Mar
9
B+ A finely tuned character-d…
March 9, 2010 | | Leave a Comment
B+
A finely tuned character-driven flick picture show with good performances, and stirring combat and plotting.
"A Description of Violence" begins in the type of borough where you would require to find Andy Griffith and Ron Howard walking up the mud trajectory with a fishing refractory. Everything is nice, tranquil, and friendly. Then we date the first kinky sex scene between Viggo Mortensen and Maria Bello and are zapped primitive to the actuality that this is a David Cronenberg film. The first movie I always saw of his was "Existenz,? which I didn't truly care for. Then I saw "Stark naked Lunch,? which in fact made me love the guy just destined for scheme uniqueness alone. He has a way of producing intelligent stories everywhere people and their flaws with horrific emphasis on the flaws.
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Take Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen) for example. He is a kind and decent family man living in the small town of Millbrook. It's a place where everybody knows your tag, what you do, how many kids you have, and so on. Tom works at the local diner and has a decidedly loving and nurturing relationship with his wife Edie (Maria Bello), and two children, Jack (Ashton Holmes) and Sarah (Heidi Hayes). The only way bounce could insinuate any better by reason of Tom is if On the up Capra offered him a spot on his unusual reality show.
Sole everything changes when two killers hold up the diner one continuously. When faced with the do or desire job, Tom displays an unconscionable skilfulness inasmuch as killing. The act makes him a hero in the town and his exploits even attract the media. Tom could care less about all the hoopla, however, really just wanting to fix shy away from to the normalcy of his prosaic sustenance. That becomes an increasing improbability when a cuff dressed in a black skirt, carrying scars around his sensitivity (from when it was pulled from its socket) walks into the diner one age. His identify is Mr. Fogarty (Ed Harris) and is an organized misdeed upon who insists that Tom is actually named Joey Cusack, a former hood from Philadelphia. Tom thinks that what Fogarty is saying is insane, but Fogarty thinks he knows the genuineness and so begins threatening Tom and his family.
"Violence" is a rare and unexcelled thriller that doesn't contribute anything away before it's exact dead for now comes. We are left to impossible Tom while at the nonetheless time equal his all-around fastidious guy attitude and noble heroic efforts. Viggo Mortensen's terrific performance here gives Tom that extra disguise of mystery, capturing the small town simplicity of the character. That is put in distinguish with the initiative scenes, which undoubtedly place Tom as a danged lithe and smartly trained killer. Necks and noses are broken, people are shot in the take charge of, blood splatters all over the place. The action is some of the goriest of the year but is also some of the most shockingly mirth to timepiece. The deed data that Tom is a skilled martial arts adept seems to be a part of his nearby, a past that he doesn't want to recall, but it not in a million years leaves a clear cut version of who Tom is. After all, how multitudinous martial arts experts are in the mafia nowadays? Tom seems more of a piece with ex-military.
As the movie continues, Tom is fighting a melee within as well. One part of him is the family man type and the other is this exquisitely trained fighter. Both are a share of him, one being who he wants to be but the other being the one he can't feel to escape. This sort of item has been done first in "Jekyll and Hyde,? but it's without exception refreshing to see a thriller that hangs most of its anxiety on arbitrary increase rather than on car chases.
The rest of the cast in this film get smaller roles but do nice go well. Maria Bello is a good choice fitted Tom's loving wife and she also looks amazing nude. The one thing I was unhappy in was that Cronenberg doesn't achieve the emotional order drama aspect he was going for; the ending solely kind of dies when it should be the movie's strongest full stop. Nonetheless, Ed Harris does nice work as the unkind and under any circumstances delusional Fogarty, and William Hurt has a lot of fun with his role as one of the mafia bosses.
"Violence" is a a ton more fun if you don't cognizant of what Tom is, which is why I took painstaking efforts in this review not to give anything away. Even if you do be familiar with, though, this is motionlessly a finely tuned character-driven flick picture show with good performances, and thrilling action and plotting.
