On The Waterfront

"Everything I heard about Marlon Brando was true" that was the first impression I had while watching this movie, of course everyone knows about his classic performances, especially as Vito Corleone, in "The Godfather", but this is a young brando, and frankly this man was an acting Mozart since the beginning, but that was only part of the brilliance of this movie.

Terry Malloy (Brando) is a dockworker on the docks of New Jersey, he is funny and simple minded and gets along well with the local mob connected union and it's boss Johnny Friendly (Lee Cobb) since his brother Charlie is Friendly's lawyer, one night he even helps Johhny's men to ambush another dockworker, who accepted to testify before the authorities on the crimianl activites around the docks, and who ends up flying off the roof, Terry has resentments about his involvment, but the whole docks operate under the D&D (deaf and dumb) the local brand of Omerta, which suits Friendly's opressors very well, since they are the ones who control who works and who does not

But the murdered dockworker has a lovely sister Edie (Eva Marie Saint) who seeks the truth and justice against those who killed her brother, she first shames the local church's priest (Carl Malden) to set a resistance to the injustice happening on the docks, which lead her to meet Terry and to slowly fall in love with him and trying to convince him to be a better men (the thing women always try and fail to do)

The violence escalades when other people willing to testify receive more and more opression from Friendly's men, Malloy doesn't want to get involved, he has a simple life he likes, raises pigeons on the roof, and has to remain loyal to his brother, but when this very loyalty is compromised, things get serious very fast, and the former contender in Terry who was forced to make a life changing decision to make Johnny a little richer wakes up, and the conforontation must occur, between the opressors and the opressed.

First of all this movie has very high human messages, about the opressed, the simple workers, and about becoming a better version of oneself, when the right motivation comes in, a bum can become a contender, and when the opressed have a leader who accepts to submit violence on therir behalf, they shall be free, It is very messianic in essence, when you put it in context this movie was made in the context of the House Un-American Activites Comittee, or better known as McCarthysm, and the movie's director was interrogated by the comitte and allegedly "named names", so maybe it was also his personal redemption, a director naming names can make a movie like that.

The other high point is Brando's superiour brand of acting, you see the famous "method acting" in practice in here, It is a great performance, he carries the weight of the whole movie on his shoulders and gets away with it brillantly and with an Oscar, with the movie winning a total of eight oscars, the directing was superiour, the supporting acting very good, and the movie was shot on location anyways on New Jersey's docks which adds a great authenticity to the whole thing

Everybody should watch this, for all the reasons mentioned above, and also for one of the most famous quotes in movie history "You don't understand! I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody instead of a bum, which is what I am." .

From Hell

The holywood studio system has been known for it's savaging of creative people and creative ideas, take Terry Gilliam or Orson Welles as an exemple, on the other hand, the comic book world has been know to be the nest of the most creative people in pop culture, but sometimes a crossover happens when hollywood wants to adapt a cult graphic novel with a huge following, and most of the time it ends up making it a sensless blockbuster focusing on the obvious and leaving out all the rest

"From Hell" is a cult comic book about the killings of Jack the Ripper, Several prostitutes are found dead in Victorian London, and then posthumously savaged with some vital organs missing, and Inspector Frederick Abberline (Johnny Depp), who is known for his insight, and who is prone to accurate visions is appointed on the case to investigate, night after night the murders happen following a strange ritual, one of the prostitutes Mary Kelly (Heather Graham) ends up assisting Name Name in his investigation, because she is a potential target, and by the almighty blockbuster rules has an affair with him.

The experience and the craftmenship in these murders shows that the murderer has a knowledge of human anatomy, which leads Frederick to seek Counseling by doctor Willian Gull who happens to be a royal doctor, and leads him to cross the paths of the ruthless special police force and it's leader, the dots on this macabre map rapidly have the pattern of a conspiracy, and through the nets of this conspiracy royal princes and secret society members are either entrapped or pulling the strings, until the final showdown which shows a complexity in the motives higher then humanly possible, it's a divlish plan, a plan from Hell.

