Jebby Movies

2009-08-06T10:12:00.001+02:00

This site has moved to http://jebbymovies.wordpress.com/ !

2009-07-28T15:52:00.002+02:00

New Post on the new site:

Michael Emerson: Read

Please make sure to check the new site for new reviews from now on, mine are all moved, Ghanoo will move his reviews within the next weeks. However new stuff is going to appear THERE from now on.

Have fun!

Ghanoo is a lazy ass!

2009-07-26T11:25:00.003+02:00

This movie is basically about a woman's request to the second editor of a movie critiques site to create himself a Wordpress account and start moving his reviews. Now when she had finished moving her posts and the whole move of the site was only a day away, he still had not even created an account but continued posting on the old site.

Now this woman became very angry and raised hell but then just decided not to publish his new posts anymore till he moved his old ones, otherwise he would not get his ass up. Spoiler: It worked.

Totally recommend this one bcs it's a real daily life movie, that could happen anywhere.

--------

Imagine us being a bit like them two nowadays:

Closer

2009-07-25T14:39:00.005+02:00

Apart from the celine dion crowd, and the people who live in an extrapolation of the "ever after" concept in fairy tales, people know that relationships are complicated, because they house a big amount of conflict all the time, things get more complicated when covetness enters in the game, and it gets complicated to the Nth degree when parties involved have a hidden agenda, one of the most faithful portrayals of all of the above is the movie "Closer" by Mike Nichols

Four people from diffrent nationalities and diffrent backgrounds, two British men Dan (Jude Law) and Larry (Clive Owen) , and two American women Alice (Natalie Portman) and Anna(Julia Roberts) meet in London during diffrent circumstances, and they fall in love, end up engaged, married and living together, then doubts start to arise on the accuracy of their choices, then adultry and cheating and double lives enter inevitably in thie mixture, brining many changes to their situation, in a game where nobody wins, and where winners congratulate the losers, the very game of life.

So great is this movie, because it's so simple, it doesn't need plot devices because the characters tell the truth to the people they are supposed to deceive, Larry and Anna are hugely successful in their profession, Dan and Alice are struggling, and it doesn't change a darned thing, it's all the same, it's the same green on the both sade, and since this movie was adapted from a play long unedited sequences reveal the past and intentions of characters, it says much about the state of relationships in this century, people want everything so much that they end up with ... nothing

The artistic praise in this movie goes to Mr Nichols, and Patrick Marber the writer, without forgetting the majestic performances from Natalie Portman and Clive Owen (both golden globe winners for that), the scene where a washed up Dan goes to see Alice in the strip club is so intense that you could make a movie just out of it.

Well for the rest of the world creaming about upper mid class western life, this is as faithful a portrayal as it gets, and in the words of the great Warren Zevon "Rich folks suffer like the rest of us, it will happen to you", so perhaps at the end of this movie you will realise that your relationship is not that miserable after all, and that's the bonus form of self help one can get out of a brilliant piece of a movie making, and granted it's a movie you will never get tired of.

Mission Impossible 2

2009-07-24T14:32:00.006+02:00

After the first installment was a commercial and a critical success, Ethan Hunt came back to the movie screens for another episode of "Mission Impossible" and since Tom Cruise is very involved with the project being a producer as well, he hired no other then Mr Hong Kong cinema himself, John Woo, to direct the sequel, was it a success ? let's dig deeper.

Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is the new leader of IMF, and while on vacation doing some extreme sports thing he gets contacted by the Agency, and during a meeting in an exotic location Mission Commander Swanbeck (Anthony Hopkins) informs him that some prototype virus "Chimera" had been stolen by his arch rival Sean Ambrose (Dougray Scott), and that his mission "should he choose to accept it" is to retrieve the virus and it's antidote, he might choose two teem members and the third must be Nyah Nordof-Hall (Thandie Newton), a woman who had a relationship with Ambrose and well trained in her field.

From Spain to Australia, back to America, and again, the chase between Hunt and Ambrose goes firece, while both fight to get their hands on Chimera, a love triangle forms between the three of them, and indeed it has an effect on the progression as anytime the professional and the moral and the sentimental gets mixed, you always know in your heart that the good guys win, but at what cost, to themselves and humanity.

A highly anticipated sequel, turned out to be a mere money maker, John Woo lost his mojo when he moved to America and he never got it back, he surely made a lots of money, but he did a big harm to his filmography, an American action hero is not as absolute as a hong kong one, and besides, the story doesn't justify the stunts, which are the true force of this movie, and the two most important ones, the vilain and the love interest are far from convincing, Thandie Newton was a clear miscasting, and Scott could be a goold vilain would his character be drawn better, but again, this is a star vehicle for Tom Cruise, who shines in shades and on motorcycles, doing stuff that is illegitmate outside of Hong Kong, i mean at one point, a white dove flies out of nowhere for god's sake ! but it was a good summer movie, which a lot of movie fans wanted to like, and the remainder is a couple of mountain climbing stunts, and some scenes that look like the prototype of the far superiour "The Dark Knight", indeed at the heart of a good action movie are story and character, and character is exactly what this movie lacks.

Catch Me If You Can

2009-07-23T16:45:00.005+02:00

Genius is a word we use carefully here in JM, because otherwise, anybody who is not average would be labled "Genius" and that's not the right way to use it, but Frank Abegnale was a true genius a guy who managed to make millions of dollars, pose as a Panam pilot, a district attorney, and even a pediatrist and go around the world, before he was nineteen years old and Spielberg made a movie based on the events of his life and that's "Catch me If You can).

Frank Abagnale (Leonardo Dicaprio) is a teenager in New Jersey, living an upper middle class life, his Father (Christopher Walken) is quite successful in his business, and his mother (Nathalie Baye) is French, whome his father met while he was serving in WW2, the couple can't resist some troubles they have, and they end up divorcing, the super sensitive, super intelligent Frank doesn't take it well, and using some wisdom provided by his father, he manages to fool everybody, from Airport authorities, to respectable hospitals, to the US attorney office, using innovative forgery techniques, and a superiour self confidence, and to make so much money doing forgery stuff wherever he could.

On the other side is agent Handratty (Tom Hanks) the chief of check fraud branch in the FBI local office, and he is the one hunting him, Handratty is a good guy, paternal, intelligent and understanding, soon enough a strange bound forms between him and Frank, and this bound is the wire that connects the movie together, at the end Frank is a troubled child in a broken home, he needs to prove himself to the world around him, and to some persons in particular, and Handratty understands that, but will it be enough to catch him ?

One of my personal favourites, it's a brilliant movie, much praise goes to DiCaprio's performance, as Abagnale, this guy didn't replace DeNiro in Scorsese's world for nothing, there are other great preformances, Hanks as always is very good, but i think the best of them all is Walken as Frank's father, this performance should have got him several awards, he got the nominations but he was more then good.

A swingy score by John Williams and the traditional brilliant cinematography by Janusz Kaminski complete the atmosphre of this film, and compared to many movies set in the sixties this one is so superiour, because it does not fall into the trap of nostalgia but focuses on the characters and their relationships, Jennifer Gardner plays a role which is hard to forget of a prostitute who ends up paying her client for her services, this movie was good when it came out, it stands the test of time, it's not a masterpiece like the other three or four Spielberg made, but it's close to that status, brilliant people make the most difficult things look effortless, and this movie is an exemple of that.

Update on the moving

2009-07-23T11:04:00.002+02:00

You may wonder how far we got in moving the site and its posts.

For that we created a list to mark what's already done and what still has to be done
Click to see details

As you may see all 48 posts of Sina's in 2008 have been moved already, so its 48 reviews you can try the new search on already. Feel free to try it and let us know if you found what you were looking for.

Also see the "Editors" page for Sina's Bio bcs that much is done, too.

We keep you updated on the progress!

Leaving Las Vegas

2009-07-21T17:39:00.005+02:00

Since Bugsy Siegel imagined it (see our review of "Bugsy") Sin City has been known to contain all the forms of excess within it's limits, from the psychadelia of a Hunter Thompson to the crooning of Sinatra and the Rat Pack, to Pharaonic projects by Winn and his likes, yet on the outskirts of Vegas exists another limit, the place where dreams and illusions die, and the doomy question comes knocking "what remains when everything is gone ?" .

Ben Sanderson(Nicholas Cage) is a Hollywood agent who has hit rock bottom due to alcoholism, under the California Sun he manages to trash a beautiful existence the whole world creams about and throw it all at the foot of his mistress, the bottle, and since late alcoholism is full of unfunny ideas, Ben has the best of them all "Going to Vegas to drink himself to death".

After burning the remainder of his LA life, and since his firing from his last job got him a nice severance package, he puts his plan to work and goes to Vegas, checks in a motel, and on the Strip he accidentally meets Sara (Elizabeth Shue) a beautiful hooker, between the two, an odd relationship forms, based on "mutual understanding", he doesnet criticize her occupation, she doesnt criticize his "mission", but Sara is just his perfect match, she seen it all, she is more disillusioned then him, if that's possible, this relationship is deep and doomed, with and end that will surprise you, this is really a Hunter Thompson vision of vegas, the place where the American Dream dies.

The movie has a melancolic tone, it's similar to a free fall to the abyss of human misery, but with a shining light at the bottom, at the end Ben and Sara are metaphors of the successful and beautiful who are too odd to live, and too cool to die, and are stuck in this big mirage in the desert, a hole they can't, and don't want to get out of.

The chimestry between the two lead actors is a rare thing on movie screens, because they hit bottom , they are at the edge of honesty, the rest of the cast is for plot purpouses, this movie is about Ben and Sara and and that's it.

Mike Figgis makes a great tale of Vegas and despair, the city lights are filmed in a beautiful cinematography, and the fragility of Elisabeth Shue is not something you will forget soon, and anyways, if Vegas is the tomb of the American dream, then leaving Las Vegas.... a surrender to nothingness, and seening such a high concept within the limits of moviemaking is great by itself.

The Last King of Scotland

2009-07-20T18:50:00.013+02:00

Africa, cradle of civilisation, land of exotism and mystery and beauty.... and dictatorship, and murder, and blood money, and a lot of things, matter of fact the old continent is still struggling, because "the new continent" and the one above are still making it a rule to give shelter to it's dictator and leave it in it's virgin state, save for the natural ressources of course.

"The Last king of Scotland" is such a movie, it's about Ugunda, a country not many of you have heard about, and it's center is the life and times of General Idi Amin the man who ruled the country
with an iron fist and an undeniable charisma seen through western eyes.

Nicholas Garrigan (James McAvoy) is a young Scottish doctor fresh out of med school, he has daddy issues and don't want to end up like father in the classy monotonous life of village practice, so he throws his dice on the world globe, and ends up in Ugunda, where he helps a humanitarian doctor to cure the needy in a remote Ungandan Village, his arrival conicides with the successful coup d'etat staged by General Idi Amin (Forest Whitaker) , a series of events lead Nicholas to become a close adviser to Amin, and to enter his life of ultimate luxury, unlimited power and raw violence beyond the understanding of a Scottish upper middle class kid who came to look for adventure.

The movie is shot in warm hues, and a great cinematography, again through western eyes, it starts in the exotic safari Africa with exotism and mystery, then slowly to "bloody money " Africa where nobody wants to live, and the truth is lost between those two, in a mere cinematographic point of view the movie is good, but you can't help the feeling of absorbing a biased message, it's speaking about real people having real lives, it has a somewhat honest point of view in the sense of Nicholas's indulgence of Idi Amin's cruel behaviours is a metaphor for the whole western indulgence of African dictatorship, i mean who did provide dictators with arms (see our review of "lord of war), with tax havens, with swiss accounts, and sometimes even of a favourable media coverage, far from me to indulge dictatorship and killings, because i know what it's like to live under a dictatorship, but this bloody coin has two sides, and you can't just focus on one, because i think he is just paying the price of his political stands during "Operation Thunderbolt".

Back to cinema, Whithaker's acting is amazing, he could absorb and channel the raw magnetism and undeniable charisma of Amin and won all the major awards that year, on the other side James McAvoy is really good in his interpretation of a candid doctor, who came to Africa to seek adventure, and ends up learning that "everything there is real" in the words of Amin.

Being an African myself, i can't judge this movie without thinking about the broken promises my contient endured, an how deceived it was, from the early days of Ben Mhidi, Nasser and Lumuba, a big African Festival is happening in Algeria these days the second "Panaf", the first was in 69, between the two is a painful story of an extinction of a holy fire of aspiration for billions of people, which got reduced to the distance between any African capital, and Geneva, and they don't even need that now, they have the internet

NEWS: IMPORTANT!

2009-07-20T08:18:00.001+02:00

Hey guys,

there's some really big and important stuff to announce. Jebby Movies is finally moving!

Nah, don't worry, we are not going anywhere but we will move all the posts and the best of your comments to http://jebbymovies.wordpress.com/ - Soon we will also get us a short and nice domain but for now it's just the server movement.

Why do we move?

Wordpress provides better service for everyone! You will have a site search that actually works, will be able to find us on Google and so on, the comments and site managing is much more easy and comfortable and you will be able to browse through the reviews you are looking for, faster and better.

For us however it provides a better look into the site statistics and an easier post and comment management. I got my own site http://sinahawk.wordpress.com/ on Wordpress since the first launch and it just works better.

We will drop a few features (such as the "Tag cloud" and the store) and provide new ones (easier linking to Youtube and Communities, new categories ...).

It will take a lot of time to move all the reviews of the last years but we will finally finish somewhen. Please check out the new site already and use the comments at the "About" page to let us know about the new site. Also GO ON CHECKING THIS SITE bcs really new reviews will be posted here till the other site is complete!

Have a great rest of a weekend
Best regards
Your editors

Forgetting Sarah Marshall

2009-07-19T19:18:00.005+02:00

What happens when you take your audience for granted, well Sting made a luth album, The Rolling Stones made disco albums, Schwarzenneger made a movie where he was pregnant, and these endeavours share one common symptom, they are not just mediocre, but they have a kind of an agressive mediocrity, a disrespect for fan's loyalty.

"Forgetting Sarah Marshall" is such an exemple, although not that mediocre anyways, Peter Bretter (Jason Segel) is a film musician whose girlfriend is the smoking hot Sarah Marshall (Kristen Bell) the star of "Scene of the Crime", a series that bears a ressemblance to a certain CSI, the couple is disequilibred but functional, until the day the inevitable happens, Sarah Breaking up with Peter.

Peter doesn't take it well to say the least, since he is basically a man boy, think couch potato with a vengence, so after trying everything, he follows his brother's advice and goes to Hawaii to forget it all, and guess what, Sarah is also there with her new boyfriend, the rock star Adlous Snow (Russel Brand) the leader of Infant Sorrow.

One thing leads to another, and all the clichées of the genre fall like the moussoun, Rachel (Mila Kunis) is the hot receptionist who has a little thing for Peter, Matthew (Jonah Hill) as a restaurant employee trying to break into music, Chuck (Paul Rudd) as the Surf instructor, and the old story of Peter trying to make it big in the entertainment business using his frustration as creative stimuli, until reaching a predictable ending that will make you wonder when did it cease to be an Apatow production, and became a Sandra Bullock one.

Now don't get me wrong, it's the summer, and if you have nothing to do, it's a nice afternonn movie, but it's below the Apatow standards, like "SuperBad" we reviewed days ago, it's a predictable plot, what make an Apatow comedy is it's unpredictablity, and it suffers some problems in the level of character building, some of them like the fundamendalist couple, or the yoga instructor are just fillers, they just occupy vacant screen time, a special mention indeed for Russel Brand who saves the movie with his exotic brand of comedy, and his onscreen wit, you won't forget his performance here anytime soon.

Apatow and Co are working on a new thing, "Funny People" with Adam Sandler, and the usual people, now will Sandler drag Apatow below to the level of "big daddy" or will Apatow drag him up to the level of "Punch drunk love", a low point in the body of work of this great funny Apatow family, but we shall be indulgent, because they made us laugh so hard, and so many times.

The Man Who Wasn't There

2009-07-18T18:17:00.004+02:00

Some things are easier said then done, like "bring back the golden ae cinema" think of the failed attempt of Clooney and Soderbergh to do their interperetation of "The Third Man" it was named "The Good German" and tanked like a torpedoed german submarine in WW2, but the Coens know the craft of film noir, and that's what made "The Man Who Wasn't there" a success.

Ed Crane (Billy Bob Thornton) is a barber in Santa Rosa, California in the fifties, he has a quiet stable life with his wife Doris (Frances Mc Dormand) and works at his in laws barbershop, one day an "entrepreneur" named Creighton Tolliver (Jon Polito) asks him to become his business partner in dry cleaning, Ed is supposed to make it big, and lack of funds leads him to blackmail his wife's boss Big Dave (James Gandolfine).

Following that greedy move, everything around Ed falls into pieces while he is the quiet observer he is "just the barber", this basic blackmail will make him cross the paths of a ruthless lawyer (Tony Shalhoub) a young virtuousou pianist (Scarlett Johansson), in the whole mood of the USSR atomic bomb, the Rosewell UFO's, and all the Pulp culture in the Fifties America.

That's a movie the new generation of filmmakers can present to HitchCock, or Welles and be proud, it has all the elements of noir used in a masterful way, with Ed Crane as a fabulous anti-hero, he is in the midst of the Horatio Alger thing, he wants to make it big, that's what America is supposed to be about, but he is stuck in his air conditioned hell, and when he tries to leave his comfort zone, destiny hits him with it's huge shovel on the head.

Straightforward cinematography from back in the day by Roger Deakins plays a big part in the success of this movie, and a minimalist score by Carter Burwell, it's insane how the Coens can be brilliant, it left me spontaneously clapping while the end credits were rolling, and indeed a special mention to the acting of BBT who channels one of the quietest anti-heroes in the coen's universe since Byrne in Miller's Crossing.

Ed lives his life as an UFO fitting nowhere, and the conens are at their best when they film misfits, this is one of their best works, and it won a big award at Cannes that year, indeed they want to win a handful of oscars years later, but that's another story for another review.

Superbad

2009-07-17T13:16:00.008+02:00

If you love American comedies nowadays then you live in the Apatow world, the guy behind "the 40 years old virgin", "knocked up", or "forgetting sarah marshall", with a little help of his friends, the likes of Seth Rogen, Adam Sandler, Micheal Cena, he know makes or produces, or supervises these blockbusters with an attention to detail, and also a respect to the audience smarts and the rules of the genres, just as he did with "SuperBad" in 2007.

Evan (Michael Cera) and Seth (Jonah Hill) are best friends and are also in their senior year in highschool, like all the teens in their age, they like adult movies, booze, video games, and girls.... a little bit too much, but their success with the other sex is limited to say the least, because of their geekish looks and shyness, but this is about to change because Jules (Emma Stone) a girl Seth has been creaming over since forever asks him to be in charge of the booze details of her party, using the gorged ID of their friend Fogell (Christopher Mintz-Plasse).

This assignment is harder then what they thought, because they cross the paths of two crazy police officers (Bill Hader and Seth Rogen), a crazy driver, an alcoholic dude, the night will be long for the three of them, and because they are two weeks from graduation, their fear of the upcoming separation adds a lot of tension to their quest to take the booze where it belongs.

The Apatow formula is easy to understand but very hard to replicate, it's beyond the sterotype of "the geek meets the fly girl", this is an update on the Woody Allen formula, a strong plot with well drawn characters, and then the comedic artifacts enhance the final work, Seth and Evan are in the tradition of the comedic duos, their loyalty to each other carries the movie, their questo to get this booze to the party is involving for the audience, this level of craft is not what you'd expect in a movie made for the widest audience.

We all loved "American Pie" when it came out, but it was a guilty pleasure, but this is the kind of teen comedy you won't be ashamed to like, because it's brilliant and involving, indeed there are minor flaws here and there, some details we could live without, but if you like comedy, it's as good as it gets, and in these hard times you can't possibly spare a chance of a good laugh, life is too short for missing it's funny part.

Red White and Blues

2009-07-17T00:01:00.003+02:00

Every true movie lover loves music as well, and it's a delight when the two merge sometimes, like in these interesting documentaries produced by Martin Scorsese about the blues, there are seven of them but in my opinion one of the best was "red white and blues" directed by Mike Figgis.

The movie simply documents the british influence on the evolution of the blues music in General, and how the british music scene shifted from jazz influences to embrace the blues, and the very passionate people at the center of the mouvment, it's true that GenXers, and GenYers don't know much about that, we tend to take things for granted, but it's safe to say that without these people, your favourite rock band, or metal band would probably not exist.

Through testimonials of inflencial musicals, like Eric Clapton, BB King, Chris Fowler, Jeff Beck, the story is told, how these very passionate post war musicians discovered the blues through import vinyls, and how they absorbed it for ten years, to then export it back to America in the era of "the british invasion", where the beatles and the rolling stones took america by surprised and amazed it and the rest of the world for decades.