Craig's Grade:
B+
Craig's Overall Grading:
Mar
6
The Rideau river runs red in …
March 6, 2010 | | Leave a Comment
The Rideau river runs red in “Jesus Christ Vampire Stalker,” a cheeseball spoof proving that there’s life in Ottawa, square if the undead do stalk the halls of Parliament. Grainy 16mm pic, which got an honorable mention at this year’s Slamdance fest and last will and testament be offered in the Cannes market, is now being self-distribbed on alt-arthouse circuit, where it should build a small-but-religious following.
Canada’s own Ed Wood, the multi-hatted Lee Gordon Demarbre, previously delivered campy “Harry Knuckles and the Treasure of the Aztec Mummy.” Here, he sends up Bible epics, Hammer horror pics, rock musicals and chopsocky cheapies in a tale that poses the Second Coming as an occasion for some serious ass-kicking. Jesus makes his comeback when some punked-out priests plead for help in warding off vampires that are draining the capital city of its finest lesbians.
The Son of God (Phil Caracas) survives an attack by snaggle-toothed suckers, including the svelte Maxine Shreck (Murielle Varhelyi), but his beard-and-sandals look doesn’t: A red-suited Emma Peel type (Maria Moulton) assists in a makeover that leaves him looking like Scott Bakula on casual Friday. He then goes after the evildoers, eventually calling upon a masked Mexican-wrestling star to make things right.
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Fundamentalists may be offended by the plot description of a kick-ass Jesus who uses kung-fu to wipe out lesbian vampires. But for most others, including religious people, the film is too silly to offend.
Although pic contains virtually no religious or social commentary, Demarbre is nothing if not ambitious; his big musical numbers feature actual choreography, and he goes in for the occasional gory spectacle and slapstick gag — all done on a budget that would barely buy matzos for a Passover party.
Mar
5
A Woman of Paris (1923)
March 5, 2010 | | Leave a Comment
Marie St. Clair believes she has been jilted by her artist fiance Jean when he fails to tourney her at the railway passenger station. She goes displeasing to Paris alone. A year later, mistress of wealthy Pierre Revel, she meets Jean again. Misinterpreting events she bounces burdening someone and forth between discernible safeguarding and true regard. Also misinterpreting, Jean commits suicide.
Mar
3
The Notebook review
March 3, 2010 | | Leave a Comment
Note: In the following joint Blu-ray re-examine, both John and Tim comment on the flick, with John also writing up the Video, Audio, and Parting Thoughts.
The Film According to John:
Warner/New Line must think they’ve hit upon a attractive good idea here: the Minimal Edition Blu-ray bonus box. Outwardly, the studio powers that be liked the big caddy for “Casablanca” so much that they decided to give the selfsame treatment to 2004’s “The Notebook.” I obtain no objections. What does matter me, albeit, is that the studio is not providing a regular Blu-ray copy for those fans who might not want all the bells and whistles of a big set, to say nothing of not wanting to deliver up the shelf lapse a burly box takes up. At any standing, the pin down set is no more costly than a estimable publicity release, so except for its size, this Limited Edition does known with some exciting bonuses.
The thing is, “The Notebook” seems an odd choice for Blu-ray publish in the original advance. It’s the kind-hearted of mad weeper that would receive made Bette Davis proud and understandably has a female audience in mind. Yet Blu-gleam is still a predominantly spear niche trade in. How numberless males want come by a big BD gift unvaried of “The Notebook” unless they definitely, unqualifiedly love the movie or unless they mean to give it to a girlfriend or wife? I dunno. I’m sure it would make an ideal Valentine’s Day record; it satisfies both the giver and the receiver.
The Wife-O-Meter had never seen the obscure previously, but she had conclude from the best-selling novel by Nicholas Sparks and said it made her bawl. Precisely there you’ve got a built-in fiend base, particularly among female readers. However, with a lay out adapted by Jan Sardi, a screenplay by Jeremy Leven, and direction by Nick Cassavetes, “The Notebook” worked seeing that this male viewer as nicely. It is definitely, as I power, an unabashed weeper for anyone but those with the most stoney of hearts.
Jim Garner plays an older gentleman living in a nursing tranquil, where he reads the film’s story aloud to a fellow sedulous, played by Gena Rowlands. Her character is suffering from dementia, an impairment of her mental capacities leaving her with a defeat of honour. Her doctor says her condition is irreversible, but Garner’s character doesn’t buy it. He feels he can jog her mind if he reads to her each day.
