Au Hasard Balthasar (1966) - Robert Bresson's movie is an early example of the intersecting stories genre with the film following around a donkey as he's passed around from owner to owner during his life in a small french town. Bresson uses the fate of the donkey as a contrast to the lives of his characters and there's some brilliant scenes in this that work due to Bresson's style of having his non-professional actors speak and act in a manner devoid of any expression or emotion. This method strangely seems to make the viewer produce the emotion in scenes where the chracters should but arent. However, there are numerous times where the script is contrived enough to the point where it borders on silliness. This did detract from the film for me but overall its well worth a watch.

7/10



The Heiress (1949) - A decent movie, nothing more. The opening 45 min had me seriously questioning it, mainly due to olivia de havilland's annoying and one note performance during this time, but I did like where it ended up.

I still don�t see why an oscar was given to de havilland for this, she only really acts for the last 20 min. Ralph Richardson was much better as her overbearing father and Montgomery Clify was nicely ambiguous.

7/10 

Whoa. That movie is a bit fucked up. The camera work distracted me sometimes, but the movie was pretty good. 

was the dodgy flashback sequences. 

But that's pretty much what the whole movie was: flashback sequences, drug sequences, or both in the same sequence. :P 

The Age of Innocence (1993) - Martin Scorsese's period drama is very opulent but it is also one of his weakest efforts, completely empty and devoid of any substance.

It has a shaky script and stiff performances from its main players, both of which improve significantly in the second half. Scorsese directs poorly with some very out of sorts pacing and an equally out of control camera.

The only pluses are the excellent production design and a very good score from Elmer Berndtstein.

5/10


Angel Face (1951) - Borderline great film noir which is probably also Otto Preminger's finest hour apart from Anatomy of a Murder.

Robert Mitchum is very good as the downtrodden loser, the script is well written, Preminger directs outstandingly and the score is great, but its Jean Simmons who steals the show with her keynote iconic performance as the femme fatale alluded to in the title.

The only thing that separates this from the great noirs is the relative absence of memorable dialogue.

7.5/10 

Le Notti Bianche (1957) - Visconti's melodramatic fairytale version of Dostoevsky's short story is defnitely worth a watch, even though it doesn�t really succeed. It�s a very stylized movie, set in a completely artificially made city inside a studio, and that�s both its main strength and weakness. The setting gives it a bit of a surreal mood which suits the material but at the same time it also lends the whole thing an unconvincing feel, something it definitely cant afford given the story of two lonely people who meet by chance and each pursue their own version of a fairytale relationship. The performances also vary in quality depending on the scene but there's still a lot to like despite all the flaws.

6.5/10



Futurama Season 4 - slightly better than season 3 but still way below the quality and consistency of seasons 1-2. A handful of very good episodes but most were average-above average.

6.5/10 

High and Low (1963) - A first rate procedural crime drama from Akira Kurosawa, I have yet to come across a bad film from him (Ikiru is probably my least favorite and even that was reasonably good).

Toshiro Mifune is once again excellent as a corporate businessman whose son is the target of a kidnapping/ransom, only to find out that the kidnappers got his chaffeur's son by mistake. It's a film of two distinct halves, the first half playing out as a psychological drama as Mifune struggles over what to do, and the second turning into a police procedural chase movie. Both halves are very well written, directed and acted but I think the movie suffers slightly in the second half from relegating Mifune's character to the sidelines.

Overall though, another excellent movie from the great Japanese director.

7.5/10 

considering I've seen both Pan's Labyrinth and Little Miss Sunshine in the theater, neither was a particularly good film.

The first one was kinda good in almost every way. Good acting and interesting details and all that. But it still sucked, the feeling you got when you left the theater was just sadness. It didn't contemplate on the themes enough. And it was unnecessarily violent too.

Little Miss Sunshine then. Well, what can you say? It was unconvincing. Somewhat interesting characters and all that but it just wasn't that interesting as a whole, and you didn't need to wonder that much what would happen next. The "funny" things have been seen quite many times already, and the other things weren't just explored much.