The Rolling Stones are not interviewed but they are part of this mouvment and so are the beatles, it's interesting to notice that it was a political decision in America to shelter white kids from this music, it was the reason it had to find a temporary refuge across the ocean, and then invade white america in the mid sixties, thus "opening doors that otherwise would have stayed closed", it is also interesting to notice how these brilliant people made this music their own, but without changint it's core, a fascinating journey indeed.

This story is illustrated by filmed performanes of many british musicians and singers doing blues renditions, and heavyweight ones, Van Morrison, Tom Jones, Jeff Beck, the best performance in my opinion is Lulu's rendition of "drown in my own tears" but they are all great, and recored in the legendary Abbey Road studios for god's sake !

A great primer on blues for those who are interested, and just a great documentary by all means, if you have a chance to catch this one don't miss it, because cinama and music, especially the blues have a deep relation and blues is the music of the night, of the misfits and of the lonely, and a lot of the movie making comes from these primal elements.

Manhattan

2009-07-15T20:03:00.007+02:00

One yea after his triumph at the oscars, Woody Allen came back to visit the themes he endears the most, people, relationships, psychanalysis, and a New York, and rather then taking a thematic departures, he made what might be qualified as the second volume of a trilogy which is still unachieved, "Manhattan" that is, one of the director's landmarkish works.

Isaac Davis (Woody Allen) is a successful TV writer in New York with a fair amount of success

with women, and friends who support him, what seems to be a happiness receipe has the exact opposite effects on Isaac, he is neurotic, self loathing, and dating a seventeen years old girl Tracy (Mariel Hemingway).

In a broad move of desperation Isaac quits his high paying job to focus on writing his book, but he is unable to work, and his finances decline rapidly, during this time he meets Mary (Diane Keaton) a pseudo intellectual as he describes her, who can go on showing off her knowledge for hours about things ranging from Van Gogh to the Saturn's sattelites, a series of events lead the two of them to date, Mary who is every bit as neurotic and unsecure as Isaac is a perfect match for him for a while, but does this affair have a future.

This movie takes the older then this world concept of "greener on the other side" puts many levels of comedy and brilliance over it, Isaac doesn't know what he wants, and he systematically destroys any chance he might have to be a little bit happy, some people are just like that, his relationship with Tracy is perfect but he intellectualise it too much, his other relationship with Mary is him going to the other side of the specturm to see if he fits in there, but he is a misfit, in all ranges, colours, and relationships.

It's shot in a great black and white by Gordon Willis in wider then usual format, maybe to capture the broadth of the city, the dialogues are brilliant, and the acting a little bit theatrical, but theather is not far from this movie, nor is the cinema of Bergman, one of Allen's hero.

But in it's essence this movie is a commentary he is having on the intellectual circles of New York, despite his looks Woody Allen is the kind of a person "to stay the whole afternoon watching sports on television then reading russian litterature" he seems to have more then desdain for pseudo intllectuals and their self centred monologues, but it is also a very funny movie, with hilarious bits of dialogues, and a very good romatnic comedy in it's own right, one of the director's/authors best films to date, it manages to have it's pulse on the city's rhythm, while drawing a broad painting on the issues it's inhabitants might have, and considering the huge task that is, it's a masterful piece of work, and a good place for anybody to dive in the Allenian brilliant universe.

March of the Penguins (La marche de l'empreur)

2009-07-14T17:11:00.004+02:00

Question: Who cares about penguins in Antarctica ? Answer: French people, somehow these people have plenty of ressources and free time to go spend time with these noble animals, the coolest species in my opinion, in terms of swagger and attitude, the result is an interesting documentary, "the march of the penguins"

Emperor Penguins are observed in their natural Habitat, Antarctica, as they "march" from the ocean, their natural habitat, inlands in an ardous and difficult journey to their breeding ground, where they establish a colony, find a partner, following by the female laying an egg, the parents then have the difficult task to keep it warm from winds that can reach 190MPH, predators, all that while they starve since the ocean is far, and it's the only place where they can find food, a journey that takes several months, and which many of them will not survive.

The educational value of this documentary is dense, interesting and metaphorical, both the male and female empror penguin take turns in keeping the egg safe, after the laying, the female goes back to the ocean to bring food, while the colony sticks together agains the cold and dark Antarctic winter, and if they make it to the ocean, they are preys of many predators and dangers, it's really fascinating, i'm far from being an enviromentalist myself, but the whole experience is worth watching.

What torpedoed the experience was the dubbing (french in my case) where famous voice actors, Charles Berling and Romane Bohringer took speak for the male and female penguins, it's almost silly, since they want to make it look like a romantic comedy or tragedy or something, the kid's voice to the baby penguin was beyond silly, these birds are too cool to sound like french brats.

The music is adequate, except maybe the techno pop thing to illustrate the "love story", but I still think the original version narrated by morgan freeman is more interesting, and anyways, minus the narrative, which is a plus if you are into tear jerking, it's a movie worth watching by all means, some people will try to see it in a metaphorical sense for strong family values, and parental sacrifice, but these creatures are just birds, they are genetically programmed to do what they are doing, but watching these noble animals, with their tribe values and patience beyond tough times, is inspiring in a sense, these animals are not called emperors for nothing, they have royal value.

This documentary/movie won the oscar for best documentary, well deserved, well done, and try to think about the penguins right now preparing for their endless trip, boy are they cool !

The Third Man

2009-07-13T21:32:00.007+02:00

Viewing a «certified classic» is an intimidating experience, the equivalent of listening to The Beatles's Revolver, and what if you won't like it, does it mean that it sucks, or that you suck, but in general all these ideas vanish after the first half an hour of viewing, classics are classics because they are more then good.

«The Third Man» happens in Vienna, not the peaceful Vienna with it's architecture and music and cafés, but the post war one, which is divided to four parts, by the number of the winners of world war two, times are though and everybody is surviving as they can, life goes on.
Holly Lime (Joseph Cotten) arrives one morning to join his friend Harry Lime only to find him murdered, since Holy is a pulp Western writer he smells something fishy in this whole thing, Harry was murdered by his own car with his friends attending at the door of the building he lives so unlucky Holy attends his friend's funeral hours after he arrives.

Holy starts investigating and questioning Ha's friends, which leads him to Anna (Alida Valli) Hal's beautiful love interest whom he already seen in the funeral, and Sergent Paine (Bernard Lee) and major Calloway (Trevor Howard) British officers in charge of the investigation, Holy's diggining brings him some unwanted attention, and in a post war city everything can happen, soon enough he finds about a huge ploy including some dirty money, and where what he believed in is shattred like an ancient mirror, when he learns about truths which were better concealed.

What a great Noir indeed in post war atmosphere, words are not enough to describe the minimalist brilliance of this movie, first it was a script developed by Graham Greene from a novella he wrote for this movie, and then there is the beautiful sitar music by Anton Karas, no big horn sections in here, no haunting violins, most of the time it's the silence and the mood, and the gorgeous black and white cinematography by Robert Krasker, and Vienna itself.

The acting is the true force of the movie, you have Joseph Cotten as Holy who is the best Noir detective i've seen so far with all respect to Humphrey Bogart, Alida Valli as the femme fatale is a radical departure since she has dignity, she is not manipulative, and far from being a vamp, she is just stuck in this part of the world doing what she can to survive, but the acting crown goes to Orson Welles in an improbable vilain part, I mean I never thought I would say this, but he is probably the best Vilain i've ever seen on a movie screen, and during the movie famous Ferris wheel scene, with a dialogue every bit as good as the famous dialogue in «on the waterfront»

This movie has been named the best British movie ever, and also won the grand prix at Cannes this year, it's had to find a movie that top it, as Noir and Mystery movies go, and that's why we love cinema no matter how many atrocities Micheal Bay, and McG make us endure.

Brubaker

2009-07-12T15:02:00.002+02:00

Prison movies are a staple genre in popular cinema, because they treat universal themes, especially crime and punishment, which are the basis of the whole concept of justice, and because of the potential of dramatic richness of incarcerated people each having a story to tell.

«Brubaker» is no exception to this rule, but it has another perspective on it, Henry Brubaker (Robert Redford) is the newly appointed director of the Wakefild prison in Ohio, because of some electoral promise the governor had made, reforming prisons has always been a shiny campaign slogan, rarely applied in reality, but Brubaker has another view on this matter, he is a criminologist, and an idealist, he is here to change things, and does not believe in half measures.

Wakefield being a sort of a modern medieval dungeon, only a notch above a slaves farm, where inmates starve, are tortured, and are subject to many abuses, while people outside the prison are making some sweet benefits, Bruback's attitude ends up irritating more then one, and finally brining him the wrath of the very people who employed him in the first place, who used him as a vehicle of a PR endeavour, and who see the prison in terms of profit, politicians the true scum of the universe.

This movie is a true hidden gem of the genre, I remember saying that Redford was the Brad Pitt of his time, in fact he is superior, there is a sort of integrity in the way he plays his parts, and a sort of a hidden charm beyond looks, this is a gift that cannot be acquired, and the mid career Redford here masters it like a second nature.

The cinematography is adequate to the theme, the supporting actors are good, especially Miss Gray (Jane Alexander) the person who recruited Brubaker and who supports him to the end, and also Morgan Freeman in a short but a memorable performance, the sheer of the last scene will give you a chill up your spine, it's superior to the usual tear jerker where many auteurs are niched usually, It's a true reflection on how a sparrow can bring the spring if it's the right one

Surely one hidden gem of the genre, it has Redford on top of his game, also a special nod to the script by W.D. Richter (screenplay/story) and Arthur A. Ross (story)., which has a lot of humanity and smarts in it, inmates are in because they committed crimes they generally regret, the true criminals are the people in suits and women suits with their camera ready shiny smiles, but then again they are incarcerated inside their mediocrity and hypocrisy, and there is no shabbier prison then this one.

Year: 1980
Director: Stuart Rosenberg
Starring: Robert Redford, Jane Alexander, Yaphet Kotto, Everett McGill

Se7en

2009-07-11T19:34:00.003+02:00

In the end of the second millenium, especially from 1995 and on, there was a pre apocalyptic feel in the air, the internet was new, and people did not know what to expect from it, the united states were ruling the world without being accountable to anybody, and the popular culture was no diffrent to that feeling, one of the most prominent exemples is "Seven" by David Fincher, the shock film of that year that put Fincher and Pitt on the map.

Detective Somerset (Morgan Freeman) is a police officer who is a week away from retirment, his young replacement is detective Mills (Brad Pitt), and Somerset has to brief him on the cases, Somerset is tired and disgusted of what the city became, and he sees his retirment as a failure to make the world a place worth fighting for.

Things take a dire twist when some strange murders start to happen, very calculated and following a certain ritual, first an obese man is killed in a very disgusting way , and then a successful laywer with , and then a pedofile, a pattern starts to form, and it seems that the killer is graphically illustrating the seven deadly sins, because the murderer manages to leave clues leading from murder scene to murder scene, with some macabre references to ancient books.

Things go from bad to worse, Somerset who is the older of the two uses his considerable knowledge to link the murders, while hard boiled Mills is losing his tempter, his recent moving to the city has causes his wife Tracy (Gwyneth Paltrow) some adaptation troubles, the killer John Doe (Kevin Spacey) seems to be playing the police department like puppets, and the graphical nature as well as the atrocity of the murders escalates, untill reaching the climatic superb ending where again, nobody gets away clean.

The movie is well known for it's desperate tone as well as it's brilliant cinematography, Somerset is desillusioned, he knows that the world sucks, but he can't understand John Doe who claims to have pure motives, I remember watching this movie at a young age, and it turnted me off everything for a while.

David Fincher has made great movies especially in that category, but he is more a technical director then an intuitive one, his collaboration with Brad Pitt, who plays here one of his most memorable roles, is undenaiably brilliant, and Morgan Freeman great performance counter balances all the others, he was discovered late, but he is a great actor.

The world has changed since 95 but arguably to worse, consider that this movie was made before 9/11, and gitmo, and the balloney invasion of Iraq, the morals decay had lead to a new race of criminals, and compared to those John Doe is a small time crook, but this movie is terryfying, not in the Exorcist sense, but in a more intellectual one, it raises questions and never answers a single one of them, it's like a downhill rollercostar ride that ends up in a tar pit, but it has a great rythm image and performances and can be considered a prequel to "Fight Club" by the same Fincher/Pitt, and we will soon have the occasion to speak about that one in greater detail.

Sideways

2009-07-10T19:44:00.002+02:00

Indie movies are the true beating heart of cinema, they are the niche for auteur movies which are the only genuine art pieces in popular cinema, and often because of the low marketing budgets it's hard for them to reach for a large audience, « Sideways » is no exception, and while being an Oscar winner in the writing category, is still reduced to the status of buried treasure.

So let's pick a shovel and unearth it, Miles (Paul Giammati) is a stereotypical loser, with all the ingredients that make one, abusive mother, failed relationships, denial of relationship failure, alcoholism, and is also an aspiring author who had no luck so far in publishing.

Losing loves company, the only thing working in Miles life is a strong friendship he has with Jack (Thomas Haden Church) an actor with a decent success who is about to get married, the other thing working in his life is a passion for Horticulture, and everything related to wine, and vineyards, so instead of a bachelor party, both of them decide to have a road trip through rural california, and it's wine culture, exactly a week before Jack's upcoming wedding.

The initial plan is, drinking nice wine, golfing, good food and wine, and women if possible, Jack being the best marketable of the two ends up attracting Christine (Sandra Oh) a thirty something wine grower who is still gripping on her youth, and since nobody wants to be a third wheel, Maya (Virginia Madsen) a waitress in a nearby restaurant wh knows both Miles and Christine is also part of the party.

While Jack is attracted to the nets of temptation, Miles and Maya find they have many things in common, especially the wine culture, indeed nothing goes out as planned, and this roadtrip takes an unexpected turn that will test the loyalty of Miles and Jack to each other, and to their past and future commitments, in beautiful South California.

This movie is a great loser buddy movie, Miles anxiety and issues with women drive this movie along with the wine culture, max knows the wine, he sees the beauty in it, but he can't extrapolate it into his life, the wine here is very metaphorical and is the soul of the plot, people end up alone, and they want to be more then the usual drinker, they want to do it with class, it's really about looking at reality through a half full glass of wine, it's colored and distorted, and it smells nice, but the post hangover things are here to stay, no matter what cellar you might have.

The script is wonderful, the setting in South California wine culture more then adequate, and this whole fourty something people not giving up on life has a fragile beauty in it, Alexander Payne is a writer director to follow, and the four principal actors have an undeniable chimistry, it's like one of these long melancolic jazz jams, you don't have enough of it, or just like one of these precious wine bottles you might have if you are not religously forbidden to do so like myself, you need to own this movie in any form whatsoever, it's a summer movie by excellence, missing it would be a sin.

007: For Your Eyes Only

2009-07-09T14:51:00.006+02:00

James Bond has spent almost fifty years at her Majesty's secret service, that's a long time, in where the world has seen many changes, unfortunatly the true Bond spirit did not survive the fall of Berlin's wall, now becoming a mere copy paste of Jason Bourne, yes it's making a lot of money, but the last few ones were actually a waste of celluloid.

But back when "For Your Eyes Only" was released, the greatest James Bond was still on duty, Roger Moore that is, and his mission this time is to recover or destroy the ATAC system, some kind of a fancy satellite guiding system for strategic messiles, which was lost in the Adriatic Sea, with the help of a very cool British/Greek bond girl Milena (Carole Bouquet) and the whole tools Q provides him with.

The Power of a James Bond movie is to combine everything we like, want and aspire to be, in this installment, it's a subtle mixture of Italian winter sports resorts, Greek mythology and Hospitality, the blue of the Mideteranean Sea, Archeology and Scuba Diving.

To make his mission a success James Bond enlists the help of Kristatos (Julian Glover) a Greek smuggler with an admiration for British lifestyle, and he is a victim of the plotting of Columbo (Chaim Topol) the former associate of Kristatos, but in this double edged plot, loyalty changes with the breeze of the Miditeranean sea, and since ATAC is a serious business, the Russians are not far, but since the movie was made in the detente times, they are kinder then usual, and their attitude is more businesslike.

These are the Bond movies we like, beautiful bond girls with smarts, fast cars, exotic locations, a solid plot, and even the classic Casino scene where bond always wins, the action scenes are great and inventive, and the underwater scenes with a glimpse on the Greek civilisation are breathtaking, even Bond's Archnemesis SPECTRE makes an appereance along with the Iron Lady herself Mrs Thatcher, it was a brilliant way to enter the eighties for the Bond Franchise

I remember watching it a decade and a half ago, and it's still relevant now, a great place to start your Bond experience if you are new (don't be turned off by the Daniel Craig crap, he ain't a true Bond), or to add to your 007 Filmography if you are a veteran, in both cases, Roger Moore remains the best Bond ever, and we 007 fans really hope that the franchise will manage to get back to this state of brilliance, let's hope the Broccollis will be able to listen to this request or are they too busy counting their millions and licensing the 007 seal to video games

Year: 1981
Director: John Glenn
Starring: Roger Moore, Carole Bouquet, Julian Glover, Topol

Minority Report

2009-07-08T15:34:00.005+02:00

In a near future, crime fighting agencies have a major asset, they have a means to know about and prevent a crime before it even happens, this is the mission of a Precrime a government agency led by John Anderton (Tom Cruise) who has achieved remarkable results in the district of Columbia, which is supposed to encourage the whole country to endorse this method which combines police efficiency, high technology and parapsychologic powers focused around the powers of three oracles, the twins and Agatha (Samantha Morton).

Precrime being the center of a major media attention, the department of justice dispatches Danny Witwer (Colin Farrell) an ambitious suit with enough authority and insolence to irritates the established order, Anderton is not happy because he has skeletons in his closet caused by a close family member of his involved in a tragic happening, which jeopardized his stability, and made him prone to dishonourable behaviors.

To make everything worse, John is the next target of his team, since He is about to be part of a crime, now this can be either a ploy to take over his service, or that he has good reasons to go on the other side of the law, this is the central conflict of «Minority Report»

Anything Spielberg does has the potential to attract movie audiences and movie lovers alike, because the man has the hidden talent to make movies that attract both, in his first collaboration with Tom Cruise, and over a script based on a short story by the legendary Philip.K Dick it even has the potential to become a cultural event, something that would be in the same drawer with «Blade Runner» as one of the Sci-Fi classics, this movie doesn't manage to do so, but It fails honorably, because it doesn't laugh at iteslf, and it respects the audience's brains.

Anderton quest to discharge himself from this criminal involvment that did not occur leads him to realise that this whole mess is political and involving very influencial people, as he learns from his mentor Max Von Sydow (Director Lamar Burgess), who was the mastermind behind Precrime, and as we follow him through a futuristic Washington D.C, we have a glimpse of the future without the cheap tricks that we became tired of, but in it's essence it's a thriller, it doesn't really dig deep in the soil of big brother issues, and private life, , Anderton wants to know the truth, to do so he crosses the middle line between good and evil back and fourth, and visits the underworld and it's identity concealing technologies to do so.

When I say «fails honourably» it still means that it is head and shoulders above stuff like «I.Robot» or even «A.I» by the same director, the way Anderton uses the interface of Precrime was as overused as the Matrix's bullet time effect, We wish it would dig deeper into the territory of the conflicting man-machine relationship, and how new technologies are altering our free will, but this movie is here to entertain, and it does it brilliantly, it is not the best Spielberg but it's quite good, and it gives him another success to add to the many he had in his rich creative life, casting choices are good, the cinematography splendid, we just hope that summer blockbusters with A-List stars had this quality controls, but when you see «Transformers 2» being so popular while being so bad, you wonder if American movies have went again through the downward spiral of lucrative mediocrity, and even if it does, we'd still have the underground Sci-Fi movies.

Vanishing Point

2009-07-07T19:35:00.006+02:00

A Dodge Challenger running trough the asphalt of the American southwest, the radio is turned on KOW radio with plenty of soul and funk music, the sun is burning, and rebellion is in the air, and sex drugs and rock n'roll are nearby, this is the spirit of "fear and loathing in las vegas", but from another persoective, because we are in the middle of a huge inter state car chase, this is "Vanishing Point"

Kowalski (Barry Newman) is a former lot of things, a former Vietnam war hero, a former police officer, a former motorcycle and destruction dirby racer, and a former boyfriend of a surf queen, the man has lived a rich life, and now he is a car delivery driver, a true rebel soul addicted to an absolute concept of freedom, so after he delivers a Chrysler Imperial he refuses to take rest, and starts his next journey right away, delivering a white Dodge Challenger to San Fransisco, and while enroute he refuses to pull over when asked to do so by motorcycle cops, this act will be the ignitiono of a major chase through four states, a mystical journey, where he will cross path with death many times, and where he will meet allegories of counter culture elements, a sort of a modern day Greek mythology hero in the American Southwest.

