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You should check out Au hazard balthazar.

Re The Backup Plan: Twilight, now this...have you always been this willing to watch shit chick flicks because of your significant other? most guys draw the line after a certain point in the relationship, and save the 'brownie points' for stuff involving in laws or something.

I actually disagree about Gangs of New York and would describe at as entertaining but uneven, and trashy in nature.

It plays kinda like a graphic novel adaptation which I don't think suits Scorsese at all. Characters (good actors like John C Reilly and Brendon Gleeson) are left half-developed cartoonish like depictions and I must confess to loathing Diaz's performance. She looks so far out of her depth it is difficult for me to comprehend.

On the plus Day-Lewis is unforgettable. Di Caprio, despite not entirely convincing as a hard-man, is a good lead actor by any reasonable standard. Neeson, when not trawling the depths like he does on some films, lends charisma and gravitas in his brief role.

All in all I'd stretch to 8/10 for sheer mindless entertainment.

According to Wikipedia, 'Missing in Action' is "inspired" by a story treatment for 'Rambo II' and was rushed into production in order to be released before 'Rambo II', in order to avoid any lawsuits. But technically, you are correct - the Chuck Norris vehicle was released first.

The casual racism in 'Missing in Action' lies in its portrayal of Asian characters who are either devious politicians, sadistic swines or prostitutes. The same kind of racism which can be found in Westerns of the 1950ies, which present Native Americans as primitive savages.



Thanks regarding this information, calvero. I would love to check out that "donkey movie", but its not available in Germany, I'm afraid.

Concerning my willingness to watch bad chick flicks - this and enduring model casting shows enable me to catch the occasional match of football (soccer) on TV and immerse myself in Euro2012 for a month, so it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make. I should mention that my wife also thought that 'The BAck-Up Plan' was ludicrously bad, but we finished watching it in morbid fascination.

Well I personally didn't see it as racism, but I guess that's just me.

I picked up Exorcist III cheap yesterday and gave it a rewatch last night. The film was notoriously plagued by heavy studio interference, so much so that William Peter Blatty has not worked in film since. Because of this studio interference, it doesn't have the same thematic and narrative consistency as the original, but damn if it doesn't match it in terms of creepy imagery and overall atmosphere. 8/10.

Sarah's Key. Kristen Scott Thomas plays Julia Jarmond, a journalist writing a story about the Vel d'Hiv roundup, a notorious incident where 10,000 Jewish residents of Paris were rounded up by French authorities collaborating with the Germans, imprisoned in the Vélodrome d'Hiver without adequate water or food and no toilet facilities, then sent to a transit camp from which the Germans sent them to Auschwitz. This incident happened on July 16-17, 1942. A few weeks later, her husband's grandfather moved into an apartment that had been cleared by the evacuation of the Jews, the same apartment she and her husband are currently moving into, and she desperately wants to know the fate of the Jewish family who lived there and whether her husband's family were involved in the Vel d'Hiv.

Sarah ((Mélusine Mayance) is the daughter of the Jewish family and she was 10 years old at the time of the roundup. She locks her brother in a closet to protect him and keeps the key on her person, expecting to be back in a few hours, and a lot of the film is her trying to get home. We see the 1942 events through her eyes, while in the present day, Julia is trying to find out what happened to Sarah and her brother.

This is a pretty good film, but oddly structured, with the main mysteries all resolved a half-hour before the end of the movie; the last half hour is practically an epilogue. I was also struck, given the terrible incidents in the film, by how many acts of kindness and courage there are. (7.5 of 10)

Also Because of Winn-Dixie in which a little girl is possessed by a hellhound and proceed to terrorize a small town into bonding together into a parody of Mayberry. AnnaSophia Robb does a voiceover which is too cute for words, but I liked her scenes with the manager of the local pet store. (Actually a farm and pet store: not only can you get rabbits and hamsters, but also chickens, geese, pigs and goats, and there's probably a herd of sheep in the background.) Robb's turned into a pretty good actress (she's excellent in Bridge to Terabithia) but here she's a bit too cute. She's still better than Jeff Daniels and Cicely Tyson, and Harland Williams is truly terrible. The cute little blonde girl is Elle Fanning, who has turned into one of the best young actresses in America. (4 of 10)

