From kamhung.soh at gmail.com Mon Mar 2 17:53:15 2009 From: kamhung.soh at gmail.com (Kam-Hung Soh) Date: Mon Mar 2 17:53:17 2009 Subject: Retrospective: Nicotina (2003) Message-ID: Characters whose paths intersect in one busy night in a Mexican city: Nene (Lucas Crespi) and his partner, Tomson (Jes?s Ochoa) hire computer cracker Nolo (Diego Luna) to get bank passwords for Russian gangster Svoboda (Norman Sotolongo). While on the job, Nolo spys on his pretty neighbour Andrea (Marta Bel?ustegui), a concert musician who is having an affair with her conductor and also her upstairs neighbour. We also meet two bickering couples, barber Goyo (Rafael Inclan) and his wife Carmen (Rosa Mar?a Bianchi), and chemist Carlos (Eugenio Montessoro) and his wife Clara (Carmen Madrid). The story plays out roughly in real time as we watch the characters lurch from one crisis to another. The initial scenes of Nolo and his neighbour run too long and don't go anywhere other than to set up the rest of the story. Oddly enough, while everyone argues about smoking or discuss life and smoking, nicotine has very little impact on the story. The digital cinematography is plain and realistic but rather hard on the eye. Split screen and computer graphics are used in some scenes for additional effect. Middling black crime-comedy. Mexican with English subtitles. 3 out of 5 stars. 25 February 2009 Kam-Hung Soh http://morvahouse.blogspot.com From kamhung.soh at gmail.com Mon Mar 2 17:54:07 2009 From: kamhung.soh at gmail.com (Kam-Hung Soh) Date: Mon Mar 2 17:54:10 2009 Subject: Retrospective: A/R andata+ritorno / Round Trip (2004) Message-ID: Just before Christmas, Dante (Libero De Rienzo), a bicycle courier, decides to leave Turin to escape his dingy flat and the 20 000 Euros he owes to local gangster Skorpio (Michele Di Maurio). At the same time, flight stewardess Nina's (Vanessa Incontrada) relationship with her boyfriend is on shaky ground. When she becomes stranded in Turin due to a general strike and is unable to find a hotel room, Dante's mentor, the kindly Tolstoj (Kabir Bedi), offers her Dante's vacant room. As she pieces together Dante through his notes and books, she falls in love with him. This film teases the audience by keeping the potential lovers apart for as long as possible. Then having brought them together, poses the question of how will they stay together given, in this case, Dante's immediate and fatal debt problem? Writer-director Marco Ponti solves it by introducing a heist element into the final third of the film. A genial and light-hearted film. Remember to stay around for the scenes inserted in the trailing credits. Italian with English subtitles 3 out of 5 stars. 27 February 2009 Kam-Hung Soh http://morvahouse.blogspot.com From steve.rhodes at internetreviews.com Mon Mar 2 17:58:27 2009 From: steve.rhodes at internetreviews.com (Steve Rhodes) Date: Mon Mar 2 17:58:28 2009 Subject: Review: Capers (2008) Message-ID: CAPERS A film review by Steve Rhodes Copyright 2009 Steve Rhodes RATING (0 TO ****): ** 1/2 CAPERS is a wonderfully wacky film, filled with one over-the-top moment after another. The zany characters that inhabit its narrative are caricatures of caricatures. Visually the movie is a hilarious shock to our senses. Shot in three distinct styles, which are interspersed throughout the movie, the look of the picture is that of an old 1970s movie, complete with the random vertical lines of a bad print, a black-and-white drama from the 1950s and a hip-hop rock video from today, complete with garish colors and bad rap songs. In one of many overlapping story lines, would-be gangster blacks, called "moolies," find themselves with an eight-year-old white girl they can't sell, so they enlist her in their gang. She sweet talks and thereby distracts any police officer that comes by when a crime is in progress. Another group called the "Sputniks" are Russian mobsters who are actually, so they claim, "Arab Slavs." They are busy trying to buy uranium or other nuclear material from hardware stores in New York, where all of the stories are are set. The third group of crooks is led by a would-be criminal mastermind named Fitz (Danny Masterson, "That 70s Show.") When we first meet Fitz, he and his wiener dog are masquerading as a cop and his police dog. As Fitz is having trouble cracking the safe at Saks and Company -- it seems that the safe has buttons rather than dials -- one of the store's security guards tries to arrest him. Fitz convinces the security guard that he is from Homeland Security and that his dog is busy sniffing for nuclear material. CAPERS is obsessed with one joke line. Probably a hundred times in the script, a joke starts with the words "since 9/11." The writers clearly think that the country's change in security since 9/11 is the funniest thing going. Can you imagine a film that prefaced every joke with "since the Holocaust?" At any rate, CAPERS is a film that is consistently visually cute. Its problem is that a little of craziness goes a long way. After twenties minutes, I got it -- subsequent repetition did not enhance my viewing pleasure. Less of CAPERS would have more enjoyable. As a short, I'd love it, but, as a full-length motion picture, it just simply overstays its welcome. CAPERS runs 1:26. The film is being shown as part of San Jose's Cinequest Film Festival (www.Cinequest.org), which runs February 25-March 8, 2009. Web: http://www.InternetReviews.com Email: Steve.Rhodes@InternetReviews.com *********************************************************************** Want reviews of new films via Email? Just write Steve.Rhodes@InternetReviews.com and put "subscribe" in the subject line. From steve.rhodes at internetreviews.com Mon Mar 2 17:59:18 2009 From: steve.rhodes at internetreviews.com (Steve Rhodes) Date: Mon Mar 2 17:59:21 2009 Subject: Review: Ye che (2007) Message-ID: NIGHT TRAIN A film review by Steve Rhodes Copyright 2009 Steve Rhodes RATING (0 TO ****): ** Writer and director Diao Yinan's NIGHT TRAIN (YE CHE) is one of those infuriating films that attempts to make a virtue out of the obscurity of its narrative and the painful slowness of its pacing. Some parts of NIGHT TRAIN do work well -- the parts that don't involve the script or the acting. In its opening sequence, we watch a woman from the back and listen to the snow crunching beneath her feet as she makes her away across a frozen road. The images, as well as the sound of the blowing wind, convey an effective chill that will have you putting on your jacket and maybe even your hood as well. The rest of the movie, filmed under universally overcast skies, also gives a palpable feeling of cold and doom. Depression seems around every corner, and rarely has life in the People's Republic of China appeared less hospitable. The story, however, is purposely oblique. We have a magician