie or not. But once the boys got up on their horses and John Wayne started instructing them in the finer arts of cattle handling, I was hooked. This is an excellent Western and I'm just surprised I'd never heard of it before NetFlix recommended it to me. The score is also outstanding. It was composed by John Williams (Star Wars) and has a full, hearty orchestration that reminded me at times of Aaron Copeland's work. The director, Mark Rydell, has a good eye for the Western, having directed many episodes of "The Wild Wild West" and "Gunsmoke." Between Rydell's direction and Willam's score, there is a solid, traditional feel to this Western. I found The Cowboys to be emotionally stirring and visually rich. I would highly recommend it to any fan of the Western genre. |
July 17, 2007 | N/A | |||
| Open Your Eyes (Abre los ojos) (Permanent Midnight) - R |
The movie doesn't have the slick Hollywood polish that Vanilla Sky has, but it has a certain flair that I found more gripping in many ways.
Cameron Diaz was good casting for the American remake. Kurt Russell was brilliant casting. But Tom Cruise was a poor choice to reprise Eduardo Noriega's role. I can't think off-hand what current American actor would have been a better choice ... possibly Johnny Depp. At present, I'm not sure which film I prefer, but I was pleased when Abre Los Ojos clarified a few things for me, such as why Vanilla Sky ended the way it did. Without putting a spoiler for anyone who hasn't seen Vanilla Sky, there's a particularly dramatic ending that is quite moving but seems to come from nowhere. Abre Los Ojos has a very similar ending, but it makes it clear just why it's ending that way. It all hinges on one line that was left out of Vanilla Sky and I think it was a huge mistake to leave that line out. Abre Los Ojos also explains the main character's situation slightly differently ... in a way that makes a lot more sense than the explanation in Vanilla Sky. I can't say more than that without giving away important plot points. But if you have a chance to see Abre Los Ojos for yourself, I'd recommend it, especially if you're a fan of Vanilla Sky. It's an excellent movie. Vanilla Sky adhered to it so well that you will feel a lot of strange deja vu watching it (and the always-beautiful Penélope Cruz plays Sofia in both versions!) but the differences, while small, are important. |
July 17, 2007 | N/A | |||
| La Cité des Enfants Perdus (The City of Lost Children) - R |
The essence of this movie was summed up for me when I heard actor Ron Perlman in the commentary track saying, "I never really understood any aspect of this film."
Before watching this film, all I knew about it was that it was in French, that it starred Ron Perlman, that it was about a mad scientist who kidnaps children in order to steal their dreams, and that it had been repeatedly compared to Dark City. I can see the Dark City comparison in that the setting is a cryptically put-together city, never fully revealed in sunlight. The film is populated with freaks, both literally (siamese twins, tattooed men, a circus strong man) and figuratively (people of freakish nature and twisted physique captured in a distorting fisheye lens.) But the similarities end there. Dark City is a futuristic film-noir mystery while The City of Lost Children is a fairy-tale thriller that reaches so desperately for the "arty" yet falls on its face, becoming pathetically ridiculous. Dark City is a twisting plot, clearly related while The City of Lost Children is a straight-forward plot portrayed in an unnecessarily baffling manner. I wanted to like The City of Lost Children. I wanted very much to like it, but in the end I can only give it two stars out of five: one star is strictly for the novelty of hearing Ron Perlman speaking truly atrocious French and the other is a bleed-over blessing for Jeunet's later masterpiece, Amelie. |
July 17, 2007 | N/A | |||
| Zombi 2 (Zombie) (Zombie Flesh Eaters) (Zombie 2: The Dead are Among Us)(Island of the Flesh-Eaters) - R |
If you don't like zombie movies, read no further: there's absolutely nothing about this movie you will enjoy. If you do like zombie movies, however (and I mean old genuine Romero zombie movies, not the newer, inferior-except-for-special-effects stuff that's come out in recent years), there's a lot to like about this movie.
Zombi is low on plot and characterization and highly derivative of Romero's work, but the make-up and gore are very well done and the movie has a good feel for pacing and tension. It starts off a little slow (by American standards. It starts fast for European horror standards) but soon picks up the pace, heading toward a gore-fest finale. There is a magnificently filmed underwater scene with a shark vs. zombie battle that is amazingly well-done, considering the time period and budget. Then there is the infamous "eye gouging scene" that everyone who's seen the movie will inevitably mention. The eye-gouging scene still looks fairly fake but that doesn't stop it from being cringingly effective by gore-fest standards. And the zombie make-up is outstanding. The first zombie you see is a bit laughable, but all zombies afterwards are so putrid-looking you can nearly smell them through your television screen. And the camera work is surprisingly well done (though the quality of the cheap film undoes some of that.) All in all, this is a very good movie if you enjoy 91 minutes of mindless gore and people fleeing for their lives. |
July 17, 2007 | N/A | |||
| À Meia-Noite Levarei Sua Alma (At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul) - Unrated |
Having discovered that the first horror film ever made in Brazil is considered to be a cult classic, I decided to request it from Netflix. À Meia-Noite Levarei Sua Alma, created in 1963, is the story of Zé do Caixão (Coffin Joe), a São Paulo undertaker who wishes nothing more from life than to produce a son to carry on his legacy.