Sounds nice doesn't it ? well matter of fact this is ten floors below the level of the graphic novel, because the interesting theory about how Jack The Ripper was making some ritual sacrifice in order to prepare humanity for the twentieth century, and the philosophical significance of the places murders took place in, and his view on time and history, and how it all affected the bloody twentieth century and everything which happned during it has been replaced by a Johnny Depp runnint from a murder scene to a murder scene, while being involved in a hard to believe romantic relationship with the female lead, and Jack the Ripper commiting his murders without clear intentions, the theory in the book is far more interesting, so my advice to you, skip the movie and read the graphic novel .

Year : 2001
Directed by: The Hughes Brothers
Starring: Johnny Depp, Heather Graham, Ian Holm

Miami Vice

"Miami Vice" starts with a nightclub with the song "Numb/Encore" playing, and it sets the tone for the whole movie, because the song is what is called a "mashup" you have Jay-Z on the side of the good stuff, mixed with the less good Linkin Park, but the song works because of it's versatility, now is that extendable to the movie.

Sony Crockett (Colin Farell) and Ricardo Tubbs (Jamie Foxx) are two undercover Miami Police officers investigating a prostitution ring, while they are about to intervene, they receive a call from their informant who informs them that his cover is compromised and life is in danger, one thing leading to another, they find themselves infiltrating the huge drug business in the carribean sea run by the druglord Jose Yero (John Ortiz), posing as smugglers, they gain the trust of the south american masterminds of the deals, and eventually Sonny ends up falling in Love with Isabella (Gong Li), the right hand of Yero, and you guessed it, this whole thing has an explosive momentum, leading the players to question themselves, make sacrifices, and even cross the thin threshhold between crime and law.

First you can't even start to accuse micheal mann of betraying the spirit of the cult series that inspired the move, since he was one of it's creators, but he did the aformentioned mashup between the spirit of the series, and his tradmark style visilble on films like Collateral and Heat, which we reviewed before, shot mainly at night, with a state of the art digital camera, it captures the spirit of the Floridan night, and uses many close shots that enhance the sense of entrapment of the characters in the movie, and the doubts they might and might not have, on this side it's brilliant

the downside comes from the not so convincing love story between Isabelle and Sony Crockett, and since it's the main plot it weakens the dramatic fabric of the whole movie, the other aspect is the love scenes, which are plastred over the movie like Maxims on magazine racks, which sucks the poetential of the emotional conflict the characters find themselves in, I still think Gong Li is a good actress, and her chimestery with Colin Farrell is arright, but something is missing, and that "something" would elevate this movie to the rank of "collateral" and "heat", but on the other side, this movie is better in it's weakness then ninety percent of the other stuff, especially studio system made movies, so i will just say it is to the other two what the Godfather III is to his two big brothers, but it's still a good movie.

So, friends of the night, this one is for you, friends of gorgeous aeraial imagery, friends of speedboats, friends of class, friends of fast cars, and friends of films this one is for you too

in its best moments it will haunt you, in the not so good moments it is still solid entertainment, and it's a good occasion to revisit Micheal Mann's catalogue, since he is throwing a big movie this summer, public enemies, with Depp as Dellinger, and I surely can't wait to watch and review that one.


Year: 2006
Written and Directed by: Micheal Mann
Starring: Colin Farrell, Jamie Foxx, Gong Li

The Fast and the Furious 4

What happens when you put a four days old hamburger into a microwave oven because you have nothing else to eat ? well either it is un-eatable or discover it has a new taste, indeed both happned to me during the screening of the fourth part of the Fast and the furious franchise.

First of all it brings back the whole cast from the original movie, which was not that good anyways, but the best in the previous three, let's not forget that this series of movies brought back the whole street racing spirit, and car customizing, and the whole "need for speed" games series of bad boys riding gorgeous cars, and cops undercover caught in the webs of temptation in various forms, girls money respect greed, and having their loyalty to each other and the game itself tested everyday

Dom (Vin Diesel) is doing small sumggling jobs in the Dominican republic, where his girlfriend Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) has joined him and where he assembled a crew of car enthusiastics to help him challenge the asphalt, the authorities and dangerous folks, indeed this is no life for anybody loving anybody, so after an opening worthy of a James Bond (the old good stuff, not the new crappy stuff) he decides to go on solo, only to be hit by the shovel of karma on the back of his head as something bad happens to his girlfriend and lets him full of the three R's, remorse, regrets and revenge.