who uses his modest skills to impress and flirt with women. We have a woman, who is said to have been a prostitute working at the Yo-Yo Motel -- got to love that name. And we have a very sad woman whose job is that of an executioner. We know she hates her work since we witness her burning the clothes she wore to the execution. Since defendants are only given 10 days to appeal, the implication is that executions are quite common. All of this might be more involving, except that the director's ability to effectively tell a story is questionable. With little dialog, the movie meanders along, testing viewers' patience in every scene. Rarely does it give us any reason to care or any reason to try to sort out the story and its various characters. NIGHT TRAIN runs 1:34. The film is in Mandarin with English subtitles. The film is being shown as part of San Jose's Cinequest Film Festival (www.Cinequest.org), which runs February 25-March 8, 2009. Web: http://www.InternetReviews.com Email: Steve.Rhodes@InternetReviews.com *********************************************************************** Want reviews of new films via Email? Just write Steve.Rhodes@InternetReviews.com and put "subscribe" in the subject line. From steve.rhodes at internetreviews.com Mon Mar 2 18:01:12 2009 From: steve.rhodes at internetreviews.com (Steve Rhodes) Date: Mon Mar 2 18:01:14 2009 Subject: Review: Dansen (2008) Message-ID: DANCERS A film review by Steve Rhodes Copyright 2009 Steve Rhodes RATING (0 TO ****): *** A touching tale, Pernille Fischer Christensen's DANCERS (DANSEN) is like a lovingly executed short story, although I have no idea what the inspiration for the narrative was. DANCERS follows Annika (Trine Dyrholm) and Lasse (Anders W. Berthelsen), two most unlikely lovers who are probably in their late thirties. Both actors give completely genuine performances, sure to touch your hearts in subtle ways. Complete opposites, Annika and Lasse get together after she refuses to leave him alone. Annika is a gregarious dance teacher whose face is in an almost continuous smile. She teaches everyone from little girls, who like nothing better than following her like a train with her as the engine, to adults, who are deadly serious, lest they not learn every dance step properly. Annika, who works in her mother's dance studio, which was started in 1944 by her grandfather, does everything from teaching pupils to cleaning the bathrooms. When the power goes out, Annika has to call an electrician, which is how she meets Lasse, a taciturn electrician who almost refuses to make eye contact with her or anyone for that matter. As he stares at the floors and the walls one day, she finally gets him to explain the mystery behind his reluctance to make human contact. It seems that Lasse just got out of spending a little over a year in prison. His offense -- he says, as he quickly exits -- was fraud. Later he amends his statement, claiming that he was in for rape, which he doesn't remember since he and the woman in question were both very drunk. The rest of the story has Annika falling more and more for Lasse, while she tries her best to uncover the full truth behind his imprisonment. The script is particularly smart in the way that it doesn't feel the need to fall back on the clich? of some huge, off-the-wall surprise or big tragic ending to close off the story. There are twists, but they remain firmly in the realm of believability. DANCERS runs 1:30. The film is in Danish with English subtitles. The film is being shown as part of San Jose's Cinequest Film Festival (www.Cinequest.org), which runs February 25 to March 8, 2009. Web: http://www.InternetReviews.com Email: Steve.Rhodes@InternetReviews.com *********************************************************************** Want reviews of new films via Email? Just write Steve.Rhodes@InternetReviews.com and put "subscribe" in the subject line. From steve.rhodes at internetreviews.com Mon Mar 2 18:04:48 2009 From: steve.rhodes at internetreviews.com (Steve Rhodes) Date: Mon Mar 2 18:04:51 2009 Subject: Review: Witch Hunt (2008) Message-ID: WITCH HUNT A film review by Steve Rhodes Copyright 2009 Steve Rhodes RATING (0 TO ****): **** WITCH HUNT is the sort of documentary that can reduce a grown man to tears. I know because it certainly had that effect on me. By directors Don Hardy Jr. and Dana Nachman, it tells a chilling and cautionary true story that will have you thinking "there but for the grace of God go I." Any innocent person's liberty is at stake when rogue prosecutors are allowed to go unchecked. Over the span of a just a couple of years in the mid-1980s in Bakersfield, California, child molestations and satanic killings started spreading like wildfire out of nowhere, or so the District Attorney, who still is in office today, would have us believe. Three dozen people, including many married couples, were incarcerated in some of California's worst prisons, after being convicted on a wide range of sexual offenses. And dozens and dozens more were arrested but not tried or had their kids taken away while the charges against them were investigated. Their offenses, for which many of them were sentenced to terms of over two hundred years each, including having sex with their kids while hanging them from hooks, trading the kids among the adults in the neighborhood, swapping their kids at motels and, in the most extreme series of accusations, of killing kids in satanic rituals and burying them in the backyard. All of the adults, many of whom knew each other, protested their complete innocence, rejecting any deals for settlement since it would require them to confess to something they didn't do. The documentary, using excellent archival footage and interviews, amply and convincingly demonstrates exactly how this travesty of justice took place. After serving anywhere from 12 to 20 years in prison, the accused were finally able to prove their innocent and get their original convictions completely overturned. The prosecution based their original cases solely on the testimony of the kids, not on any records or medical exams. These kids, now grown and severely and permanently scarred by what the prosecution did to them, told what really happened. They said they were grilled for hours on end with the prosecution refusing their claims that nothing happened. The investigators screamed at them, ridiculed them, and said that all of the other kids already said that the molestation had happened. Finally, exhausted, they simply agreed to say "yes," when prompted with detailed descriptions of various horrible acts. The kids were told that if they would just agree, then no would get hurt or go to jail and that they could finally go home. Once at trial, the cycle repeated itself, with the kids saying nothing happened while on the stand initially, but, once the