I don't know any better movies since I haven't seen much.

Oh, Serenity was on tv on monday. What a load of crap. I thought it was supposed to be somewhat different from peoples comments. Why do they put millions of dollars to such stupid stuff? Maybe they should put a few million more to the script as it was such an inane story, not just in overarching picture but in details too. Maybe on par with star trek episodes. Childish. 

was a good genre flick this year. Nitin's review was spot on. It has a lot of little plot holes that you don't really notice until you are thinking about it later because the acting and the clipped story telling keep it moving forward.

Given that the movie focuses on a slight of hand, likely a nod and wink is the reason more than technical flaws. Sometimes you chop off a bit of logic so you don't sacrifice the story.

I didn't bother to see what the nominees (any year with a dominate musical is a year I skip) for the Oscars are this year, but I doubt if Inside Man recieved any of them. To turn a common phrase, it has enjoyable flick that doesn't beg for the little statue nor for public adoration written all over it. 

But it still sucked, the feeling you got when you left the theater was just sadness.

Did the Pianist suck? How about Schindler's List? 

I don't really care about the oscars, but I can't say I've really seen any better movies in 2006 than Pan's Labyrinth, Thank You for Smoking, and I guess A Scanner Darkly and Little Miss Sunshine were pretty good too. But none of those seem like "great films."

Admittedly, I haven't seen a lot of movies from 2006. 

would be The Prestige, marginally ahead of Inside Man, Pan's Labyrinth, Children of Men.

I havent seen a few things like Babel, Little Miss Sunshine etc but the ones I listed above I found quite enjoyable. I wouldnt consider any of them great films in my own opinion but all were very good. 

the Pianist was a pretty good film. It had it's dead ends but all in all still many-sided.

Totoro (whatever the accompanying descriptions at your home theater were) was good in many ways. It was from the eighties, seems something more naive and sunnier was still more genuinely possible back then. I'd recommend watching when on a date. :) 

Lost (season 2) - season one was decent, this one was above average overall, a stretch of 12 or so pretty good episodes in the middle bookended with 4-5 dud ones at both the start and finish.

The first season gave me the impression that it was being made up as they were going along, I take that back. If it's going where I think it is, then its actually pretty well set up but it's just being dragged out because the writers are being too cute.

6.5/10 

Three Times (2006) - Hou Hsiao Hsien's Taiwanese drama features 3 love stories set across three different times (1966, 1911 and 2005) and uses the same actors in the principal roles of each segment. But in an un-hollywood bit of inspiration, none of the segments are connected in any way except to paint an overall picture and all 3 of them end differently so that none of the stories really mirror each other. By the end though, it's fairly obvious what Hsien's point is and the sum of the parts is definitely more than the individual stories by themselves.

There is not a whole lot of dialogue in the movie, and there's even less plot, but most of it is very easy to watch due to the strong acting, exceptional cinematography and assured directing (except for a stylistic choice in the middle segment). Each segment very easily conveys the time period its depicting, and especially manages to capture the mood of each period (no small task given the lack of dialogue or plot).

The first segment is almost perfect, Shu Qi and Chang Chen playing a pool room worker and army trainee respectively, who have an idealised but unfulfilled relationship due to Chen's character's military commitments. This was probably the only segment that worked well by itself.

Hsien goes one step further in the middle segment and plays it like a silent film, with only music being audible and reading cards coming on screen for any spoken dialogue. It's an understandable choice, but at the same time a very distracting one, especially given that this segment probably contains the most 'dialogue' in the whole movie. This time around, Qi and Chen play a courtesan and a writer (campaigning for Taiwan's independence from Japan) and while the script of this segment is probably the strongest, the style used lessens its impact significantly.

The last segment provides the point of the film, with the first two segments basically serving as context. However, the segment by itself is very average due to its predictability and while it manages to successfully illustrate what Hsien was going for, it was still a disappointing way to finish up. In this incarnation, Qi and Chen play adulterous lovers, Chen's character being a photographer cheating on his girlfriend and Qi's character being a singer cheating on her girlfriend.

