The Page Turner (2006) - nice little french pschological drama that, although predictable in its outcome, is well made and acted.

Deborah Francois plays a cold, disenchanted woman who in her youth was an aspiring pianist whose aspirations were cut short inadvertently by a famous pianist who judged one of her performances. The majority of the film is about how Francois' character works her way into the judge's life a decade or so later, intent on ruining it.

Like I said, its been done before and the outcome is fairly predictable, but its facinating to see how she goes about it in a calm and calcualted fashion, but always with a creepy sense of being unhinged. Also, the other thing going for it is that Denis Dercourt avoids the hollywood path in outlining every bit of detail and leaves quite a bit of the (irrrelevant) mechanics upto the viewer to determine.

Not for everyone, as the sheer unlikeability of the main character will distance some people, but it�s a decent movie that's worth a watch.

7/10


Little Miss Sunshine - its not terrible, but I find it absolutely staggering that this was a best picture contender. Poorly written, poorly executed and the shooting style is virtually identical to your run of the mill reguar hollywood movie.

The "drama" has so little weight that it may as well be non-existent, the "comedy" ranges from ok to just plain awful. And the ending had me laughing for the wrong reasons. That's up there with Clerks 2 as some of the stupidest last 20 min in a film.

On the plus side, some of the acting is pretty good, Greg Kinnear and the little girl doing much more than their one dimensional roles would have otherwise allowed.

5.5/10 

I find I agree with you quite a lot on many movies I've seen. (eternal sunshine of the spotless mind, little miss sunshine for late examples that spring to mind.)

Maybe I should pick up that B&W french stuff if you like it so much. 

it takes a bit of getting used to for te old french style, especially if you havent seen anythign like it before, and there's just as much cra int hat era as any other, but the good stuff is well worth tracking down. 

The Last Metro (1980) - Francois Truffaut is a very hit and miss director for me, but what elevates him into the pantheon of great directors is that when he gets it right, the result is usually very close to magic. Apart from a non-ending, this is excellent stuff that's very hard to fault.

Set in 40's occupied France, it focuses on the wife of a banned jewish theatre director who is hiding him in the theatre cellar even though the whole country believes him to have skipped the country. It looks at the strain on the wife as she essentially leads a double life trying to manage the situation and the impact of the arrival of a mysterious new actor into the theatre troupe.

Catheine Deneuve is outstanding in the main role and while she gets good support from the rest of the cast, she is the one to watch. Truffaut effortlessly weaves his story strands together and its only at the end, when he doesn�t quite know how and when to finish, that the movie falters.

7.5/10 

On Dangerous Ground (1952) - Nicholas Ray's expressionistic film noir is a film of two distinct halves, the first being a Taxi Driver style roadside look at policework, the second being a more conventional thriller set amongst a small town.

Robert Ryan plays a cop disillusioned with the world and everyone in it till he meets Ida Lupino's blind girl who tries to bring him back from the point of oblivion. It's standard pulpy stuff but acted pretty well by the two leads and directed with so much flair and skill by Ray that he almost manages to convincingly pull off the very obvious studio enforced ending.

7/10


Only Angels Have Wings (1939) - It's a big call, but I think this is possibly Howard Hawks' greatest film, maybe even better than The Big Sleep. This is pretty much perfect stuff that's hard to fault about a group of pilots in a small port in South America whose job is to deliver mail over dangerous and foggy mountainous territory.

Cary Grant and Jean Arthur lead a pitch perfect ensemble cast that eats up every line of the terrificly plotted and written script and Hawks is in control of every scene. One of the great ones that fits in everything the modern blockbuster tries to encompass (action, comedy and drama) but usually fails at doing.

9/10


Confession of Pain (2006) - The reuniting of the team behind Infernal Affairs is a perfect example of how a decent plotline ands story can be absolutely butchered by a hopeless script and trite direction. The narrative is an absolute mess and the way it's edited only makes it messier and sillier.

Tony Leung and Takeshi Kaneshiro try their best as two friends who go about dealing with past tragedies in different ways, but their fine acting cant raise this into anything that's even remotely suspenseful or engaging.

4/10 

I saw Oceans Thirteen. I didn't mean to, honest. 

it surely couldnt have been worse than Twelve?

Saw a few more :

Entourage Season 3 Part 1, - more of the same, but this time around it's a bit more uneven with one or two absolutely terrible episodes.

The rest is the usual above average, entertaining, well made but disposable fluff. Pity, because every now and then such as the episode(s) with the Bob Ryan character, it reaches a higher level.

6.5/10


La Strada (1954) - well made, semi-surreal fiilm by Fellini that, although being a good movie, will be different for each viewer depending on how much they like Giulitta Masina's performance as the chilidsh and impish Gelsomina.

Her character is sold early in the movie to Anthony quinn's Zampano, a brutish travelling entertainer who mistreats Gelsomina whenever he gets the opportunity. Masina's performance is effective at milking her character's circumstances for viewer sympathy, but personally I also found it to be sometimes annoying and a bit too mannered and calculated.