prosecution asked for a break and coached the kids more, the kids said what the prosecution wanted. The accused were told that if they took lie detector tests and passed, they would be released and not held for trial. Many of them did this, all passed and none were released. The defense lawyers asked the judge to order a medical examination of the kids to prove that no molestation had taken place. The prosecution successfully fought against it, claiming it would traumatize the kids to do so. On the later appeals, in a box never turned over to the defense was proof that the kids were given medical exams, but, since the exams clearly stated that no molestation occurred, the exams' existence was hidden from the defense. Similarly, taped records of the bogus interviews of the kids were also made but not released to the defense. A couple of dozen of these people were at our screening and told their stories afterwards. The grown kids who were there said that they haven't been able to hold or bathe their own kids out of fear that something like this will happened to them. They were still traumatized. Other grown kids who weren't at our screening have turned to drugs or attempted suicide, since their lives were so wrecked. Of the 36 people falsely convinced, all were freed after 12 to 20 years, except for 2 who died in prison while waiting for the wheels of justice to slowly grind away. Even when the accused got their new trials, it took a long time. In John Stoll's case, even though the evidence to overturn his conviction was overwhelming, the prosecutor dragged out the rehearing for five long months. The prosecution's mantra in the original conviction was "children don't lie about stuff like this." And, even today, the law enforcement officials are unwilling to admit gross miscarriages of justice were made. The new country sheriff there writes off the problems -- adding parenthetically, "if there were any" -- claiming that they stemmed solely from the lack of proper training. So, if you get hauled away in the middle of the night or if your children get put in a foster home for a few years while they investigate charges against you, I guess you're just supposed to give the justice system a break, because it might just be a case of poor training. I got to talk afterwards with some these poor souls who suffered these horrible injustices. Nice, salt-of-the-earth people to a person -- they are exactly the kind of people you would be happy to have baby-sit your kids and would love to have as next-door neighbors. What a huge travesty! WITCH HUNT runs a riveting, edge-of-your-seat 1:31. The film is being shown as part of San Jose's Cinequest Film Festival (www.Cinequest.org), which runs February 25 - March 8, 2009. Web: http://www.InternetReviews.com Email: Steve.Rhodes@InternetReviews.com *********************************************************************** Want reviews of new films via Email? Just write Steve.Rhodes@InternetReviews.com and put "subscribe" in the subject line. From steve.rhodes at internetreviews.com Mon Mar 2 18:08:47 2009 From: steve.rhodes at internetreviews.com (Steve Rhodes) Date: Mon Mar 2 18:08:49 2009 Subject: Review: Rock Paper Scissors: A Geek Tragedy (2007) Message-ID: ROCK PAPER SCISSORS: A GEEK TRAGEDY A film review by Steve Rhodes Copyright 2009 Steve Rhodes RATING (0 TO ****): *** "A bunch of morons in Toronto, Canada held a competition to play Rock Paper Scissors," one of CNN's better known talking heads says in compete ridicule. He knows a real sport when he sees one, and Rock Paper Scissors is not one of them. But players like a guy known as Master Roshambollah would disagree. Calling himself the Bobby Fischer of the sport, he thinks he has the right strategies to psyche out his opponents and win. Other players take a Zen approach to their techniques, reasoning, "Be the rock, be the paper, be the scissors." Still others who want to compete at the world level of the competition think it has to do with their bodies, which can be used for distraction. One guy, talking about his edge, says, "cute in the face, tight in the waist, I'm a Rock Paper Scissors player's worst nightmare." Tell me about the screening of a documentary on some really off-the-wall subject, and I'm there. There is nothing like the sheer joy of watching films on such diverse subjects as role playing games in the woods (MONSTER CAMP), middle school elections (THE THIRD MONDAY IN OCTOBER) or the history of the drive-in (DRIVE-IN MOVIE MEMORIES). But it isn't enough just to pick some obscure subject. You also need to find a filmmaker talented enough to draw you into the story and make it come alive, not just be wacky. One such director is Mike McKeown, whose ROCK PAPER SCISSORS is a very funny look at a kids' game played at a world championship level. It's also the story of two brothers, Douglas and Graham Walker, and their continuing struggle to market the sport. Is theirs a rags-to-riches story? Not really. More like a rags-to-rags story. Let's get this out of the way first. One of the questions at the screening that I attended was whether ROCK PAPER SCISSORS: A GEEK TRAGEDY is a mockumentary. In other words, did this film follow several real Rock Paper Scissors (RPS) tournaments or was this all some elaborate hoax. It is real. Although the competitors keep their sport very tongue-in-cheek -- sometimes dressing in crazy outfits -- they do compete for prizes and the honor of calling themselves a world champion. The movie follows high profile players like C. Urbanus, who spends his days working a game of chance -- spin the wheel to win a prize -- at an old boardwalk amusement park. He considers himself a master of RPS strategy, but he has the bad luck to get eliminated in the first round of almost every major tournament he has played in. Whether having crazy professions are prerequisites to gaining fame in the RPS world isn't clear, but some of the sport's most well-known players do have some pretty unusual backgrounds. Master Roshambollah is by far the most well known. After a stint at Arthur Anderson, he switched professions when they went under in the wake of the Enron scandal. Now he works two jobs, one as the "piercer" at a tattoo parlor and one as a psychic at an 800 psychic hotline. In a movie that would appear certain to have lots of laughs but few twists possible, the story takes a sharp turn in the last act, when, out of nowhere, a rival pops up to the Walker brothers' official world-wide organization for Rock Paper Scissors. Throwing out more money and hiring ex-Playboy Playmates to advertise the sport, the new league becomes something like the rival XFL to the traditional NFL. The new league will be playing the same game, but with more extreme promotions. As we start to feel sorry for the lovable Walker brothers, it's easy to be thinking illogically