The Man From Nowhere

Another Korean adrenalin fix. A good story with a few holes in it. The holes work to keep an element of unknown during the run, but are somewhat cheesy looking back. It is almost a Kill Bill type of movie in the level of violence and implausibility of anyone getting through it. Definitely not a feel good movie. If you're in a mood for action though, and I was, it doesn't get a whole lot better. 8/10

And The Three Musketeers (Netflix sent me three movies this weekend). This is the 1921 silent version with Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., and is incredibly fun, although vastly abridged from the novel; the main plot is the recovery of a diamond brooch the queen foolishly gave her would-be-lover. Dartagnan's misadventures in the first half are particularly amusing, as is seeing Cardinal Richelieu, cat person. Eugene Pallette, the frog-voiced character actor in things like My Man Godfrey and The Lady Eve is the other one, er, Aramis, when Pallette was still relatively athletic and silent and Aramis was not yet a cologne. (8 of 10).

Hobo With A Shotgun

With a title like that, you pretty much know what you're getting. A grizzled bum (played by Rutger Hauer) decides he's fed up with all the crime and corruption and begins delivering justice "one shell at a time," as the movie's tagline puts it.

This isn't as good as Machete. It lacks the humor, unnecessary nudity, and general sense of tongue-in-cheek fun that made Machete work so well. Hobo is a bit mean, actually. But it doesn't skimp on the violence, so there's that.

Ip Man

I've long been a fan of Samurai movies, but not so much for Kung Fu. Lately I've been seeing a few of the Korean action revenge films and and this movie came up as a similar recommendation from Netflix. It was both good and interesting, but not really similar to the Korean movies. The heroism portrayed was dramatic and moving. The fighting was intense and seemed to be well portrayed to my untrained eyes. I'm not really happy with modern day movies depicting the Japanese, or the Germans for that matter, as ruthless and in-humane oppressors, but understand that this is a movie set in the occupation and is used for dramatic effect.

8/10

Snow Angels:

Probably the only David Gordon Green film I had yet to see (aside from The Sitter which I have no intention of going anywhere near) this one is well-done if more than a tad depressing, The characters are developed enough so we understand them and their motivations and Sam Rockwell reminds the viewer that he's a good character actor. It's relatively slight. But well-done. Not as good as its three predecessors or even Pineapple Express. But better than the commercial pablum Green has cranked out since Pineapple.

Moneyball (2011)

This film pretty much lived up to my fairly high expectations. One thing that did take me slightly by surprise was the extent to which the story is told in such a focussed fashion through the past failures of the protagonist.

There are two intresting things about Moneyball for my money. Firstly I have a soft spot for scientific approaches to sport and how in this they open up a new world of possibilities. It's almost like a "geek strikes back" play on the Rocky formula, as Beane (Pitt) and Brand (Hill) have to battle a whole system of received wisdom to even impliment their ideas, never mind make them successful.

The second is Beane himself. Despite the superfical appearence of talent, some intellect, and an apparently enviable position, Beane is a sad, sad man who spends his days living through his past failures. Touted as a real talent in his youth (possessing the apparent 5 big skills a baseballer can hope to have) his career, and by extension his life, appear to have broadly speaking wimpered out.

Why it didn't happen for him is one of those mysteries. Perhaps he was overrated to begin with. Perhaps he simply lacked the courage to impliment his talent under any real scrutiny. Perhaps a bit of both. He doesn't seem to know himself, but he does know that his failure to live up to the expectations of others defines who he is.

This theme is interesting to me as it reminds me of an old English Cricketer called Graeme Hick. A man whose career I followed to some extent, who was predicted to be a world-beater and who in the lower levels of the game was, but when exposed to the top flight crumbled again and again.

Another thing I respect about the film is the fact that it stays away from expressly stating that the Brand-Beane forumla is right, and everything else wrong. Over an hour in and Beane is having a debate with his chief scout about the "right" approach - Beane advocating this new scientific/economic approach and his old-school coach advocating the old-school methods of emperical wisdom, specifally the "intangibles" that only a baseball man and not an Economics graduate could know. Oddly in this debate I agreed with both points of view. The Scientific approach that challenges received wisdom and fact that there are aspects of sport (and life for that matter) that can't be quantified using mere data analysis.

I think this film is pretty unique and made all the more so by the true story element.

Good stuff.