The dispatch he reads concerns a pair of young people, Noah Calhoun (Ryan Gosling) and Allie Hamilton (Rachel McAdams), who in 1940, while in their late teens, fall madly in love. But love ain’t easy, as all of us who have experienced it can announce. She is from a rich Southern kith and kin; he works in a burden yard and lives with his widowed father (Sam Shepard). It’s a typical Romeo and Juliet tale, with Allie’s mother (Joan Allen) uncommonly against the young couple’s plans to run unpropitious together. Can anything stop true have a crush on? The mother, behaving like the Wicked Witch of the West, certainly does her best to immure b silence things down.
After constrain from Allie’s parents, Noah and Allie’s summer bash ends, and the two little ones people reluctantly go their separate ways. Seven years pass, and Allie has fallen in have sex again, this time with Lon Hammond, Jr., “handsome, smart, complicated, and charming”; the fact that he is also “fabulously wealthy” impresses Allie’s mother no put to death, and Allie and Lon become engaged. Meanwhile, Noah has bought a crumbling old plantation mansion, the scene of his first tryst with Allie, with the steadfast to renovate it. Somehow, he feels that if he restores the old house, Allie will up retreat from to him.
We get two sets of narratives in the flicks: the flashback to the youngsters and their romance and the account of the oldsters and their relationship to one another. Both sets of events are poignant, but it is the actions of the older people that done win to the ground our hearts and minds.
The moving picture makes its intentions clear from the outset. It wants you to go with its emotional romanticism, starting with Aaron Zigman’s soft, warmhearted euphonious score and cinematographer Robert Fraisse’s lushly atmospheric photography. To the cynic it will all have all the hallmarks squishy. If you go with it, which I admit I resisted for a while, it force snag you.
Yes, the characters are stereotypes, and the story is predictable in most ways. But, it’s the movie’s saving strength of character that the characters often remain sincere, fleshed-revealed human beings. Even the seemingly one-sided mother and the fiancée turn absent from to be more dimensional than they first appear. More important, there’s a authentic chemistry between Gosling and McAdams, and Up and Rowlands entertain never been punter.
Straight-inoperative romance movies are rare these days. In the past decade or so, Hollywood has foreordained us precious few, with ones correspondent to “The Painted Veil,” “Atonement,” and “The Bridges of Madison County” among my own personal favorites. Go on increase “The Notebook.”
I have the understanding that movie critics who didn’t approve of “The Notebook” are ones who saw the story as entirely manipulative and overly sentimental. But that’s what romance is about. Hold dear does manipulate people, and out of is damned sentimental. What’s more, regard is the best whosis people have accepted for them. We need more “Notebooks.”
John’s film rating: 7/10
The Peel According to Tim:
You clothed to admire romance films because it’s amazing how many stories can be created around the idea of love. The one thing you can always count on in a attachment story is that either someone will bite the dust, or the loving join longing live happily a day after. There is also the “break-up-in-the-end” scenario, where our lovers go their own analyse ways. The people thing I can say about the New Line film, “The Notebook,” directed by Nick Cassavetes, is that it manages to touch on all of these elements in a delightful and tasteful manor. There is piles of charm and comedienne to carry the untruth, but be prepared as a replacement for moments that pull at the heart. There’s as much cramp as there is joy in this solicitude adventure.
At the start of the film, we meet an older woman, Allie Calhoun (Gena Rowlands), living in a retirement hospice. Every time Allie is accompanied by her patron Duke (James Garner), who reads her a fortunes from what is known as “The Notebook.” As Duke reads the version to her, the audience is enchanted back in pro tem, all the way back into the 1940s. It is here that the love story begins, as we intersect a uncommonly young, spoiled, sapid mommy-and-daddy’s girl named Allie (Rachel McAdams). There are the obvious clichés to the tale because she is to find and marry a staff of wealth. Of course, this brings us to the “Romeo and Juliet” theme as we meet a very poor, lumber roller worker named Noah (Ryan Gosling). Noah is neither subtle nor graceful about making his intentions known for Allie. He purely not till hell freezes over gives up until she falls for the treatment of him. Of course, Allie’s mother want not weather their love for one another and takes Allie destroy to New York.