This mythological journey is set on the root music of the south, soul and gospel, provided by Dj Super Soul (Cleavon Little) the blind guide of Kowalski who considers him "the last American hero to whom speed means freedom of the soul. The question is not when's he gonna stop, but who is gonna stop him. ", and when Kowalski goes off the road to avoid opression, he meets very symbolic characters, each and every one helping him to cheat the authroties and death itself, a rattlesnake, a snake catcher (Dean Jagger), a biker and his naked girlfriend, a sect in the middle of the dester. He also has the chance to meet the ghosts of his own past, his motivation is as pure as his white shirt and the colour of his car, when a man loses all what matters to him, he still has his freedom, his free will, and the endless road of destiny, I think I will stop here, because this movie cast layer over layer of meaning and wisdom, that ask for interpretation, and that are a snapshot of the post Woodstock America, with drugs and freedom and race issues, you can almost feel that the air is heavy with ghosts of the happenings on these roads, and the region itself, and that's what makes Kowalski's journey infinitly Interesting.

A cult classic by all means, a movie that will haunt you, vanishing point is the point in perspective where two parallel ends meet, by going as fast as possible with pure motives, Kowalski reaches the line between the real and fictional, this world and the other, what He is and what He wanted to be, indeed on this endless highway of life is a merging point ahead, Kowalski managed to reach it because he managed to become a light bolt moving ahead, that's what everybody aspires to become perhaps, the gates of eternity are ahead, but unfortunatly nobody knocks, that's my modest interpretation of that monument, and you will surely enjoy it and have your own interpreation of it, but I certainly hope that somewhere on the highway, this Dodge Challenger is cruising ahead with no particular destination, a remake is in preparation by Richard "Donnie Darko" Kelly, I surely hope he won't screw it.

Year: 1971
Director: Richard Sarafian
Strarring: Barry Newman, Cleavon Little, Dean Jagger

Spy Game

2009-07-06T12:24:00.003+02:00

Sometimes you feel in the mood for a political thriller, for most of us it makes us feel smarter, and it makes you more "involved" when you watch the news, the majority of them are totally disposable though (remember "the sum of all fears" with Ben Affleck, horrible) but "Spy Game" is a cool one, and for many reasons.

Nathan Muir (Robert Redford) is a veteran CIA agent, who has operated in several parts of the globe, on his last day in the agency's headuqarters in Langley, news break in that one of his protegées Tom Bishop (Brad Pitt) has been arrested in China, and is facing an ill omen, the dilemma being that major trade negociations are happening at the same time at the highest political level, so the agency convocates Muir to "fill some gaps" on Bishops missions, and through that, he has the chance to tell the story of the recruitment and the training of Bishop, and also his various missions especially in Beirut during the Lebanese civil war.

Beirut in the eighties was CIA's paradise, of course before the bombings of the Us Embassy and the Marines HQ, and both Muir and Bishop were stationed there, undercover of course, but the former boy scout Bishop, treads on the red line when he gets involved with Elisabeth Hadley (Catherine McCoramack) a British activist who is responsable of some bombings around the globe, this conflictual situation leads to dire consequences for evreybody, and nobody gets away with a clear consciousness.

The fun of this movie is that it' juxtaposes the highly formal conference room in Langley with all the suits playing mental chess with Muir, and him using every chance he has to do things to help Bishop, and all the flashbacks, to exotic places, like Berlin and Beirut, the editing is brilliant, and it goes back and forth like a good yo yo, the weakness of the movie is Brad Pitt's acting, not a good match for Robert Redford, well he can be a great actor but not here for sure, but still there is a good father-son parallel between the two actors, because Redford was the Brad Pitt of his time also, on the time this movie was released there was a picture on french "Premiere" where both were standing smiling you'd swear he was his father.

So it's a nice lesson on the CIA disasters in Lebanon and the people invloved in them, the best scenes are the conference room scenes where Muir's brilliance shows, the film is visually superiour thanks to the technique Tony Scott aquired through the years, especially one famous scene on top of a German building, and at the end, agents on the field are human beings with emotions and feelings, this is not an anti James Bond per se, but it is much closer to reality.

Year: 2001
Director: Tony Scott
Starring: Robert Redford, Brad Pitt, Catherine McCormack

Eternal Sunshine Of the Spotless Mind

2009-07-05T15:35:00.005+02:00

Picture this, somebody sending you a message saying that a friend, lover or fiancée, has completely erased you from their memory, and advises you to act accordingly, seriously how would anyone feel facing that, yes indeed sometimes one wants and needs to forget, after forgetting, the second logical step would be "what if i could do it all over again ?"

This is the central theme of Eternal Sunshine, Joel (Jim Carrey) meets Clementine (Kate Winslet) and they have an affair, at first they are excited,
then happy, then bored, then angry, then sad, then vindictive, happens all the time, the final straw being, memory erasing, Joel is accidently informed of this on Valentine day ! and being the man child he is, decides to do the same, so here He is at the headquarters of Lacuna Inc, asking Dr. Mierzwiak to erase Clementine from his mind, a procedure that turns out to be harder then what they thought wich is a good parallel for them to reveal their own issues with memories and love in general.

The fearless team of Lacuna is dispatched at Joel's place, to perform the erasing, the team leader Stan (Mark Ruffalo) is in charge of the operation, along with the frivoulous Patrick (Elijah Wood), and as things get complicated, they are joined by Mary (Kirsten Dunst) Dr Mierzwiak's Assistant, and throughout the night, they visit Joel's Memory, trying to erase it memory management being as hard a task on computer as it is inside consciousness.

Charlie Kaufman is a brilliang screenwriter, his screenplay is the true stat or this movie, nobody does alien scripts with deep social commentarism as he does, Michel Gondry the director is the other force of this movie, brining on his trademark visual inventivity, and as with a good script and a good director, no actor can fail, so the actors have adequate room to play at ease, Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet, have a good chemistry, and it carries the movie, the initial conflict is do they want to forget ? from this central premisse, the movie has a strong structure, where great visual tricks are performed, and in the ambient surrealism of this movie, everything makes sense, with respect to the audience's suspension of desbelief, it is never silly, and never overdone under a brilliant score by Jon Brion.

Gondry and Kaufman are amongst the "Smarter then you crowd" people like Sofia Coppola, Spike Jonze, Chris Cunningham, the bands Phoenix, and My Bloody Valentine and even the White Stripes, these people work together all the time, their work might be too arty for some, but it's output is American art with a European touch, this movie has the feeling of a good French movie, it comes as no surprise since Gondry is French, but it's brilliant, because it respect's the audience's imagination even in it's surrealism, rather then catering to fairy tales fantasies, Kate Winslet in here looks as Kabyle as ever, acts as Kabyle as ever, I never liked her, but i like her part in this movie, she should do that more, and less like "The Holiday"

Maybe it is not the best movie to watch if you have breakup issues, because you will project it on yourself, but any visual proof that inventivity and humour and surrealism can survive in something aimed at a large public is good news for us, and we keep on asking for more stuff from Kaufman to whome we wish a long miserable life, because his misery has such a beautiful output.

Full Metal Jacket

2009-07-04T13:51:00.005+02:00

« Born to Kill » is the inscription on the helmet of Sergeant James T. "Joker" Davis the protagonist of FMJ, but this is just what he thinks, or let's say that's what he was told to think, through eight weeks of intense physical and psychological strain under the vicious command of Gunnery Sergeant Hartman (Lee Ermey), a training many others can't or won't survive, but the protagonist is a smart dude a person who would be a computer geek if he was born a decade later, he has a good journalistic pen, but he is cursed by his birth certificate to be at draft age in the midst of the craziness of the Vietnam war.

War is nothing new, I bet even Neanderthals had their wars, warlords, politicians, businessman, and even media adding oil to the fire so it never consumes, what is great about this movie, which some consider to be the greatest war movie ever, is that it has a neutral point of view on both the training field and the battlefield, the soldiers and officers are not heroes, they are plain guys from poor to medium upbringing, some are simple, others are smart, none heroic, they have various skin colors and various cultural backgrounds, and above all have the same rifles, and are threatened by the same angel of death.

Death on the battlefield is like fish in the sea, or whatever better metaphor you might find, it is omnipresent, as depressing as it sounds, it puts an emphasis on the here and now, because people tend to be dissatisfied based on the assumption that they will live a long time ahead, but the immediacy of death and the blurriness of the ideal brings out the best and the worst in everyone, again, nothing heroic, this movie does a great job of being as realistic as possible, from casting choices, to camera moves, to set design, it has this sense of atmospherics that sucks you in, and when people eventually die, they just die, they don't find out about hidden wisdom, there is no dramatic closeup on them, they only stare at the other world, as they are going towards it.

Speaking of casting, you almost can't recognize anybody, the protagonist is private joker (Matthew Modine) as the journalist soldier for «star and stripes» the one in charge of keeping the morale of the troops, by covering various operations, and Leonard "Gomer Pyle" Lawrence (Vincent d'Onofrio), the guy who is too fragile to take it all, and all the others are really names I could not identify, there clear message being, «no stars», would they have casted Charles Bronson, it would become a Bronson movie, and eventually it will be about a special guy on the battlefield, none of it here, just regular guys stuck in a game bigger then them.

Matter of fact this movie has the feeling of playing a war video game, something like «Call of Duty», and it is obvious that these games took inspiration in here, especially when it comes to level design, It's not a mockumentary or something like that, it is just a brilliant war movie, at the end of everyday soldiers are glad to be alive, they don't know what's ahead, deep inside them they know they will not make it probably, but they live in the moment, and the Camera of Stanley Kubrick is so neutral, it's just there, even the Vietnamese are feeling and behaving the same on their side of this huge chess board, all corpses look the same, smell the same, and governments never learn, they did the same thing again in Somalia, destroyed a country that was already devastated by famine and plagues, then they just did the same in Iraq, and the mess they left behind in there was so big, that I hope it will inspire the new Kubriks , Copollas and the Stones some other masterpieces, Cinema at it's best can be transcending, it can document and educate, and show instead of telling, and that's why we love it, despite all the «transformers» and the chick flicks they keep on throwing on our faces, this Kubrick will resurrect your faith in the silver screen if you lost it, and in a world of prtence, you surely need it as hell.

Year: 1987
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Starring: Matthew Modine, Vincent D'Onofrio, Lee Ermey

Bugsy

2009-07-03T16:18:00.007+02:00

Gangster movies are a staple genre in pop culture, for some reason there is a strong identification with the rise and fall of criminals seeking to make it big and legal, some crime figures, real and ficitional have aquired mythological status, think of Al Capone, Lucky Luciano, Vito and Micheal Corleone, and indeed Ben "Bugsy" Siegel.

In thie film adaptation of his life and times Siegel (Warren Beatty) is a quick tempred jewish mob head from New York, he is rather happiely married, and at the same time a big womanizer, business is great thanx to the alliance he made with his childhood friend Meyer Lansky (Ben Kingsley) and Lucky Luciano (Bill Graham), being the totally impredictable man he is, he goes to Los Angeles for a two weeks business, he ends up buying a house in Beverly Hills, establishing a local brand of his mob activities under the control of Mickey Cohen (Harvey Keitel) and meeting a real life femme fatale, Virginia Hill (Annette Bening) who will be a key factor in his rise and fall.

Virginia is a mobster dream, with strong personality and a temper quicker then Bugsy's if this is even possible, the thing is that Bugsy loves her, this unconditional love will lead him to jeopardize his family stability, and his business activities, but it also takes him west to the Nevada desert where he has a visionary idea, building a big casino in the middle of the desert, the now legendary Flamingo.

Back then, Las Vegas was your average town on the highway, and everything still needed to be done, but Bugsy was an enthusiastic, and meets his partners to ask for the financing a huge (by the standards of that time) one million dollar, and the Casino is set up to open during the next holiday season, but building the hotel turns out to be a more difficult and more pricy task then what Bugsy and Virginia intitally thought, and as the costs were jumping, the anger of the investors rises, and all this will force Bugsy to make several sacrifices to make his dream come true, and it will test his loyalty to his principles, and his friends, and to Virginia, and their loyalty to him to the extreme limit.

Indeed, this is a tale of redmption, at the end of the day the dream of bugsy is to build a monument that will outlive him, something like a Charles Kane, Xanadu, and his other dream is to "make it legal", a place where gangsters can finally be accpted in society, and where people will fly from all over the country, and the world, to be part of the artificial paradise they created, Warren Beatty does such a good job in this movie, that it made me understand why Tarantino casted him as the original Bill in "Kill Bill", his charisma and talent is second to none, I think even the real Bugsy would be happy with his portrayal of him, Ben Kingsley, and especially Harvey Keitel and Elliot Gould, make great performances too, It seemed to me that Anette Benning weakned the movie, but not all that much, the real star in this movie is the building of "The Flamingo" itself, a dream so big that it finally destroys the dreamer.

This movie can seem lenghty in the middle, but it's full of passion and wit, under a master score by the legendary Ennio Morricone, Bugsy is motivated, by Love and Ambition and Loyalty, and at the end he loses the three, but his passion remains, I think I answered my question about why people love gangster movies, that's because of all these value that motivate them, a sort of a modern Robin Hood mythology, although the majority of them did not have all the nobility, but let's remember this is a movie, a mere fictional portrayal, and nobody will ever be interested in the real Bugsy Siegel's rape and murder history, Let me say that this movie is the third brother of "The Godfather" and "GoodFellas", and that Bugsy Was right, since the flamingo generated a hundred billion dollars from the initial six million dollars investment.

Year: 1991
Director: Barry Levinson
Starring: Warren Beatty, Anette Bening, Harvey Keitel

Lord Of War

2009-07-02T14:24:00.003+02:00

« All the truth in the world adds up to one big lie » these were the words that came to my mind as the end credits of « Lord of War » were rolling on the screen, these words are from a Bob Dylan song, and granted, there always were a great deal of truth in his words, truth is so obvious that it makes you instantly recognize, half truths, instant truths, baked truths, bikini truths, anyways, this movie deals with the arms business and has the effect of a bullet that rips your consciousness in two.

Yuri Orlov (Nicholas Cage) is the son of Ukrainian immigrants, his parents run a small restaurant in Little Odessa NY, his younger brother Vitali (Jared Leto) is the lousy chef and he is the bum of the family, well at least until he has a revelation, an abstract one, every precious thing needs a safe, and every safe needs a gun, every interest engenders a conflict, and every conflict needs guns, and since the big five of the security council are also the big producers of arms, then granted that there will always be a war to use them, I mean what would Coca Cola do without thirsty people to sum it up, Yuri ends up becoming an arms dealer, a lord of war.

And as we follow Yuri throughout his story it's also the whole history of the twenty plus last years unfolding before our eyes, the Lebanese war, the Balkans war, the fall of Berlin's wall, the ill fate of the Soviet empire, and the huge gun heritage it left, the African conflicts, and every trigger needs a bullet, and Yuri provides them all, with an interesting point of view on things, to him he is just meeting the demand, he is just an observer, and trust me, he could convince you in five minutes that he is similar to the dude who sold you your vacuum cleaner, only he does it more efficiently and with an observer point of view.

Blood money can buy things also, and it buys Yuri his trophy wife Ava (Bridjet Moynahan), it buys him the fifth avenue apartment, and everything else money can buy, and Yuri is even smart enough to hide everything from his beloved wife and cute kid, but his brother can't take it, and becomes a rehab candidate, the dangerous path of Yuri leads him to cross the paths of a rival arms merchant (Ian Holm) a sadistic African president André Baptiste Sr (Eamonn Walker) with his crazy son André Jr (Sammi Rotibi), while being chased by the Elliot Ness like agent Valentine (Ethan Hawke) when money is not available deals are closed with other means, but that's another story, and the movie comes to a surprising conclusion, colder then a mid winter shower in Siberia.

Well, let's roll the superlatives, Andrew Niccol is a genius, Nicholas Cage, and Ethan Hawke and everybody else deliver Oscar worthy performances, the art direction is awesome, this move should be the one people would walk out as they did with «The Matrix» with a feeling that they have another perspective on things, an eye opening experience, surely we are not slaves of some machines, but the truths in this movie are very contemporary, and very disturbing, the worst being that it even has the «based on true events» story.

Not only do you need to watch this movie, you need to watch it twice, one for the story and another for the details, and then you might find yourself in an urgent desire of a drink, or two or six, anyways, it's one of the best movies we reviewed in here, and interestingly enough it's an independent one, Hollywood can't make a movie like that, matter of facts people who make trigger happy movies, are the public opinion shapers, and these same people are the ones who did market all the wars where Orlov did business, and if you can't see the connection, then go watch «lord of war» a third time, and wonder how many real life Orlovs are out there, some of them are people you and I respect, boy are we dumb !

The Holiday

2009-07-01T11:53:00.003+02:00

First of all, here at JM we are not against any movie genre, because no genre is brilliance proof, even romantic comedy aka «chick flick», Sina did shed a tear over «city of angels» and «sleepless in Seattle», and «When Harry meets Sally» are amongst my favorite, but what about «The Holiday» a movie which a Hollywood executive would explain by saying «Four weddings and a funeral meets there Is something about Mary».

«there is something about mary» leads us to Cameron Diaz, the former model turned actress which was revealed by this movie, in «The Holiday» she plays Amanda Woods an L.A woman too successful for her own good, who did not cry since she was fifteen, lives in a mansion, and has looks to die for, but on the flipside She has a disastrous romantic life, where she suffers a bad breakup during holidays season, So she decides to go for two week holiday to the furthest and quietest possible place, a three clicks online search leads her to a home exchange website where she finds out about a nice cottage in Surrey proposed for a home swapping, the cottage is owned by Iris

Iris Simpkins (Kate Winslet) is the anti thesis of an L.A girl, she is too British for her own good, the kind of girl to own all the records by Dido, but her romantic life is as disastrous as Amandas's, suffering the only thing worst to a breakup during the season, so they both agree, and the Californian ends up in freezing Surrey, and the British in sunny LA. Both girls make interesting encounters Name meets Graham (Jude Law) a British bachelor with manners and wit and a secret, and Name meets Miles (Jack Black) a movie score composer who can't put the right tune on the soundtrack of his life, and also meets Arthur (Eli Wallach) a guy who was there during Hollywood golden age and lived to tell her the story, both of course kind off re discover love and themselves and the meaning of life and whatever .

Okay girls, I know you love movies like these, but this one is far too pink even to the Celine Dion crowd, everybody knows that these movies are well crafted marketing ploys designed to attract the «sex and the city» demographics and their huge buying power, but please, I never thought i'd say this, but this movie makes «Desperate Housewives» look like «Casablanca», the interesting idea of the juxtaposition of LA life with British life is lost in endless kissing scenes and senseless dialogues, and the romances unconvincing, Eli Wallach for god's sake, the guy who played «The Ugly» in «The good, the bad and the ugly» seems to be wondering what He is doing in this mess, but can't blame him though he did if for the check, so did Jack Black off course who plays a part worthy of a Telenovela actor.

And while Cameron Diaz drags the movie down with her unconvincing character, Kate Winslet counterbalance it to a certain extent, her character is more interesting, but not even to the level of a Kate Hudson, or Sandra Bullock, and frankly it's not even a compliment.

So look, If you are a boy, it's a good plan to watch with your wife or girlfriend if you have the needed patience, and if you are a girl, it's a good breakup relief, or for an afternoon with your girlfriends, but if you happen to also love movies, toss this off the window, and go watch «closer» which is what this movie aspires (and fails) to be, in all cases, remember that these are only romantic comedies, so please don't take life lessons from them, because if you map your life over a romantic comedy, granted that you will end up lonely in the holiday season, with nobody to swap your apartment with.