A definate 8.5/10 ...perhaps inflating higher on subsquent watches

The Sum of All Fears (2002) **1/2

The movie never really answered the question in the title. Is the sum of all fears 2? 4? 6 even? God help us if it's 8.

Young Frankenstein

Can I admit that I've never been a big fan of Mel Brooks? His work has never done a whole lot for me. I saw Young Frankenstein about 10 years ago, kind of thought "meh," and hadn't seen it since until last night. I thought I'd give it another go to see if my opinion had changed. It hadn't.

That's one my favorite movies.

Mirror, Mirror is a mess, to the point where I have qualms about recommending it, but I was entertained and sometimes vastly amused. I really liked the sequence when the dwarfs are training Snow White to fight*, followed by the scene where She and the Prince have a swordfight, complete with somersaults, snowballs and kicks to strategic areas**. Being a Tarsem movie, it is full of striking and unusual images, including the animated open scenes, and an attack by giant wooden puppets. (These are the featureless kind without clothing.) Snow White is a pretty formidable opponent for the Queen here, using her head as well as her looks.

This is the only version of Snow White I know of that ends with a Bollywood Style production.

The main problem with this fractured fairy tale is that it's not quite fractured enough. Tarsem tries hard to make it unusual, but he's hampered by the over-familiar fairy tale it's based on. Still, I smiled a lot, and sometimes laughed out loud.

*The dwarfs in this version are bandits rather than miners.
**The dwarfs didn't just teach her to fight, they taught her to fight dirty.

Back To Bataan (1945)

John Wayne stars as a US Army colonel who witnesses the fall of the Philippines at the outset of WWII and is assigned to lead the Philipinno resistance against the invading Japanese until the US can retake the islands. Anthony Quinn plays Wayne's second in command and the grandson of a local native hero. The movie is brisk at about 90 minutes or so and while there is some lack of focus here and there, the overall the story told, based on actual events, is a compelling one. There is great respect shown for the Phillipine people who were first conquered by the Spanish, then the US and then the Japanese, but who maintained their allegiance to the Americans and the promise of eventual freedom after the Japanese invasion. It's not terribly deep by today's standards, but it's nice to see that touch in an action movie such as this. 3.0/4.0


Under Ten Flags (1960)

This Dino De Laurentis production, again inspired by true events, tells the story of a German raiding ship in the Indian Ocean that spent the war targeting allied merchant supply ships by disguising itself as a harmless passenger or cargo ship to get close enough to its targets before revealing its heavy armaments. Van Heflin plays the German captain who does all that he can to conduct a "clean war" by refusing to shed blood needlessly and who goes out of his way to rescue the crews and passengers of the ships that he sinks.

Charles Laughton, in one of his final roles, plays the English Admiral back at the Admiralty who is in charge of tracking down the German marauder, moving his fleet around in a nearly 2 year long game of cat and mouse. Overall the movie is fine, but there is a middle section where there is a "heist" at a German installation that seemed a bit out of place and some of the civilian interactions seemed more at home in the 60's than the 40's. Stil, it was nice to see Laughton do some scenery chewing in his later years. 2.5 / 4.0


Play Dirty (1969)

Michael Caine plays a BP officer in North Africa during WWII in this Dirty Dozen rip-off as he is assigned a squad of criminals to go 400 miles behind Rommel's line to destroy a massive fuel depot. Much of the film's tension is in the squad battling the elements, the terrain, the enemy, and each other to reach their objective. Nigel Davenport plays Caine's second in command who has led the squad on similar raids before and who conflicts with Caine's "by the book" leadership.

Not a great movie and one that kind of suffers by trying to be too edgy and clever. Not as subversive as The Dirty Dozen or as fun as Kelly's Heroes. 2.0 / 4.0

I watched a great Memorial Day evening flick The Best Years of Our Lives, last night. I can’t recall a time when I was so quickly drawn into a film’s characters, as I was with this film.

Three soldiers returning home from Europe and the Pacific face a more difficult challenge than they had in combat. For one, it’s physical wounds. For another it’s a massive slide down a social/economic ladder. For the last, it’s returning to financial security at the cost of newfound values. These three share an airplane ride and then a cab ride to their respective destinations, but their paths continue to cross as they try to come out of their uniform and re-enter civilian life.

I can’t imagine the reception this movie received in 1946. I would think the wounds from ‘The Big One’ would still be a bit fresh for audiences to have sought this film as an escape. Viewed on a day when we honor those who served couldn’t have been more appropriate.