At last, Noah goes afar to fight in WWII, while Allie finds a new love by the name of Lon Hammond (James Marsden). Within no time, Allie and Lon are tied up to be married. No matter what, once Allie sees a picture in the newspaper of her years lover, Noah, she finds the urge to go see him in the twinkling of an eye more before she ties the knot. As you can imagine, and it’s very much obvious, we are headed down the path of the “love triangle.” It’s kind of ironic how we have the epic of a wealthy damsel getting ready to marry a well-to-do man. Then out of nowhere, she decides to rekindle her affection for Noah. Allie is contemporarily self-conscious to prefer between the two gentlemen, and this is where the black lie gets all too familiar. Can anyone signify, “Sweet Home Alabama”? And I say that because this silent picture was filmed in the South, of all places. Still, “The Notebook” carries off this disquisition in a far more charming and heartfelt presentation than many other films of its kind.
Mar
1
Bloody Sunday Documentaries a…
March 1, 2010 | | Leave a Comment
Bloody Sunday
Documentaries are one thing, but it's rare that a dramatic film convincingly captures the chaotic, confusing, fast-paced nature of real life ? much less real life in a crisis. That's the brilliance of
Bloody Sunday
, writer/director Paul Greengrass' harrowingly authentic look at January 30, 1972: the day British troops killed 13 Irish people in Derry (and wounded 14 more) after a peaceful civil rights march went tragically awry in Northern Ireland. Filmed with handheld cameras in a
cinema verité
style (in the truest sense of the term),
Bloody Sunday
makes a good-faith effort to offer both the Irish and British perspectives of the event. While the Irish protestors, led by idealistic politician Ivan Cooper (James Nesbitt, in an excellent performance), hope to use their march to make a statement without resorting to violence, the isolated English paratroopers sweat it out waiting for something ? anything ? to go wrong so they'll have an excuse to move in and catch the hooligans they're sure are out there causing trouble. Unfortunately, they're at least partially right: Instigated by IRA militants, several young men, including shaggy-haired Gerry (Declan Duddy, nephew of Bloody Sunday's first casualty), split off from the main body of marchers to taunt and curse the British soldiers, voicing their frustration at being governed by a country they despise. All too quickly, the protestors' rocks and stones draw return fire from the troops ? first rubber bullets and then real ones. In the melee that follows, the soldiers let their resentment and anger loose, ignoring a cease-fire order and going after anyone who runs, even those waving white handkerchiefs in truce. It's bewildering, frenetic, and catastrophic, and when it's finally over, no one knows quite how it all happened. And while certainly casting the Irish in the most sympathetic light, Greengrass doesn't indiscriminately tar and feather the soldiers ? he makes it clear that communications breakdowns and personal prejudices were as much to blame for the debacle as were official orders and military strategies. In keeping with the film's documentary-like feel, most of the cast members aren't experienced actors ? Greengrass cast former British soldiers and Derry citizens to play their on-screen counterparts, and it works beautifully. The authenticity of their reactions and interactions is indisputable, and it makes the film all that much more powerful, both as an expression of grief and as a cautionary tale. Grainy, choppy, and garbled on purpose,
Bloody Sunday
nevertheless looks and sounds good on DVD; the anamorphic transfer (1.85:1) is strong, and the English DD 5.1 audio is clear (although you might want to turn on the English subtitles ? the accents will make some of the dialogue next to impossible to understand for most North American viewers). Extras include a "making-of" featurette, a retrospective interview/featurette with the real-life Ivan Cooper, and two commentaries. Greengrass and Nesbitt weigh in on the first one, offering thoughtful, insightful comments on the film and the larger issues it touches on. The second track, also quite serious, features co-producer Don Mullan. Author of
Eyewitness Bloody Sunday
, the book that inspired the film, Mullan was there in 1972 and gives a fascinating perspective on the events covered in the film. Keep case.
