could be interesting.

Meanwhile :

Videodrome (1983) - pretty effective little flick from David Cronenberg with some very creepy sequences (and effects!) and some quite prescient insight. Not going to try and summarise the plot because describing early Cronenberg plots in a non-stupefying manner is almost impossible. But Cronenberg's prophetic, if not always logical, exploration of consumer control and reaction within the tv entertainment world is bizarrely compelling and ludicrously entertaining at the same time, with all the strangeness given an anchor by James Woods' fantastic and committed performance in the central role.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086541/

7-7.5/10 

A Prophet, comments later but in short, modern crime classic.

Comments on some others :

Mary and Max (2009) - the new feature length claymation film from Harvie Krumpet director Adam Elliot is good but also repetitive in both content and structure. It does feel a little like a short film idea stretched out to feature length. Still, its very watchable with a strong ending and a nice streak of acerbic humour throughout.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0978762/

6/10


Tomorrow (1972) - Robert Duvall is a great actor and this is arguably his greatest performance, which is saying a lot considering his body of work. Duvall is in pretty much every scene of this film, playing a simple minded Mississippi dirt farmer who is hired as an overseer of a saw mill the winter season and finds an abandoned pregnant woman whom he eventually falls in love with. The film shows the turn of the century south in a very straightforward and unglamorous fashion and captures the mood and feel of a very lonely rural community in what appears to be a very authentic manner.

Its slow moving, but always interesting, especially if you like strong acting and moody cinematography. Olga Bellin, who plays the woman, is also brilliant.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069393/

7.5/10


The Ruling Class (1971) - brilliant idea for what should be wicked black comedy, but the execution is just plain poor. A member of the House of Lords dies in a silly way and leaves his estate to his insane son who thinks he is Jesus Christ. Other members of the family try to have him committed in order to steal the estate and their plan backfires when the son no longer believes himself to be Jesus, but rather Jack the Ripper.

Unfortunately, the film is a big sprawling mess with a couple of brilliant scenes but mostly being a poor mishmash of different tones and genres. Peter O Toole is allowed to chew whatever scenery he can find and although his performance is more than zany enough, he only really hits the mark in a few scenes (the most notable being his showdown, as Jesus Christ, with another insane inmate who believes himself to be The New Age Electric Christ).

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069198/

4-4.5/10


Side Street (1951) - solid if unspectacular film noir from Anthony Mann reuniting the successful pairing of Farley Granger and Cathy O'Donnell from Nicholas Ray's superior They live by Night.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0042960/

6.5-7/10


The Ascent (1977) - Larisa Shepitko is relatively unknown but is widely regarded by her peers as one of the best female directors in cinema history. She died young, making only a handful of films and this was her final film before her death. It�s a near masterpiece, with a first half that is as good as any film ever made.

In 1942 Belarus, two partisan soldiers leave their band and trek through the snow to find a nearby farmhouse to get supplies. The first half tracks their progress through the wintery landscape, with mesmerising long tracking shots that have to be seen to be believed. Eventually they are captured by Nazi collaborating Belarusians and at this point the film settles into a more conventional biblical allegory that focuses on the different attitudes of the two men towards their fate. This half of the film is still strong, brimming with an unforced honesty, but it is also much less immediate than what has come before.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075404/

7.5-8/10


The Red Desert (1964) - terrible film from Michaelangelo Antonioni. Its only saving grace is that its shot quite well but otherwise this is a tedious, dreary, dated and repetitive effort from Antonioni. His earlier alimentation trilogy covered much of the same ground but far more effectively in my opinion

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058003/

3/10


A Serious Man (2009) - A little too oblique and impenetrable for me to fully appreciate but its another distinctively bleak but hilarious outing that only the Coen brothers can make. I have no idea how they got approval to make something like this but I'm glad they did.

Sy Abelman is one of the all time classic characters.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1019452/

7-7.5/10 

"very important" 

I watched Inglourious Basterds yesterday and agree with what people said before me. Nothing too special but alright. I found the Landa character getting out of character starting with the laughter about the skiing accident, earlier he was ace.

Someone like Guy Ritchie could have managed much better to make the various plots come together in one final big good ending...

I also found the music choice bad sometimes but I guess that is Tarantino having to do his thing.

Gotta watch the older one some day. 

And the 1978 Inglorious Bastards:
Average nazi killing. Some parts are better, some worse. Has almost nothing to do with Tarantino's movie. It's american's disguised as nazis and that's about it. Fun characters. 

http://www.teethmovie.com/trailer.html

Anyone seen this?? Sounds pretty interesting, rated well on RT too. 

yes. it's awful really, but strangely compelling at the same time.. and to be fair it doesn't take itself that seriously anyway. certainly enough to put you off sex for a while :P 

What do you call a fanny with teeth in?

A vicious cunt! 

I want to see that - heard it's good and goofy in a 'slither' type of way. 

That the vagina dentata one?

It's alright, mildly amusing, if slightly sub-average. Watch it if you have nowt else to do, but I wouldn't go out of your way to do so... 

RocknRolla, 2008 by Guy Ritchie
Nowhere near Lock, Stock ... or Snatch. Fun though. Very local english, I switched on subtitles after a while. Some hilarious, some cool scenes. But also a lot of stupid scenes. A bit much of annoying music. Some great actors. Ending unsatisfactory as it was not really about the actual main characters (12, Mumble and Bob for me). Will probably not watch again. 

The Informant! (2009) - Steven Soderbergh's latest, a satire of something like Michael Mann's more serious (and much superior) The Insider, tries too hard to be quirky and clever which was completely unnecessary given the loopy nature of the overall plot and main character.