to yourself, "there oughta be a law ..." Oh well, even if the Walker brothers appear to be losing control of their sport, director Mike McKeown never loses control of his movie, which is uniformly hilarious and entertaining. ROCK PAPER SCISSORS runs 1:28. The film is being shown as part of San Jose's Cinequest Film Festival (www.Cinequest.org), which runs February 25 to March 8, 2009. Web: http://www.InternetReviews.com Email: Steve.Rhodes@InternetReviews.com *********************************************************************** Want reviews of new films via Email? Just write Steve.Rhodes@InternetReviews.com and put "subscribe" in the subject line. From steve.rhodes at internetreviews.com Mon Mar 2 18:10:34 2009 From: steve.rhodes at internetreviews.com (Steve Rhodes) Date: Mon Mar 2 18:10:36 2009 Subject: Review: The Skeptic (2009) Message-ID: THE SKEPTIC A film review by Steve Rhodes Copyright 2009 Steve Rhodes RATING (0 TO ****): *** "Forty-six percent of people believe in ghosts," a psyche named Cassie tells Bryan Becket (Tim Daly, Dr. Pete Wilder from "Private Practice.") Not impressed with her logic, Bryan replies that "Forty-six percent of people can't find Europe on a map!" THE SKEPTIC takes a serious, but light-hearted as well, look at what happens when a guy inherits a haunted house. The film is smart enough to keep us guessing as to what is really going on. Maybe, for example, Cassie is just part of some scam being run on Bryan. And, since Cassie is played by the gorgeous Zoe Saldana, who seems to specialize in sexually charged roles, having worked on movies such as AFTER SEX, WAYS OF THE FLESH, DIRTY DEEDS and TEMPTATION as well as higher profile movies like VANTAGE POINT, maybe the movie will turn into FATAL ATTRACTION. The possibilities are endless, which writer and director Tennyson Bardwell mines to equal measures of comedic effect and shock value. Breezy and fun, the movie has a great cast, which strikes just the right balance between being funny and creepy, with the tilt more towards the humorous side. When we meet Bryan, he is a card-carrying skeptic. A completely unemotional guy, "I'm a guy," he tells his law partner -- and comedic sidekick -- Sully (Tom Arnold). "I haven't cried since I left Cooperstown." Soon after Bryan starts to live temporarily in the old, rambling Victorian house that his aunt left him, he starts hearing things. Eventually he goes to a research lab specializing in studying paranormal phenomenon. As easily the film's best character, Bruce Altman plays Dr. Koven. As the head of the lab, Dr. Koven is a firm believer that everything can be explained with science, right down to ghosts talking. The sounds don't come from ghosts, since ghosts don't exist, the doctor says. He then goes on to describe how supposed ghostly sights or sounds can be explained away with quite rational, scientific explanations. It is at Dr. Koven's lab where Bryan meets Cassie. In no time, she has come to Bryan's haunted house to help him. But is having her there like throwing fuel on a fire? After the first night that Bryan and Cassie spend in the house, he tells her, "I slept like a baby -- a baby fearing crib death that is." THE SKEPTIC is a nice little treat that isn't scary enough to affect your sleep, but it will affect your demeanor, as you leave the theater happily satisfied that you were well entertained. THE SKEPTIC runs 1:35. The film is being shown as part of San Jose's Cinequest Film Festival (www.Cinequest.org), which runs February 25-March 8, 2009. Web: http://www.InternetReviews.com Email: Steve.Rhodes@InternetReviews.com *********************************************************************** Want reviews of new films via Email? Just write Steve.Rhodes@InternetReviews.com and put "subscribe" in the subject line. From steve.rhodes at internetreviews.com Mon Mar 2 18:13:01 2009 From: steve.rhodes at internetreviews.com (Steve Rhodes) Date: Mon Mar 2 18:13:03 2009 Subject: Review: Corpse Run (2008) Message-ID: CORPSE RUN A film review by Steve Rhodes Copyright 2009 Steve Rhodes RATING (0 TO ****): ** 1/2 CORPSE RUN is one of those uneven films that's likely to have many audience members scratching their heads wondering why it only seems to work in fits and spurts for them. I, for one, was never quite sure if it was because I wasn't in the targeted demographics for the movie, which appears to be videogame playing twenty-somethings, or because the script just needed more work. But don't get me wrong, CORPSE RUN isn't a bad film, since it contains several delightful and insightful moments with the best being sharply written jabs poking fun at videogamers and their disconnect with the real world. One of the best of these moments occurs about ten minutes into the narrative, which, up until that time, was filled with the most mind-numbing and unintelligible gamer gibberish you've heard. At this point, the action on the screen is frozen, and the narrator allows as how most of us probably haven't been able to understand anything that has been said up until then. (Boy, is he right!) The narrator then goes on to note how most of us didn't understand what "googling" meant only five years ago, with the implication being that the geek-speak of the movie thus far will probably be entering the mainstream before we know it. Although my almost 20-year-old son is a dedicated gamer, I kept wishing the movie had subtitles, which may be the point of the film's on-going joke with the audience. "We all choose our lives," Nick (John-Michael Thomas, who also writes and directs the film) tells us. "This is the one I choose -- one of pixels." The story follows Nick and his band of merry men -- as well as a single girl, Liberty (Brea Grant, the speedster from "Heroes") -- as they try to get to top place in a team-based on-line video game competition. Along the way, Nick tells of the key events that shaped his life. His second grade teacher told him that the explosion of the Challenger space craft would be the moment in time that they would remember forever, just like she remembers the Kennedy assassination. But Nick disagrees, since he knows that the major moment of his childhood was the day that Nintendo released the "Nintendo Home Entertainment System." Nick also blames his obsession with videogames on Nolan Bushnell, who invented the Atari 2600. In a putdown, Nick notes that Bushnell also came up with Chuck E. Cheese. The movie is filled with hip jargon, such as "WTF!!" which frequently isn't spoken but just printed next to the character. Playing more like a series of vignettes than a full-length motion picture, the movie does have a story, which is roughly about the conflicts of love and life in the real world vs. the on-line world. One of the guys, for example, met a girl briefly in the real world, but their relationship ever since then has