Coffin Joe is a cultural icon in Brazil and has been re-created over the years in many movies, television shows, comics and so on. Joe goes beyond irreverance, taunting a God he does not believe in. He shocks the local devout Catholics by eating meat on Holy Friday and rains violence upon those who cross him or dare to stand up against his cruelty. I was excited to see At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul, but it turned out to be a bit of a disappointment. José Mojica Marins could definitely be called the Brazilian Ed Wood -- especially in light of many of his later, sex-drenched titles -- but his film was a re-hash of the by-then well-known Vincent Price formula. I can understand why the Coffin Joe movies are cult classics, but if you choose to view them, be prepared for very campy, over-the-top performances and poor sound and video quality (and that's on the restored version!) I wish I could say that Coffin Joe was ground-breaking or ahead of its time in some way, but it's unfortunately derivative and very much a product of its time ... behind it in some ways. |
July 17, 2007 | N/A | |||
| Eyes Without a Face - Unrated |
Eyes Without a Face (1959), which was dubbed in English and released as The Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus, is a dreamy and surreal black-and-white film with sparkling visual clarity and haunting imagery. The story is of a beautiful young girl who has lost her face in a car accident caused by her domineering father. Her father is also a brilliant surgeon and willing to go to any lengths to set right what he has ruined so he begins kidnapping young girls to steal their faces and graft them on to his daughter's.
Despite the lack of blood (in an interview, Franju comments that he could not have blood so that the film would pass the French censors, could not have torture of animals so that he would pass English censors, and could not have a mad doctor so that he would pass German censors (who were still quite sensitive about Mengele-like topics so soon after WWII) the surgery scenes are chilling yet mesmerizing. We know that the doctor is lifting a latex mask, not the girl's actual face, but the movie is so dream-like and enchanting that we are willing to agree that he is peeling away the very identity of a human in order to bestow it upon his daughter. His daughter is the most poignant victim in all of this. She does not want to destroy other girls so that she can have a face again. In fact, she asks to be allowed to quietly die instead. Her face, when we see it, is filled with a deep sorrow that manages to project beyond the emotionless mask she wears throughout most of the movie. She is a gentle and haunted soul, floating waif-like about the doctor's opulent villa. She is an elegant creature of pure sorrow and twisted beauty. While Eyes Without a Face has some pacing problems and I'm ambivalent about the carnival-like score, it certainly deserves its status as a classic of cinema. Many express the belief that this film has been overlooked too often and I would have to agree. I only heard of its existence this year. But I believe the film should be listed as one of the greats and should be more well-known, especially among fans of older art films. I do agree with those who say that Eyes Without a Face should rank with Jean Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast for its visual qualities and fairy-tale storytelling ... except that the fairy tale in Eyes Without a Face is a tale with as much sorrow as Cocteau's tale has joy. The Criterion disc includes another short film by Georges Franju that I will review here as well: Blood of the Beasts is a short documentary, about twenty minutes long. While I have seen other reviewers refer to this film as "surreal," I would be more inclined to categorize it as "hyperreal." The subject is the slaughterhouses of Paris at the time of production (1949) and the topic is treated with a gentleness and honesty that stand strongly juxtaposed against the graphic nature of the images depicted. Franju begins the film by showing us the edges of Paris. At that time, the gates of Paris opened onto empty countryside and we see a makeshift flea market with strange and wonderful goods for sale. We see children playing Ring of Rosies against a foreground of broken springs. We see lovers strolling and kissing and a great happiness out on the edge of town. Then the narration moves toward the city and the industrial section there on its edge. We visit several slaughterhouses and, other than the sterility of the black-and-white film, we are spared nothing in watching the animals die. Sensitive viewers will not want to approach this film at all and the rest of us will likely feel a twinge of sadness as we watch beautiful animals become food. Yet simultaneously, one is pulled in by the efficiency of the workers and the fascinating process by which a neighing or bleating creature on four legs becomes a cutlet. The workers do not betray any emotions, whether of regret or even boredom. They are workers doing their job, just as any other, yet instead of fastening bolts or adding columns of numbers they are butchering animals. The narrator admires the workers and mentions several times how dangerous their work is. We see a butcher with a peg leg because he once cut a femoral artery while skinning