Year: 2006
Director: Nancy Meyer
Starring: Cameron Diaz, Kate Winslet, Jude Law, Eli Wallach, Jake Black

On The Waterfront

2009-06-30T12:44:00.007+02:00

"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

2009-06-28T13:37:00.006+02:00

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

2009-06-25T18:15:00.005+02:00

"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

2009-06-24T17:22:00.007+02:00

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)

2009-06-14T23:49:00.003+02:00

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

2009-06-13T18:15:00.003+02:00

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

2009-06-13T17:43:00.003+02:00

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

2009-06-06T17:23:00.003+02:00

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

2009-06-04T12:08:00.002+02:00

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

2009-06-03T08:06:00.004+02:00

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

2009-06-02T14:40:00.010+02:00

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

Above the Law

2009-05-30T16:15:00.007+02:00

In the last years Steven Seagal has turned himself into a joke, but let me take you further, to the year 88 whe the guy was still relevant, to his screen debut Above the Law

Nico Toscani (Steven Seagal) is a Chicago cop, son of Italian immigrants with an interest in martial arts that lead him as far as Japan, where he mastred aikido and other martial arts, this virtuosity led him to be remarked and recruited by the CIA, to serve in Vietnam for a short while, caused by his refusal to agree on severe interrogation techniques used by a superior Kurt Zagon (Henry Silva)

And since the world is a tiny place Nico who is now a honest Chi Cop married to Sara (Sharon Ston no less), is invistigating a routine drug deal, which turns out to be not such a routine drug deal, since it would involve explosives, Senate hearings, and the Invasion of a South American country funded with dirty money, leading to a nice big shodown, a la Charles Bronson, all this in the Jazzy athmosphere of the Reagan Era's Chicago

I watched that movie back in the nineties in a movie theater in Algiers, and it was so wonderful that we watched it several times, although we were short on pop culture references, this movie held still, and it's enough to say that the partner of Seagal is played by her blaxploitation majesty Pam Grier herself

Now is it still relevant, to some degree it is, Steven Seagal played a somehow autobiographical role (he learned martial arts in japan, like his character and was somehow invloved in governmental stuff), which means it did not need him to have actor's studio training, and some of the scenes are still action classic, and it's enough to be said that If you missed the eighties like Sina you should catch this one just to have an idea how the world was before the berlin reunition and the first invasion of iraq, good people were good, evil were evil, it was a whole diffrent mindset, and frankly it is righteous to miss it a little bit

Year: 1988

Director: Andrew Davis

Starring: Steven Seagal, Sharon Stone, Pam Grier, Henry Silva

Featured shortfilm: Our Wonderful Nature

2009-05-28T13:13:00.004+02:00

Tomer Eshed created this little clip around two water sheds getting in a fight and won first place in the jury category at the Aniboom Awards 2008 with it. And he deserves it, we love it!

Underworld : Rise of the lycans

2009-05-19T16:09:00.005+02:00

Continuing the story from the very beginning

"Underworld : Rise of the lycans" is a prequel showing the background behind the story you already know if you've watched part 1 and 2 which are stated in the modern days.

The vampire lord in the past keeps lycans for slaves and pets. He also made a deal with the humans to save them from the lycans in the wild for high taxes they've got to pay to him. And everyone who doesn't pay will just die. It has been going like this for years when one amongst them, Lucian, decides to rise against the empire. Together with his secret lover Sonja, the daughter of the king, he goes to battle for freedom.

If you enjoyed the first two movies, you will also like this prequel. However it is set somewhere in the dark age and conditions to make it look really cool with nice effects are harder. Still the movie has a lot of good points and I liked it. It continues the movie series very well without much confusion.

Underworld : Rise of the lycans - Released 2009

The Day The Earth Stood Still

2009-05-17T21:24:00.002+02:00

An unnecessary remake

An alien race has decided to prevent the earth from dying by wiping out the human race. The alien Klaatu is sent to deliver the message to them before their end but when he meets Dr. Helen Benson he starts understanding the other, not destroying, side of the earthlings.

One should think there could be not so much wrong with a well animated movie that even has Keanu Reeves in it but after seeing this remake of the 50's classic that had such a better story, you see there can be much wrong.

The movie is just boring. There is the climatic topic of "The day after tomorrow" missing that let you stunned. There is the action from "War of the worlds" missing and after all it seems like a movie you've already seen somewhen. Not my cup of tea!

The Day The Earth stood still - released December 2008

Role Models

2009-05-17T13:22:00.003+02:00

Supposed to be funny

Wheeler (Seann William Scott) and Danny (Paul Rudo) were usually working for an energy drink producer doing advertising anti-drug/buy it sessions at schools. Their job sucks and somewhen they just mess it up. When their car is to be towed off they just jump in and try to escape. Well, they try. Not to go to jail they are signed up for a social program to care about kids, one kid each for a suitable amount of hours. But it turns out the kids they got are not just very different but also a bit complicated to handle. It all ends in a literarry battlefield.

Ok now, this movie is obviously supposed to be some kind of comedy. I guess. Problem is, I didn't really find it funny. Maybe that's just me, however it might not even be a movie you wanna watch with some popcorn and friends. But they certainly had only the best intentions with it ...

Role Models - released 2008

Religulous

2009-05-17T10:55:00.004+02:00

The big religions put to the test

You may know Bill Maher, the maker of "Religulous" as a cynic political comedian so it may not really have surprised you that he checks out religions for his documentary.

So what is this docutainmentary about. It is about the absurdities in all the big religions. It is not really against them, it's not stating the fact that we should all become atheists. The movie just shows us the religions we believe to know from a different side, a weird side where you will find yourself even shaking your head on your maybe own religion for a while. We get a critic look on christianity, judaism, islam, mormones, scientology and an outlook on older religions.

It is not a really serious documentary and it plays with the interviews as it likes but in the end it also states facts. Religion is dangerous when it is played in the interests of very few people and maybe that's the message the movie wanted to give us but maybe it came around the corner the wrong way to do so.

However it is an entertaining documentary if you don't feel offended quickly by anything that makes you think about your beliefes. I don't wanna take a side on this, I just find it a good piece of work by Bill Maher and if you usually enjoy entertainmentaries you may actually find yourself liking it.

"Religulous" - released 2008

Primeval

2009-04-13T18:37:00.006+02:00

Season 3

Primeval is back on screen for the third time. Series number three had a not so great trailer released a while ago, now for the fourth episode already it is back on TV.

Hm, I started up watching it "back in the days" as a huge fan. I mean, great characters, nice storyboard, you can overlook the strangely bad animations of the creatures themselves. You can do that one season, you can do it two seasons but then the third seasons starts up with a supercroc walking on two legs. To fit into ancient egyptian mythology.

Yes, I like supercrocs, I also like egyptian mythology. What I not so much like is when screenwriters can't come up with new ideas anymore and therefore set the whole storyline into a mystery context. First episode, okay Sina, give them a chance.

The second episode came up with ... this ... and what the hell that is describes the website of ITV: "The Camouflage Beast is a visitor from the future. It appears to be a form of primate and shares many characteristics with the Madagascan aye aye: a creature so strange looking that native mythology believes it to be a symbol of death." Is that so? Aha ...

No, ITV, you can not make that up with big carnivore dinosaurs in episode four and it even overshades my love for the characters a bit. Please. Stop. This. The story became a mess. Don't stop the series, get it back on a straight path! Pleeeeeaaaaase!

Primeval Season 3 - on TV since April 2009

Fringe

2009-03-18T09:54:00.002+01:00

"We should do some new mystery series!"

That's how it all must have been started. Someone stepped up and said "Mystery is big! And science is, too! Let's mix it up and ... when we are already on that, I don't like these simple location descriptions shown at the side of the screen. We need to come up with something new for that!". "Fringe" was created. A mix of conspiracy, pharmaceutical companies, bio terrorism, mysterious phenomenons and of course the FBI and a lost love - what a series. In a negative way.

Agent Dunham (Anna Torv) creates a new team to solve strange happenings, getting herself a modern day Dr. Frankenstein and ... his son? ... and a few other FBI MDs and tries to find solutions for all the strange cases that come her way since her partner died in an other case where he had turned out to be the terrorist, not the victim.

Sounds illogical and messed up? Yes it is! And also it's very boring set up. The acting is some normal TV series thing and the only good thing is Peter Outerbridge in the first episode. I love Peter Outerbridge.

Oh and back to the location descriptions. Have you ever seen giant letters floating in the air in front of buildings showing you where you are? You will - in this series. When a line at the side of the screen isn't enough you gotta stretch the description to the whole scene and make it 3D. Very ... clever ... guys ...

Fringe - On TV since 2008

Blood Ties

2009-03-02T14:27:00.003+01:00

Very short review

In the times of "Moonlight", "Twilight", "Buffy", "Charmed" and all the other nice, little vampires and other strange things series it is really hard to come up with something new. The makers of "Blood Ties" came up with something never seen before however. A vampire ... that helps a police officer ... hunting monsters! Wohooo. You heard that one already?

Okay, but back then you didn't imagine they could ever put a forty year old female police officer in it. And a romance!

Oh, you did? Yes, it's true, there are slight similarities with lots of other movies, b-movies and series but we can't just get enough of those modern, always good looking, never too evil helpful vampire guys, now can't we.

Blood ties - On TV since 2006 (the fun never stops)

Miller's Crossing

2009-03-01T13:27:00.005+01:00

Plot is a big word, and is an art form by itself, and that is why so many writers handle it with extreme care, but rarely a plot has been as twisted and brilliant as in Miller's Crossing, the Coen Brothers homage to gangster movies, with a plot as twisted as they come, revisiting the whole Irish Italian rivality without falling in the clichés of the genre, while observing the rules of Noir.

Tom Reagan (Gabriel Byrne) is the adviser and trust man of Leo O'Bannon (Albert Finney) who is a big Irish crime boss in a prohibition era city, a throne soon to be threatned by Johnny Casper (Jon Polito) a quick tempered Italina gangster because of a gambling debt story involving Bernie Bernbaum (John Turturro) a double faced bookie, and the brother of Verna Bernbaum (Marcia Gay Harden) who is the love interest of Leo, and because of whome, a gang war starts in the city, despite Tom's strong advices against Leo's involvment in this story, which will end him to earn the animosity of his former friends, and to face the ruthless Eddie the Dane () Casper's executioner, and a natural born killer straight out of hell.

We are in the middle of a Dashiell Hammett novel's setting, the ultra corrupt town with rotten officials, Marcia Gay Harden as a weary femme fatale with really simple motives, John Toruturo as the meanest movie character you'll ever see, and Jon Polito, who gives a performance that makes you regret that he was not in The Godfather, and Frances McDormand and Steve Buscemi in short but memorable roles.

But the true force of the movie is Gabriel Byrne, who walks through this movie as a hat blowing breeze, he is not always at the right side of events and often ends up in trouble, but this is a tale of loyalty, and of the fragility of every system based on loyalty, and how a simple event can be the direct cause of a war.

This movie is on a lots of best lists and favourite lists, but is not much celebrated, so it's a time for everybody to unbury this treasure, with a plot as thick as a warm blanket and characters you will not forget soon, and of course, the whole gangster era nostalgia, in a time where criminal ethics belong only in the realm of the silver screen.

year of realease: 1991, origin: US

Collateral

2009-03-01T13:11:00.004+01:00

Some movies belong to the night, they happen in the night, and they are just this enveloping darkness where a lot of things are possible, which are not possible otherwise, and "Collateral" is an extreme example in that sense because it happens during one night in January 2004.

Max (Jamie Fox) is a middle age humble cab driver in Los Angeles, he is a regular guy, with hopes and dreams, which will probably never happen, one day he picks a client, a beautiful district attorney (Jada Pinkett) and gets along well with her, not knowing that this cab ride will change his life.

Somehow he crosses paths with a ruthless killer Vincent (Tom Cruise) who is in town for some "cleaning jobs" and who convinces him to be his driver, of course a lot happens, because max has to deal with his fears, his lack of initiative, his obsessive mother, and of course learns a lot in the contact of somebody as Vincent, who is as methodical as a killing machine, all that happening in the awesomely filmed LA night.

First of all, let me say this, I'm a big fan of Micheal Mann and i don't hide it, this man made "Heat" another big LA film, and if you can have Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro on screen, then you are our hero, and I admire his pioneering work in the use of big digital cameras, which
yield magnificent results especially during night scenes, and this movie is a night movie by excellence, and it's a movie so faithful to that esoteric spirit of Midnight to 3AM

Tom Cruise, as much as you can blame him for carrying his big sientologist smile on screens for two decades, is as brilliant as he was in "Magnolia", his interpretation and his physical changes are impressive, he is exactly the night fox of this movie, agile, predator, and efficient, as you would expect them, and within the tiny space in the cab, a really psychological duel faces him to Max, duel of motives, duel of Live in the moment versus carefully planned, and you see Max
toughening during the movie to the point he impresses even himself.

All the classical themes of the night are present too, the loneliness, the Jazz, the nightclubs,the silcnce, the meditation, and whatever the curtains of night fall one, and the movie ends in a way mirroring it's beginning, the terrible oneliness of a town of fifty millions people with all that abundance in everything, except maybe human warmth.

As far as I am concerned this movie is part of an LA trilogy, started with Heat, and i hope that Micheal Mann will close it with a worthy third episode, because some movies are characters, and because catching the spirit of a city is as difficult as describing an intense multilevel feeling, but this is a movie that has a finger on the pulse of what is probably the most fascinating city in pop culture, and that's why it would be almost a sin to miss it.

Released: 2004, Origin: US

Full Frontal

2009-02-25T13:32:00.007+01:00

A very strange but surprisingly good movie

This piece of film work is one of the most confusing things you will ever watch. It is a movie within a movie - within a movie - within a movie (probably within a movie). Since you are basically watching a movie anyway, it shouldn't matter to you if it is in the end just a movie but it does because somewhere in between you just lost the line and took it for real life - within a movie.

So here is the story. There is this actor, Nicholas (Blair Underwood), who shoots a movie with Brad Pitt. While he does that he is interviewed by a journalist (Julia Roberts) he falls in love with. But actually that is just a movie, too winding up to the personal life of the rest of the crew and actors around in Hollywood. There are so many movie shootings going on in that movie. It all ends with the death of the producer Gus (David Duchovny), while everyone is waiting for him on his birthday party. (Was it as birthday party at all?) Meanwhile we get a look at the lifes of the rest of the actors and crew. There is casting director Lee who wants to leave her husband but then his day goes so wrong that he doesn't even get the letter she wrote him to do so. Linda (Mary McCormack) meanwhile meets some guy online who says he's a 20 year old actor while in fact he's a mid 40s stageplay director, just releasing his new play on Hitler.

And in the end you get to know that also this personal life of the actors you watched was just a movie.

This is very confusing, and somehow brilliant! It takes a while to really get it but it's worth it. That is one of the most underrated movies of all times, just because it's hard to get. And it comes with a great cast, too. A better cast than you expect because the movie has on the first look the feeling of a B-movie, mostly because of the shooting quality. This is definitly to be recommended and even though it got really bad reviews I really like it!

Full Frontal - Released August 2002

Update: Tag cloud

2009-02-22T18:08:00.004+01:00

Hi there,

I got a small update to announce, which I just finished. At the bottom of the right sidebar you now find our own tag cloud. What is that?

Well, tags are placed below every review to make it easier for you to find it. If you are looking for George Clooney movies for example you can type his name into the search bar at the top of the website and it will find every movie on our site tagged with his name.

With this new feature you can also browse through the alphabetical tag cloud and click on his name to make the reviews appear. This also works with genres now. The bigger the word you click on is, the more reviews are tagged with it.

This tool is also great for discovering new actors or genres. Just look through it & tell us if you find it useful or not.

Greetz,
Sina

House of D

2009-02-21T21:31:00.006+01:00

David Duchovny's writer's debut

This is Tommy's story. Tommy who ran away to France when he was just thirteen years old. The reason it is told is when his own son turns thirteen and he somehow feels guilty about his family not knowing about his life.

Tommy (Anton Yelchin/David Duchovny) could have a better life when he is twelve years old but he stays optimistic. Working as a meat delivery boy with his forty one year old mentally damaged best friend Pappass (Robin Williams) after school he always comes home to a Mum (Téa Leoni) taking pills all day. He counts them to know if she still is on a healthy dose. He cares for her and reminds her from time to time that his Dad was not a bad man and "just" died from cancer years before. He also reminds Pappass' father that he has a good son who's mother not killer herself because of the kid but ran into a car because of him. Tommy is much to grown up for his age but he needs an advice sometimes.

And one evening infront of the women's jail he gets one from an inmate he talks to - to just go out on a dance with the girl he likes. But from that moment on his life goes down the pan and in the end all that's left is to leave from all that was his life for thirteen years.

"House of D" is David Duchovny's first "self made" movie. He wrote, directed and stared in it - and hell did he good! Understandable that he freaked out about some bad critic by Richard Roeper lately because the movie deserves awards, not boos!

It is, I would call it, an optimistic drama, and those are rare nowadays. I'm impressed about Duchovny's work here and can only really recommend it. It has everything a great movie needs plus a super cast! Thumbs up for that piece of work! *taking a bow*

House of D - Released May 2004

Don't Tell Mom The Babysitter's Dead

2009-02-20T19:37:00.007+01:00

And don't tell my boss, I'm a cheater!

Mom is going on vacation - and she leaves her five kids at home alone for two months with a stone old babysitter. The babysitter dies - as old as she was - and the kids 'get rid of her' so that Mom wouldn't come back and disturb their holidays but unfortunately the dead babysitter had all the money for the eight weeks. Sue Ellen (Christina Applegate), the oldest of them 5 decides to get herself a job.

Realizing working at a fast food restaurant wouldn't do it for her she applies for a job as a receptionist for a fashion company. But her fake cv and references are to good and so she finds herself in a higher position than wanted. Meanwhile the rest of the kids screw up the house and trash the dishes and Sue Ellen soon discovers: Being a Mom sucks!

This lovely and funny movie was released in 1991 and that's what it looks like. It had a certain naive charm and a good cast. I guess it could go through as a teeny romance but on the other hand if I liked it, it can't be one.

Being an scheming, slimy storage keeper at the company Sue works for was also one of the first roles for David Duchovny, who I portrayed lately. His part is ... very small but remarkably unlikeable.

All in all it is some very entertaining, likeable movie and it goes straight to our highly recommended list!

Don't tell Mom the Babysitter's dead - Released June 1991

David Duchovny

2009-02-20T15:46:00.015+01:00

A portrait of strange success

Nowadays everyone knows David Duchovny. Even people who don't really watch movies know him from „Californication“ the TV series around Hank Moody that went to be a total success all around the globe and everyone who grew up in the 90s would never get Agent Mulder from „The X-files“ out of his mind. David Duchovny has a safe place in the hall of fame of TV stars but he also made it through in Hollywood. Who is that charismatic guy that a famous celeb website even called an „uber-sex god“ - for the record, we find that a bit exaggerated.

David Duchovny was born in Manhattan August 7^th 1960 into a Jewish family. He went to Princeton and Yale later, worked on a Master's degree in English literature. Young Duchovny was no fool so to speak but some when the interest in acting took over and he dropped the whole thing to ... have you ever heard of the „Red shoe diaries“ series?

„Red shoe diaries“ was a TV erotic series that started up in 1992. David Duchovny was on board there from the first part released to the 18^th in 2002. Now if that would not be a start to a serious acting career. He had caught a few small roles from 1988 to 1991 already but what really made him famous were the three episodes of „Twin peaks“ he starred in 1991.

From that he headed over directly to his role of a lifetime, our all time favorite, Mr Everybody-loves-him, Agent Fox Mulder. At total of 176 episodes, 4 movies and lots of video games and specials were released basing on „Spooky

Mulder“ and Dana Scully hunting for mysterious phenomenons at „The X-files“. A whole generation growing up with the series agreed later that 9 seasons were really enough for the latest movie from 2008 was kinda … boring.

But as mentioned from the start Duchovny also got famous with movies. For example there was “Evolution”, the sci-fi comedy from 2001 with Duchovny in a lead role. He was in “Zoolander” with Ben Stiller in 2001 and a handful of other movies in the last years.

But David Duchovny also successfully tried himself as a writer. He wrote 8 episodes of The X-Files and in 2004 the wonderful movie “House of D” .

“Californication” in 2007/2008 brought him back as a teeny idol and sex symbol and it seems he always grabs the right roles to make it up to the top again and again. This guy had a strange but kind of straight career and for that David Duchovny is one of our highly recommended actors!

---

Stay exited for many reviews on David Duchovny's well- and unknown movies, coming the next days!

David Duchovny movie reviews yet available on JebbyMovies:

-> Don't tell Mom the Babysitter's dead (1991)
-> Californication Season 1 (2007)
-> House of D (2004)
-> Full Frontal (2002)

Election (2005: Hk)

2009-02-18T13:37:00.005+01:00

Some movies belong to another culture, and are just what you are not used to, and "Election" is one of these movies, which proves two things, first that cinema is not US cinema, and that Johnnie To is a hell of a director.

Meet the Triads, a secret societies of organized crime in HongKong, with three hundred thousand members, and a history old as the history of china, and you would not be surprised that these secreties appoint a chairman to rule the board, what is surprising matter of fact is that this chairman is democraticaly elected from the "uncles" or the senior Triad memebers, and for the Wo Sing society, it is for a term that expires after two years.