been confined to interacting in the on-line world. If you're a video gamer, you'll probably love CORPSE RUN from start to finish. For others, it may be more of an acquired taste. What is clear is that there is lot of potential on the screen. Let's hope that the actors' next films have wider appeal. CORPSE RUN runs 1:42. The film is being shown as part of San Jose's Cinequest Film Festival (www.Cinequest.org), which runs February 25-March 8, 2009. Web: http://www.InternetReviews.com Email: Steve.Rhodes@InternetReviews.com *********************************************************************** Want reviews of new films via Email? Just write Steve.Rhodes@InternetReviews.com and put "subscribe" in the subject line. From Faust668 at msn.com Thu Mar 5 12:22:25 2009 From: Faust668 at msn.com (Jerry Saravia) Date: Thu Mar 5 12:22:27 2009 Subject: Retrospective: The Secret of the Incas (1954) Message-ID: <685cfb8e-f9c8-4b70-bf67-701154c2e1d0@z1g2000yqn.googlegroups.com> SECRET OF THE INCAS (1954) Reviewed by Jerry Saravia RATING: Three stars and a half Movies like "Secret of the Incas" were a dime a dozen back in the 1950's. The idea that grave robbers or archaeologists were looking to unearth priceless golden treasures in forbidden countries and doubly forbidden tombs was a major commodity for Hollywood. 1954's "Secret of the Incas" is probably one of the better entries in this genre and with Charlton Heston at its center, it will rivet your attention and knock your socks off. Heston is Harry Steele, a Cuzco, Peru tour guide who is out for a few bucks by taking tourists' money (he studies plane manifests so he can get tourists to ride with him and show them the local museum). Harry is also obsessed with the Incan Empire, specifically a lost Incan treasure known as the Sunburst. It is a golden disc that would restore life to the village of Machu Pichuu. Naturally, Steele is more interested in fortune and glory and wants to steal the Sunburst, despite some greedy partners wanting it for themselves. Morgan (Thomas Mitchell) is one of those scheming partners - a tub of lard who seeks personal fortune rather than playing pool in seedy bars for the rest of his life. There is a catch - in order to get to Machu Pichuu, Harry needs a cargo plane and gets his chance when he escorts an illegal named Elena (Nicole Maurey) who is seeking safe passage to the United States. So what we have are exotic locales, seedy bars, the late Yma Sumac singing in different pitches to the Incan people, archaeologists digging through a sacred tomb, double-crossing swindlers, beautiful damsels, inflatable rafts (Calling Dr. Jones), and a tough, arrogant, highly chauvinistic hero who exchanges double entendres at will and makes a moral choice by the end of the film. If any of this sounds familiar, it should. The Indiana Jones series borrowed liberally from similar films of this period, not to mention countless serials (and I am sure Spielberg took a good long look at "That Man From Rio"). Indiana Jones most noticeable antecedent may be "Secret of the Incas," considering the Sunburst is not unlike some of the artifacts from Indiana Jones and Harry Steele's style of dress and demeanor (the way he constantly tilts his hat or lowers it when sleeping) is more than a passing resemblance to the archaeologist hero of the 1980's (sans bullwhip and army pouch). If I have any major qualms, it is that the character Elena is rather flatly characterized as someone whose only concern is making it to the United States (though I like when she fakes sobbing to Harry and how she always asks who cut down the cherry tree). Also, Robert Young plays Dr. Moorehead, an archaeologist who proposes marriage to Elena within a few hours of meeting her. It is one of the quickest proposals I've ever seen in a movie, but Dr. Moorehead remains one-dimensional and almost perfunctory to the plot. "Secret of the Incas" is not full of derring do or the escapist mentality of Indiana Jones, but it is an exquisitely made and entertaining adventure movie that will more than please thrill-seekers and lovers of pulp adventure tales. Heston delivers as a rough and tumble hero and, yes, a lot of what transpires in the film is hokey and silly but never dull. And when Yma Sumac triumphantly sings "Ataypura" to the Incan village, her voice resonates as an echo throughout the entire region and reminds us of how glorious movies used to be. I would think that anyone who visits Machu Pichuu can't help but hum Yma Sumac's music. For more reviews, check out JERRY AT THE MOVIES at: http://www.geocities.com/faustus_08520/Jerry_at_the_Movies.html BIO on the author of this page at: http://www.geocities.com/faustus_08520/index.html Email me at Faust668@msn.com or at faustus_08520@yahoo.com From mleeper at optonline.net Thu Mar 5 12:23:09 2009 From: mleeper at optonline.net (Mark R. Leeper) Date: Thu Mar 5 12:23:11 2009 Subject: Retrospective: Hearts and Minds (1974) Message-ID: HEARTS AND MINDS (a film review by Mark R. Leeper) CAPSULE: This is a film that is more than an evening's entertainment. It qualifies as a genuine historical document. Famous people have been inspired by it. Famous people have condemned it. But nobody doubts that it is an effective piece of filmmaking. Rating: high +2 (-4 to +4) or 8/10 This film has been re-released February 13, 2009. A military is a machine. In wartime it is set in motion against an enemy. If it is functioning as intended the people who are doing the fighting are not making the moral decisions. They are following their procedures, collecting intelligence in a manner they have been told to follow, and they are killing in the manner they have been trained and ordered to follow. Commanders and non- military personnel far from the fighting generally make the major moral decisions. HEARTS AND MINDS is a powerful documentary that was made by Peter Davis in 1974 to examine the Vietnam War in its last days. It is a potent film with many images that stick in the mind; some the viewer might prefer to forget. The film is being revived and re- released thirty-five years after it was made. The idea is that the same standards the film uses to evaluate the Vietnam War can be applied to wars in the Middle East. It would be foolish to say that the current war in Iraq is a repeat of the Vietnam War in a new setting. But certainly there are similarities in the two wars as striking that are as the differences. It is probably true that every war the United States has ever fought has had fighting men who simply were not happy with what was going on. But the Vietnam War was something new for the United States. What made this war different from previous wars was advances in technology. In World War II soldiers groused in their foxholes, but almost none could send their complaints home to a wide audience. Technology was just