Tuesday, March 9, 2010 at 02:29PM Starring Michael Nyquist, Sven-Bertil Taube, Noomi Rapace
Directed by Neils Arden Oplev
Based on the Swedish thriller by Stieg Larsson
A journalist is hired by a wealthy industrialist to find out what happened to a sixteen-year-old girl who disappeared without a trace forty years earlier.
Monday, March 8, 2010 at 01:32PM Academy Award Winner—Best Foreign Language Film
Starring Ricardo Darin. Soledad Villamil Pablo Rago, Javier Godino
Directed by Juan Jose Campanella
Monday, March 8, 2010 at 01:12PM Academy Award Nominee, 2010—Best Foreign Language Film
Grand Jury Prize Winner, Cannes, 2009
Starring Tahat Rahim, Niels Arestrup
Directed by Jacques Audiard
Friday, March 5, 2010 at 02:00PM Starring Ian Bonar, Lyndsey Marshal, Kieran Bew, Matthew Baynton
Directed by Giles Borg
Excellent, funny and touching film about an English indie band struggling to stay together and make it.
Thursday, March 4, 2010 at 02:52PM Starring Richard Gere, Wesley Snipes, Ethan Hawke, Don Cheadle, Lil Taylor
Directed by Antoine Fuqua
Thursday, March 4, 2010 at 02:21PM Psychological horror
Starring Christina Ricci, Liam Neeson, Justin Long
Directed by Agnieszka Wojtowicz-Vosloo
Monday, March 1, 2010 at 05:40PM Starring Matt Damon, Greg Kinnear, Brendon Gleeson
Directed by Paul Greengrass
Friday, February 26, 2010 at 05:14PM By Michelle Muggil
The Caterpillar - This character is probably best known for smoking a hookah and instructing Alice on how to eat a special mushroom in order to grow or shrink to help her on her journey. Although Alice is mostly annoyed with the Caterpillar initially, she does benefit from his help and advice.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010 at 05:52PM By Marty Meltz
“Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief”
My 0-10 rating: 8
Genre: Adventure, Fantasy
Director: Chris Columbus
Screenwriter: Craig Titley, based on the Rick Riordan novels
Starring: Logan Lerman, Brandon T. Jackson, Alexandra Daddario, Sean Bean, Pierce Brosnan, Steve Coogan, Melina Kanakaredes, Jack Abel, Catherine Keener, Kevin McKidd, Joe Pantoliano, Uma Thurman
Time: 1 hr., 59 min.
Rating: PG (for action violence and peril, some scary images, suggestive material, mild vulgarity)
Hey, big surprise. “Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief” is almost totally fun for everybody, with enormously imaginative and spellbinding digital effects, has a pretty decent script and is terrifically educational while being never less than top entertainment.
Critically, it’s being compared unfavorably to Harry Potter. Unfair. This is not Harry Potter and isn’t supposed to be. It has its own singular delights and its concepts of what Greek gods do are often very humorous. Granted, by virtue of its attractive and appealing leads, it’s pitched hard to teenagers, but its attractions are numerous and never cheap.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010 at 05:47PM By Marty Meltz
“Shutter Island”
My 0-10 rating: 9
Genre: Psychological Thriller
Director: Martin Scorsese
Screenwriter: Laeta Kalogridis, based on the Dennis Lehane 2003 novel
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingsley, Michelle Williams, Emily Mortimer, Patricia Clarkson, Max von Sydow
Time: 2 hrs., 18 min.
Rating: R (for disturbing violent content, language and some nudity)
A superior crime thriller of the first magnitude, “Shutter Island” is a masterpiece of exquisite depression, creative bleakness, relentless twists and a surprise ending to end all.
This is master director Martin Scorcese outdoing himself. Mostly known for the recent “The Departed,” his classics were “Gangs of New York,” “Age of Innocence” and, of course, “Goodfellas.”
Here he designs a mercilessly dreary story of a remote island hospital for the criminally insane whose vivid characters — staff, inmates and federal investigators — and their secret motivations become hypnotically fascinating. Scorcese’s constant balance between clues, schemes and tinderbox violence develops into a welling suspense tale which proceeds to an ingenious ending that wraps up the unwrappable.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010 at 05:41PM By Todd Murphy
BOTTOM LINE: Misguided, uneven and poorly executed, this re-telling of “The Wolfman” is by and large a waste of time, despite some excellent production design and visuals.
THE GOOD: Starting from good source material, “The Wolfman” seeks to tell the classic tale of the man cursed to turn in to a werewolf whenever the moon is full. Benicio Del Toro plays Lawrence Talbot, the prodigal son who returns to the family estate of his father Sir John Talbot (Anthony Hopkins) upon hearing the news of the death of his brother Ben at the hands of a wild animal. Wanting to find answers, Lawrence eventually becomes cursed himself when he is attacked by the werewolf. Condemned to damnation and life as a werewolf when the moon turns full, Lawrence eventually discovers the truth about his father, and his mother’s death, which leads to a violent confrontation and resolution between them
Tuesday, February 23, 2010 at 02:48PM Ajami is the name of a neighbourhood in the Israeli port city of Jaffa, now part of Tel Aviv, but retaining its own ancient character. The city blends Jewish and Arabic culture, and this blending is vividly depicted in the use of the Hebrew and Arabic languages in the film of the same name, Ajami. The film was also co-directed by an Israeli Arab, Scandar Copti, and Yaron Shani, an Israeli Jew. Ajani is nominated for an Academy Award this year for best foreign-language film. It was runner up for the Camera D’Or at Cannes last year.