Dom comes back to LA and starts to invistigate, since he is a known felon, it attracts the eyes of the FBI on him and his old pal Brian (Paul Walker) a quick tempered FBI agent with extreme methods and a love of racing, and whome Dom knows since he was an undercover cop inflitrating his crew, and who also had a romantic involvment with dom's sister (Jordana Brewster), add to this Arturo Braga (John Ortiz) a druglord who recruits street drivers to smuggle weight, and a bad boy so sterotypical you'd swer he is made of polygons, and you get the whole image of this blockbuster.

What attracted me to the movie theater myself was the lineup of the original cast, because it made me nostalgic to a more whatever period, of course you don't go there expecting to see an auteur movie, what fast and furious promises, fast and furious delivers, Cars Girls and Cliché, by the middle of the movie, the evil ghost of Robert Rodriguez strikes, and we find ourselves into another "once upon a time in mexico", until a "sequel promising" ending, and it was well handled to say the truth.

The revenge story is so predictable, the characters are not that multidimentional, but you watch this movie as you'd buy the last Timbaland produced record, it's fun, doesn't take itself too seriously, nice soundtrack, the CG is well integrated, and the emphasis put on loyalty, something i think is good for it's target age group, and it will make you drive a little faster on the way home, but you'd still wonder why the totally plastic surgery remade Michelle Rodruigez is missing from the movie, the last word being it's not "Vanishing point", but it's quite good.

Year: 2009
Director: Justin Lin
Starring: Paul Walker, Vien Diesel

Hard Boiled (Lashou shentan)

Few directors have mastered an aspect of movie making as John Woo did master the action scenes craft, and that is especially true in his Hong Kong era before he moved to Hollywood and started to parody himself in a series of movies not even worth mentioning.

But when he worked with actors like Chow Yun Fat or Tony Leung, the results can be of epic proportions and that's what happned with Hard Boiled the action movie that kills all action movies and which influenced a wide variety of movie making and even Video game design and level management

Law (Yun Fat) is a Hong Kong cop with unorthodox methods and a love for Jazz music, while he is investigating some gun trade he ends up in a violent encounter with some mobsters and accidently killing an undercover cop, while his partner also passes away.

This trauma leads him to dig deeper which his boss () disapproves and to make things worst he has an office romance gone wrong with one of his coworkers()

Yun (Tony Leung) is a hitman for the mob boss Hu () who is solitary, makes origamis and dreams of running from it all, what happens is that the empire of Hu is about to be taken over by Johnny (Anthony Wong) who is the rising face in the underworld and who has managed to keep his major operations a secret from the police, competitors and even the undercover agents, who are still trying to find out about the depth of his involvement in the crime scene in HK

Law and Yun inevitably cross paths, and Hu and Johnny have to fight like ancient Chinese emperors about who will reign in the underworld, and all this potential leads the plot and the viewers into a an amazing cinematic roller coaster with a breathtaking suspense until the end

You can say what you want about the stylized violence in HK cinema but matter of fact the screen writing is always brilliant, the characters well drawn, with clear conflicts and large strokes, of course these characters bear more a resemblance to comic book heroes and it's all good because they really represent the symbolic that was the engine of the chivalry tale since the dawn of times.

These movies are just an update of the sword movies of the sixties, just a different setting and replacing swords with guns and machine guns, even the choreography of the scenes is almost identical, including broad movements, and virtuoso stunts moves, and compared to that, the whole matrix thing looks like a fourth mediocre copy

The last hour of the movie happens in a hospital, with a major suspense and a lot of lives on the line, and forget about the hospital's scene in «the dark knight» because this IS the hospital crisis situation that is the blueprint for all the movies that follow it, the only difference is that these movies have a big marketing machine behind them and familiar start faces, but never did any action movie in the last twenty years have reached this level of mastering, or very few did to be fair.