not in a state that made it easy for the fighting man to express himself. The loudest voices commenting on the US participation in World War II were the US Government and Hollywood. And both had almost identical messages that this war was going to be the last war and the one that would set the world straight. The message was that the fighting men were doing the right thing to fight that war. And frankly I myself do not doubt that that message was substantially true. By the time that the Vietnam War came along, the individual soldier's opinion was much more important. Any soldier might find his words on the 6:00 news being broadcast across the nation. The war was poorly run and probably with assumption and principles that were faulty. It is a little shocking to see Gen. William Westmoreland, one of the moral decision-makers of the war saying, "The Oriental doesn't put the same high price on life as does a Westerner. Life is plentiful. Life is cheap in the Orient." But the opinions of the front line soldiers and the men who were actually fighting the war became important as they never had been in any previous war. HEARTS AND MINDS examines the opinions of the people involved in the Vietnam War. As a bit of a polemic it concentrates mostly on people who were opposed to the American policy. Certainly the people against the war are shown in a much more favorable light than those who supported it. At the time of the original release of HEARTS AND MINDS in 1974 it was very strong stuff. There were few other documentaries that presented the contrarian view. This was then a unique and powerful film. Releasing it today, when the liberal documentary is in what will probably be considered its Golden Age, cannot help but deflate the film's impact. There were many effective documentaries made in the last two or three years. But director Peter Davis's hard-hitting style is still effective. This remains one of the best documentaries about the liberal reaction to the Vietnam War. The similarities of current conflicts to the Vietnam War will still be striking. But it cannot hope to have the strength and the individuality that it had 35 years ago. Contrasts between the Southeast Asia war and the Middle East wars cut against the film. But the classic films never really lose their power for the people who saw them in their first run or who remember the historical context of that time. Davis start with selections from World War II films showing how public opinion was orchestrated, thought perhaps no more than other countries other countries manipulated their own people. The United States left that victory with a belief they could be a force that would control the future... for the good motives, of course. Davis takes us to a short history of Vietnam under the French after WWII and how when they gave up the United States took their place. Davis then interviews allies, soldiers, commanders, Viet Cong, and civilians caught in the middle. A bomber pilot tells how he just gets the plane to near where the bombing is to take place and then turn it over to the computer to actually drop the bombs. The film goes on for almost two hours showing many aspects of the war, but few really favorable to US side. HEARTS AND MINDS won the Academy Award for Best Documentary of 1974. A co-producer, Bert Schneider, accepted the award and read a telegram saying "Greetings of Friendship to all American People." It was from the Viet Cong delegation to the Paris Peace Accords. Later in the awards ceremony Frank Sinatra presented a disclaimer he had co-authored with Bob Hope saying "We are not responsible for any political references made on the program, and we are sorry that they had to take place this evening." Michael Moore calls the film the one movie that inspired him to become a filmmaker and calls it the best documentary he has ever seen. Even after three and a half decades this film still will be controversial and still has a real impact. I rate HEARTS AND MINDS a high +2 on the -4 to +4 scale or 8/10. Film Credits: What others are saying: Mark R. Leeper mleeper@optonline.net Copyright 2009 Mark R. Leeper From Faust668 at msn.com Thu Mar 5 12:23:47 2009 From: Faust668 at msn.com (Jerry Saravia) Date: Thu Mar 5 12:23:51 2009 Subject: Review: The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause (2006) Message-ID: <66363cac-7e68-46b3-a6de-e17787dcd64c@v19g2000yqn.googlegroups.com> THE SANTA CLAUSE 3: THE ESCAPE CLAUSE (2006) Reviewed by Jerry Saravia RATING: Two stars and a half My only expectation with "The Santa Clause" movies is to laugh and to have a jolly good time watching Tim Allen dress up as Santa Claus (if you think about it, he is the only actor that can wear that costume and not look ridiculous). "The Santa Clause 3" is more of the same and, despite a shortened, unfunny third act, it works and it has a genial tone that is more pleasing in this day and age than you might think. Tim Allen is back as Scott Calvin aka Santa, more jolly than ever and perhaps a little ego-driven (a fireplace is molded to resemble Santa's mouth). Carol aka Mrs. Claus (Elizabeth Mitchell) is none too happy because she is pregnant at the worst time of the year, Christmas, which is when Santa and his elves work hard to make toys. So, not unlike Scott's problems from the original where he was a divorced dad, he is in danger of getting a second divorce because he works too hard (he has to - he's Santa!) Since Carol is homesick and wants to see her family, Scott brings her parents (Alan Arkin, Ann-Margret) along with his ex-wife, Laura (Wendy Crewson), her yoga-worshipping, spiritually composed husband, Neil (Judge Reinhold) and their daughter, Lucy (Liliana Mumy). Scott's ex-wife's family already know he is the jolly red-suited guy yet Carol's parents are clueless, and a little perturbed that Scott's ex-wife is invited. Scott convinces his in-laws that they are in Canada and that all Canadians look like elves (the miniature hospital room and the elvish doctor should be signs that Scott is lying). In the midst of all this, there is the wild, wily, frosty Jack Frost (Martin Short) who, to no one's surprise, wants to be jolly old Santa. Apparently his idea of Santa is to change the North Pole into a commercial theme park where his elves work as retail employees sans creating toys, and he gets to perform songs with the kind of gusto straight out of Broadway! Ironically, he gets his wish in the Hall of Snowglobes and the less said about that, the better. "Santa Clause 3" has some chuckles and laughs strewn throughout, but the "It's a Wonderful Life" nightmare at the 3/4 mark turns into some sort of anticlimax and is given short-shrift (not that the alternate time line wouldn't end happily with the jolly red giant but it feels extraneous). I just wish the filmmakers had more faith in their Jack Frost