the fact that you can see whats going on, whereas the AVP movies (alon with most other recent stuff) are edited at 10 cuts a second with next to no lighting. 

Rocky Balboa - pretty solid till it builds up to a silly climax fight which is very poorly executed. Apart from that, the writing and performances are quite good (save a few monologues which don�t sit well with Stallone's speech impediment).

6/10


Un Secret (2007) � well made movie about a boy in a jewish family in post-war france who learns about his family's past during the war and is forced to deal with the consequences. The story is told in a sequence of flashbacks, flash forwards and dream sequences which, though not hard to follow, do not seem to enhance the audience connection with the central characters.

The story is definitely its strongest point, and even a weak ending which probably worked better in book book form cannot derail it.

7/10


Harry Potter 5 : Better than the last one but still not very good - that pretty much says it all. Standard Potter flick which means there is the usual dodgy acting and scripting, some reasonable visuals and set pieces, but nothing that stays with you once the credits roll.

5.5/10 

Elizabeth : Golden Age - since I was one of the few who thought the first was a pretty poor film, I didn�t have much expectations with this one. And yet it still managed to disappoint.

Its been bagged for being historically inaccurate, but the first one seemed to escape that criticism despite having the same shortcomings. The real problem is that the script is just plain bad almost plays out like a parody of a film like this, the direction is an absolute mess and only Samantha Morton is on the right page as to what sort of tone her performance should be in.

Cate Blanchett puts in probably one of the worst performances that�s ever been nominated for an oscar, abbie cornish is in way beyond her head and clive owen is ok in what is really a thankless role.

3-3.5/10


Fearless (2006) - fairly simplistic morality tale in the form of chinese martial arts period epic, but it works because jet li is amazing in the fight sequences (which are also very well choreographed) and ronnie yu directs well with a restrained style during the non-action moments that allows some of the corny bits to not really come through as badly as they might. There's also some great location photography of southern china which also gives it visual edge.

6/10


Cat People (1944) - classy old school thriller/drama by the Jacques Tourneur/Val Lewton combination that once again had its title greenlit before the script. Tourneur, as usual, does wonders with the camera for his material, utlizing light and shadow brilliantly in two very famous sequences that have been often imitated. The script is also very very good and far from the b movie you expect from the title.

Only some of the dodgy acting holds it back from being a great film.

7.5/10


Devils Advocate (1997) - this was pretty solid for close to two hours despite having keanu reeeves in a main role, some dubious plotting and shameless borrowing from Rosemary's Baby (and also one sequence lifted straight from Marathon Man).

Then it self implodes with an ending that just comes across as the scriptwriters not knowing where to go and ending up turning to pacino for another one of his long recent year rants. Which is a shame because up until then I thought he was actually pretty decent in a restrained yet oddly sinister performance.

6/10


Spider (2002) - excellent film about a fractured mind. Usually in a movie like this, it is difficult to get audiences to connect with the main character. Enter David Cronenberg, who takes you so far into his character's head that you cant help but nod at everything the character says and does.

This approach will probably put off a few people because through it the movie enters some dark and uncomfortable territory but its an unarguable display of great filmmaking skill and writing. Cronenberg is aided by fantastic performances from Ralph Fiennes, playing a mentally impaired man grappling with his past as a child, and Miranda Richardson, playing key roles that shouldn�t be given away.

7-7.5/10


Funny Games (1997) - tries to have its cake and eat it too, and almost succeeds. Michael Haneke's effort has a go at the audience for treating violence as entertainment but presents a catch 22 situation by making a disturbing, confronting movie that is also just very compelling to watch. The quality of the filmmaking is too good for the attempt to talk down to the viewer in having a part in whats happening on screen.

Its also been remade (shot for shot) by Haneke for US release.

6.5/10 

Coup de Torchon (1981) - dark french comedy/drama by bertand tavernier set in french owned west africa in the 30's. Phillipe Noiret plays a small town's ineffectual local constable, who accepts condescension from his superiors and from other rich french occupants until he realizes that he can use his position to gain vengeance with impunity, resulting in him starting to kill everyone who previously regarded him as a fool.

Its excellent, slow burn stuff with Noiret quite effective in the main role and getting good support from Isabelle Huppert and Stehpane Audran. Tavernier juggles the different tones of his movie quite well, changing from light hearted mundaneness to outright bleakness to existential dilemma with ease.

The movie also has a neat circular narrative, opening and closing with a similar scene, but with markedly different meaning which effectively highlights the change in the main character over the course of the film.