Interestingly, Harold Russell won two awards for his portrayal of Homer Parish; a best supporting actor and an honorary award for a character who ‘served as an inspiration to all returning veterans’. He is the only actor ever to have won two awards for the same role. Overall, the film won 7 Academy awards.
I found it deeply moving. The characters seemed real because they undoubtedly were. In the 1940’s, each of these men returned to Somewhere, USA to find that the war was over but a new battle had begun.
Highly recommend.

Cowgirls 'n' Angels, because sometimes you just have to see a film without any reviews at all. Unlike with most such films, this is because it was filmed in Oklahoma and Kansas rodeo sites and is in limited release in the area (and, apparently, partly paid for by my tax dollars.) 11 (?) year old Ida Clayton (Bailee Madison) is the grandaughter of a famous rodeo rider and her father was also with the rodeo but left before he knew Ida was conceived. Elaine (Alicia Witt), Ida's mother, is understandably fed up with rodeos, but Ida is drawn to them, and comes to the attention of Terence Parker (James Cromwell), an even more famous rodeo rider who has collected a troupe of female trick riders called the Sweethearts to the Rodeo. Ida's hanging around and good with horses, and Parker was close friends with Ida's grandfather and remembers Elaine as a kid, so he asks Ida to join the troupe and Ida, seeing a chance to find her father, jumps at the chance. Persuading Elaine, is a different matter.

I rather liked this slight film, which is redeemed by good performances by Madison, Witt, Cromwell, Kathleen Rose Perkins and Dora Madison Burge (who is very sexy but this is a family film). It was a good decision to stack it with actors who can act. The soundtrack is mostly annoying. Madison still looks about 10, and was one of the reasons I wanted to see the film, to see if she was still a good actress. Yes, she is. Main drawback is that kids who see it will want to run off and join the rodeo. (6.5 of 10).

Sansho the Bailiff

I wouldn't call myself well versed in Japanese film. The only ones I have seen are the ones from the top 100, which I think is a good foundation, but definitely not comprehensive. However, my viewing of Sansho the Bailiff was enriched not by my film knowledge, but by my knowledge of Japanese art styles.

Last fall, I took an Asian art history course at my college to fulfill a requirement. Going in, I knew nothing about Asian art but had a decent grasp on Asian history. I had a great teacher and ended up loving the class. Again, while it wasn't comprehensive, I did gain a decent understanding of Asian art styles and how to view them.

Bringing this knowledge into Sansho significantly changed my appreciation for the film as well as the Japanese style. Every shot is masterfully composed by Kazuo Miyagawa, who is truly one of the best cinematographers in the history of film, and reflects a classical style that was developed over the course of centuries. It is a style that uses space, environment, and character interactions in a truly unique way. For example, the interior shots are dominated by their use of vertical and diagonal lines which frame the scene; this is a technique used in onna-e painting from the Heian period as well as Edo woodblock prints of the Tokyo pleasure district. Another example is the depiction of the dense wilderness and expansive landscapes that our characters live in; these are reminiscent of the monochromes of Sesshu and the woodblock prints of Hiroshige. Considering the cinematography from this point of view, Miyagawa becomes not an independent anomaly in the development of modern cinematography, but rather a master artist adopting traditional techniques to a new medium.

I know that I am neglecting the other aspects of the movie by focusing on the cinematography, but I don't think Sansho would be nearly as effective without it. That is not to say that the rest of the film is lacking. In fact, the writing is streamlined and insightful. The acting, while over the top at times, is touching and normal in a Japanese context. This is something I've been wondering about - is Japanese acting just traditionally exaggerated or do Japanese people actually act like this? I'm going to guess that this is based on the kabuki acting tradition.

There are two scenes here that should be required viewing for anyone who calls themselves a movie buff: and the final scene. The former is wonderfully eerie and atmospheric while the latter is some of the best stuff you will ever see. It doesn't get much better than this.

Sansho is not a happy film. It's end is hopeful and heartbreaking at the same time. It explores the effects we have on each other as human beings. It's message is simple - be compassionate - but touching and fascinating at the same time. Zushio is an extremely well written character. He holds the narrative together.

I'm really surprised this isn't higher on the list. I definitely prefer it to the other Mizoguchi film in the top 100, Ugetsu.

4/4