premise and stretched it out, giving Martin Short the opportunity to really let loose with some inspired chaos. Plus, the most entertaining performance in the movie is from Alan Arkin, and one wishes the filmmakers had more faith in his character's doubts and concerns over hard-working Scott. Still, for fans of the other "Santa Clause" movies, "Santa Clause 3" will do just fine. There are some nifty cameos by Mother Nature, Sandman, and the late Peter Boyle as Father Time. And for some good laughs, there is the funny tyke Curtis, the Experimental Elf (Spencer Breslin) who tries to coax Santa for some solidarity with the "help me, help you" speech. The movie is harmless family entertainment but it feels a little too short and precious for its own good. For more reviews, check out JERRY AT THE MOVIES at: http://www.geocities.com/faustus_08520/Jerry_at_the_Movies.html BIO on the author of this page at: http://www.geocities.com/faustus_08520/index.html Email me at Faust668@msn.com or at faustus_08520@yahoo.com From mleeper at optonline.net Thu Mar 5 12:25:09 2009 From: mleeper at optonline.net (Mark R. Leeper) Date: Thu Mar 5 12:25:11 2009 Subject: Review: Forbidden Lie$ (2009) Message-ID: FORBIDDEN LIE$ (a film review by Mark R. Leeper) CAPSULE: Norma Khouri became an international celebrity telling the story of her friend when she was living in Jordan. The friend, Dalia, was a Muslim who fell in love with a Christian and then was murdered by her own father and brother in an honor killing. But in all probability none of this ever happened. Norma Khouri is (probably) a con artist supreme. Documentary writer/director Anna Broinowski investigates Khouri's stories and her background and finds a bizarre story that grows ever more complex in Khouri's telling. This is a film that would make a great double feature with Lasse Hallstrom's THE HOAX. Rating: high +2 (-4 to +4) or 8/10 Norma Khouri's story is a tragedy. As a Muslim growing up in Amman Jordan, Norma's best friend was Dalia. Neither Norma nor Dalia wanted the life that had been pre-ordained for them by their families. They wanted careers, not just to be married off to men they did not choose and probably would not love. As one of the few careers that were open to them, they opened a beauty shop. After that Dalia did find herself falling in love. But the man was not one who would have been approved by her family. In fact the man was not even a Muslim. He was a Christian soldier. Dalia knew that if her father found out about the relationship it could go very bad for her. Her father believed that he was the guardian of virtue for his family. Dalia's love for a Christian would make her father very angry, and he would undoubtedly believe that it would destroy the honor of the family. So Dalia kept her love a secret from her family. One day Norma went to see Dalia only to find that Dalia was dead. Dalia's family had found out about Dalia's love and murdered her with knives. When Norma saw her dead friend laying in the morgue, Norma decided she no longer could live with her family and could no longer even live in Jordan. She fled for her life and wrote the story of the incident in book form. That is Norma Khouri's story. She submitted it to an Australian publisher who released it widely. The book known as FORBIDDEN LOVE or HONOR LOST became a bestseller in several languages and several countries. Norma Khouri's story took great courage to bring to the world the story of Muslim honor killings. Or perhaps a better word would be that it took great "chutzpah." The story was (probably) totally fabricated by Khouri. Khouri had a history as a confidence trickster and though she denied the truth for a long time, the book is likely a total fabrication. Writer/director Anna Broinowski delves into the life of Khouri, taking her camera to Australia, England, Chicago, and Amman. As Broinowski investigates she finds more and more contradictions in Khouri's version of the truth. And each time an inconsistency is found, with a straight face Khouri adds more to the story and makes it more complex. Each contradiction is patched with a new story tailor-made to win the sympathies of the listener. Soon the investigation turns up a story involving an elderly neighbor whom Khouri (probably) conned out of half a million dollars. Khouri claims that she was forced to steal that money and the story goes off in the direction of rape and incest. Yet she has a talent to tell her stories with a straight and attractive face that makes you momentarily want to believe her. By the end of the film Khouri's story is nothing like it started out. FORBIDDEN LIE$ is amusing and frustrating. But it is undeniably entertaining and one gets a certain amazement at the creativity of Khouri's mind under pressure--much the same quality that Clifford Irving has in THE HOAX. I rate FORBIDDEN LIE$ a high +2 on the -4 to +4 scale or 8/10. Film Credits: What others are saying: Mark R. Leeper mleeper@optonline.net Copyright 2009 Mark R. Leeper From steve.rhodes at internetreviews.com Thu Mar 5 12:31:24 2009 From: steve.rhodes at internetreviews.com (Steve Rhodes) Date: Thu Mar 5 12:31:26 2009 Subject: Review: New Brooklyn (2008) Message-ID: NEW BROOKLYN A film review by Steve Rhodes Copyright 2009 Steve Rhodes RATING (0 TO ****): *** 1/2 Let's be honest here. Indie filmmaking is hard, really hard, at least if your goal is to get just about everything right, as NEW BROOKLYN does. Usually, when attempting to enjoy an indie film, viewers have to decide how much they are willing to put up with the limitations of the production, bad lighting, amateurish cast or miserable music. The audience generally has to decide if it can like the movie warts and all and to decide if certain less satisfactory parts of it are worth putting up with. NEW BROOKLYN, written and directed by Christopher Cannucciari, gives viewers a consistently satisfying film experience, which works on every level. Deserving special mention is the hauntingly beautiful music by Kyle Bobby Dunn, which uses the piano to maximum advantage, and the cinematography by Mark Karinja, which is lush and inviting, full of beautifully oversaturated primary colors. In short, the movie is a treat for all of your senses. Don't get me wrong, this isn't some big movie which was miraculously shot on a shoestring budget. This movie is a character study of some characters, most especially the lead, that you'll end up caring a lot about. All -- not just some -- of the performances are touching and genuine, but Blanca Lewin, as Marta Piro, steals the movie. An award winning television actress with her own show ("Lola") in Chile, she gives a captivating performance that will have you glued to the screen watching her. She is good in every scene, but, when she has dialog-free moments of intense sadness, be ready to have your