t is written: in the last days, a world leader will rise up... he will declare himself God and embark on a reign of terror

scampies autobiography ? 

Just watched Sin City and all the good stuff I heard about it's true: it's violent and it's damn good. Mickey Rourke, Bruce Willis, Benicio Del Toro and even Elijah Wood all show a very good perfomance. Recommended. 

The Vanishing - Saw the original dutch version not the extremely badly adapted american one with sandra bullock.

Quite a well made albeit slow burn thriller with a very good buildup and climax. Very different to your standard serial killer type film which is why the hollywood version sucked since it took away most of what was original in the dutch version.


Insomnia - I liked the remake, I thought Chris Nolan and the actors made that quite a good film (except the badly executed ending). So I went and checked out the original.

The original is also a very well made and effective film. However, it is almost a completely different take on the story. The basic plot elements are the same but this is almost entirely about the main character (played by Pacino in the remake) with everyone else getting a lot less screen time. And the take on Insomnia in the original is also different, with it being less of a dominant force on the character and more of a constant, annoying disturbance.

If I had to pick one, I'd go with the remake, mainly becuase I like Nolan's style but if I had to pick the one with more strengths than weaknesses, I'd go with the original.


Diabolique - Very good thriller which takes a while to get going but then hits all the right notes. The ending is well executed if a little predictable now with the numerous films that have ripped it off.

I dont know if the story about Hitchcock wanting to make this and missing out on the rights is true, but I would have liked to see what he would have done with this material. it could have been very interesting ala the Insomnia comparison.


The Lady Eve - It's highly regarded but I thought it was average to above average at best. Barbara stanwyck's pretty good but it never really clicked for me. A few nicely judgedmoments but nothing that would make me watch it again.


Leave Her to Heaven - Dated old fashioned melodrama with Gene Tierney as an obsessive/possessive wife. Filled with some woeful acting, Tierney is average but some of the other actors are just plain bad. What saves it is some eye popping cinematography. Nothing flashy in terms of camerawork but very well shot.


The Bad and The Beautiful - Sunset Boulevard Lite, probably what Wilder's film would have been like had a studio got its way. Still, it's an above average film with a decent script except for one or two badly misjudged scenes (most invovling Lana turner and her lack of acting abilities). 

Just got back from the cinema. And well I geuss I enjoyed it overall, but I was very dissapointed about the 2nd half of the film, after they take shelter in the crazy mans basement the film just falls apart and became very boring from then onwards. But all the events leading upto that were fantastic. I really got into it at the beginning, spielberg's directing is great and fx is nice etc. But it does all feel a little hollow in the 2nd half.

Worth seeing... 

...do you have any idea how one might get one's hands on 35mm print of Bergman's The Seventh Seal? I can't find back catalogues for the major distributors. 

no.

The Criterion DVD looks pretty decent blown up though.

http://www.criterionco.com/asp/release.asp?id=11

"This new digital transfer was created from a new 35mm fine-grain master positive made from the restored camera negative" 

...thanks, that Criterion transfer might cut it (blown up) in an 110 seat cinema. A bit of grain adds to the charm of that film anyways. I've got a PhD of History lined up to do a brief intro focussing on Pestilence and the Plague, & a PhD of Philsophy lined up to do a brief paper on the 'existential hero' afterward (followed by wine, nibbles and a Q&A). Now I just need to get the copyright stuff sorted. 

sounds like it would fall under fair use. I remember seeing full-length movies in some university classes. 

...yes, if I was showing in the uni theatre to students and fellow academics fair use would apply. However, this is part of our community enrichment brief and will be open to the public in a public cinema. Criterion should be back to me with a solution tomorrow. 

....bloody excellent!! One of the very few films I've been to and walked out thinking "That was great" without reservation.

This is the QUALITY of action / action hero film the world has been needing for a long time, and something anyone trying to make a modern action film should be forced to watch and learn from. Stuff that actually makes some SENSE, a world and characters with some COHERENCE (both in the context of it being a fantastical world, of course), a film that delivered thing STRAIGHT without wallowing in CHEESE. Basically a lot of the little details that other action films do wrong, this did right. Great entertainment and good hope for the future of action films. 

seventh seal is an early criterion release and nowhere near some of their best restorations but it's still a pretty good image. Hopefully, it will satisfy what you need to do. 

I think in the end it comes down to having a good director at the helm with good actors to play with. Christopher Nolan had directed two very good films before this and with that cast, he had adequate resources for a quality film. 

Full agreement with shambler, but as someone else said, I didn't like the way that the fight scenes were directed, all the quick cuts and the way you can never really see both combatants at the same time made it very confusing to follow. If they had filmed the punch ups in a more "matrix" way im sure they would have had more effect. Thats the only crit I can come up with at the moment, recommended to everyone! 

Full agreement with Daz and nitin about the fight scenes, they were the only obvious thing that didn't work, because you couldn't see what the hell was going on.