Lok (Simon Yam) and Big D (Tony Leung Ka-Fai) are the two candidates, who are campaigning amongst the uncles to convince them they are the fittest, and this election, as any election in the world, is not clean of bribery and threats, but after the intervening of Uncle Teng(Wong Tin-Lam), who speaks in favor of one of the candidates who is more keen on respecting the old tradition which mind you goes back to the times of the Mandchurians and the Ming empire, the election happens and everybody is more or less happy.

Problem is that some influent people are not happy with the outcome of the election, so they try to get their hands the Dragon head which is the symbol of power of the new Triad leader, while the police is forced to emprison all the uncles, to keep the gang infighting from causing a bloodbath in street, while the both part struggle in continental China to get the dragon head and while the former Triad leader Whistle (Wang Chung), has to make choices that cause him immense sacrifice to show his loyalty to the Triad.

Mind you this is a radical departure from the godfather/godfellas kind of gangsterism, this is another flavour of it, and more in the spirit of the loyalty and family, even the police is aware that it will never be able to eliminate the triads, so their goal is to keep the harmony where they don't overstep territories and cause disturbance, this movie is not for export and it's a good thing, it's a movie made by asians for asians, the level of loyalty and brotherhood is similar to the one in the samurai movies, or the Shaw brothers swordsmen movies, it is really a relief to see something different that doesn't try to be western.

There is a certain amount of violence but it's never gratuitous and it is even righteous from the point of view of the persons who perform them, they do it by loyalty, and this feeling of belonging to a code of honor, something that is bigger then one's self interests, and the controversial end is perhaps also justified because he did what he did to keep harmony.

Tarantino called this movie the best of 05, and frankly it is probably true, the calm force of Lok, the violent outburst of Big D, and the wisdom of Uncle Teng, and Whistle, and Chief Superintendent Hui who is aware of the limits of what he can do, but is not intimidated by the mob bosses, it is far away from the Armani power thirsty model we are used to, these are real people, who have been in the society all their lives, and who got promoted, who obey an ancestral code of honour, and who elect their leader, you sometimes which our corrupt governements were that loyal, and the character that caught my attention was Jimmy (Louis Koo Tin-Lok), who is educated and a post graduate student, and whose influence helps to cure the feuds.

The Election ceremony is exactly th same as it happens in the real world, and Johnnie To, films this movie as an insider, well i don't say that he is a Triad member, but i'm sure that he is friends of many influent "Uncles", and for that authenticity, you need to watch this.

Nick of Time (1995)

2009-02-16T20:38:00.004+01:00

Sometimes you don't like a movie particularly, but you like something about it, would it be an on-screen encounter between two actors you wish to see together, or some movie artifact, or the general mood of a movie, or sometimes even the title, and that's what leads me to speak about "Nick of Time"

Gene Spencer (Johnny Depp) is an accountant and father of a small girl, arriving to Los Angeles by train do attend to some business, little did he know that he will get trapped in some major assassination business by a mysterious man (Christopher Walken) and his assistant (Romma Mafia) (i'm serious that's her real name), who hold his little daughter hostage, making him understand that he either carries the dirty business or else....as the plot advances we clearly see into this whole plan, and Gene gets grip with reality, finding as always more ressources then he ever thought he was capable off, getting into the unmerciful world where politics and business merge.

The movie is notable for some reason, although far from being a great one, first of all, it is shot in real time, meaning is that a minute in the movie equals a minute in the plot, Johnny Depp and Christopher get away clean with rather a simple and straightforward story, because good actors know how to struggle with average script, the music is good, and is in the whole Bernard Hermann Vertigo-like tradition, of entrapment and claustrophobia, and the cinematography is a clear hommage to Alfred Hitchcock.

That's maybe the sad thing perhaps, an idea like that would find it's right place if they had somebody as Hitchcock to work on this story, because the promisses were interesting, but this movie has a real small running time 82 minutes including the opening titles, and no it's not boring, and it has a great title, and after all it all happens practically in a luxurious hotel, which means it helps with the entrapment feeling, and well if i don't recommend it, i don't advise against it, all i can say is that i spent a gold hour and half watching it, remember, not all movies are masterpieces, some are just average.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1997)

2009-02-14T12:24:00.010+01:00

Ever heard of the American Dream, the Chevrolet, the nice house with the Drive-in, the malls, the blondes, this dream has been promoted by a zillion of movies and series from the early twenties, and that's why the American Immigration will be ever strong, despite Nagasaki, Vietnam, Irak, Guantanamo, and even recession.

Mr Hunter Thompson was a singulary Journalis, inventer of the "gonzo journalism", and a righteous witness to the Sixties in San Fransisco, so in the early seventies in the middle of the Vietnam War and during the Nixon administration, he decides to go to some sort of pilgrimage, a "savage journey to the heart of the American dream", so he takes a convertible, a bag full of all drugs known to man, a typewriter, and a Samoan laywer to a trip that was immortalized in the counter-culture canonic book "fear and loathing in Las Vegas.

Many directors and actors have tried to adapt this book, Scorsese, Oliver Stone, Brando, Nicholson, but we had to wait for the end of the millenium and Terry Gilliam to see it in what became a canonic cult movie on it's own right.

Hunter Thompson handpicked Johnny Depp, to play him, or to be exact his Alter Ego Raoul Duke, and you can't omit the irony in choosing an actor who represented the American dream for two decades to do that, Thomoson even shaving his head personally which is a bold movie concidering the chances of it never growing back, Benicio Del Toro completes the cast as Dr Gonzo, the alter ego to the real life crazy lawyer Oscar Zeta Acosta (who disappeared in mexico in 74) and cameos of "American Dream" stars such as Cameron Diaz, Tobey Maguire, Christina Ricci, and the main character of the movie "the heart of the American Dream" the city of Las Vegas itself, with it's strip, Casions, affordable Luxury suites, and it's blinding lights.

Duke is sent to cover the Mint 400 motorcycle race, and later has to cover a serious convention in Vegas on the other end of the American specturm, and between the two, he juggles with the components of counter culture, on a tightrope without a net below it, just the 3AM sound of desolation.

You have the Sinatra and the Rat-Pack component, you have the big circus with the jugglers and the clowns, you have the ingénue puritain teenagers, and the lone diners at 2 AM, and of course the Las Vegas strip with the flashing lights, plus all the parallel universes which are opened under Acid, Mescaline, Cocaine, Marijuana, or all of them at the same time, all that under the red sky of the involvment in Vietnam, and an acid generation of Cindrellas, following false prophets like Timothy Leary into the place where the wave ended up, in the middle of the desert.

You don't watch the movie in a classical facion, because it's a celluloid equivalent of a psychadelic album, like the "Jimmy Hendrix Experience", the soundtrack is aweome with Dylan, Tom Jones, Buffalo Springfield, and others, and Depp is not only playing Hunter Thompson, he IS him.

Thompson being the man who invented Gonzo Journalism, and a legendary Rolling Stone Magazine contributour, Dr Gonzo being the name of the character played by DelToro, the only thing i can promise is that this movie will affect you profoundly, and keep you wondering about it's famous "wave speech", and what if the sixties mouvement had succeeded, because all we see know is a direct result of their failure, and would we be stuck with reality-tv, three decades of Madonna, and the whole teen queen business, they owe a lot to this failure of good versus evil, and that's the impression you get as you leave the heart of the American Dream, on a Chevy Convertible, on the Highway number 15.

Burn After Reading (2008)

2009-02-14T11:55:00.005+01:00

What do CIA signal interception, internet dating and the fitness culture have in common, not much you would say, not in the minds in the Coens they do, and the result is comedy called "Burn After Reading".

Osbourne Cox (John Malkovich) is a CIA analyst in the Balkans Siging devision, he is married to a cutthroat bitch (Tilda Swinton) and lives in the velvet carpeted boring life of a princeton graduate in Washington DC, but his ejection from his job into a marginal position leaves him frustrated, and to make things worse Mrs Cox is not exactly a model wife, so out of frustration, he decides to write a memoir about his years in service, and to make things worse again, this memoirs fall accidently in the hands of Chad (Brad Pitt), and Lynda (Frances McDormand) fitness coaches at "hardbodies" a successful gym run by (Robert Jenkins), who see in this an oppurtunity to make some money.

Lynda who is into internet dating and "re-inventing herself" ends up meeting Harry Pfaffer (George Clooney), a treasury executive and who is inclined to filandering and buliding weird artifacts, and who is also a friends of the Cox's especially Mrs Cox.

This intricate web of characters relationships is what connects a rather impressive set of subplots, but hey these are the coens, and when it comes to multiplex plot and gourmet dialogue, they never disappoint, but what is essentialy a charcter movie populated with idiots in the big tradition of the much excellent "The Big lebowski" offers opportunitys of acting departure for it's stars, Brad Pitt is such a cartoon of himself in the perfect coenesque tradtion, miles away from the cool clever Rusty Rean from the "Ocean's Trilogy", Clooney continues his hilarious job for the coens, which he started with "O'brother", and continued with "Intolerable cruelty" as a larger then life buffoon.

And Frances McDormand is so touching as a fourtiesh woman trying to re-invent hersrlf, and getting acciedently in the world of espionnage for that, and Tilda Swinton plays her exact opposite, incredibly stuck-up and cold, and in this myriad of characters, the award goes to super John Malkovich, in the "Being John Malkovich" tradition, overworked, and over the edge, reminding everyone that when it goes wrong, it goes wrong all the way, all this set on a rythm of a beautiful paraniod soundtrack by Carter Burwell.

The Washinton DC politics , the fitness culture, the jogging buffs, the CIA bigshots mergey in this unlikely but very tasty stock, it is the Coens laughing at themselves and at everybody, who take themselves and their little stories too seriously, because if the DC people are like that, who can blame Canada.

The movie's weakness is perhaps the ending, which comes at a surprising moment, in a surprising way, it makes you wonder why, but i guess this whole movie is a "feel good movie" after the much darker "No Country For Old Men", and a near miss is also a near hit, but you will laugh your guts off when you see the artifact harry builds, it's a pure coen-clooney moment you can't affoard to miss, in the days of "40 years old virgin" type of gross comedy.

Citizen Kane (1941)

2009-02-13T19:16:00.007+01:00

No better way to celebrate our hundredth post then to speak about the AFI 100, best movie ever made, it is also the best movie ever by Rogert Ebert Criterias, by the Village Voice Sight and sound poll, by french, russian, romanian polls, everybody loves this movie, and when you watch it you will know why the picked it probably.

Charles Foster kane (Orson Welles) press mogul, and billionaire dies alone in his own version of a Mogul's mega palace, his last words being a mysterious word, and some journalists making a documentary about him realize it is really important to find out more about him, so they interview his friends, assistants, colleagues, wives, butlers in order to get to know him more, from the early days of the idealisitc young newspaper owner he was, to the days of his inflated ego, thirst of power, and estranged freiends, through the great depression of 1929, and successes and failures in politics, love and being true to oneself.

VH1 has this kind of shows of discutable quality called the "rise and fall of ....." in the majority of time it's about a celebrity who has nothing to say, and another version of this is "the life and times of ......", biographies sell millions because of this whole fascination we have about the rich and famous, the successful and the powerful, the charismatic and the self-destructive, and this movie is about another fascination we have, the moguls and the filthy rich, especially media moguls like Spielberg, or Rupert Murdoch, or even Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, because this concentration of opinion shaping power in the hands (and mind) of one man who has probably as many successes as failures and who can suffer from something as basic as a tooth ache.

This movie is ground breaking visually too, because of it's wonderful use of lights and shadows, especially on the face of CFK, and also casts some wonderful camera angles and matte paintings, the makeup to age the cast is credible even by today's standards, and the cinematographic narrative devices like time compression are amazing, we tend to forget what a brilliant man Orson Welles was, to the point of making a movie as poetic as the scent of honeyscuckle and as real as a punch in the gut.

It is also amazing how frail vanity is depicted in this movie, and how it burns to black smoke, and how simple important non corrupted things are the ones we find out are the most important, beyond the veil of money and looks, the dialogues are efficient and the characters well drawn, and the is even a "movie in the movie" in the form of a documentary, this movie is about power and corruption in the face of ephemerality, I had a serious thrill watching this movie, what i thought was a boring historic elitist movie turned out to be very contemporary, and when Mr Kane uses all his power to promote a talent-less singer, just because he wanted to , you realize that this "pygmalion effect" hasn't changed since and that's why telentless artists last for decades torturing the ones of us with taste more and more ( remember that Mariah Carrey married Sony Music CEO, and if that's not Citizen-Kane-ish !)

I don't know if it's the best film ever made, but it sure is a serious contender, and i couldn't help but notice that Orson Welles style in film making and acting was a huge influence on Coppolla and Brando thirty years later when they made "The Godfather", makes you realize that nothing is ever original, but if you steal, steal from the best, and what if i told you that Orson Welles was 25 when he wrote, directed, produced and starred in It, and that it was his first movie as a director, I always hesitate to use the word "genius" but it fits in here probably !

Where in the world is Osama Bin Laden?

2009-02-09T16:35:00.007+01:00

And why is Morgan Spurlock looking for him?

You surely do remember Morgan Spurlock, the guy from "Super size me", which was the entertainment documentary that nowadays keeps you from eating McDonald's burgers? Yes you do, we all do remember it! Now this time Spurlock asked himself a question many may have asked before him: Where in the world is Osama Bin Laden? Not that it would matter because nobody seems to look for him anymore, anyway. But the director still would like to find out and so he starts his journey around the world.

Okay, it's not really "around the world". It's "just" Morroco, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Egypt but still, it's far. He meets people, he collects opinions about terror, war and Bin Laden himself and he comes to realize that the majority of people doesn't see only that one person behind terror and that everyone would like to catch him, not only the Americans.

I got my very own thought on entertainment documentaries because there is still a slight difference between cinema docus and ... well normal ones. But on this one I must say I am quite impressed that he really went into all the dark corners, coming out with a smile. But what do we really learn at the end of the movie? Except for that we don't have to look for Bin Laden at some shopping mall?
Okay some watchers who really thought so may learn that not every Afghani, Morrocan and Pakistani is a terrorist but well, whoever thought so yet is a bit paranoid anyway.

Well, it's a good watchable docu (and I appreciate that Spurlock had the guts to actually take that journey) but as I see it it would have been necessary about ... well let's say 7 years ago because the nowadays generation of kids doesn't even know about 9/11 ... at least around here. But you gotta give the movie credit for it is very entertaining and well made. Still recommended!

Where in the world is Osama Bin Laden? - Released April 2008

Double Indemnity (1944)

2009-02-08T12:33:00.005+01:00

Some movies have a constant greatness, due to their deep insight into human nature, and their neutral view on the human weakness towards temptation, "Double Indemnity" is one of these, a movie about how the wheel of fate can turn like a russian roulette into the firing position.

Walter Neff (Fred McMurray) is a successful Los Angeles insurances salesman, who works for Pacific All risk, a routine visit to the house of one of his clients Mr Dietrichson to renew the insurance on his cars leads him to dire consequences.

The flirty coy trophy wife Mrs Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck) seduces him, and convinces him to join her into a devilish plan to take advantage of some insurance her husband has recently took, the reluctant Mr Neff is betrayed by his human weakness, and since he knows the tricks of his trades, proposes an even more devilish plan, which will let them use the "double indemnity" clause in the contract.

As it is often the case, the nearly perfect plan, has a gran of sand in it, and the suspcting claims adjuster Barton Keyes (Edward G. Robinson) starts to dig into this story, because his intuition tells him that this story is too perfect to be true, while Mr Neff gets deeper and deeper into the trap of Mr Dietrichson, and finds out about her past, and her true nature.

This film is a classic Film Noir, by the famous director Billy Wilder, and based on a novel by Raymond Chandler, the story is great, but so is the cinematography (by John F. Seitz) dark and caulostrophobic, adding to the entrapment feeling by the players in a story which is bigger then them.

Barbara Stanwyck is so femme fatale in this movie, you just can't escape her, like a succubus in some legend, and the poor Mr Neff, doesn't even have the slightest chance to put some order into this mess surrounding him, but the acting award goes to Edward Robinson, this short very smart fast speaker, who is really the pattern of all the Joe Pesci's an Danny DeVito's that came after him.

The camera is non judgemental and even the whole story, because Mr Neff is a plain nice guy, who could be your brother, or your brother in law, it is just about a giant magnetic blackhole kind temptation from which he cannot escape, and which will lead him to push his personal limits, and find out about his well hidden anti-heroic potential.

This movie has a good rank on the AFI's best movies, and Mrs Dietrichson is ranked as one of the top ten vilains of all time, because as sweet as she can be, you can't escape her, I know i wouldn't be able to, so i will chew my words twice before judging Mr Neff.

You need to watch this one !

Any Given Sunday (1999)

2009-02-05T16:16:00.006+01:00

American Football is another planet as far as I am concerned, first of all, because to me "football" is what they call "soccer", and this whole crazy enthusiasm beyond the superbowl is something beyond my understanding, but with this movie, i definitly could understand it better, as just an extension of the notion of gladiators and ancient battlefields.

Coach Tony D'Amato (Al Pacino) is a legendary coach of the fictional Miami Sharks, four years ago he won the Panthon Cup with the help of an All Star cast of players, "Cap" Rooney (Dennis Quaid), J-man Washington (LL Cool J), and "Shark" Lavey (Lawrence Taylor) the captain of the Sharks Defense Taylor being a real legandary football player with the New York Giants, who changed defense forever.

Life is not that easy for coach D'Amato lately, because his team is not doing so well, they lost their last four games, "Cap" health is a concern, and he has many management conflicts with the team owner Christina Pagnacci (Cameron Diaz), who took over after her dad, and D'Amato close friend died, and has trouble to prove herself in a man dominated world of men owners.

During a particulary difficult games D'Amato loses both his quarterbacks, forcing him to give a chance to the third Wille Beamen (Jamie Foxx) a talented player who never got an actual chance to prove himself do to a series of misfortunate events , Beamen doesnt only allow the team to win the games but turns into a true sport's world superstar, causing D'Amato's anger for his tenedancy to change the playing tactics on the fly as he pleases, and getting away with it.

Beamen's growing stardom gets to his head, while he starts to openly criticize his team and their way of living, and showing disrespect for the whole Coaching team, and earning him Cap's rivalry who works his butt off to get back to his initial place as the team's star quarterback

D'Amato deals with this new problem, plus his own alcoholism problems, plus his estranged family, and plus his addiction to hookers, while managing a conflictual relatonship with the media, and it's powerful talkshow hosts, this review could very well be about Al Pacino's performance as D'Amato because he gives a masterful one, but he played a somewhat similar role in "Heat" and we spoke about that, so while d'Amato is dealing with all these issues, the team continues to win thanks to "steamin" Beamen successful plays, and as the team heads to their biggest game, what will D'Amato do to manage the chaos around him, and to revive his legend, or is it just that he is past his primie, caught up in a world he no longer understands.

This movie is about the crazy and fascinating world of football and the people who revolve around it, it's partly written and directed by Oliver Stone, who made such small movies as "Platoon" or "JFK", and being a football fan himself, he manages to transcend it into an epical world, where the players are gladiators and the owners and coaches a royal court, with undless power battles, and where the lives of the players themselves are not much diffrent from their real lives, and it also shows the ruthless world of owners and politicians around it, and how one could get eaten alive if he doesn't pay much attention.

The confrontations of coach D'Amato and Christina are epical, she tries her best to hold up to him although it's hard with a man with such a status and an authority, who nevers allows anybody to tell him what to do, the evolution of the character of Beamen is also worth watching and even the sweet decline of the once Legend Cap Rooney played beautifully by Dennis Quaid is a subplot strenghtening the whole movie.

So this movie basically covers the world of football from all it's sides, and without being long or boring, this movie has the same rythm as a superbowl, with the game itself, the side entertainment, the ads, the party athmosphere, but don't let it unfocus you, because as we learn through Coach D'Amato's wisdom, this game is about more then winning, making money, or being the star, it's about the passion and the trust between ten men who will throw themselves into the harm's way, because they believe you'd do the same for them, and that's a beatiful lesson, from a beautiful movie.

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002)

2009-02-03T23:00:00.004+01:00

Actors turned directors, are in general spoiled kids of a system, who are rewarded for making so much money, by being allowed to play with a camera and a crew for three months, and make a movie people will watch anyways, because they usually star in it too, i can name so many of them but not the one i'm talking about tonight.

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind came as a knockout punch in the early 00's, George Clooney making a movie, with a Charile Kaufman script, and everybody thinking that a handsome face can't be a director anyways that he is going to ruin the script, and to the general surprise the movie was good, some even say very good.