a horse and his leg had to be amputated. We see a young man working with a knife so sharp it can cut a cow's leg off as if it were made of butter and are forced to marvel at the risk he takes every day, casually swinging that knife around. While the film is difficult to watch, it is also beautiful in a very real way. It is the beauty of honesty and anyone who ever puts meat on his plate over the course of a week can cringe from the sights but if he wishes to be as honest as the film, he must admit that it is his own appetite that swings the poleaxe, that pulls the trigger on the bolt gun, that wields the scalpel-sharp knives. At the end, the movie returns to the pastoral setting of the edges of Paris and we finish with the image of a barge navigating the canal, filmed from an angle so low the boat seems to be cutting a swath through the grassy field itself. Our breathtaking and sometimes painful journey through the places that feed us -- or I should say that fed us as butchering is a much different prospect these days -- has come to an end. I watched a brief interview in which Franju discusses his intent in making this brutal yet hauntingly beautiful film. He explained that he intentionally did not film it in color because he wanted to pull the viewer in, not push them away with repugnance. In color, the stark and strange beauty would have become nothing less than repulsive. Franju realized that he wanted the film to be beautiful but his sense of beauty is a sense of truth, not of loveliness. He was seeking an honesty toward his subject that, I feel, he did achieve. As for sandwiching the horrors of the slaughterhouse with the loveliness of a sunny day on the outskirts of Paris? He felt that an object is not fully realized until we can place it in its setting and that the setting itself de-objectifies the object and helps lead us to a fuller truth. This is definitely not a film for everyone. I would go so far as to say it is a film that only a select few will truly appreciate. But those who can appreciate the life-giving death and the calm assuredness of the men who bring this sustaining flesh to us will come away from the film with a deep sense of awe and wonder. If you have the stomach and sinew to watch where your meat comes from, this film will show you with honesty, respect, and a transcendant beauty. |
July 17, 2007 | N/A | |||
| March of the Penguins (La Marche de l'empereur) - G |
I'm normally not bothered by the presence of lots of little children when I go to see a children's movie. It was charming to hear their comments when I went to see the Pooh Halloween movie shortly before seeing March of the Penguins. But I was very disturbed at the presence of the children this time -- disturbed for them, not by them.
I am a firm believer that children need to understand life and death. But I am an equally firm believer in introducing the ideas to them gradually, if possible. Having experienced a death in my nuclear family at age six, I was introduced to some stark realities very early and I do feel that I survived it well ... but I also would have wished for a more gradual and gentle introduction to the harshness of life. In our culture, more often than not, we have that choice for our children. Making that choice would mean not taking toddlers to see nature documentaries about survival against the odds. The little children kept asking questions, "is that bird dead, too, Mommy?" "Why are so many birds dead?" "Why do those birds stand out in the snow and die, Mommy?" "Will those birds die?" "Those birds are so sad because they will never see their Mommy and Daddy again." (this last, said through tears.) At one point, a little girl - probably about four years old - leaped up out of her seat and started shouting at a predator, "you bad bad bad bad bird! Stop pecking those babies, bird! You are bad!" Her mother pulled her back to her seat and the little girl said, "Mommy! Can't someone stop that bird? It's pecking those babies all dead!" At another point, a child asked, "Daddy, why is the seal chewing up those birds?" Before Daddy could explain, Morgan Freeman (the narrator) told us that the babies would die because the bird it chewed up could not go back to feed them now. Okay, he used more grown-up language to say it, but we all knew what he meant, every one of us of every age. March of the Penguins is a beautiful nature film that shows the harshness of Antarctica and the stubborn survival of the emperor penguins that live there. Anthropomorphizing though it may be, Morgan Freeman was right: it is a movie about love. But it is not a movie for small children. |
July 17, 2007 | N/A | |||
| Oliver! - G |
As musicals go, I give it high scores. The music was bright and memorable, the costuming was colorful, the dance numbers were understated compared to many musicals but added just the right note of accompanying expression, ranging from quiet desperation to frantic frivolity.
But, having read the Dickens novel and having found it the bleakest, dirtiest, darkest, most despairing and horrific of all the author's work, I never quite managed to get over the shock of seeing it turned into Mary Poppins. |
July 17, 2007 | N/A | |||
| Vampyr - Der Traum des Allan Grey (Not Against the Flesh) (Adventures of David Gray) (Castle of Doom - Unrated |
Carl Theodore Dreyer's Vampyr is a brilliant movie!