Overall, its worth a watch, but it finishes up short of what could have been possible.


6.5/10 

24 Season 5 - fairly ho hum season, probably the worst to date. I liked the turn season 4 took, where it ditched the realism to an extent and became more of an all out action show. There must have been complaints with that though as this season reverts back to the formula of the first 3 and this time around it looks really tired and strained.

On top of all that, its very lazily written too, with some overly silly turns and the whole season basically being a mesh of the best parts of season 2 and season 3 (the second half of both seasons respectively).

5.5/10


Election (2005) - Johnnie To's look at the biennial triad elections in modern day hong kong where old traditions clash with business needs comes across like half a movie, missing several crucial scenes and moving rather haphazardly from one set of events to the next without any sense of flow.

There's a handful of good moments, mosty near the end, but on the whole it comes across as fairly amateurish.

4/10 

Election 2 (2006) - Johnny To's followup to Election is a much better movie all around, with more interesting characters, much better acting and a better handle on direction.

But although the flow is better, it still suffers from appearing to miss several crucial scenes. And the script is still downright silly in quite a few parts.

6/10 

It's a german film, a humorous story, tells mostly about east germany.
I recommend it. It's not extremely deep but probes some things anyway and is original.
"79 qm DDR" is the original title in german. It's from 2003. (or 2002?)

I also today saw an interview ("movie") of Story Musgrave. What an intensive man. I recommend it.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0390515/

I've been watching twin peaks episodes. Thanks to the hard disk box of my flatmate I can actually follow a tv series for the first time in my life. (Well, maybe I watched the original batman some as a kid ;) ) I remember hating it when it ran and when there were reruns. I'm only now really following it closely. It's still overdone on many fronts but it is captivating to try to think and predict things. The music theme setting sets a nice atmosphere, as well as the ungimmicky and calm camera work. It's probably getting worse with time and getting mixed in its own cleverness. 

hitler movie with helge schneider arive around your places? it's quite good, if you don't expect a really funny film. The ending sucks though :/

Somehow i don't believe helge schneider movies are played in other countries... :) 

The Blue Dahlia (1946) - fairly decent low level film noir with veronica lake and alan ladd, hampered by a very predictable plot but saved by some great characters and classy dialgoue.

7/10


Dirty Harry (1971) - had only seen bits of this previously, first time I saw it properly. Anyway, eastwood gets most of the plaudits, but two of the other reasons this works as well as it does is Don Siegel's excellent direction and the downright pschotic Scorpio as the villain. And the music's great too.

7.5/10 

I watched the entire series over a weekend a few years ago. Only the first movie is actually good; the rest of them are worth watching only for some good moments. 

yeah, I've heard that although people still me that Magnum Force is worth a watch.

I dont think Siegel was involved with the sequels, which like I said, was a big part of the first's quality. 

I really like the style and basic attitude of Twin Peaks, and the first series is pretty awesome, but the second series mostly sucks and you can see why it got canned. 

terrific acting from everybody but the screen play was a mess --

Hey Frank Costello, your crew just murdered the Boston City comish, what are you going to do next?

'I think I'll go to Disney Land, after all they wouldn't exactly call out the National Guard to break down every door and squeeze Southie until they got me now would they? Nah, I'm sure they would wait around and tail me until I scored a load of coke and bust me then.'

Frank, you are doing some deals with Chinese nationals, you realy think your FBI contacts can protect you from an NSC wanting to appear effective in the War on Terrorism, and a President who wouldn't mind riding a mob boss like a pony if it boosts his poll numbers a few points?

'Nah they may have a few cameras and listening devices but they wouldn't actually raid while I'm playing biggest gunnest with Triad types. Why would they? They don't know I'm carrying chips that can be used for cruise missiles on me'

But it is clear they know every little detail of what you have and how you got it.

'Then what the hell are they waiting for?'

I don't think the screen writers actually thought that one through, Frank.  

yep, while trasposing it from hong kong to america, it doesnt quite work as well as Infernal Affairs (although that had its own faults).

Its definitely a good film, but hardly a great one.