So you have Chuck Barris (Sam Rockwell), for those of you who don't know him (and i didn't know him before the movie neither) is the creator of such TV shows as "the dating game", or "the gong show", which means he is responsible for this downward spiral whitch the Television took resulting with such atrocities as "the obbournes" or "Laguna Beach", but it is not his total responsability, because he claims that he was giving people what they want, and you almost can't argue with that, because if nobody watches a show it will get canceled, and this egg-chicken argument can entertain you one afternoon when there is no DVD to watch.

So this movie is about his life, as depicted in his unauthorized biography, where he claims he was hired as an assassin for the CIA, killing thirty people for them, but this is not even the theme of the movie although being a good part of it, the whole theme of the movie, is alienation and schizophrenia, because it's either that Chuck Barris did invent this fictional life because he was going crazy with all these accusations of him running the whole Television, or just representing everything decadent, or it is that these stories are true, and then it makes perfect sense too, because as Jim Byrd (George Clooney), the CIA recruiter says to him "you fit the profile", and god knows that he does.

This is a brilliant first movie, and shows that clooney has been a good students of his great director friends such as the Coens, or Soderbergh, some even accused Soderbergh of ghost-directing it at the time, as rediculous as it might be as an accusation, the cast also is fitting, with Drew Barrimore as Chuck's love interest, and Julia Roberts as a Cold War Femme Fatale, while the ever great Rutger Hauer, plays a ruthless fellow assassin, all this while projecting the audience into the heart of the Cold War and it's world of double identities, and spies, and it's Berlin wall, and all the stories around the wall, and the dirty work the CIA did in South America.

It is arguable what's more disgusting, killing people for the CIA, or making shows that show how decadent everybody is, or even shows like "the gong show" made in purpouse to make fun of people, for the sake of making fun of them, but then again, people kept coming to these shows to participate, and they were aware of what it was about.

The Dating game shows that dating and relationships are just another form of gambling, because at the end of the day you can't know much about a person unless you spend months in their company, and Chuck Barris knew that, he is at the same time, the victim of this culture and also it's catalyser, because he holds deep scars going back to childhood and early teenage.

So this movie is about failure, like much of Charlie Kaufman works, and one of the most common facets failure, is failure to be accepted, especially by the other sex, this failure can trigger creativity, and it can trigger nonesense, but it can project one into this sweet illusion of an imaginary life, for better of for worse.

And that's where the movie gets away with it, because it has true persons statments about chuck berry, it has his point of view on life, and his obvious alienation shown using clever color schemes, and it deals with self despise, self worth issues, and it deals about the consequences of being a misfit.

The movie starts with Chuck Barris standing in a dirty hotel room naked, facing a TV, watching Ronald Reagen inauguration in 81 (something everybody should do more often), and this scene is revealing because when we absently watch television we are naked, because it shows us the way we are, consumers, gossipers, and cruel, at least Chuck Barris, was not afraid to face his own flaws, and failures, I wish many other people, intoxicating the TV, movie, or the music world, has the same courage to watch themselves in the mirror of reality , or of TV

This movie is a buried treasures, it deserves to be watched, as scary as it be in it's revealing what we became.

Elephant (2003)

2009-02-02T14:41:00.004+01:00

It is really rare that a movie has the same feel of reading a poem, not any wannabe writer poem, but something like an Edgar Allen Poe poem, "2001 a space odyssey had that feeling" and "Elephant", the Palm d'Or winner in 2003 has that feeling, etheral, beautiful, and invasive.

Then again i will be the first to admit that winning the palm d'or is not synonymous of greatness, since many boring movies got that distinction, it all depends on the identity of the jury, and some juries are so elitist, and prone to heavy intellectualism.

The Movie starts with John McFarland (John Robinson) taking the control of the car from his drunk father, a heavy symbol of power handed to teenagers and which they will never get back, John enters the Fictional Watt HighSchool which could be anywhere in America, The Camera follows John in long tracking shots with minmalist music, but then departs from him to follow several of his friends and fellow stuents, doing whatever they do during a normal highschool day, including creative photography, discussing serious matters, being boulimic, speaking about boyfriends and girlfriends, having weight issues, or being bullied by their classmates.

The problem is that this is not a typical day and that the school is about to witness a terrible happening, as two students Alex (Alex Frost) and Eric (Eric Deulen) preparing a mass murder and John trying to prevent them from doing so, then the story shifts into the preparing of this murders by Alex and Eric, and how easy it was for them to get the necessary supplies, and the severe alienation they were facing, while their surrounding people were totally unaware.

This movie shows terrible things in a very quiet fashion, teenagers left to do whatever they want, or can, and to face whatever they face without an assistance, or with a totally misguided assistance which does more harm then good, it's about the total failure of all the systems which are supposed to supervise them, parents educaters or even friends, what remains is the bubble everyone creates to live in, and when this bubble explodes, it will touch everybody else, in a terrible way.

But the writer/director Gus Van Sant, is too smart to be judgemental, he doesn't blame anyone, because this movie is supposed to expose the problem from the point of view of the people living it, and because the adults, and politicians and the media tend to ignore it like "an elephant in the room" hence the title.

The Cast are amateurs and that's a brilliant decision, because what was needed were teenagers being teenagers, and who would need a Misha Barton, or a Lindsay Lohan in such a movie, they are fit for the whole "cheerleader, everything is arright, drinving a new beetle" teenage movies, Mr Van Sant going as far as casting one of his movies on Myspace.

It is easy to draw the parallel with events such as the Columbine highschool massacre, but this film is intended for a broader view, and a more general approach to the theme, but then again since i live in Algeria, it's really shocking to see these priviliged kids living in a beautiful suburb being that depressed, or suicidal, i guess that at the end, happiness is like a ball, we run after it until we reach it, and then we kick it further, the problem being, that these kids didn't have anyone to show them the right ball to kick, and that some explosives look strangely like toys.

The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976)

2009-02-02T14:15:00.005+01:00

The first impression i got out this movie, was that the Poster was misleading, you see Josey Wales screaming on the poster, while the movie is a meditational revisionist western, the second impression is that this movie is every bit as good as "Dances with Wolves" in it's respect and admiration of the native American culture and suffering.

Josey Wales (Clint Eastwood) is a peaceful Missouri farmer during the times of the American Civil War, he sees his family murdred and his farm burnt to the ground by some Pro Union Militia, the "RedLegs" lead by a man named Terill, Josey seeks revenge, and being a good marksman, he joins a band of Pro-Condfederate Militia, where he learns the trades of gunmanship, but at the end of the war, his side obviously being the loser, they are offred a total amnesty by the Union army, and a power thirsty senator.

Josey is the only one who refuses, thus making him the witness of the betrayal and the mass murder of his past partners, by the hands or the RedLegs who became officers in the union army Terill becoming "Captain Terril", Josey immidiatly avenges them, thus becoming "the outlaw" in the title of the movie.

Being a fugitive now, he has to move constantly and during this journey he meets Lone Watie (Chief Dan George), a wise indian chief who tells him how the US government betrayed his people with false promises, leading to the lose of his family, this common factor being the one leading to the two men's frindship, an indian woman he saves from raping, and a Yankee woman and her daughter, while they travel towards a new frontier and a new life surrounded by Comancheros (mexican bandisos), Apaches, and the Union army itself.

This movie has it's required amount of gun battles, and has a revenge spaghetti western like plot, but it's more then that, it's a meditation of a fragile and ephemeral time in the US where the country was changing, leading to immense tragedies, a time where any outlaw was home in the wild west, and where the gun was the law (wait a minute, it hasn't changed much in America, they even exported it)

Josey Wales is a quiet observer, who intervenes on the right time, he doesn't speak much, but when he does, he usually says the right thing, and his dialogue with the Apache leader, and with Chief Watie is full of understanding and wisdom, his motives are pure, he seeks revenge, justice, and then he just minds his own business, he is a typical anti-hero.

This movie was a success, both critically and commercially, it ran for the Golden Palm and was presented in Cannes, Eastwood proves that he has been a very good student of Sergio Leone, but with a personal touch you can't miss, and when you see this, you can guess that a masterpiece is not far away in his career, and it happned a decade and a half later with his Western Swan song, the marvelous "unforgiven".

So even for those who dont like Clint much, this movie is really worth watching, it's not glorifying the Union army, and even it's final showdown, ends in a very unsusual fashion, a japanese one rather then an American, that says also that "Yojimbo" and the Kurusawa influence was not far neither, but let's all remember that Mr Kurusawa is the one who inspired both Sergio Leone Dollar Trilogy, and "Star Wars", frankly nothing is original, but if you steal, steal from the best, and add a personal touch.

The Terminator (1984)

2009-02-01T21:26:00.006+01:00

It's a thrill for me to speak about The Terminator, one of "the films" of the eighties, this movie was so influencial and has a clear influence on the whole science fiction genre, with a clear inflence on suc a movies as The Matrix franchise.

To put you in the setting the time is the beginning of the eighties, and the robotics are advancing the first personal computers are sold, the Walkman is very popular, and it lead to rise of many issues, and what if the robots could build their own consciousness and start to exterminate humans, well if that is to happen it surely easier for the computers with the big well of human knowledge and experience called the internet.

So much for that, the year is 1984 (George Orwell obvious Reference) andSarah Connor is a waitress in a diner, who loves to party guys who own a porsche, but somehow she is the target of a mysterious killer (Swharzenegger) who came to life naked in a thunderstorm, who has this tendency to kill everybody in the phone book whose name is Sarah Connor, and there is another naked guy (Micheal Biehen) who talks and acts paranoid but he pretneds to want to protect her, this story seems pretty basic, but add to that cocktail the fact that both guys come from the future, one of them is not a hundred percent human, and doesn't speak much, and is pretty direct when it comes to killing people, he is "The Terminator" and he does... terminate.

It turns out that the young sweet Sarah is very important to the future of humanity, and that big Artificial Intellingce from the future want her dead, so the movie is basically the Terminator trying to kill her, and her becoming more and more aware of her influence on the future, leading to some paradoxal consequences, this movie is still enjoyable to watch especially for the people who were born after the eighties ended, and have no frame of reference to this weird and optimistic era.

Shwarzenneger acts wonderful in here, probably because he has no facial expressions to perform, Lynda Hamilton as the sweet Sarah, is really a wonderful mirroring to her more serious Sarah in the no-less-valubale sequel, and the action sequences are beautiful, especially the robotic stop motions used in here, because it was before CG, which makes them even more impressive.

It is really hard to forget the assault on the precinct on the police, or the whole robotic paranoia running throughout the film, and the huge presence of Swharzenegger, he was never that much of an actor, but he has tremendous presence in here, James Cameron was a great director back then and the screenplay is so solid though, although the story is influenced by master science fiction works.

This is really a prequel to the Matrix in terms of ideas, because it deals with the robots having a consciousness, the matrix is about virtual reality, a concept which was still in development back then, but it's really a double winning bill, watching a great move, while rising important questions, i did not watch the movie for fifteen years, and today it's still relevant, still thrilling, and still powerful, as Mr Ebert would say "Two Thumbs Up", and I'll be back !.

The Maltese Falcon (1941)

2009-02-01T19:59:00.007+01:00

Quite an honor for me to speak about "The Maltese Falcon" probably one of the greatest American movies of all times, with one legendary detective Figure Mr Sam Spade, and is considered the first film noir to establish the codes and the visual aspects of the genre.

Sam Spade is a new york private eye, in an agency he shares with his partner Miles Archer, one day a Mysterious and beautiful women (femme fatale) enters the office, asking the pair to investigate the disappearing of her sister of whome she had no news, while asking them to follow a man she thinks has the information, Archer is immediatly attracted to the woman with serious consequences to him and his family, and Sam Spade has to deal with her, as he finds out that her story was false, and the she is one of the players in an international quest for a mysterious and powerful falcon which has a history linked to the Templar knights of Malte, and Charles V of Spain.

Sam Spade played beautifully by Humphrey Bogart, is the center of this story, he is both corageous and ruthless with a fearless attitude and an obvious despise and a fearless attitude towards the underworld people and the guns they carry sometimes in both pockets of their trenchcoats.

So many famous detective artifacts originate in here, the whole trenchcoat, hat, pretending to read a newspaper thing come from her, it's much more amazing knowing that it was John Huston's first movie, but the word is that he worked and planned his movie extensivly, and frankly the work shows, because the movie advances like a clockwork.

The characters are the true force of the film, from the sinister kingpin Kasper "Fatman"Gutman (Sydney Greenstreet) or the effiminate Joel Cairo (Peter Lorre), or the fatman's bodyguard Wilmer, not forgetting the Femme Fatale (Mary Astor) and of course the attractive secretary, their distinctive stories and their fatal attraction towards the Falcon, which leads to a distinctive end scene which could possible be an early ancestor to the famous Mexican standoff.

The Cinematography is so inventive either, with the use of unusual Camera Angles, and the tradmarked Low Key look of the Noir Genre, especially one scene where Spade Follows Gutman while he explains the story of the Falcon, this scene is a must see for all the movie lovers, it's so fluid that you might even be attracted into it, and not even notice it.

As Jay-Z said "what more can i say", this movie is a must see for the Noir lovers, the cinema lovers, the litterature lovers, and everybody who loves brilliant art, and you will probably know why this movie was so influencial that they named a nuclear bomb after one of it's characters !

Philip Seymour Hoffman as Lester Bangs (Almost Famous)

2009-01-31T20:24:00.012+01:00

Philip Seymour Hoffman is a great character actor, and everybody can remember him in half a dozen of great roles, where he plays everything, from an introverted nurse, into a world class vilain, but his portrayal of Lester Bangs in "Almost Famous", is still one of his finest, and for various reasons.

The first reason is because Lester Bangs was one of the greatest Rock Critics of all times which means that it will inevitably lead to a direct comparing, and how do you compare to somebody with such a charisma or even give him justice on screen, and the second is that "Almost famous" is semi-autobiographical, it's about the life of the writer-director Cameron Crowe, when he was a teen journalist for Rolling Stone Magazine, and touring the untied states with bands like The Who, or Led Zepplin, in the same fashion depicted in the film, which means that the film is also personal, and everybody knows what personal often means in cinema.

Lester Bangs was famous for his irreverance towards the "Rock Stars" which he saw as "people who were not that special", he is still very influencial as a rock critic years after his death at ayoung age, but the most important fact is that in the movie he acts as the mentor for Henry Miller (Cameron Crowe's alter ego), and that means that the task was not easy, considering the small screen time offred to SHH, who had to make the mentor-student believable to the student himself years later.

The movie is about the journey of Teenage William Miller and the audience into the glamourous world of seventies Rock music and touring, and it's fast paced life, pretences, and the whole "industry of cool" when it was just starting, and Lester is the Equivalent of a Yoda to a Luke SkyWalker, being more of a spiritual guide then a teacher, William calling him everytime he has a problem or an issue with the scary Rolling Stone editors, especially when he is writing the assignment of his life, for Rolling Stone magazine (of which Cameron Crowe is still the record holder as the youngest contributor)

Portraying vivid characters is difficult especially those who did actually exist, portraying Lester Bangs, is almost impossible, but PSH was right for the job, he makes you love the guy and care for him, and want to be tutoured by him about music and life, he has roughly four or five scenes in the movie, but these are probably some of the most memorables ones, he is the one who "been there, done that", so he helps the movie to advance, and of course makes you nostalgic to these days where journalist could write the way he did, or the way Hunter Thompson did, the days there was a margin of freedom in artistic press, way before MTV.

Philip Seymour Hoffman did not win an oscar for that performance, but he did win for his portrayal of another larger then life figure "Truman Capote", but I am sure that the Academy voters had his portryal of Bangs in mind when they casted their votes, i sure would have voted for him !!

and one last quote for the road...

LESTER BANGS
The only true currency in this bankrupt world if what we share with someone else when we're uncool.


I don't know if he ACTUALLY said that, but man it's so true !

Zong heng si hai / Once a Thief (1991)

2009-01-30T14:43:00.009+01:00

First of all this title might be confusing, it has the same title of an alain delon movie i didn't know existed, and of course it has the same title as the remake which was made by the same director in 1996, but the latter was an attempt to please western audiences anyways, after his immigration to North America, but today we are talking about the greater one with Chow Yun-Fat, and Leslie Cheung.

So you have Joe , jim and "red bean" Cherie (Chow Yun-Fat, Leslie Cheung, Cherie Chung) who are orphans who were raised in the streets of Hong Kong, by their ruthless tutor hung, who is the one who taught them pickpocketing and other theft techniques, and their other parental figure, a cop who is the one who taught them about dignity and lover and loyalty.

Years later the trio has evolved and their techniques too, they are now a high tech (by the standards of 90) Art Burglars, who go only to the most expensive and safely keeped artworks, naturally in the south of France, which is somehow the officious capital of art burglary in the world.

So the First deal goes right, and they say "hey, let's pull up a last one before retiring" this is the one of course which goes wrong, and then escalating the stakes to a place where their loyalty to each other, to their parental figure is severly tested, in a journey that takes them back to Hong Kong.

Of course this story is a "seen it before" one and the reason is obvious, it's a John Woo movie, and a Hong Kong movie, which means that the story is a vehicle for two things which are the most important in this genre, the action scenes, and the stories of male loyalty, which is the righteous heir to the martial arts code of honour one, which is seen in all Hong Kong martial arts movies.

The action scenes are beautiful, from the car chases in the south of france (non digital, good old stunts) and the martial arts scenes, the acrobaties, and the world famous John Woo gunfight scenes which no one does better then him.

Speaking of which, i mean this movie has one vilain throwing cards as weapons, like in 90's videogames, and another one who attacks using flames, there is one thing you must be sure of, the John Woo influence on the Video Gaming industry is so enormous that they should pay him a percentage of every action game sold.

The rest is the obvious love they are forming, which center's shift throughout the film, and the beautiful loyalty between the characters played by Chow Yun Fat, and the late and great Leslie Cheung, and the relationship they have with their two parental figures, one representing the good in them, and the other one representing the evil.

You also have the stealing scenes with the laser beam classic scene and the locked in the safe one, these are some kind of genres musts, and when it comes to respect genre's codes, or to invent new ones, Mr Woo is the man.

So this is a Hong Kong movie like we love them, with an ounce of humour, and romance which is really well welcome, and please remember that this movie is about Hong Kong before it returned to China, and before Woo and Yun-Fat immigrated to United States, now making movies which are fit for western and international audiences, thus alienating their old fans.

And of course you have the multi talented and awesome Leslie Cheung, who died too young infortunatly, making him the right equivalent of a James Dean, or lately, a Heath Ledger.

To Catch a Thief (1955)

2009-01-29T17:49:00.010+01:00

So many of you have heard critics and journalists say that George Clooney has “that” Cary Grant thing, and if you have been wondering about “that” thing, this movie will come with the answer.

John "the cat" Robie (Cary Grant) was notorious jewels thief, from the old school of "cat burglaras" a former trapezist who had converted to a more lucrative form of jumping around, he is now a retired gentelman of leisure in the south of France and attends to his vineyards.

but "The Cat" is back, a lot of rich tourists are robbed of their jewels diamonds or pearls, and Robey is the usual suspect, and as if it was not enough, a lot of his former resistance buddies during WW2 who work now at a touristic restaurant and who are on a fragile parole, are mad at him because of the suspicion around him, is jeopardyzing their new "respectable citizen" status.

The boss of the restaurant Mr Bertani introduces Robie to an important insurances man Mr Hughson, in the hope of unveiling the identity of the true cat, Mr Hughson introduces him to a new rich oil billionaire widow Jessie Stevens (Jessie Royce Landis), and her good mannered daughter Francie (Grace Kelly).

As the plot advances, Robie and Francie get more and more into each other, thus forming a love triangle with Robie's old flame, a gorgeous french girl, daughter of the wine waiter at mr Bertani's restaurant, this triangle's outcome leading into some dire consequences and revelations.

Now Picture this young fellas of the dot come generation, you have Mr Cary Grant in all his glory, Ms Grace Kelly in all her Charms, and of course the French Cote d'Azur in all it's glamour before it lost it thanx to zillions of Russian Businessmen, Gulf oil princes, Paparazzis, Japanese industralists, and shall i go on, even hip hop moguls.

This movie is a true witness to the post WW2 optimism, when wealthy but unexperienced America was meeting the magnetic glamour of France, and europe in General, Mr Hitchcock in all his genuis captures this energy with all the details and the beauty of technicolor, and you can see the old Nice with it's ever glamourous Carlton Hotel.

The "grace" of this movie is like an old french wine, surprising, uplifting, classy, and charming, and you can see why they say that George Clooney is the heir of that elegance, and that style, i mean, Clooney even has a villa in lake Como Italy, so similar to the one Cary Grant owns in the movie, and i really wish he would do a remake of that movie (wait !, wasn't it their intention with that movie "Oceans 12", sure it tanked like an old yacht in the french reviera)

Anyways that's a movie is one you can't afford to miss, especially that it was Grace Kelly's swan song before she became Princess Grace of Monaco just a few miles away, boy she surely looked royal in that golden dress.

