Last pic seen in theaters was SICKO, at our Landmark; much more accessible than FAHRENHEIT 9/11 - too bad people aren’t turning out in droves here like they did for that pic - its central message should matter to everyone living in America.
Last films i saw at the cinema were 2 local films Lucky Miles & Noise.
Both excellent films that will hopefully get onto the international festival circuit.
Very different films but hopefully an indication that the Australian film industry is coming back to strength after some very dismal years.
It’s 1990 and an Indonesian fishing boat abandons Iraqi and Cambodian refugees in a remote part of the Western Australia. Whilst most are quickly caught by officials, three men with nothing in common but their misfortune and determination escape arrest and begin an epic journey into the heart of Australia. Pursued by an army reservist unit, our three heroes wander deeper into the desert, desperately searching for civilisation amongst the stones of the Pilbara.
Graham McGahan (Brendan Cowell) is a cop - almost by default he thinks. Self-centered, beset with doubt and afflicted with tinnitus, a few days before Christmas he is sent by his boss to man a police van in a suburban shopping strip, after violent murders rock the local community.
Basically I have seen all of the Summer
flix here in the states: Transformers,
Harry Potter, Die Hard, Pirates, etc…
And I must say the majority of them have
been disappointing. There is an art house
theater around the corner from my apartment,
but it seems everything they show, Asian wise,
is already out on DVD. Anyway, nothing exciting
to report in the way of interesting movies.
Perhaps the Fall and Winter will be a better time
for movies this year, or else American Movies
plain suck, which I have been suspicious of all along.
Saw The Simpsons Movie yesterday afternoon. I think A.O. Scott’s review echoes my feelings - as good as a slightly above-average episode, which means I could only watch it 20 or 30 more times.
I saw Sunshine yesterday.Well it was a pretty entertaining one,especially the build up.But i was a bit dissapointed in the plotpoint at about 75% of the movie.I expected a smarter ending than the 5 dollar one that Boyle has chosen. He chose for some visually vague slasher type ending.All by all a nice effort from Danny, now throw us another 28 days on the screens:).
Saw The Bourne Ultimatum today. Very solid film. The Bourne series is one of the rare cases where they haven’t had a slip up. Spider-Man - Third was crap. Pirates - 2 & 3 was TOTAL crap. Fantastic Four....oh well they are BOTH crap, bad example…and you get the idea. Bourne is one great trilogy (and a trilogy I hope it stays!). You can read my review of The Bourne Ultimatum here if you feel at all compelled.
Thing about the Bourne Series, other than the fact that it is a nice modern bent on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, it is too hellbent on being entertainment to follow thru with the dark message of modern spying (or spying of any age), namely that the spy never wins. I liked the symmetrical beginning/ending of the series, but setting for a heroic ending of sorts, the film pulls what could have been a more powerful punch.
Still on a technical level, you don’t get much better than the Bourne Team from 2002-2007.
Hopefully they never make a 4th one, as the trilogy is good as it stands, but beyond technical achievements, I have my doubts it will ever be GREAT or overly resonating (much the same way Frankenheimer’s last film RONIN is very good, very entertaining, but not as great as his MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE or even more importantly SECONDS.
Still I’ll take it. Bourne may have been my best pure entertaintment $$$ of 2007.
I’ll take Paprika, Zodiac and Inland Empire as ‘greater’ cinema though. And I’ll say that Sunshine reached higher than Bourne even though it failed on some pretty serious levels, can’t fault the ambition there. I think for all its technical virtuoso, Bourne in a way plays it pretty safe with its audience (well with the exception of the second one which I think stands as the best of the series)
Just got back from the cinema after seeing Bourne Ultimatum.
While the movie plotwise was fair - definetly weaker than the first, about the same as the second - the camerawork was horrid! You could literally close your eyes for three thirds of the film and not miss a thing with all that shakycam. While it may be effective in small doses, it was way, WAY overboard in this film (note: I haven’t seen too much action films lately so I have no idea how it stacks up against the current level). My eyes are still throbbing painfully… ugh. Not impressed.