7.5/10


The Devil is a Woman (1936) - fun little movie from the Josef Von Sternberg/Marlene Dietrich collaboration that is not amongst their best work together but is still reasonably entertaining throughout. Dietrich plays her usual unattainable vamp character but is also, as usual, quite a screen presence and she carries the lightweight script along with Von Sternberg's great visual skill.

6.5/10


Drunken Angel (1948) - the best thing about Kurosawa is that even his more minor films are streets ahead of what most other filmmakers can produce and that is certainly the case here. This one is nowhere near his best work, it has a few narrative problems with distracting subplots and Toshiro Mifune is not as convincing as he would become in his later collaborations with the director, but as a whole, its still quite an excellent movie.

Takeshi Shimura plays an alcoholic small town doctor in post war Japan who starts to treat a young Yakuza (mifune) with TB and realises he wants to cure more than just his physical sickness. What follows is a borderline great look at Shimura's character's success and failings and how he deals with each.

Even in an early work such as this, you can see numerous flashes of the brilliance that would follow, and that combined with Shimura's performance raises it to quite a watchable level.

7-7.5/10


The Banquet (2006) - a very loose adaptation of Hamlet in the wuxia style seen in recent times in Hero, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, House of Flying Daggers and Curse of the Golden Flower. I liked 3 of those and House still had its moments despite being shoddy overall.

This one, unfortunately, is just lame. As far as its source material is concerned, it deviates so far from it that it should not even have called itself an adaptation. Its an overlong, tedious affair with no characters that are anything more than cardboard cutouts and amalgamations of various shakespeare figures (eg Zhang Ziyi plays some sort of strange cross between Gertrude, Lacy Macbeth and Ophelia).

This leaves a capable cast with nothing to do except wear the intricate costumes and parade around the impressive sets. Even the fight choreography is average, some smaller scenes coming off pretty well but the larger more complex ones just being a mess of slow motion wirework.

4.5/10


Suddenly Last Summer (1959) - pretty good adpatation of Tenessee Williams' play by Joseph L Mankiewicz, the material comes across better than in something like Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Elizabeth Taylor and Katherine Hepburn put in strong performances and although the whole thing is very stagey, Mankiewicz does enough visually to draw attention away from it.

Quite a strong script plot and dialogue wise, although most of it probably came from the source material.

7-7.5/10 

Indiana Jones 4 - it's good. Not as good as 1 and 3, but much better than 2. Shia le Bouf was surprisingly fine but the main reason it works is Harrison Ford. He slips back into character easily and the whole thing's a fun ride with nods and winks to a lot of 50's films, even if it's a little too preposterous compared to the earlier films. The action scenes are mostly first rate.

7/10


Bug (2006) - I'd read this was a return to form for William Friedkin which understandably, and anyone that's seen The French Connection and The Exorcist would agree, had me looking forward to it.

Well it is and it isnt. It is in the sense that his adaptation of the 1996 play about two people feeding off and fueling each other's acute paranoia is suitably tense and foreboding and has very good performances from Ashley Judd and Michael Shannon (reprising his stage role). It isnt in that the source material just doesn�t appear to lend itself to film at all.

Due to the nature of the material, the whole thing heads into a frenzied and hysterical state for its last half an hour and requires a distance between the happenings and the viewer to not appear extremely over the top. This is obviously possible on stage but unfortunately on film the lack of distance between the happenings and the camera/viewer causes unintentional disconnect and believability.

4/10 

Prince of the City (1981) - the last of Sidney Lumet's great films and although it covers similar ground to Serpico, the execution is completely different. The screenplay is a model of how to tell an intricate, complex story containing a lot of information without overloading the audience through ceaseless exposition. It has its flaws, the movie lacks Lumet's usual economy and overstays its welcome at 168 min but it's quite forgivable given the other fine qualities on display.

7.5-8/10


The Barefoot Contessa (1954) - bit of a mess narrative wise, it doesn�t seem to know whether it�s a Sunset Boulevarde lite attack on Hollywood or a less fantastical version of the Cinderella story. But Joseph L Mankiewicz writes good dialogue and Bogart and Ava Gardner lap it up in entertaining performances. It's also brilliantly shot by Jack Cardiff.

6/10


Lifeboat (1944) - unfortunately its more a WWII propaganda movie than a Hitchcock film. The premise is based on John Steinbeck's story of a ship sunk by a U-Boat and before you can say 'microcosm of society' a variety of different sorts of survivors gather on a lifeboat (with one of them possibly being the captain of the U-Boat that sank them). Its technically brilliant, Hitchcock makes great use of the limited space, but despite his attempts to breathe life into it, it never once veers of a very predictable path.