Fort the rest, you can catch the Vanity Fair photoshoot , with Clooney and Gema Ward posing as Grant and Kelly, and frankly, as classy as they were, it was an impossible task to match the glamourous Nice couple of 55.

Mission Impossible (1996)

2009-01-29T14:12:00.008+01:00

If you are like me, then you have probably watched Mission : Impossible as a series, matter of fact i did not watch the original one, but the twenty years after version when Jim Phelps got old and cool, so in the mid nineties there was a movie based on a serie (loosely based i may say) starring Tom Cruise, and directed by Brian DePalma.

So when an iconic director and an A-list Star join forces, with such co-stars as Jon Voight, Ving Rhames Jean Reno and Vanessa Redgrave, the movie goers shall pay attention, and their attention was ... rewarded since M:I was probably one of the best action movies of the nineties.

Ethan Hunt is a member of the IMF (impossible mission force) who are dispatched to Prague, to uncover a mole selling a high end document to some international arm dealer, of course the deal goes wrong with many people killed and Ethan Hunt taking the blame.

After a brilliant escape Ethan Hunt along with some remaining team members and new hired experts attempts a very daring heist in one of the most secure locations in the world, and contacts the arm dealer himself to find out surprising revelations about the mole, his fellow team members, and the IMF.

This movie is like Kill Bill in many regards, the plot line is used to tie impressive action figures, and brilliant filmmaking by DePalma, the film is not really convincing and relies on suspension of desbelief, but neither was the series anyways, and it was part of it's charm (now if you can believe that it's actually possible to make a mask that imitates excatly the face of a person ....), but that's Mission Impossible, Impossible is even in the title, so you can't act like you did not know.

Fans or the real series might feel alienated by the portrayal of Jim Phelps by Jon Voight, but then again this movie is in many cases a reboot as our fellow comic book lovers like to call it, and it's part of the enjyoment, another part are the exotic shooting locations, Prague, London, Virginia, and France to name a few, and the international cast, especially the use of french actors Jean Reno, and Emanuelle Beart.

So yes, this is a good movie, and still relevant today, it sadly did rise the anticipations for the second installment, which turned out to be more profitable, and really a disgrace to the spirit of the series, with the oh my god so boring Thandie Newton as the female lead, and the once good director John Woo, and his pigeons coming out of nowhere.

The Karate Kid (1984)

2009-01-28T19:21:00.007+01:00

Some Movies are made to stick in memory and serve as life lessons, for instance "The Shawshank Redemption" or "Dead Poets Society", "The karate Kid" is one of such movies, and just the thought of the last scene still sends shivers of excitment to my spine.

Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) moves from Newark to a town in the San Fernando Valley, ner Los Angeles, looking for a new beginning, Daniel is rapidly attracted to the beautiful Ali (Elizabeth Shue) thus earning the animosity of her ex boyfriend Johnny, a Karate student in the Cobra Kai Dojo run by Sensei Kreese (Martin Kove) an ex special forces who served in vietnam, and who teaches a pragmatic and unethical form of Karate.

Johnny and his friends bully Daniel everytime they see him, one day Mr Miyagi (pat morita) a humble handyman from Japanese origins is witness to the bullying, and manages easily to sweep the the attakers, the impressed Daniel asks him to be his karate teacher.

Reluctant at the beginning Mr Myagi accept to be his karate trainer, and through the training we learn tragic and inspiring aspects of mr Myagi's life, who slowly becomes a father figure to Daniel, through unorthodox training techniques, he slowly becomes elligible to fight in the town highest Karate contest, and to learn important life lessons, about peace harmony, and the true essence of martial arts.

This movie was important due to it's approach to martial arts, and to it's emphasis on the beauty of eastern culture, it also was important in changing the public image of Italina Americans victim to decades of mafioso sterotypes, the Oscar worthy portryal of Miyagi sensei was one of the most influencial parts in eighties cinema, with a big load of life lessons to overcome tragedy and reach out for redemption.

This movie is as relevant today as it was back then, or even more, it teaches simple and powerful lessons about self worth, master disciple relationships, and just the inner beauty of martial arts, eclipsed by all the Tony Jaa's and Jet Li's jumping in all direction

The "crane kick" at the end is an everlasting image which deserves to be seen by any teenager, wether he is or is not interested in martial arts, because this movie is one of the rarest to capture the beauty and fragility of this important period in anyone's life, and that's what makes this movie, more then just what you expect from a movie theater experience, it is actually a life lesson !

The Dukes Of Hazzard (2005)

2009-01-27T14:22:00.007+01:00

How much sense is there in sensless, the answer would be, not much ! , but then again is sensless forcely a synonymous of bad, I watched this movie yesterday, and my answer is, not all that much!

So here is the story, three cousins living in Hazzard county Georgia, Bo (Sean William Scott), Luke (Johnny Knoxville), and Daisy (Jessica Simpson), the boys run a monshell business in the farm of their uncle Jesse (Willie Nelson), and they use a 69 Orange Dodge Challenger for transportation, and also for fun, since Bo is the five times consecutive winner of the Hazzard Rally.

Trouble Occurs when Boss Hogg (Burt Reynolds), manipulates the local sheriff to seize the farm of the boys and their vehicle, the boys investigate to find out that Boss Hogg has sinister plans for the whole county, and that he is using the Rally as a diversion device by hiring the services of the local stock-car champion.

Now what do you expect from this, you have Stiffler from American Pie, and Johnny Knoxville from Jackass, with a bimbo pop star, this movie is not brilliant by any means, but it's not a terrible movie neither, it's just a sensless entertainment, and as far as I am concerned, it beats the hell out of watching House Md episodes for the zillonth time.

Funny fact is that Jessica Simpson's only purpouse in this movie is to show off her body, to advance the story, that's the only plot use of her character, the rest is an excuse for johnny knoxville to do some Jackass type stunts, for SWS to be as silly as the character which made him famous in American Pie, and for Willie Nelson to be Willie Nelson, the bad note in here is Burt Reynolds, well I am sure the check was tempting, but this man should be more careful when picking his roles.

So here is the deal, watch this movie because it's worth watching just to see the Dodge Challenger cruising through Atlanta, and to have a nice look at Jessica Simpsons Bombshell body, then go to youtube and watch her video from the movie "these boots are made for walking", because you can't watch "On the waterfront" class movies everyday, sometimes sensless is good, would it be for the sake of opening a mental parenthesis.

How To Lose Friends & Alienate People

2009-01-26T04:42:00.002+01:00

The memoirs of some very misunderstood guy

Sidney Young is on his way to the top, unfortunately he thinks he already arrives at where he always wanted to be – as close as possible to the beautiful world of Hollywood glamour and the stardust surrounding it. He's got an offer from „Sharps“-magazine and hell yeah he's gonna take it! He's even going to wear his best dumbass shirt and pay the taxi to his new living – if only he could.

It turns out as it had to. His new home is worse than the only one if that's possible and the magazine – well Sidney doesn't really know what exactly is his job there. Nobody gives him a story to work on and nobody either cares about where he is, what he does and what he gets payed for. He doesn't fit in and the new colleagues don't even let them selfs down to make him feel it. An English boy in New York? Not that big a chance to make it to the top. He messes up with his boss, with the stars he should write about and if he makes a smart move it's mostly out of pure luck. But in the end he is where he always headed to – and doesn't like it there!

“How to make friends & Alienate people” is based on the memoir of writer Toby Young and it feels like one of those “I wanna make it to Hollywood, which way should I take?” movies, not the ones of the best kind usually.

And who could play the role of the smart kid from England who stumbles over his own feet into the star scene than Simon Pegg. Wait, who's that again? Yea right, it's the guy from „Run fat boy run“, who could forget about that „classic“ - which we have all seen, haven't we? No, we haven't, I haven't. I actually read it at the filmography and I've never seen Simon Pegg before. But that's good so I can comment only on his performance in this one movie right here.

I found it – not bad, but not so great either.
He fitted into the role, he really did. But that's it. Really.

Well it started up so funny but in the end I must say it was more the kind of movie you watch when you're not planning anything for the evening and quickly need to find a film that fits for all your friends. Then you should take this one, seriously. A bit funny, a bit interesting and a bit of a performance but well, there were better ones than this.

How To Lose Friends & Alienate People – Released Oct 2008

Ghost Town

2009-01-22T04:37:00.002+01:00

A typical Gervais and a good one, too

Frank just accidentally let his wife know that he cheats her with his gymnast when his estate agent called her about the apartment he bought for his girlfriend. And just that second Frank gets run over by a bus. Shit happens. What also happens is the dentist Bertrand Pincus, the ultimate asshole who hates all his clients and basically every human being that ever tried making
contact with him. He goes to the hospital for some small surgery and when he is released he sees people and for the worst – they are talking to him and asking him for favors! Well actually what he sees are the ghosts of the street of Manhattan who got unfinished business with their former loved ones and he is the first to be a link between them and the living in a long time. So he has to
help them or does he.

Frank is the most bothering of them and jumps on Pincus right away with the “small favor” of getting his former wife away from the suspicious new boyfriend of hers she is in love with. Not that he had much of a reason, he just thinks that is what he has to do. And Pincus – accepts doing him this favor under the condition that after this one they all leave him alone and he can go on quietly hating everything living.

Greg Kinnear and Ricky Gervais make such a great “couple” in this movie and Gervais is once again so … himself! Seriously – every time I see Ricky Gervais pissing of people I think to myself “man, you gotta learn from this guy!”.

There's nothing really bad to say about this movie. Good set up, funny as hell, great actors, a Gervais on his best and even a good soundtrack. It's one of these movies you gotta love, for real. It must be such a boring review to you ending with that critic, but well: Face it, we got a really good movie here!

Ghost Town – Released Sept 2008

Gran Torino

2009-01-14T14:23:00.006+01:00

Short review

After his wife's death Walt is looking for a new target in life. His family left him alone, his grandkids just want his money and lately some Asians moved into the house next to his. He can't stand the world anymore.

But then by mistake he rescues the life of one of his neighbors when he wants to scare some gang members off his loan. The neighbors appreciate it and fit him into her community. And Walt finds a new chance to change - which is to make the shy boy Thao a tough guy with a job and some self esteem.

But Walt doesn't have a clue what he's doing when he pisses on the legs of the gang members he scared off earlier and he also is struggeling with cancer that is killing him faster than he thought.

I was sceptical watching "Gran Torino" but it turned out a really good movie in the end. A bit funny, a bit drama and a story that could be kinda taken outta daily life. And Clint Eastwood - well you gotta like him somehow to like his movies. I don't but I give him alot of credit for this one!

Memento

2009-01-09T14:11:00.009+01:00

Step by step back in time

Meet Lenny. He hates to be called that and its by far the only thing he remembers when he suddenly find himself shooting a man without the benefits of knowing why. Because Lenny can only remember the last few minutes of his life and every few minutes a new circle of finding out the previous events starts. Lenny finds himself having tattoos all over his body with clues to who murdered his wife. He wants revenge but he never remembers what else happened since he started searching for the man. Now that's why he makes polaroids of everything and the really important stuff he just tattoos on his skin.

"Memento" is the only movie of his kind that starts with the ending of the story and traces the steps back in short episodes to how it all began. And between those steps there are sequences going even further into Leonard's past, kept in black and white.

What makes this movie interesting is that you can think about what may have happened to get to the events but you never know more than what Lenny remembers and thats only just a few minutes each episode. Sounds confusing? Actually not, somehow director Christopher Nolan did the trick to keep the movie interesting and catching till the last minute. If you like a good thriller, don't miss this one!

Frances McDormand as Marge Gunderson

2009-01-08T11:02:00.010+01:00

Some characters have a short life span, who for example remembers Tommy Lee Jones' character from "Volcano", or Bruce Willis' character in that movie i forgot the name of, but i betcha that nobody will be able to forget Marge Gunderson from "Fargo".

After a series of violent and senseless murders occurs on the road around Fargo Minnesota, and the person who is investigating is police chief Marge Gunderson, and she is not what you'd expect her to be, not this wanted-to-be-a-man cop, who plays it tough, she is just a smart seven months pregnant cop, who is married to a stamp painter, she is a good chief and a good wife.

Marge starts investigating, quickly figuring out that these murders were linked to a story involving the kidnapping of a housewife, two very violent small timers who are after a lousy ransom, and sneaky son in law who is the dumb mastermind of this whole situation.

Of course i'm not giving away the plot of "Fargo" one of the best movies of the nineties, that being sad, you can't help but love marge gunderson, her modesty, her smarts and her true belief in good, Marge is supportive to her husband even if he does a lousy job, she supports an old highschool friend who is desperate in his private life to find out that he is a compulsive liar, and she is slowly able to follow the leads that will take her to find a solution to these gratuitous murders, and to the roots of the basic greed behind them.

Marge Gunderson is a hero, not one like these ones you see on TV, but she is a hero anyone can be, she is a good person, she is good at her job, supportive to her husband, and above that, smarter then everybody around her, but she doesn't feel the need to show it off, and that's what made her one of the most loved character in cinema history (she is number 33 at the AFI 100 heroes list), and let's not forget the movies signature Minnesotan accent, which is so pleasent to listen to, and so hard to forget, along with the iconic main theme which has the ryhthm of a Scandenavian chant.

This masterpiece of a character is due to two reasons, one is Frances McDormand's performance, and the second being that the script is written so good, Frances Mc Dormand (the oscar winner that year) played marge gunderson as if it was an alter ego, with honesty and wit, it is really impossible not to root for her, as she is the only character with a clear moral compass in the middle of all the others, blinded by greed and incompetence, or by selfishness, matter of fact this is a movie you should watch only to see that seven months pregnant woman saying at the end of the movie after all that blood spilled and all these people dead “And for what? For a little bit of money.... There's more to life than money,you know.... Don't you know that?... And here ya are, and it's a beautiful day...”

Five Fingers

2009-01-07T14:16:00.011+01:00

And Ryan Phillippe at his Best

I stumbled about this movie when I was lately looking through the newer DVDs at the store. Thought to give Ryan Phillippe a chance once more. I must confess I am not a big fan of his movies, he somehow always belonged into teen movies, couldn't imagine him in something serious. The only thing I liked him in, but didn't we all, was in "Cruel intentions" in '99. But surprisingly his recent works feature a really grown up actor who doesn't need to hide behind all the good ones out there.

Now not to spoil the movie for ya, bcs I really liked the ending, I can't tell you so much about it, unfortunately.

Matijn (R.Phillippe) goes to Morocco to "change the world" with his food program. He gets himself a guide and jumps on the plane, leaving his sad girlfriend behind. But when arrived he suddenly gets caught by terrorists and held hostage. They ask him questions he could not answer and suspect him working for the CIA, while he just wants to help the people - now does he. For every answer they don't like they go on cutting one of his fingers off, since he is known to be a good pianist in his spare time. How many fingers will it take till the truth comes out?

Since I didn't know the story - if I find a good lookin DVD I don't really care about the movie till I've seen it - I was kinda impressed by it. As I started up with, Ryan Phillippe really does some good work on there and however the story doesn't even get boring, even though only 6 people are involved in it. So if you are a fan of carefully made up stories, you might like this one, I guess!

Iron Man

2009-01-05T16:07:00.009+01:00

When "Cartoon" is not synonymous of "Cheesy"

Lately superhero movies got better and better, the Spiderman series revived the genre, the Hulk series were disappointing, Dardevil don't even deserves being mentioned, but The new Batman series and the new Superman movie were great as well as the X-men, the second installation in the Batman series turned out to be industry saving with earnings that threatned the most supreme "Titanic" on the top of all time box office, beating all the star wars and the lord of the rings and the pirates of carribeans in the way.

Iron Man is one of these movies, the story is really simple, Tony Starks was a genius boy, son of a multimillionaire scientist who was a science legend himself, now he is the CEO of his father's company all the parties, girls and the ferraris a super playboy needs, and with achievments that would take a hundred lifetimes for any other, the only problem is that his company makes weapons, some of them he personaly invented.

A weapon's showcase goes wrong and Tony Starks is a prisoner and he has to face the fact that his weapons are not only in the hands of people who pretend to use them to protect America but in the hands of crazy extremists, who threaten him to build them the ultimate weapon, and instead Tony becomes the Iron Man, and has to make difficult choices about his allies, his life's work, and about the way he was raised to think.

The original story of Iron Man is as dark as the one of batman, his parents died both in a car accident, he has alchoholism problems, and he is somehow disgusted about his playboy life, but this movie choses to eclipse this part in the favor of a more cartoon like approach, you don't really see him very depressed save for one scene (and let's face it, we have batman to be depressed and gloomy), his worldview is incredibly simple for somebody that smart and that powerful, but he is always convinced he is doing the right thing, and the performance of Robert Downey Jr, is really good in the sense of that he is exactly the best choice for a guy who hit botom several times, and came back to top once again.

Jeff Bridges is almost a miscast, because he is a victim of his superperformance in "the big lebowsky", Gwyneth Paltrow is really surprising in the role of Starks personal assistant, and then again we shall remember that this is the first movie of a trilogy, so comparing it to "the dark knight" would be unfair, because it has to carry the weight of character introduction, and it is just a good example that even the cartoon approach can be successful if handled with creativity, and frankly we don't need Iron man to be as gloomy as batman, one Gotham City is enough !

The War of the Roses

2009-01-04T19:59:00.013+01:00

Ever After / Never After

Okay you find the perfect person, your second half your media naranja, you complete each other's sentences, you fit morally, mentally and physically, isn't it a receipt for a perfect life, or is it just a slow falling down the hill to meet his highness the divorce attorney, well then this black comedy is just made to answer these questions.

Oliver and Barbara Rose (Micheal Douglas, and Kathleen Turner) met on a vacation on an island, they caught up immediately and were so happy together that they decided to marry, Oliver is a beginner lawyer in his firm, and Barbara is a waitress, move five years forward, Oliver is becoming more successful, and Barbara is still doing small jobs to help, they have a boy and a girl, over-spoiled overweight kids, but they are happy together, move forward and Oliver is a very successful lawyer, and she has started her catering career, the kids grew to become ivy league athletic young people, and they bought a dream house that Barbara took years to furnish with all the patience and the taste you can think off, but are they happy now ?...... think again !

Oliver experiences a traumatic event, and Barbara has a reaction he did not expect, so they find themselves less and less found of each other, which will lead them to the path of destroying property, shattered porcelain, sauna accidents, and to be stuck in a huge chandelier (both of them)

Well, think of this movie as the anti fairytale, a movie that will make you wonder about what you thought granted about love, marriage, and mutual life, when you see a super wealthy couple with everything you could dream off entering into this path of self destruction and mutual destruction, the most original part of it, is that it's narrated from the point of view of a divorce attorney (played by Danny DeVito, who also directs), but then again this is a comedy which means that it's still funny, and that's what makes it so enjoyable

So while strongly advising the engaged and the newly married to avoid this movie, the others are welcome to watch it, and enjoy really one of the couples with the best couples in American Cinema, with an unprecedented level of alchemy, and then you can project yourself twenty years later in 09 and it hasn't changed much, so it's really a movie for all seasons, but not for the weak at heart !.

King Of New York

2009-01-02T21:58:00.010+01:00

"That" old feeling of analog filmmaking

Picture this bill, Christopher Walken as a criminal mastermind, Laurence Fishburne as his first lieutnant with a big mouth, two guns and a Run Dmc Style, David Caruso as a nervous irish cop, miles away from the one he portrays in CSI:Miami, and Wesley Snipes as an angry cop, and you get King of New York, one of the forgotten gems of a genre that doesn't exist anymore.

Frank White is a criminal mastermind, just out of jail, he is ambitious and philantropic, and has a posse of black gansters who listen and dress like old school hip hop (these days, sweet), and he has to secure his territory from the Columbian Mafia, the chinese Mafia, and the triades, he is followed by a special police unit, and his girlfriend is his lawyer, and she gets him out of trouble all the time.

It sounds pretty cliché second rate film, but add to that, the whole other ingredients, Electric camera moves, ambiguous characters, and New York by night, becoming a character by itself, and thie whole style of filmaking, see these days everything is too digital, movies seem to be fast packed and designed to look the best on home cinemas, but a movie like that is made to be watched at an old movie theater, preferably on a winter evening, back in the days, it really filled you with a wonderful feeling.

The storyline is pretty straightforward and simple, but the filmmaking is brilliant, the actors give a good performance, and it's a good movie for the internet generation to watch, just to remember the world before Terminator 2, which was the first blockbuster i remember (i'm sure there were ones before), and then all this magic of the silver screen started to change, that's something that doesn't exist anymore, neighborhood smelly theaters, and JVC Vcr's but this movie will bring you back to it, and to all these movies you watch on a saxophone solo, with city lights, and no computers, no mobiles, no internet, just tangible stuff, the level of sex and drug and violence is really on a level that the kids are not used to, but these excesses were what made these movies special.... Abel Ferara is surely Brilliant.