The thing you will remark also that this directing style had a very big influence on video game level design, and even characters, you will see your favorite characters from «counter strike» in here, and many games like that, and it is fair to say that if an actor can entertain a baby while killing with a machine gun, without being shocking or gross, it means that new grounds in movie making where opened, and this is the very definition of «genius».

year: 1992

Origin: Hong Kong

Director: John Woo

Acting: Chow Yun Fat, Tony Leung

Blow

The movie starts with « can't you hear me knocking » and this can mean two things, either this movie is top cool, or the producers have a lot of money to afford a Rolling Stones song, sadly the second statement is the true one, this song merely starts a movie that goes in one direction like a car on cruise control, and no Johnny Depp charisma, or Penelope Cruze Sexiness is gonna save it, nor the «based on a true story» sticker.

Meet George Jung (Depp) a bright kid from Massachusetts who was raised in a poor household and promised himself it wouldn't happen to him, so as soon as he can he travels throughout America and lands in LA with his childhood friend Tuna (Actor name) where he rents an appartment in Manhattan Beach in the midst of the summer of love.

California lifestyle needing money, Jung starts to deal drugs, first small quantities of herb, then expanding to importing it himself from South America, then expanding again until reaching a status allowing him to deal with Pablo Escobar personally, being the first man to bring Cocaine to America, and the story is true, which means all the craziness surrounding white powder in America in the seventies, it was this dude's fruits of labor.

The plot is really straightforward with not many twists really, it's the whole «rise and fall of ...» thing from VH1, of course a guy like that ends up marrying a trophy wife (Cruz) of course he ends up estranging everybody who ever mattered to him, and the end follows with no surprises, but the film positive side is that it tells a terrible tale of greed, but in a candid way, in the eyes of Jung nothing he did was bad, since he was just meeting the demand in simple marketing terms, even the FBI and the DEA are not bad guys, and besides unlike his South American likes he is not prone to violence, he is just a businessman

The best part of this movie are the exchanges Jung has with his Father played beautifully by Ray Liotta, they are the most interesting parts of the movie, and what save it from totally drowning

Let me just say It is a movie you can live without, Depp made far better movies in his career some we praised here, and Cruz was always overrated in the first place, and If you want to listen to Rolling Stones songs in a movie, pick a Scorsese one, but it was a fairly entertaining one, so if you really have nothing better to do it can be a nice choice.

Year: 2001
Writers: David McKenna, Nick Cassavetes
Director: Ted Demme
Starring: Johnny Depp, Penelope Cruz

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

OFOCN is an unconventional movie to say the least, first it is a Hollywood movie directed by a Czech director, Milos Forman, and second it happens in a Mental institution, and the most of it happens within it's walls which makes it prone to claustrophobic movie making, which it is not surprising, since this movie was adapted from a play, and it has Jack Nicholson in one of his iconic performances

Randall McMurphy (Nicholson) is a small time crook who is faking mental troubles to avoid prison, he is a rebel, womanizer, cool and a natural leader, his biggest problem of course is that inside the walls of (name of the hospital) free will is kinda frowned upon, since the whole purpose of this institution is surrender of free will, and of course he doesn't plan to stay locked in for a long time

The head nurse miss Ratched(Louise Fletcher) is a polite
and vicious woman with a zest of sadism, She is the one in charge of the group therapy sessions, which turn rapidly into humiliation and inquisition, and her methods are diametrically opposed to everything McMurphy believes in, and quickly McMurphy is pushing his fellow patients to act to improve the conditions of their stay, the consequences of which are them having the greatest fun of their lifetime ,and of course angering the whole hospital's establishment and challenging miss Ratched authority, leading McMurphy to face some unpleasant consequences