But Quinn's performance in a mostly one dimensional role is excellent and Fellini directs with a sure hand, something which I think is missing from his later stuff.

7/10


Jane Eyre (1946) - havent read the book, have no intention to, and so the comments here are a reflection on just the movie rather than a movie-book comparsion.

The only reason I watched this is because its widely rumoured to have been directed by an uncredited Orson Welles. Rumour or fact, what is obvious from the opening shots is that it has been highly influenced by Welles which is a good thing because I personally didnt care much for the plot.

Joan Fontaine doesnt really help, playing her character as a variation on Rebecca, but as soon as Welles enters the movie about a third of the way through, it becomes exteremely watchable (although the first 10-15 min with a younger Jane Eyre are also very good). Welles is so good as the Duke of Rochester that you hang off his every word, regardless of whether anyone else is talking with him or not.

Its also beautifully shot with tremendous gothic imagery, and only the slightly rushed and unsatisfying ending holds it back from being a good film on the whole.

6.5/10 

The Good German

Just what was Steven Soderbergh thinking? If you are going to make a movie that pays more than homage to not one but two of the great cinematic classics in Casablanca and The Third Man you better make sure that you have both the knowhow to shoot in b&w and also some idea as to what made those movies tick.

Unfortunately he shows neither. Whilst he mimics the camerawork and composition of the period well, he has no idea how to light a b&w film resulting in nearly every scene looking overexposed with way too much contrast. There's no excuse for this, especially considering George Clooney was at hand whose Good Night and Good Luck is a perfectly shot b&w film.

As for the movie itself, what made Casablanca and the Third Man classics were scripts with strong characters who had great dialogue to work with. In contrast, all the characters in this film are peripheral to the machinations of the plot. On top of that, Tobery Maguire in a crucial role is badly miscast. Cate Blanchett fares better with her Marelene Dietrich impersonation, although it is a bit too inconsistent. George Clooney struggles to channel some sort of mixture of Cary Grant and Humphrey Bogart and ends up with a performance that's completely in the wrong tone.

There's many references to the great dialogue of both Casablanca and The Third Man, but never actually a genuine piece of memorable dialogue. Which is a ll a pity, because I think the story and plot had great potential if handled correctly.

A big wasted opportunity.

5/10 

The Elephant Man (1980) - whoever had the idea of having David Lynch make this movie was a genius. This could have been your run of the mill, oversentimental oscar bait movie in the hands of most people, but Lynch turns it into a pure masterpiece.

This is flawless stuff really (although the 'romeo and juliet' scene didnt work for me), and I think its Lynch's greatest movie, even better than the great Blue Velvet and Mulholland drive.

The style is brilliant, everything from the very intricate sound design to Freddie Francis' extraordinary cinematography (which is perhaps even better than his work on The Innocents) to the incoporation of the signature Lynch surrealism is pitch perfect.

As for the rest, its a beautifully restrained piece of storytelling with a well written script that is brought to life by some terriic acting from almost everyone that appears on screen and operates on many levels.

9.5/10 

of Jane Eyre that aired here on tv in three parts lately. Pretty good. I talked about the social restrictions of the age a lot with my girlfriend and how they were the basis of the plot.
It probably is a lot harder to understand everything nowadays. 

So... for some reason I had nothing better to do on saturday but watch Resident Evil and Alone in the Dark back-to-back on TV. Some observations:

It's suprising how similar these two movies' basic elements are. Humanoid zombies, check. Larger, fast-moving "Alien"-type monsters, check. Is the underground complex somehow attached to an old mansion/orphanage via a tunnel? Check. Does the movie end with the entire fictional city being overrun/evacuated? Check.

Second, the basic stupidity of making a "cinematic" game into a movie. The thing that makes these games feel so cinematic, which is a good thing for the game, is the heavy use of familiar movie cliches from the appropriate genre. But the movie based on this game is going to be a movie based on a game based on a bunch of movie cliches. So now the movie has both the cliches of a video game, plus the cliches of an entire genre of movies.

On the plus side, it would be pretty easy to make a game based on either of these movies. 

metl,

you're not hanging out for the new Far Cry or Diablo movies then?

I saw Happy Together (1995) recently. Now I'm a big fan of In the Mood for Love and 2046, but all of Wong Kar Wai's earlier stuff only impresses me in bis, and usually on the whole not at all.

This is the same, there's a few interesting bits in this movie about the ups and downs of a gay asian couple in Argentina, mainly due to the excellent acting of Leslie Cheung and Tony Leung, but on the whole the bleak, meandering and aimless nature of it didnt do a whole lot for me.

5/10 

On the plus side, it would be pretty easy to make a game based on either of these movies.

With some lolmalade. 

Cars - I have to say that given the subject matter, the uninspired trailer and the lukewarm reception upon release, this was probably the pixar film I was least interested in seeing.

Turns out there was never any cause for concern, the movie just adding to pixar's ever growing list of quality films.