Vertigo

2009-01-01T19:48:00.005+01:00

Obsessions & Masterpiece

Vertigo, Agoraphobia, fear of heights, well it seems as common and sensless as seasickness, not to Mr Hitchcock though, who made it the title and the theme of one of his many masterpieces, about obsession, possession, and identity

John "Scottie" Ferguson is a former police officer, who left the force after a traumatic event, which makes him agoraphobic, he spends his days in the atelier of his artist friend Midge, when he is contacted by a former college friend to invistigate the strange behaviour of his wife Madeleine.

Scottie accepts Reluctantly and he finds out that Madeleine is quite strange, and that she is from a cursed lineage, and he gradually becomes obsessed with her, which leads him to cross paths with suicide, double-identity, heights, and a woman who died one hundred years ago.

This movie is quite a masterpiece, it has a precise rhythm lifted by Bernard Hermans famous score, John Stuart's quite heroism, and the scenery of a San Fransisco that doesn't exist anymore, without forgetting the brilliant Title Design by Saul Bass, which was ages before it's time, and also beautiful experimental camera techniques, which led to the classical "vertigo" camera move.

As Scorsese Said it's quite surprising that a movie made in the studio system could be that personal, but Mr Hitchcock was one of the only ones who could get away with the holy graal, working for the man without becoming the man, the inventivity in this movie is deep, and it has diffrent levels of meaning, but it's main theme which stitches it all is Obsession.

Obession will lead Scottie Ferguson to a series of encounters including ones with his own fear, and his own demons, this movie can be a solid entertainment, and can also be seen as an exploratory piece on human nature, and how a man always hunts what he can't get, and sometimes what he just wouldn't get

Anyways, you can't call yourself a movie fan without watching this one, better late night, the production company did a beautiful restoration job, and maybe it will cure your own phobias, with the magic of silver screen, you never know.

Shine A Light : Four Devils and One Crossroad

2008-12-28T10:14:00.005+01:00

Meet Mick 63, Keith 63, Ronnie 59, and Charlie 65, sounds like a good starting four for a nursing home, but they are still ....the Rolling Stones, and boy they had it Rolling for almost half a century, and under the Camera of Marty Scrorsese 65, one of the best when it comes to film a buddy band such as Goodfellas and Casino, you an imagine that the result would be.... satisfactory.

A lot of people Believe Mick Jagger is the devil, and that would be because the stones had always this develish delta of mississipi, Robert Johnson feel, and that's because the band was always so Bluesy, and the blues was always meeting the devil at the crossroad and selling him one's soul in exchange of musical prodigy

So even for a non stones person (like me) it's hard to ignore the influence this band had on popular music and the whole concept of "cool", they were always kind of aware of the huge heritage of American blues and folk and country music, and they really could channel it into something unique, but why am I talking about what everybody knows already, let's talk about the concert itself.

The Film documents two performances of the Stones at the beacon theater in 2006, with archival snippets, and the concept really is "who thought we'd make it that far without becoming a cartoon of ourselves", yes people it's true, the stones are , like them or don't, true to their legend

the performance is beautifully filmed, in the format of the concert movie, of which scorsese is a fan, since he was an editor in his youth on the most influential "the last waltz", the guest stars are Jack White, the only man of this generation who can really perform with the Stones or Dylan and not be ashamed of himself, and Blues legend Buddy Guy.

you can't help it but be blown away by the powerful performance this sixty something people are giving, it's quite incredible that at the age of sixty they still have it to that extent, and of course you will be blown away by Robert Richardson cinematography, or Scorsese's attention to detail, and i am sure this is the closest you can ever be to attend a live performance of the stones

So missing this would probably be a sin, even for people who hate the Stones, and frankly I am sure now that these four guys signed a deal with the devil, because it's logically impossible to be relevant to that level at that age in this time.

But .... why Christina Aguilera.... she doesn't belong in a stones concert

JM Classic Performance Dissection : Al Pacino as Vincent Hanna

2008-12-24T15:47:00.006+01:00

The year is 95 and the perspectives tempting, "the first film ever to star Pacino and DeNiro", well matter of fact, both of them were in "the godfather II" but in diffrent time periods, which means they never met on screen, The director was Michael Mann, one of the biggest unsung heroes of directing in hollywood, and the movie was called simply "Heat"

First of all, you can say anything about Pacino, but almost no actor is that intense, and the intensity of Pacino drives his performances, of course so many to number, and generally great ones, and Pacino plays Vincent Hanna, an LAPD crime fighting unit boss, who has to deal with a team of hyper professionals lead by the character played by DeNiro.

But not only that, because he plays a detective who is possessed by his work, as maybe he sees in it a form of gratifiction, or a way to let his primary hunter instincts at work, and all that while working out a third or fourth marriage already on the verge of the D valley, and a teenage suicidal daughter, who is not even his daughter.

As the film evloves, the hunter becomes the hunted, and a lot of mirroring between the two charaters happens, which leads to one of the most famous scenes in cinema history, Pacino drives this neurotic, brilliant, paternal figure character with his sheer force of wit, and makes us really wish that crime fighters were so dedicated, and uncorruptible.

I think the pacino performance at the time marked everybody who watched it, and many of the film's scene have been copied and pasted all over cinema history, but if there was one thing you can't forget, it's the calm Vincent Hanna in the diner scene, the neurotic Vincent Hanna while dealing with criminals, and of course the satisfied hunter Vincent Hanna while shooting a criminal, and man, It was big !

JM Classic Performance Dissection : Heath Ledger as The Joker

2008-12-23T17:54:00.004+01:00

Well, i have to confess that i ain't that fan of Heath Ledger, I did not like him much in Broback Mountain, or in that movie where he plays a knight, still he was a decent actor, but his swan song performance of the Joker was mind blowing

Think about it, the "other" joker being Jack Nicholson, who gave a great performance as the joker in "Batman", the odds were really against Ledger, how do you compare to Nicholson, that would bring cold sweat to any actor's forhead, but this guy was fearless

Ledger plays "the joker" in "The dark knight", well i was not so enthusiastic about that movie since it made that much money, but you know everybody was saying it was good and blah, so i watched it, and frankly his performance is so faithful to anybody's joker that you sometimes forget that it's just acting, of course this performance owes a lot to the Directing and the Writing of Mr Nolan, the fact that he never shows the origins of the joker, to make him "absolute", but Ledger did dive into his character, it's known that he spent six weeks isolated in a motel room working on the mannerism and the madness of the character, and when delivery time came, he made such a credible and scary performance, that he is a serious contender to be the second actor to ever receive a posthumous oscar (hint, he will surely win)

The Character in the movie spread havoc throughout gotham city, and makes character make sometimes non human personal choices, he is drilling to draw everything in each other character that is pure evil, and of course he does that with class, and wit and fun, and .... fearlessly

Fearless is the keyword to that performance, fearless to compare to Nicholson, Fearless to do whatever it takes to spread chaos, Fearless of the mob, the batman, death, failure, or as he just says "I just DO things"

so for anybody who didn't see this, the time is now, and as Bruce Wayne said in the movie "you either die a hero, or live enough to see yourself become the vilain", well Ledger died a hero, with such a performance, and unfortunatly Nicholson lived enough to become the vilain, becoming sometimes a cartoon of himself, and what he was in the golden years.

Sina's favorites : One hit wonders

2008-12-19T10:22:00.010+01:00

For the final post of this special I'd like to mention those actors I liked in one movie only. There are so many of them out there and actually they should be discussed, too. I'd never go as far as calling them my favorites, since I don't like 90% of their work mostly. No disrespect, just counting. Let's take a look at those one hit wonders.

Keanu Reeves

He was Mr. "I talk kinda dumb" in many of his movies. What's that in "Johnny Mnemonic"? I love the movie but why has Keanu to talk as if he's a bit damaged? No, I am not a big fan of him BUT he was great in "My own private Idaho", that was some fine classic acting! Another good part was in "Dangerous liaisons". The rest of his career wasn't my cup of tea, not even in "Matrix" I liked him. I am sometimes under the impression he turns his acting down, fitting to the grade of the movie. That's btw what Udo Kier confesses to do. He used to say "If you want me on a B-Movie you also just get a B-Performance!".

Denzel Washington

Not a big fan of Denzel, though. I don't really know why, maybe its just not my kinda genres he's usually in. But I do love him for one role desperatly and that one is in "Fallen"! And from that movie I also got another favorite who is

Elias Koteas

I am not sure if I ever saw any of his movies, except for "Fallen". His filmography implies I should know him from 4,5 movies. But somehow I didn't see him in there what means nothing less than that I didn't like his performance then. But he was unbeatable in "Fallen", I can assure you!

Colm Feore

who I mentioned before was always the guy I got mixed up with Elias Koteas. They somehow did the same role from my point of view. One in "Fallen" and Feore in "Storm of the century". It's kinda similar but still the same greatness in there!

Alec Baldwin

I love him in "Mini's first time". That was such a great job! And yea I know he's a good actor but that doesnt mean I've seen him in so many movies. Still, I freaking love this character and acting.

Christian Bale

Was Patrick Bateman. One of the greatest characters ever written. He did him so well that the disappointment about him in person alreay started at the Making Of of the movie. It took some illussions about the actor himself. I never saw another movie again where I thought "Man that is a great actor" although I saw him in many. Nah.

Jon Bon Jovi

Yes, I know he's a musician. I loved him in "Vampires: Los Muertos" although the movie itself was a bit crappy.

I think I could go on with that for a while but you get the point here. Some actors don't need to be actual favorites, you see them, you enjoy their work, doesn't always take 20 movies of one actor to do so.

Thanks for reading our special over the last weeks, let us know how you liked it and suggest other specials if you like to!

Greetz, Sina Hawk

Sina's favorites : Udo Kier

2008-12-17T13:59:00.005+01:00

He is the master of horror, the actor that gives every character that "creepy" flair. And he also is one of the only few actors who made it in Hollywood. Even Warhol was fascinated by him and dedicated him main roles in his movies. He is Udo Kier.

You all have seen him in one or another movie. You all know his face and you can name a few movies you liked him in. But he is one of the "It's that guy again"-faces. But Udo Kier surely doesn't worry about it. Around 180 movie parts made him an honoured and well known actor in Hollywood, even though young Udo had not really planned on getting famous. In the late 60s when Udo started up he caught roles because he was a nice looking young guy and it wasn't Hollywood he was heading to. In the early 70s that changed when Warhol dedicated his movies "Blood for Dracula" and "Flesh for Frankenstein" to the German actor. And it was unwritten law that everyone who was in touch with Warhol had to be good. In the 80s Madonna showed interest for him doing her "Sexbook". Schlingensief did most of his movies with him and Uwe Boll discovered him for his video games adaptations. 180 movies and 40 years later Udo Kier confesses that he also did a few bad roles but why would he bother when all those movies made him a star.

Unfortunately Udo Kier is also famous for negative news such as being drunk already when he comes to a party, leaving interviews because he doesn't like the questions ect. but actually that shouldn't keep anyone from showing respect to 40 years of acting and working with the big ones.

(from the movie "My own private Idaho" we reviewed earlier)

My personal Top 5 roles:

Masters of horror - Carpenter's 'cigarette burns'
Blade
One point 0
Gate to heaven
Flesh for Frankenstein

Editor's note:

Dear Udo,

stop the drinking. Concentrate on your work and if you are tired of that on your art collections. I know it's harsh to say but I'm tired of hearing of your antics on various parties. Is a life as a movie star really that hard to take? You got your dogs, you got your houses, your lamps, your art, your furniture. And you got hella lot talent. Don't ya waste it and better provide us with some new blockbusters!

I'm still plannin on dedicating one of my exhibitions to you, maybe in 09, so keep up the great work, Udo!

Greetz from one of ya biggest fans and from Leipzig

Sina's favorites : Robert De Niro (+2)

2008-12-16T11:59:00.013+01:00

Sorry again for the interruption of our special! We continue today with an actor you probably all know quite well. There's nothing much left to say and write about him, everyone's got a positive opinion on him, isn't it?

Robert De Niro is THE guy in Hollywood. He fits into every big role, he is a guarantee for well selling movies and after all he's really one of the best actors of our days! He's been around for 20 years at the business now and there are only a few people left he hadn't worked with yet. We saw him in action movies, gangster movies, comedy, dramas, actually he did it all - he even produced some really good movies, for example "A bronx tale" with his friend Palminteri, I bet you didn't know that. We actually see Robert De Niro on such regular bases every year in alot of movies that we just don't consider him "someone special" anymore, isn't it? But we really should because he does some great work and he definitly is an all time favorite of mine!

Just because everyone seems to know an actor it doesn't automatically mean that he's "mainstream", he just does his thing for 20 years now, get some respect for that man! Robert De Niro is really one of the rare to find people who deserve to be "stars"!

My personal Top 5 roles:

Hide and seek
A bronx tale
Analyze this
Meet the parents
The untouchables

Editor's note:

There is none. Our editors (including me) are kinda scared of writing to Mr. De Niro. And we admit it.

------------------

Today we also wanna remind you that JebbyMovies DID tell you about other actors in the past, too! Please make sure you check out the following reviews because these guys are my personal favorites, too!

Jeff Goldblum

Gabriel Byrne

News on jebby-movies.blogspot.com

2008-12-15T14:52:00.004+01:00

Hey guys, sorry for the break. We got some news to announce, ready for it?

You may have noticed there's some stuff missing on the site. We thought you may be tired of the Ebay ads so except for asking you to support us through clicking ads we just opened a little JM-merchandising store. Yea that's right, you can buy our stuff on Cafépress from now on. Express your love for good movies through these great goodies and accessories.

Check by from time to time because we gonna add many great products to the store the next weeks. It's not too late to buy some of our stuff on good prices for X-mas and it's never too late for some good fashion! Just click the Cafépress-button at the right side of the page!

We also realized you guys aren't really using the poll - and for that it's gone. That makes the site look much more cleaned up, don't you think so?

You may also have spotted the "Breakfast with Alice" button at the sidebar. This is not really a new feature of us, it's more my personal favorite radio show and it's by Alice Cooper. Can't get any better than that. If you listen to it from the US its kinda late at night, I think 9-12pm, at the UK its on 6am and around here in Germany it's 7am. Just tune in while you read some of our reviews!

We hope you enjoy our new features and will continue our reviews as soon as possible!

Greetz
Sina

Sina's favorites : Billy Drago

2008-12-04T18:15:00.005+01:00

I founded billy-drago.de.vu in 2005 when I realized that this great but totally underrated actor didn't have a bigger mentioning anywhere on the internet. As one of my favorites he totally deserved it!

You may know Billy as the creepy guy. He gives every movie he appears in the dose of creepy-ness it needed. But mostly known he is through the TV series "Charmed" who everyone might remember well. He did the demon of fear, Barbas. But little may remember him in action movies back in the 80's with Chuck Norris like "Hero and the terror" or "Delta force 2". Basically Billy was in so many movies that he should be one of the big ones! He was in the "Masters of Horror" movies, too - to be exact he was in "Imprint" - and some may have seen him in "The hills have eyes" the remake, that was released in 2006.

Billy Drago is the ultimate bad guy when you need one and and fits into nearly every creepy character! That guy really made his way through Hollywood without getting the appreciation he should get. Make a difference: Know him ;)

My personal Top 5 roles:

Delta force 2
Guncrazy
Tremors 4
The Adventures of Brisco County Jr.
Breaking the silence

Editor's note:

Dear Mr. Drago,

we did it, we created your fanclub. It's not as if that would have made you world famous but we did the best to push your career - even if it wasn't that much. You are a great creepy actor and everyone should know so so do me a favour and produce some really mainstream teeny horror movies like "Blood relic" again and get famous! Finally! Pls!

Sina's favorites : Chazz Palminteri

2008-12-01T14:03:00.007+01:00

There are a lot of movies from the late 80's you could have known Chazz Palminteri from but most people just got to know him when in '93 his biographical movie "A bronx tale" was released. It became a movie classic even though most people just saw it as a nice fictional story. The man played his own childhood and teenage friend Sonny and became famous with it. After that many top roles followed like in "Faithful" with Cher, "The Usual Suspects", "Bullets over broadway" and about 50 more Hollywood productions.

Who's that guy and why doesn't everyone remember his name if he's that famous you may wonder. Well, it's the "It's this guy again"-phenomenon again. Everyone's seen Chazz in some movies but no one would recall who again he is. Well I can assure you at least he's a great actor!

Last year Chazz Palminteri started a broadway show on "A bronx tale" as a sold out one man thing. There again he showed everyone what kinda actor he is - a legend who's on one level with his friend DeNiro!

My personal Top 5 roles:

A Bronx tale
Faithful
A guide to recognizing your saints
Down to earth
Mulholland Falls

Editor's note:

Dear Mr. Palminteri,

I am still sorry I couldn't make it to the show but I am optimistic your coming up (currently 5) movie productions will be just as good! Man, you really are one of if not the best in your field! Keep it up!

Sina's favorites : William Fichtner

2008-11-29T18:32:00.010+01:00

When William Fichtner grew up he decided to become a cop. Most people would believe someone who starts that would actually like to do the job - not William. He went straight to acting when he was done and from that on he did movie-cops! Good ones, bad ones, alien ones, Fichtner did them all! William Fichtner is a totally underrated great actor. If I'd do a cop movie I certainly would hire him to do his part. Nah, that's not sarcasm, it's a fact! He is just best in that.

But don't you worry if you don't really can associate any movies with his name, he is more the "Hey look, it's that guy again!"-type. Surely everyone's seen Fichtner's face in some movie yet and that's what really counts. Maybe most people nowadays know him from "Prison break" (Which I personally never watched because I am just not interested in mainstream series productions) or "Invasion", maybe even "Strange days" but Fichtner has been in lotsa productions since '89 and actually is a well known face in the film industries. We'd surely also like to see him in some nice roles. What about ... I don't know ... action superhero rescueing the world? ... or whatever. Just nicer parts than creepy cops because actually Fichtner is told to be a pretty nice guy in real life. Who knows, maybe one day a mystery series is produced that features superheroes ... oh wait ... too late for that.

Hey, this is NOT badly meant sarcasm, I really love this actor! Go watch his movies! Hurry!

(Fanvid made by "Janul2" - taken from Youtube)

My personal Top 5 roles:

Invasion (22 eps) - Sheriff Underlay (Sheriff but hey we call it - Cop)
Strange days - Engelman (Cop)
Ultraviolet - Garth (No Cop - sorry for that)
Armageddon - Colonel William Sharp (Let's call it - Cop)
Crash - Flanagan ( Don't remember but still I guess ... (insert fitting note))

Editor's note:

Dear Mr. Fichtner,

we hope you might be able to take some sarcasm because still to confess I am your biggest fan alive. And I am also half German - see, we got some stuff in common. Nah really, we love your movies! Keep up the great work!

Sina's favorites : Dmitry Chepovetsky

2008-11-28T10:50:00.012+01:00

Dmitry Chepovetsky made his way up through TV productions. Small parts at "The X-files", "Stargate SG-1" and "Higher Grounds" made him a well known face on TV over the years. But wait, no it didn't really make him famous. If I'd have written this article before '05 everyone would have looked at me in a strange way and said "Come on, admit it - it's just sympathy you write that for". But in '04-'05 the awardwinning series "ReGenesis" started up in Canada and over night the world (Canada in this case) knew Dmitry Chepovetsky as Bob Melnikov. And only as him. In the 4 years since the series started up Dmitry stopped doing other productions and just wrote a bit on his stage plays he realized after the series was finished. Since then I consider Mr. Chepovetsky one of the best actors I've seen so far! And now that ReGenesis is over I also miss Bob a bit ...

So here we got a very likeable actor, quite young, although no source on the net can tell us how young exactly, of who I especially would like to see much more - at the best as Bob - please.

My personal Top 5 roles:

Regenesis (49 episodes) - Robert Melnikov
Murdoch Mysteries (s01ep01) - Nikola Tesla
The X-files (3 episodes)
Man of the year
Chain of fools

Editor's note:

Dear Mr. Chepovetsky,

we are kinda worried that you are just a realistic animation like some other actors nobody ever met before. Why ... well mostly because you don't have a date of birth on the internet! But one way or the other we are just big fans of ya, me especially and kinda jealous for that you are an acting genius! We'd reeeeeally like to see more good work of you so probably you can lay your stage career on a rest and do some more series - or do your stage acting in a theatre near us ... the middle between me and the other editor would be the mediterrean sea so probably ... italy? No, please dont take this serious ;) Keep up the great work!