And speaking of the fellow Inmates, they are some of the most attaching characters you can see on a movie screen, from the introvert Chef (Will Sampson) who is really the force of this movie along with McMurphy, to the cheerful Martini (Danny DeVito) the shy Billy Babble(Brad Dourif), the eloquent Charles Cheswick (Sydney Lassick), all of whom McMurphy shows it is still possible for them to enjoy life and with whom we discover that what happned to them could happen to virtually anybody. from there the movie takes a series of unexpected turns and ends up in an astonishing ending, which will make you wonder on the concepts of sanity, loyalty, and freedom

This movie won a bunch of oscars including best movie, actor actress and director, and is considered one of the finest ever, it has this Shawshank Redemption feel, it stays with you a long time after you are done watching it, and is a school example of why Nicholson is considered a genius actor, in fact it was so good that it made me forget that i watched it in a crappy copy, and in French, and I guarantee you that your look on Psychiatric patients will change for good.


Year: 1975
Writers: Lawrence Hauben, Bo Goldman
Director: Milos Forman
Actors: Jack Nicholson, Louise Fletcher

HOME

You've got a date with your planet



What an astonishing, non-commercial HD environment project. I hope you all make the best out of it for yourself and the world around you. Think, act, change things!

(If it says the video is not watchable in your region you just gotta click on it and view it on youtube directly)

HOME - Released June 5th 2009

American Gothic

The charming side of evil

Lucas Buck (Gary Cole) is not just the sheriff of the small town Trinity, he's also pure evil. He is on the hunt for 10 year old Caleb (Lucas Black), a boy who's parents were killed by himself, to raise him in his own "spirit". So sheriff Buck goes round the town to cash in all the little favours the citizens owe him and everyone who doesn't follow his orders dies under mysterious circumstances.

"American Gothic" was TV series released in 1995, featuring the everlasting battle between light and evil. Unfortunately it ran only one season although that was enough to introduce Gary Cole as the perfect actor for those kinda seriously badass characters. Unlike many series that tried to fit into the mystery and horror genre this one really did a good job on it.

This was once and is still one of the best TV series ever, feels like Stephen King but is none of his work. Worth watching again and again.


American Gothic - On TV from 1995 to 1996

Seven pounds

Everyone has a secret, you don't wanna know everything

Ben Thomas (Will Smith) kills himself and before doing so calls the ambulance to announce it. The movie follows the story how and why he would do that. As an IRS agent he knocks on doors to collect open bills but when he knocks at Emily's door his life takes a big turn once again. Talking of changes he also helps a lot of other people, seven to be accurate. Because Ben has a secret he won't talk about to nobody for a while and he wants to make up for it, person by person, piece by piece to just disappear in the end.

This is, I must say, a really sad romance movie, it will even make people who hate to cry in over dramatic hollywood movies sob a bit. But probably it's the uber-dramatic music and not just the story. But the story is nice however, even though it has a few moments of silent thinking. You really wanna follow this story. It is probably one of the best movies I've seen in a while and I am really not a romance fan.

I am one of those, by the way, who think Will Smith is basically a totally overrated actor. He is good but he is ... well always the same. But maybe that's just me so I still give out a plus to the cast. With Michael Ealy, Barry Pepper and Rosario Dawson.

Seven pounds - Released december 2008

Talladega Nights

The ballad of Ricky Bobby

Ricky (Will Ferrell) is meant to be a race driver, it's basically his destiny he is forced into when his Dad who has not once in 10 years cared for him, one day walks into his school and tells him that everyone who doesn't win is a loser. Ricky literary can only count to 1 but when he gets his chance to become a race driver he just takes it and becomes a star. When it looks like nobody can beat him, French driver Jean Girard (Sacha Baron Cohen) challenges him and it doesn't look as if Ricky could win that race.

This movie is some light sports comedy, wrapped up in a great cast. With Leslie Bibb, Michael Clarke Duncan and Gary Cole, Will Ferrell and Sacha Baron Cohen.

However it was maybe a nice idea for a movie but somehow it's just not funny enough to be entertaining. It should have been made into a TV movie or something like that, even though 6 award winnings speak a different language. A Nascar racing fan will have fun I guess so I leave it to you guys to make up and opinion on it!

Talladega Nights : The ballad of Ricky Bobby - Released August 2006