The film’s themes of tribal conflict and enmity between ethnic and religious groups are portrayed in a gritty, documentary style with non-professional actors. The directors trained the “actors” in improvisation workshops, then filmed the story without a conventional script. They use flashbacks and multiple points of view to show events from different perspectives and reveal more and more about the characters and situations.
Monday, February 22, 2010 at 04:47PM Starring Ewan McGregor, Pierce Brosnan
Directed by Roman Polanski
Roman Polanski, who is under house arrest in Switzerland and did not attend, has won the Best Director award at the Berlin Film Festival for his new movie The Ghost Writer. The movie is about a ghost writer hired to complete the memoirs of a former British prime minister, said to be based on Tony Blair. Polanski reportedly worked on the nearly finished film in his prison cell, transferring it via the prison warden to his film editor outside.
Monday, February 22, 2010 at 03:09PM Starring Rajandra Prasad as Quick Gun Murugun
Directed by Shashank Ghosh
A zany, camp spoof of the Western genre, Quick Gun Murugun pits the lonely, vegetarian cowboy against super-baddie Rice Plate Reddy (Nassar), the scheming capitalist who aims for world domination with his McDosa franchise. Quick Gun Murugun believes only vegetarianism can save the world and his mission is to protect the cows of the world. He is torn between love for the vivacious Mango Dolly (Rhamba), and his first love, Locket Lover (Anu Menon). Think Blazing Saddles set in South India, with references to Clint Eastwood films and send-ups of Bollywood conventions.
Mind it!
With song and dance numbers like Kootchi Kootchi Twist and Aunties on the Dance Floor, it’s no wonder the film has become a cult hit already.
Friday, February 19, 2010 at 06:35PM Directed by Kaushik Mukherjee (aka Q)
Running Time: 91 mins
English and Bengali/Hindi/Tamil with English subtitles
A personal. even intimate documentary film in which director Q looks at his own relationship with his girlfriend and at sexuality in general in the land of the Kama Sutra. Contradictions abound in this country where women are often mistreated and talk of sex is practically taboo in polite society.
Friday, February 19, 2010 at 05:57PM From IFC Fillms
Directed by Na-Hong-jin
Starring Kim Yoon-seck, Ha Jeong-woo
Running time: 124 minutes
Two thumbs up from Roger Ebert and excellent reviews everywhere for his thriller from South Korea about an ex-cop who now makes his living as a pimp. When his girls start to go missing without paying him what they owe him, he starts to suspect a serial killer on the loose. Roger Ebert writes “When I see a film like this it reminds me of what we’re (the American audience) missing.”
Friday, February 19, 2010 at 04:24PM Ip Man, the story of a Wing Chun martial arts expert’s struggle to survive in south China during the Japanese invasion in 1937.
Directed by Wilson Yip
Starring Donnie Yen as Ip Man
Thursday, February 18, 2010 at 05:37PM By Priva Roy
It has some scenes, especially one involving a child’s death that will bruise you. Yet despite all this, My Name is Khan never becomes the empowering, inspiring Forest Gump-like epic. Mainly because the connective tissue tying it together is deeply flawed and in places, embarrassingly naive.
Khan is the story of Rizwan Khan, played by Shah Rukh, who has Asperger’s syndrome. This milder form of autism impairs Rizwan’s social communication skills and gives him some decidedly odd behavior patterns - he can’t stand loud sounds or the colour yellow.
He rotates stones obsessively and can barely bring himself to hug someone. Rizwan is far from crazy but he definitely moves to the beat of a different drummer. Despite this he finds love and a family with Mandira, played by Kajol.
Thursday, February 18, 2010 at 04:53PM By Michele Bouse
I have been a Hollywood Make-up Artist for almost ten years now. I love being on shoots and being a part of the staging of what eventually becomes a finished work of art. And that is what it is, a work of art, not natural beauty.
We know everyone is beautiful. You are beautiful! You are perfectly imperfect exactly the way you are… from head to toe. You are the only one with that nose. Your freckles are adorable. Your teeth make up an unforgettable smile. Your hair has the nicest tone and cutest cut. Your skin is soft and your feet are graceful. Could you improve a few things? Sure, maybe. But you will NEVER be perfect and that is great! How boring would it be if we all were perfect and not uniquely beautiful?
It is my job to make people close to perfect for shoots. Because of what I do, people are always asking for beauty advice. But I make it my living to point out each person’s unique beauty.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010 at 06:10PM By William Sinclair
Double Indemnity (1944) was Wilder’s third, but first stylistically serious film, and is given credit for the birth of film noir, literally “night film”. This term describes a visual style and moods of a type of dramatic film, usually crime, that’s much more gritty and realistic than most films prior to this era.
Film noir was mostly shot at night or in dark interiors; there’s lots of use of shadows, dimly lit edges, light from Venetian blinds which simulates bars across characters who may be headed for the real thing, and backlit smoke. Indemnity uses both cigars and cigarettes, characters smoking whenever it gets tense, or even to relax after sex.