?Betsy Bozdech
Feb
28
Walt Disney’s Funny Factory with Mickey (2005)
February 28, 2010 | | Leave a Comment
The Walt Disney studios should force hundreds, maybe thousands, of curtail animated works in their vaults, and they appear to have no trouble repackaging them also in behalf of each new generation of youngsters. Now that the DVD age is big upon us, the Disney folks induce already stated us a brand of Mickey Mouse and Donald Bob assemblages, and this one, “Funny Works with Mickey,” collects eight of the Mouse’s short subjects on a single disc. It’s still not much, disposed a DVD’s intellect, but the amassment seems primarily aimed to amuse the youngest members of the household, who probably won’t brainpower a particle that there’s not a drawing lots of material included.
I’ve never been a telling enthusiast of Mickey myself, much preferring the hot temper and joker antics of his studio cousin, Donald Avoid. Mick is solely too sweet, too civilized, too nice to get into much mischief, so in most of his features Pluto or Goofy or Donald convoy him, the others running amuck the feature Mickey never could. This lack of in fine rascality on Mickey’s part is probably what led Disney gradually to look out the pocket Mickey Mouse cartoons by the 1950s in favor of other characters, letting Mick content himself with being the authentic mascot of the Disneyland theme parks and participate in a scattering longer animated movies.
The cartoons on this disc migrate in origin from 1936 to 1950, although Disney released several of them a year later than their copyright dates; I’ve provided the release dates in parentheses. The abridged subjects model from about seven to a little over eight minutes apiece, with the intricate qualities of each cartoon differing but slightly. The Disney people were always careful about preserving their products, and this care is apparent in every remission we see from them, trendy and ramshackle.
First up is “Mickey and the Seal” (1948), directed by Charles A. Nichols and starring the voice talent of James MacDonald as Mickey. While at the chaos feeding the seals, a babe in arms seal takes a liking to Mickey and follows him home. There, the seal wreaks confusion in the house, and poor Pluto gets most of the blame. As always, the Disney world is a surrealistic intermingling of leviathan, clothed, talking rodents and ducks along with normal-sized, non-talking animals. This strange mess of generous caricatures, anthropomorphic critters, and ordinary folk till the end of time sooner baffled me when I was girlish, but it’s now taken as commonplace, and as we get older we accept the unbelievable of Disney ardour as a land apart from any notion of reality.
Disney cartoons were especially nice fantasies because of the beautiful artwork involved, many of the training paintings worthy of hanging on the wall. This unusual cartoon, “Mickey and Seal,” is not actually so spectacular to look at, but it is fabulously preserved, the colors dazzling but not gaudy, with solitary an occasional age fleck here or there.
Next is “Mr. Mouse Takes a Trip” (1940), directed by Clyde Geronimi and starring Uncle Walt himself as the voice of Mickey. Growing up, I had no estimate that Disney voiced the Mouse and that he did so up until the fresh 1940s. In this one, Mickey and Pluto try to run for a train bully, but Pete the conductor won’t farm out animals on the train. Again, it raises the questions of why a mouse is allowed to gull the escort and not a dog and why Pete himself looks cast a dog, but these questions are beside the meaning. Anyway, Mickey has to crack to smuggle Pluto on take meals, and, fortunately to save Mickey, Pete is not too sharp or too graceful.
The picture quality here is not quite as bright as on the newer “Mickey and the Seal,” and there is a talent more nap enmeshed with, but it is still fairly seemly.
The third entry is “Moose Hunters” (1937), directed by Ben Sharpsteen and starring Walt Disney as Mickey, with Clarence Nash as Donald Duck. Mickey, Donald, and Goofy are in the North country hunting moose, with Goofy and Donald disguised as the front and back of a female moose to lure a man’s to within shooting range. In this joined, Donald enlivens things, but it’s the music that’s the top banana of the show; tender thanks goodness for Rossini.
Unruffled though the print shows a bit more age than the others, a crumb more grain and a few more flecks, given its age, it’s quite good.
Fourth up is “Mickey’s Parrot” (1938), directed by Bill Roberts and again featuring Mr. Disney as Mickey. In a rain a talking reiterate lands on Mickey’s doorstep, and Mickey mistakes him for Auto-Gun Butch, a notorious escaped exterminator. The cartoon features Pluto as much as Mickey, it may be the Disney people sensing even this early in the business that Mickey needed assist carrying a show. Counterpart “Moose Hunters” from the year before, “Mickey’s Parrot” hardly shows its age, with only a hardly duration marks and a dollop dustlike ounce.