Another, more minor criticism, was that apart from The Narrows and the trains, Gotham was not as striking and dramatic as it could have been.

Oh P.S., Anyone else spot the cunning jibe at the previous Batman films?? 

I thought it was well done. Very blade runnerish but not too fantasy like, still grounded in reality. 

Yeah, I agree with all that's been said, good film, too bad they didn't get some crazy chinese dude to help out on the fight scenes, hehe.
I liked the whole nightmarish scenes caused by the drug, would have liked more of those.
Why didn't that microwave machine blow up humans though? I can't imagine all the water in my body vaporising without me noticing.

Oh, and the batmobile rocks. =) 

because in true comic book form, no one thinks those things through.

And the batmobile was perfect in action, even though it looked terrible in still shots. 

hi 

Tristana - Pretty good film by Luis Bunuel, not as surreal as some of his other stuff, but definitely featuring some of his favorite themes. Catherine Deneuve puts in a commanding performance that starts out looking like most her roles but by the end is something different. Plus she has never looked better.

If anyhting, the script could use more work, time periods jump too suddenly for my liking.


Million Dollar Baby - This is not best picture material. Having got that out of the way, its a very good film. The direction is very assured (the best direcotr oscar is actually well judged), confident and hides some script problems well. It's helped further by some nuanced performances although why Freeman won best supporting actor for this is also a wonder. He's put in decent work, but nothing remarkable compared to other work. S and Eastwood are pretty good and work well together.

The main issue is the script. Mostly very good, it has some glaring shrotcomings in relation to some very cliche one dimensional characters and also some situations. For what he had to work with, Eastwood did very well, helped ably by some fine acting.

PS - I think Sideways, this and Aviator are on the same level. All very good films but falling short of greatness due to some issues. My pick for Best Picture was Eternal Sunshine but thats not really Academy material.


The Machinist - Nifty little thriller with Christian Bale. Definitely employs Hitchcock flavour for most of its running time (especially the bernard hermann like score).

Some people, like I did through most the running time, may groan at the attempted twist and its predictability. However, the final few seconds make the film work not because of the twist reveal (which I now genuinely believe is deliberately signposted numerous times in a not so subtle manner) but because of the "why?" denouement.

And this film probably wasnt 'important' enough for Bale to undergo the physical transformation that he did, but if only every actor was as committed to roles as this. Another winner of a performance from him. 

Has to be one of the best movies ever! The acting, story and soundtrack and everythign else is excellent!

Before watching this movie I thought karate was the best form of martial arts and that ninjas were also very cool but know I know better - taekwando owns them all and I look foward to when I am a blackbelt so I can kick ass in the name of world peace! 

Saw this yesterday with Dranz, and I went in with no expectations having only seen 1 short trailer which didn't really show anything...

And I was pleasantly surprised! This is one gory sick film! Its about some thrill seekers who go caving in the USA for fun and everything turns to shit and they need to esacpe.

Its a real dark film, set about 90% underground with just headlamps and glowsticks etc, and it does get really tense at times. Fantastic directing throughout as well I thought, you really get the sense of claustraphobia and darkness.

The film does fall down in a few areas though. The first 45 mins - 1hr are absolutely fucking boring :( Its all about the people involved and not much happens at all, very dull. Some could argue that it is TOO DARK and u cant really see whats going on, but I found there was enough illumination to see whats happening, while still leave some blanks to keep u on the edge of your seat.

The other crit is that once you've worked out what is going on in the film with regard to the challenges the characters need to face then you can start working out what is gonna happen next without much difficulty.

That said, if you like gore, this must be one of the more bloodthirsty and downright sick at times film I have seen this year, if not in YEARS, and is genuinely disturbing at times.

Try it, you might like it. 

"set about 90% underground with just headlamps and glowsticks etc,"

NO IT IS NOT A RAVE, SHUTUP U RUSSIAN TWAT 

Desperado - Disappointing. I'd heard a lot about the action in this fim but there was nothing that was really that good here. I've seen much better and of course the rest of the plot was non-existant even though for some reason the director thought he was making some sort of epic.



Ringu - Anyone that's seen the remake and this original and still claims that the japanese version is better and scarier is in denial that a US remake of a foreign film actually came out supeior.

The original, which lacks Gore Verbinski's visual flair from the remake, just accentuates just how silly the whole plot is. Sure, the remake had a few too neat explanatory scenes and some unecessary and unrelated subplots, but when the main concept is so silly, it doesnt really matter.

And Hideo Nakata did a better directing job with (regrettably even sillier material) Dark Water. 

I generally agree with you, but I remember Ringu having the nicer ending. (though I can't even remember how it ended, anymore!) 

Well, this is a totally non-objective way of comparing movies, but I prefered the Japanese version just cause it felt stranger, and sadako was alot creepier than samara (you never see her face, and they've got that nice freaky eye-through-hair thing going that they didn't keep in the american version).
The american version just felt alot less scarier (which doesn't mean it's not a better movie I suppose).
And yeah, I also prefered the ending to Ringu.