The opening scenes feature some stunning use of animation, showing just why Pixar is top of the heap when it comes to this sort of stuff. None of the other (computer) animation studios ever make this good use of their medium. And the cars in this movie have more character than all of the cameos in the recent Shrek movies combined.

The ending's a slight letdown, it was always going to be predictable, but I thought the execution was slightly lacking.

Still, probably on par with Monsters Inc, better than Bug's Life and Finding Nemo and not quite as great as either of The Toy Storys or the Incredibles.

8/10 

I thought plot wise it was one of the weakest Pixar films, everything was so clich�, could pretty much guess the whole story after 10 minutes. From a visual and technical point of view it's brilliant though.
Incredibles is still #1 Pixar film for me.
Really looking forward to Ratatouille though, and the one after that looks interesting (and I'm not only saying that cause the protagonist is a cute little robot =D ). 

it was definitely predictable, but I thougt it was still very well executed. Then again, I dont mind cliches as long as they're done well. 

Holiday (1938) - very similar to George Cukor's later The Philadelphia Story, also with Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn, and my reaction to it was about the same. Its an entertaining, predictable comedy-drama but nothing more.

Cary Grant plays Cary Grant but is still very good as a free thinking middle class man bethrothed to a high society millionaire's daughter. Katherine Hepburn plays Katherine Hepburn, but is suprisingly watchable (except in her 'big' scenes where she hams it up quite a lot) in the role of the elderly sister who is the "black sheep of the family".

The plot might be predictable all the way from the first scene to the last but the script is sharp in its dialogue and the whole thing is neaty executed.

6.5/10


Flags of Our Fathers - reasonably decent war movie from Clint Eastwood, although it struggles to distinguish itself from better films that did the same thing, and resorts to oversentimentality at the end to get its emotional point across.

Still, it has some very good acting from Adam Beach who plays one of the men caught up in the flag hero saga of the Battle of Iwo Jima. Most the scenes with him are excellent and get across the point much better than some of the more heavy handed stuff that follows.

7/10


Forbidden Games (1952) - Rene Clement's heart breakingly tragic masterpiece really does deserve more recognition than it gets. His movie about a 6 yr old french girl that is orphaned whilst fleeing a city with her parents during WWII, and taken in by a peasant family with whom she forms a strong bond is deceptively simple but very strong in its impact.

Part of its strength lies in the perfect performances of the children, but the majority of its impact is derived from the fact that it never tries to create emotion, but simply observe it.

The last 20 min or so do feel a bit rushed, but it all leads to a very memorable ending that is perfectly executed.

8/10 

finished The Fountain.

comments later, but you had some questions? What specifically were you wondering? 

/me crosses fingers 

A great short story it made. A reasonable move it coud make, with quality acting and no pseudo-scares. 

Rome Season 1 - bit disappointing because they could have done better with the material, but overall it's still quite a decent show, just a bit below HBO's recent high standards. There's probably 6 very good-excellent episodes and the remaining six are fairly average, including the very flat final episode which really should have been so much better.

The production values are very high for tv and so what you get is a beautiful looking show with great attention to detail, but the scripts and acting are not always up to the task. Although this season of the show looks at a fictionalised version of the events surrounding the rise and fall of Julis Caesar, its main focus is a semi-soap opera of two roman soliders and their families. I found the scripting and acting for this part of the show to really struggle and only when the show allows Ciaran Hinds to take centre stage as Caesar, and gives him material to work with, does it really come to life. There's also a lot of gratituity under the umbrella of "realism", but I cant really say it bothered me very much even though it was quite noticeable.

7/10 

nitin - Jack Ketchum's The Girl Next Door is apparently quite good. Don't know if its up your alley, but I like your reviews so... Interested in your take. 

there's two, the one with ellen page and catherine keener :

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0802948/

and the more unknown one :

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0802948/

you're right in assuming it's probably not up my alley but I'd probably still be interested in the first one, if it ever makes its way to Oz anytime soon. Low budget indie stuff comes and goes in a flash usually. 

The Fountain - It's definitely a very ambitious effort from Darren Aronofsky, who aims for a science fiction film in the same vein as 2001 and Solaris. But, unlike those movies, this has a fairly simple concept (death is ok) underneath the ponderous nature and recurring attempts at profundity. Once you take away the flashy technique, which is admittedly very good, there is once again not a whole lot left underneath.

The movie has three interconnected stories, some real and some a story within a story, and in all of them Hugh Jackman's character is looking for the answer to immortality for his wife. There is a heavy mayan influence in all three stories and its this aspect that links them together, sometimes in an obivous way and sometimes in a more deliberately oblique way. What is a bit annoying is that Aronofsky almost goes out of his way to make this a difficult film to get into by cutting between the stories foy symbolic purposes, but at the same time reducing the viewer's involvement in any of them.

However, I did find the central relationship between Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz to work for me, mainly because of the effective performances, even though its easy to see why it wouldn�t for another person. Without that centre though, there would be even less reason for a viewer to become engaged in the movie despite the three stories coming together quite well by the end.

7/10 

Boring, annoying soundtrack.