...yes, if I was showing in the uni theatre to students and fellow academics fair use would apply. However, this is part of our community enrichment brief and will be open to the public in a public cinema. Criterion should be back to me with a solution tomorrow. 

....bloody excellent!! One of the very few films I've been to and walked out thinking "That was great" without reservation.

This is the QUALITY of action / action hero film the world has been needing for a long time, and something anyone trying to make a modern action film should be forced to watch and learn from. Stuff that actually makes some SENSE, a world and characters with some COHERENCE (both in the context of it being a fantastical world, of course), a film that delivered thing STRAIGHT without wallowing in CHEESE. Basically a lot of the little details that other action films do wrong, this did right. Great entertainment and good hope for the future of action films. 

seventh seal is an early criterion release and nowhere near some of their best restorations but it's still a pretty good image. Hopefully, it will satisfy what you need to do. 

I think in the end it comes down to having a good director at the helm with good actors to play with. Christopher Nolan had directed two very good films before this and with that cast, he had adequate resources for a quality film. 

Full agreement with shambler, but as someone else said, I didn't like the way that the fight scenes were directed, all the quick cuts and the way you can never really see both combatants at the same time made it very confusing to follow. If they had filmed the punch ups in a more "matrix" way im sure they would have had more effect. Thats the only crit I can come up with at the moment, recommended to everyone! 

Full agreement with Daz and nitin about the fight scenes, they were the only obvious thing that didn't work, because you couldn't see what the hell was going on.

Another, more minor criticism, was that apart from The Narrows and the trains, Gotham was not as striking and dramatic as it could have been.

Oh P.S., Anyone else spot the cunning jibe at the previous Batman films?? 

I thought it was well done. Very blade runnerish but not too fantasy like, still grounded in reality. 

Yeah, I agree with all that's been said, good film, too bad they didn't get some crazy chinese dude to help out on the fight scenes, hehe.
I liked the whole nightmarish scenes caused by the drug, would have liked more of those.
Why didn't that microwave machine blow up humans though? I can't imagine all the water in my body vaporising without me noticing.

Oh, and the batmobile rocks. =) 

because in true comic book form, no one thinks those things through.

And the batmobile was perfect in action, even though it looked terrible in still shots. 

hi 

Tristana - Pretty good film by Luis Bunuel, not as surreal as some of his other stuff, but definitely featuring some of his favorite themes. Catherine Deneuve puts in a commanding performance that starts out looking like most her roles but by the end is something different. Plus she has never looked better.

If anyhting, the script could use more work, time periods jump too suddenly for my liking.


Million Dollar Baby - This is not best picture material. Having got that out of the way, its a very good film. The direction is very assured (the best direcotr oscar is actually well judged), confident and hides some script problems well. It's helped further by some nuanced performances although why Freeman won best supporting actor for this is also a wonder. He's put in decent work, but nothing remarkable compared to other work. S and Eastwood are pretty good and work well together.

The main issue is the script. Mostly very good, it has some glaring shrotcomings in relation to some very cliche one dimensional characters and also some situations. For what he had to work with, Eastwood did very well, helped ably by some fine acting.

PS - I think Sideways, this and Aviator are on the same level. All very good films but falling short of greatness due to some issues. My pick for Best Picture was Eternal Sunshine but thats not really Academy material.


The Machinist - Nifty little thriller with Christian Bale. Definitely employs Hitchcock flavour for most of its running time (especially the bernard hermann like score).

Some people, like I did through most the running time, may groan at the attempted twist and its predictability. However, the final few seconds make the film work not because of the twist reveal (which I now genuinely believe is deliberately signposted numerous times in a not so subtle manner) but because of the "why?" denouement.

And this film probably wasnt 'important' enough for Bale to undergo the physical transformation that he did, but if only every actor was as committed to roles as this. Another winner of a performance from him. 

Has to be one of the best movies ever! The acting, story and soundtrack and everythign else is excellent!

Before watching this movie I thought karate was the best form of martial arts and that ninjas were also very cool but know I know better - taekwando owns them all and I look foward to when I am a blackbelt so I can kick ass in the name of world peace! 

Saw this yesterday with Dranz, and I went in with no expectations having only seen 1 short trailer which didn't really show anything...

And I was pleasantly surprised! This is one gory sick film! Its about some thrill seekers who go caving in the USA for fun and everything turns to shit and they need to esacpe.