The film was made in 1930, shot as a silent film (placards and all) but with three languages later dubbed in. I have the German version, subtitled. The special effects in this movie are amazing! There is a scene where a man walks along the bank of a river and he can see the reflection of someone walking along the other bank . . . but no one is actually on the bank, just a reflection. So he comes to a building and sees a shadow digging a grave. The shadow walks through the building and goes outside to where a man is sitting in contemplation. The shadow sits next to the man in contemplation and when the man gets up, the shadow tracks with him - it has become his shadow. So beautiful! Dreyer is considered an "important" director and another movie of his that needs to be seen is his 1928 Passion of Joan of Arc. If you like Nosferatu at all, you will love Vampyr. Watch this movie for the fine craftmanship of early film but do not expect an intricate plot or thrilling action. This is definitely an atmosphere piece. |
July 17, 2007 | N/A | |||
| Ratatouille - G | An excellent animation! Nothing in it is unacceptable for children but they may become bored. This one is for the grown-ups. | July 17, 2007 | N/A | |||
| Very Annie Mary - Unrated |
Rachel Griffiths (Six Feet Under) plays her most brilliant role in Very Annie Mary (2001).
Annie Mary Pugh is a woman of 33 who still lives at home with her domineering father, played by Jonathan Pryce (Pirates of the Carribean). Her father owns the bakery in Ogw, Wales, and is considered the "Voice of the Valley" because of his beautiful tenor singing. As the movie progresses, we are shown Annie's shattered dreams. She presents almost as one with a developmental disability - socially awkward, clumsy, often embarassingly inappropriate - but perhaps these are mannerisms that have developed over the years of living her life knowing that the Great Opportunity passed by? I don't want to say too much. It's better to go into this film not knowing. There are so many little surprises and big revelations. Just know that I found this movie both funny and touching. It's a story of a woman finally finding her voice. |
July 17, 2007 | N/A | |||
| El Laberinto del Fauno (Pan's Labyrinth) - R |
Pan's Labyrinth (El Laberinto del Fauno, 2006) is a Spanish film, through and through. The copy I rented from Netflix is only available in Spanish with subtitles, but it is more than the language that makes this movie Spanish. The film is a period piece, set in Franco's Spain in 1944 but it is more than the location that makes this movie Spanish.
The actors, with the exception of Doug Jones who plays the Faun (del Toro did not intend the character to be the very sexual Pan because he felt it would be inappropriate to pair Pan and a small child), are all from Spain and speak beautifully accented Spanish (Jones learned archaic Spanish for his role and performs it with a gorgeous, rich accent that is not quite castillian Spanish but not quite belonging to any variety of Latino Spanish either) but it is not the actors or their lovely accents that make this movie Spanish. Pan's Labyrinth is a Spanish film all the way to the bones. The harsh beauty of the magical realism fairy tale beats at the heart of Guillermo del Toro's story. The movie is simultaneously fresh yet reminiscent of the great novels of Gabriel García Márquez and Laura Esquivel. The cinematography is understated and elegant, evoking a distant time through use of silvery faded color. The soundtrack is haunting and the subtitles are clear (I was impressed with the translation and later learned that the director no longer trusts translators and thus did the subtitles himself) and readable yet largely unobtrusive. There is violence in the movie, but only one scene that shocked me. (I regularly watch movies like Saw and Hostel while eating dinner for reference on my shockability.) The atmosphere is mysterious and sad. The movie left me painfully satisfied. If you are a lover of things dark and mysterious, of changeling children and a long-lost home far away, of frightening beauty in a war-torn world, of the majesty of fairy tales . . . if you love these things you will likely love Pan's Labyrinth as well. |
July 17, 2007 | N/A | |||
| Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest - PG-13 | It seemed meandering and more of a set-up for whatever is planned in the third movie than anything else. | June 27, 2007 | N/A | |||
| Pirates of the Caribbean: At Worlds End - PG-13 | June 27, 2007 | N/A | ||||
| Spider-Man 3 - PG-13 | June 27, 2007 | N/A | ||||
| Miss Potter - PG | June 27, 2007 | N/A | ||||
| Norbit - PG-13 | June 27, 2007 | N/A | ||||
| Bridge to Terabithia - PG | June 27, 2007 | N/A | ||||
| Hannibal Rising - R | June 27, 2007 | N/A | ||||
| Hostel: Part II - R | June 27, 2007 | N/A | ||||
| Black Snake Moan - R | June 27, 2007 | N/A | ||||
| Live Free or Die Hard - PG-13 | June 27, 2007 | N/A | ||||
| Touch the Sound - Unrated | Glennie is a terrific musician who also has a talent for bringing the viewer inside the sound in new ways. | June 27, 2007 | N/A | |||
| Stomp Out Loud - Unrated | I'm a huge percussion fan and Stomp turns percussion into performance art. | June 27, 2007 | N/A | |||
| Mean Girls - PG-13 | I actually have this on DVD but the disc is scratched and I haven't gotten around to having it repolished yet. | June 27, 2007 | N/A |
74 ratings
51 reviews