I saw Wolfsbergen today. It recently started it’s cinema run in the Netherlands and it’s also playing at TIFF soon. Director Nanouk Leopold makes a breed of art-house movies that is rare in the Netherlands. Her previous film Guernsey played at the Cannes film festival and this one was selected for Berlin. And both with good reasons. But while Guernsey did get very favorable reviews, Wolfsbergen isn’t received well by the Dutch press and also made little waves in Berlin. I think that’s unfair. This is a brave kind of movie to make. Almost every character in it is sad and depressed and all familiar “sad art-house movie subjects” are represented (marital problems, abortion, self mutilation, suicide). Add to this a nice slow pace and a very open structure with little of the characters backgrounds explained and it’s easy to brush this film aside with comments about it being mannered, soulless, boring or even pointless. But I didn’t think it was any of those things. I like the style, the amazing actors and the sad mood with occasional bursts of humanity and even humor. OK, it isn’t a masterpiece. But I am sure Leopold is destined for bigger things. I also think that if this had been an Asian film the press would have been absolutely positive. This movie is not made for a large audience and when critics are bored they like nothing more than to talk down on national cinema.
I don’t know how it will play on a festival like TIFF, squeezed into peoples programs between other movies. You need to really sit down for this one and take a bit of time to reflect on it afterward. Then it’s the kind of movie that stays with you for a long time… otherwise it might be quickly forgotten. It will be interesting to see the response to this one from Toronto!
side note: Dutch actresses and female directors are very successful Internationally at the moment. Actress Tamar van den Dop from Wolfsbergen is also the director of Blind (also showing at TIFF) and the main actress from thát movie, Halina Reijn, is starting to get Hollywood interest together with Carice van Houten, the leading lady of Zwartboek (Blackbook) and she also wants to direct. But then, these are all very talented women who deserve all the credit they get.
Just bought the box set of Sergio Leone’s spaghetti western films and been watching it over and over again… Especially “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly” my favorite… Also, been watching “Straw Dogs” by Sam Peckinpah.
Just watched 3:10 to Yuma Remake - ABSOLUTELY Fabulous little film…part traditional western, hints of Leone, and big movie star performances from the two leads (Bale/Crowe) -
I’m going to try to pop a full review up on the mainsite today or tomorrow.
Just got back from Eastern Promises and simply wow. Do they make textured drama/thriller/gangster pictures better than this one? Every scene, every shot was rich with layers of sins of the fathers, family, and difficult choices of the new blood. I cannot think of a film that goes for the nasty with such gusto yet maintains such a rich amount of undercurrent and thought (Well, I guess the last one was A History Of Violence, or for that mater, The Wind That Shakes The Barley). Skin, Blood, Tissue, Water, Wine, Ink, and of course spit make this the most Cronenbergian Cronenberg film since eXistenZ.
This is one handsome flick and doesn’t mind getting mean when it has to. Watts was not abandoned in the film, she is in it just the right amount. Hell, the film belongs to her, Stahl and Cassel. Mortensen is more of a vessel and a catalyst along the lines of Clive Owen in Croupier. This is also the darker, nastier and grittier version of Dirty Pretty Things.
I cannot disagree with Grady’s take (on the main-site) more. Go into Eastern Promises expecting greatness and it will be delivered in spades.
saw PRINCESS yesterday at Fantastic Fest. I’ve been looking forward to seeing this for a very long time and when i found out it was playing on the big screen right here in Austin I was extremely excited. I loved the idea of mixing animation with live action and i felt it worked well helping you feel more connected to the characters by the end and drawing you in to an emotional tale of revenge and touchy subject matter. This could of easily fell the way of an exploitation film but steered clear of that route and drew you into the sad story and lives of the characters. Very well done. Recommended.