Its a real dark film, set about 90% underground with just headlamps and glowsticks etc, and it does get really tense at times. Fantastic directing throughout as well I thought, you really get the sense of claustraphobia and darkness.

The film does fall down in a few areas though. The first 45 mins - 1hr are absolutely fucking boring :( Its all about the people involved and not much happens at all, very dull. Some could argue that it is TOO DARK and u cant really see whats going on, but I found there was enough illumination to see whats happening, while still leave some blanks to keep u on the edge of your seat.

The other crit is that once you've worked out what is going on in the film with regard to the challenges the characters need to face then you can start working out what is gonna happen next without much difficulty.

That said, if you like gore, this must be one of the more bloodthirsty and downright sick at times film I have seen this year, if not in YEARS, and is genuinely disturbing at times.

Try it, you might like it. 

"set about 90% underground with just headlamps and glowsticks etc,"

NO IT IS NOT A RAVE, SHUTUP U RUSSIAN TWAT 

Desperado - Disappointing. I'd heard a lot about the action in this fim but there was nothing that was really that good here. I've seen much better and of course the rest of the plot was non-existant even though for some reason the director thought he was making some sort of epic.



Ringu - Anyone that's seen the remake and this original and still claims that the japanese version is better and scarier is in denial that a US remake of a foreign film actually came out supeior.

The original, which lacks Gore Verbinski's visual flair from the remake, just accentuates just how silly the whole plot is. Sure, the remake had a few too neat explanatory scenes and some unecessary and unrelated subplots, but when the main concept is so silly, it doesnt really matter.

And Hideo Nakata did a better directing job with (regrettably even sillier material) Dark Water. 

I generally agree with you, but I remember Ringu having the nicer ending. (though I can't even remember how it ended, anymore!) 

Well, this is a totally non-objective way of comparing movies, but I prefered the Japanese version just cause it felt stranger, and sadako was alot creepier than samara (you never see her face, and they've got that nice freaky eye-through-hair thing going that they didn't keep in the american version).
The american version just felt alot less scarier (which doesn't mean it's not a better movie I suppose).
And yeah, I also prefered the ending to Ringu. 

really? See that's thing, I felt the remake felt stranger and creepier (minus the horse scene, that was just dumb).

The ending (assuming you mean driving to the grandfather to make him watch the tape) is better.

Maybe this is one of those that because it relies so much on strangeness, the version yo watch first will be better since you dont know the plot (well loosely anyway). 

Yeah, you're probably right, and I saw Ringu at least twice (along with Ringu 2 and Ringu 0) before seeing the american version, so I suppose the whole idea was already a bit stale to me by then. =\
The fact that I found it not bad is probably proof enough that it's a good adaptation. =) 

Knife in the Water - Early Roman Polanski film which demonstrates his ability to create tension even out of seemingly non-threatening situations. But the script and movie are pretty average on the whole.


The Letter - Pretty good noir/melodrama with bette davis. Has some strange characters and is pretty well acted. The direction by william wyler is also pretty impressive.


Mean Streets - Not as good as his masterworks, but this Scorcese film is still pretty good. Lacklustre script but strong performances by Harvey Keitel in particular and laso Rovert de niro. Direction by scorcese is very good.


To Live - Hero was good, House of Flying Daggers was not but this is in another league altogether. Apart from a slight drag in pacing in the last half hour, this is a pretty awesome film by Zhang Yimou. Everything just clicks and works perfectly together. And the acting by Ge You is one of the great performaces in the history of cinema. 

The visuals are very inventive and it's the most visually striking film in a while but I found it too sadistic and twisted to really enjoy. Marv storyline, as many people have said, was the best by far.

Also, being a film-noir fan, I was expecting much better dialog and use of narration.

So overall, I personally found it worth a watch but ultimately not all that satisfying/engaging. 

I'm not sure what drew me to watch this subtle comedy or whatever it is... maybe to see Bill Murray acting again.

It wasn't worth watching. It's just an eccentric little movie with a few mildly amusing dialogue bits but nothing more. I didn't catch it's motive. Maybe the entire movie was just an all-too-subtle story for me... 

Actually, The Life Aquatic was one of my favorite movies this year, it was just so weird and different (and the retro music when they are in the submarine rocks, hehe). 

when I watched The Life Aquatic, I dont trust my own opinion.

Like when I went to see Death to Smoochie after drinking a pitcher of beer and I laughed my ass off in the theater only to watch it on cable months later, wondering, 'what the hell was I thinking? This movie is awful.' 

Yeah it was cheesy fun.