5.5/10


Crash (2004) - I had only seen certain (terrible) scenes before but, well, as a whole movie, it's actually not all that bad. In fact, it's probably in the decent category. The problem as usual is with Haggis' script which is way too heavy handed and contrived for the most part. But there's definitely some good bits, mainly due to the uniformly solid acting, that make up for some of the truly awful scenes that go way overboard in attempting to manipulate the viewer.

6.5/10


Suzhou River (2001) - sort of like a homage to Vertigo done in a Wong Kar Wai style. It's definitely interesting with most of the movie shown from the point of view of or narrated by a never shown character who seems to blend a story he read about in the newspapers about the death of a young girl (who sort of looks like his new girlfriend) and what may have actually happened. Solid stuff but I didn�t like the ending which rang a bit hollow and was a bit of a stretch credibility wise too.

6,5/10


Monster (2003) - above average film with an excellent performance from Charlize Theron. The filmmaking is a bit sloppy and amateurish, as is some of the writing, but Theron makes almost every scene work with a very layered and subtle performance that avoids scenery chewing and makes you understand her character to an extent even when you don�t agree with her actions.

6-6.5/10


The Brood (1979) - his most recent work aside, its difficult to properly describe the plot of a David Cronenberg movie without sounding like you're making it up. But in short this one's a bizarre, twisted, sometimes brilliant look at the idea of manifestation of negative emotion (rage/pain) in physical abnormalities.

Certain scenes have not aged well due to their execution being a bit amateurish but others are still quite capable of messing with and sticking in your head. And that�s really what being a horror movie is all about.

7/10


Hotel Rwanda (2004) - this is going to sound harsh because it's a story that definitely deserved to be told and Don Cheadle is great in the main role, but unfortunately this is just a bad film.

Writer/director Terry George has no idea about narrative, pacing or characterisation so the whole things is barely held together by Cheadle's excellent performance and the general power of the story.

4/10 

that I'm really enjoying this decade's take on things vaguely Western... Deadwood, The Proposition, Carnivale, The Assassination of Jesse James, There Will Be Blood, No Country for Old Men, 310 to Yuma, and there's still a few coming up too. I could never get into old westerns because of the good guy/bad guy cheesiness of it, but historical settings, sinister atmospheres, and R ratings go well together.

Saw Bug a while ago for lack of something better to rent - not that good, but the main actor's paranoia was pretty amusing, with his rants about the CIA and so forth. Like when he brings up the "sound card" thing - I laughed at that. 

an older western that would fit well with those you listed is the The Wild Bunch (my favorite western).

As for more recent stuff, also check out The Three Burials of Melquaides Estrada (2005). 

I never saw Hotel Rwanda, because I watched "Sometimes in April" on the Berlinale a few month before Hotel Rwanda came out. April deals with the same topic, but from what I hear it does it in a much better way than Hotel Rwanda did.

It's very intense and saddening. I remember looking around me when the credits were rolling in the Berlinale Palast (huge beautiful cinema where all Berlinale films are premiered) and almost everyone had tears in their eyes. AFAIK some of the african actors lived in Rwanda during the Genocide, so I guess that made their performances so very good.

I suggest you check it out if you are interested in this particular topic. But be warned, this movie stayed with me for a couple of days, and it really affected me. 

yep seen it, which is probably why I was harsher on this. Its pretty heavy going like you say but considering the topic you pretty much know you're not in for anything light from the start. But it's pretty powerful stuff which sticks around in your head for sure.

Hotel goes more for a Schindler's List approach narrative wise, but at the very least Schindler's was a real film using the many options of cinema rather than just telling a story in a very unoriginal, closed and sloppy manner. 

Well, it's a shame considering that April was the better movie that Hotel got so much media attention. 

and by Hollywood :)

Its also a shame that such a bad film features one of the best recent performances out of Hollywood. 

First try, a friend and me and a camera.

http://haukerehfeld.de/misc/film/Testing1.avi (20 mb) 

 

but seriously dude, 20Mb for 8 seconds of footage of a dude running down a corridor? You really should have converted that to MPEG before uploading it!

Interesting camera work though! Good action feel to it I guess, or something.... 

it's just a test rendering, i figured i wouldn't waste any time on it. and it's already compressed ;)

Glad you like it =D 

Try xvid or AVC/H264. Also deinterlace (if it's meant for computer monitors)!

And for the love of god compress the audio with mp3. ;)

Try H264 (x264) with 2 pass, average bitrate of 1000kbps and joint-stereo abr mp3 ~128kbps. That results in 1/10th the size and on-par quality (you might need to tweak a bit for the colors though). 

http://www.rollingstone.com/reviews/movie/16155928/review/21477208/the_dark_knight 

http://www.rollingstone.com/reviews/movie/16155928/review/21477208/the_dark_knight 

The homonyms will be my downfall. 

my most anticipated movie of the year, last one was excellent. 

