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. 

Was boring ! :) 

I loved Infernal Affairs, but despite my expectations I found The Departed much more effective. I'm inclined to think that it's because it's more 'western' so I can relate to it better, but I also loved every performance and I think much more love was put in to the soundtrack.

I'm also glad that it's not going to be a trilogy. The second two Infernal Affairs films were decent, but I found that they detracted from the first simply because I didn't feel that the story needed to go any further. 

different things to like in each.

Dearted has the better soundtrack with Gimme Shelter and is a lot funnier but Infernal Affairs had that killer performance by Tony Leung which is better than DiCaprio's (although he was still good) and also I liked its ending better and the plot had less holes. 

to excellent use. I would complain a bit about using Rolling Stone A.M. hit tunes instead of album cuts (Moonlight Mile would go great with a coke injestation scene) but then I recall that Let it Loose was also played in the movie, so that criticism would not be exactly accurate. 

The Illusionist - above average I guess but it really pales in comparison to Chris Nolan's far superior The Prestige. Nolan's movie had more depth in its script and its themes, more interesting characters and much better acting.

This is well shot, with a nifty lighting trick to make its production design seem fancier than it is, but everything else from the acting to the directing to the scriptng is on autopilot. And the less said about the very predictabe plot the better.

6/10 

Jezebel (1938) - Almost great melodrama with Bette Davis turning in a fantastic performance as a domineering and manipulative woman in 1850's New Orleans who is not afraid to break from society's rrules and traditions in trying to control her fiancee and those aorund him.

William Wyler directs well and the supporting cast is also very good, but this is Davis' show in every frame. Apart from a well conceived but not well executed ending, I didnt find too much wrong with it.

7.5/10


Whatever Happened to Baby Jane (1962) - Well made bizarre semi-gothic film with Bette Davis playing "baby jane", a has been ex child star who is now a deranged misfit who both looks after and torments her more popular ex-actress sister, Blanche (played by Joan Crawford), who is paralysed from the waist down after a car accident in which Jane was involved.

Treads that fine line between really bad and deliberately campy pretty well, mainly due to the very good acting from both leads. Davis has the showier role and runs with it, she's barely recognisable both in terms of look and also her character. There's also some finely written supporting roles and a few interesting turns in the script, but the whole thing does feel as if it runs 15-20 min too long. The very end scene is pure genius though.

7/10