It works best when it casually weaves in random stream of consciousness thoughts in the main character's voiceover narration and less successfully so whenever the music score emphasises each change in tone to such an extent that Soderbergh may as well have had cue cards popping up on screen instructing the audience which parts are meant to be serious and which parts are meant to be funny. Soderbergh's approach is even more beguiling when you consider how impressive Matt Damon is and how on the ball he is as to how each scene should play out.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1130080/

6.5/10


Up in the Air (2009) - Another decent film from Jason Reitman but once again it feels a little too clever for its own good and doesn�t end convincingly. He has a gift for making what should be smarmy and unlikeable characters likeable, and for extracting strong performances from his cast, but there is a little too much tongue in cheek in his films for them to work beyond surface level (I think Juno, once it got past the first annoying 20 min, worked best on this level).

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1193138/

7/10 

The Italian Job (2003)
Very bad hollywood action movie. I think I should avoid movies with Mark Wahlberg (ok, Shooter was alright) and Seth Green (I so can't stand his characters...).


I got into The Big Bang Theory after getting bored of 2-3 seasons 3rd Rock from the Sun recently. Very funny show so far. I am sure nonentity will disagree. 

This is funny :)

http://watchxonline.com/category/610-celebrity-rehab-with-dr-drew.php 

The exceptions are of course Three Kings and The Departed. 

Huh? 

The Corruptor 

you preferred Shooter to IJ remake??

I thought the first was terrible and the second decent.

Also, Boogie Nights, easily the best thing hes been involved in! 

Boogie Nights is definitely on the list, The Corruptor I have not seen, but will make an effort now. 

Bit shaky in parts (not the camera), but otherwise okay. Hardly any new elements except for the conclusion, basically the same movie from a different perspective. 

Boogie Nights > The Corruptor, of course 

I would actually put the predictable but well made We Own the Night ahead of The Corruptor too. If only for the spectacular rainstorm car chase. But its also a decent movie :) 

Los abrazos rotos by Pedro Almod�var is a movie I watched today and liked very much.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0913425/

A blind screenwriter finds out that his archenemy is dead, so he tells the story from his past to his protege, and strives for some closure. 

Shutter Island (2009) - not sure how much of the flawed narrative is the book's fault but even if it is, I think some changes were warranted in the adaptation to film. Plays its cards way way too early and then the eventual resolution is so logically flawed, it takes away quite a bit from the reasonably well crafted film that otherwise takes place.

Scorsese the film buff is on full display, skilfully homaging many of the great noirs, particularly the works of Jacques Tourneur, and some of the sequences are from his heyday as a director, but the whole is definitely less than the sum of its parts.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1130884/

5.5-6/10


Dexter Season 3 - the show's writers have a history of creating intriguing and morally ambiguous setups and then letting themselves down with an easy and morally simple resolution. And they are at it again this season, but this time with probably the worst example of the above. The setup for this season is brilliant, with Jimmy Smits excelling in his role as Dexter's new friend and secret sharer, but the denouement just gets silly and features leaps of logic that just should have been better through.

6.5/10


Young Torless (1966) - Volker Schlondorff's disturbing debut is a pre WWI drama set in an Austrian boarding school at which a young boy becomes a target for humiliation and torture by a group of other boys, each of whom have different reasons for participating. It works as both a claustrophobic drama that unfolds with uncompromising starkness and also as a thinly veiled parallel of the rise of nazism in civilised society.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060574/

7.5/10


A Prophet (2009) - Jacques Audiard has made a string of fine films but his latest is a modern crime classic. The rise of a young arab man in a french prison to mafia kingpin is not the most original of plots but Audiard's direction and Tahar Rahim's central performance elevate this to a much higher plane. Frequently brutal, always menacing, immaculately constructed and absolutely compelling from start to finish.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1235166/

8/10


Genova (2008) - the new film from Michael Winterbottom takes more than a few cues from Nicolas Roeg's classic Don�t Look Now, having a grieving family looking to an italian city for solace and sharing supernatural overtones. Its nowhere near the quality of Roeg's film, suffering from a rambling script and being repetitive in both form and content, but it makes a fascinating use of its backdrop and is blessed with some fine performances, particularly from its young cast.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0791303/

6.5/10


Germany Year Zero (1948) - I cant believe this was allowed to be shot in Germany 3 years after the war. Roberto Rossellini's neo realist depiction of post war life in Germany is hardly a flattering view, featuring a demolished landscape and also a demolished society. The film centers on a handful of characters, all of whom move around Edmund, a 12 year old german boy who takes on responsibilities that you would not wish upon anyone anywhere.

The location shooting and use of non-professional actors lends it a remarkable authenticity and although I found it to be a little predictable narratively, its never less than engrossing.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0039417/

7-7.5/10


Che Part 1 (2008) - this is as unconventional a biopic as there has ever been. Steven Soderbergh is not exploring Che the man, but Che the icon and his approach seems to be to analyse his subject by comparing his leadership during two of his campaigns, the successful revolution of Chile, which is this film, and his unsuccessful attempted revolution of Bolivia, which is Part 2. Its not quite as narratively simple as that description because, in Part 1, he also goes back and forth between Che's 1964 United Nations General Assembly address.

Its not an easy film to watch, the first 20-30 min are particularly confusing but once you cotton on to what its trying to do, made easier by Benicio Del Toro's fantastic acting, its utterly compelling. Very keen to see Part 2.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0892255/

7.5/10 

Yeah I agree, it started so strong but it seems that the show follows a formula that you can pretty much expect that Dexter's new buddy is going to get killed in the end, which was okay for the first 2 seasons (actually liked season 2 the best) and the last 2 episodes of season 3 especially I felt were backwards. It's like they ended the season an episode early, realized their mistake, and then put in the last episode just before airtime.

Hope season 4 is better when it comes out on DVD.