Really loving the latest trailer for TDK, Begins was hands down my favourite "super hero" movie made so far and I think they really nailed the Joker character for the sequel.

CANNOT WAIT :) 

The Merchant of Venice (2004) - problematic but reasonably competent version of the shakespeare play. Its not one I've come across before but I believe the movie changes the play's focus from the comedy/love story angle to the much more interesting mini tragedy involving Shylock.

This decision is both good and bad, good because the movie spends less time with the awful and smug Joseph Fiennes and his attempts to win over Lynn Collins' Portia and more time with Al Pacino's Shylock (easily one of pacino's best recent performances), the jewish lender who literally seeks a 'pound of flesh' on forfeit of a bond as revenge for the torment he has had to endure over the years. But its bad because it also means the focus on Shylock leaves all the other characters (except maybe Portia) very underdeveloped and when the action moves away from Shylock's story, the movie bogs down noticeably.

6.5/10


Things We Lost in the Fire (2007) - danish director Susanne Bier's hollywood debut is a decent if unremarkable affair held together by strong acting from Benicio Del Toro and Halle Berry.

Berry plays a wife whose husband suddenly dies in unfortunate circumstances and Del Toro the recovering junkie best friend of the husband. They form a bond after the death and help each other with their grief and problems.

In other hands it could have been a very shonky, cliched and oversentimental movie, but in Bier's hands it never ends up like that even though Allan Loeb's flawed screenplay tries to push it in that direction.

However, in an effort to negate some of the dodgy scripting, Bier does also go a bit overboard with her stylistic touches which end up distracting and she would have been better off relying more on the strength of Del Toro's and Berry's acting to overcome the script problems. Still, overall, it's a fairly solid work that's worth watching.

6.5/10


The Piano (1991) - not great but its not bad either. The direction and writing waver a bit between very good and questionable and it also looks very ugly.

But most the performances are quite first rate and the music is excellent too. The rest of it is quite interesting, I am not so sure the execution was quite there though.

6/10


Sorry Wrong Number (1948) - quite good film noir by Anatole Livtak that's beautifully shot and well performed by Barbara Stanwyck and Burt Lancaster. Not quite as good as other noirs both actors have been in but still excellent stuff.

7-7.5/10


Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961) - I was ready to absolutely hate this but its actually decent if a bit stupid, corny and crude on occasions. It looks great and Henry Mancini's score is perfectly suited but I'm not sure about the rest which wavers in quality.

Audrey Hepburn works overall but still doesn't suit the role, some of the humour works but some of it is terrible, some of the drama works and some of it is just orchestrated by silly plot contrivances. There's a pretty good film in here somewhere, but it gets lost in what was probably a combination of restrictions of the era and sloppy direction from Blake Edwards.

6/10


Howl's Moving Castle (2004) - beautifully animated as usual by Miyazaki, in fact it's probably the best 2d animation I've seen, but once again the actual film just didn�t work for me.

It starts off fine and is reasonably decent for the first hour or so but then the last 40 min seems to have a mind of its own and makes absolutely no sense. I suppose you just have to go with it for it to work but I wasn�t prepared to.

5.5/10


The Player (1992) - quite entertaining but only a fluffy semi-skewering satire about the Hollywood system by Robert Altman. There's far too much winking at the audience for it to be anything more, but it's made well enough to be worth watching, especially if you like movies since there's about a gazillion references to films prior to this.

7/10


2:37 (2006) - decent debut from young aussie murali thalluri, showing plenty of confidence and talent, despite obvious influences from Gus Van Sant's Elephant.

I liked this better than Vant Sant's film though because the characterisations were better and more sympathetic, despite using stock characters and situations. Nothing new here but it's quite well done.

7/10 

has that something, at least that Danish dogma movie Elsker Dig for Evigt or sth was good.
There are a million Danish and Swedish flicks handling those themes though, serious family/individual slow drama style.
Maybe Bergman's portraits of a marriage series was the grandmomma of them all on film. And of course there are probably much more books written earlier.

I have a bit mixed approach to that stuff. On one hand I'm cynical and they seem funny since the people end up in such stupid decisions constantly. On the other hand, it's sometimes too much to bear for the fragility of the people and their emotions and vulnerability. And sometimes, rarely though, something unexpected happens and the movie breaks out of the mold. 

After the Wedding, which was great.

Have two others though, Open Hearts and Brothers which I'll get around too who knows when.

And there's big influences from Bergman for sure, which is not a bad thing.