heart break with her, as her emotions are palpable. As the story begins, we watch as some cute young women in their twenties and thirties swap small talk at some upscale looking club, presumably in Brooklyn, given the film's title. Marta is one of these women who are laughing the night away. But, back at the apartment owned by Angela (Shelley Thomas) and Angela's brother Eddie (Frank Harts) where Marta is staying temporarily, she is a different person. With an intense sadness and some hidden troubles, Marta is accused of moping around too much by her friend and coffee shop co-worker Lisa (Kat Ross). Marta's life is a mixture of happiness and sadness. Or is it? Could it just be that she is despondent, but, being a good actress, is able to hide her troubles behind a fetching smile? Marta, it seems, is a woman with her life on hold. She moved from Chile to get work as an actress in New York, but she spends all of her free time talking about and waiting for her boyfriend, Alvaro (Pablo Cerda), to join her from Chile. Once he arrives, however, he is so supremely uninterested in her that he rarely makes eye contact with her and bolts from the apartment as soon as he dumps his stuff on the bed. There is some good news in Marta's life. She lands a lead role in a very low budget film, where Brad Steward (Matt Cavenaugh, soon to be seen on Broadway in a remake of "West Side Story") is part of the crew. Brad sees that special spark in Marta's eyes that others miss, so he tries, with little luck, to get her to go out with him. There is so much more to the story, including some mysterious figure who drives an old muscle car, something like a 1970s Dodge Charger. This black, ominous car with its driver hidden in the shadows keeps showing up, stalking Marta and robbing her of a chance at the happiness she so clearly deserves. This exquisitely constructed film ends as perfectly as it began. It's a real jewel. NEW BROOKLYN flies by at just 1:22. It is mainly in English, there is some Spanish with English subtitles as well. The film is being shown as part of San Jose's Cinequest Film Festival (www.Cinequest.org), which runs February 25-March 8, 2009. Web: http://www.InternetReviews.com Email: Steve.Rhodes@InternetReviews.com *********************************************************************** Want reviews of new films via Email? Just write Steve.Rhodes@InternetReviews.com and put "subscribe" in the subject line. From steve.rhodes at internetreviews.com Thu Mar 5 13:02:51 2009 From: steve.rhodes at internetreviews.com (Steve Rhodes) Date: Thu Mar 5 13:02:54 2009 Subject: Review: How to Be (2009) Message-ID: <2oudnWcvAYgFDTDUnZ2dnUVZ_tLinZ2d@earthlink.com> HOW TO BE A film review by Steve Rhodes Copyright 2009 Steve Rhodes RATING (0 TO ****): ** Filled with British humor so dry that it's down-right parched, HOW TO BE may be a treat for some, but others, like me, may find its brand of comedy close to flavorless. When Robert Pattinson's name came on the screen at our packed theater, many of his fans applauded loudly. Although he had made no lasting impression on me before this film, he is best known for his work as Cedric Diggory in last two Harry Potter movies and for his more recent starring role in TWILIGHT. While it's clear to me now that his fans love him, I still don't understand the fascination they have for him. In HOW TO BE, Pattinson, as Art, is asked to carry the picture, since his is the central character. Other actors, such as Rebecca Pidgeon ("The Unit"), are there to support his lead performance, but HOW TO BE is basically a one-person film and a one-gag movie. Art is a disillusioned young adult, who has many of the mannerisms of what we might call a slacker. In the opening, Art's girlfriend says that she originally thought that she was dating "a deep and enigmatic poet," but now she realizes that her geeky boyfriend is just "sad and unhappy." He's also a musician who I thought was quite awful, but undoubtedly others would disagree. Clueless and oblivious to the world about him, Art mopes his days away feeling sorry for himself. Complaining that he is going through a "quarter-life crisis," he turns to a self-help book in an attempt to change his life. For his salvation, Art starts voraciously reading "It's Not Your Fault," by Dr. Ellington (Powell Jones). With headings such as "Your Inner Introvert" and "You Deserve Everything You Want," Art thinks he has discovered a text with all the answers he needs. The central part of the story occurs after Art pays Dr. Ellington several thousand pounds to come to Art's house and study his life with his dysfunctional parents, who barely acknowledge Art's existence. The doctor is worth a smile or two, since his New Age theories are such rubbish. But a few smiles were all HOW TO BE ever got from me and certainly no laughs. Still, if you're a big fan of Robert Pattinson, I suspect you won't be disappointed. There were people in line with me before the doors opened who loved the film so much they were coming back to see it a second time. HOW TO BE runs 1:25. The film is being shown as part of San Jose's Cinequest Film Festival (www.Cinequest.org), which runs February 25-March 8, 2009. Web: http://www.InternetReviews.com Email: Steve.Rhodes@InternetReviews.com *********************************************************************** Want reviews of new films via Email? Just write Steve.Rhodes@InternetReviews.com and put "subscribe" in the subject line. From steve.rhodes at internetreviews.com Thu Mar 5 13:17:18 2009 From: steve.rhodes at internetreviews.com (Steve Rhodes) Date: Thu Mar 5 13:17:20 2009 Subject: Review: Blue Road (2009) Message-ID: BLUE ROAD A film review by Steve Rhodes Copyright 2009 Steve Rhodes RATING (0 TO ****): *** BLUE ROAD, a two-person picture, written and directed by Oliver Cukor, has its limitations, mainly around the lack of a well-developed narrative. But, if you stop trying to analyze its problems and just be in the moment with it, it rewards your patience, as you take a road trip across the western part of the United States. The film has three stars and basically zero supporting cast. Sean Matic plays Nick, Sarah Louise Lilley plays Kate and the gorgeous landscapes of just about every national park west of the Mississippi play themselves. When we meet Nick and Sarah, they are a couple in only the numeric sense. While they dated ten years ago and haven't seen each other since then until now, they are back together again under somewhat unclear circumstances. After Nick picks Sarah up at the Los Angeles Airport, he proposes that they just "drive and see what happens." Since he is on vacation and she has inherited enough money that she doesn't need to work anymore, they both have the time for a long car trip. What they don't have is much chemistry. As they drive around the country, Sarah spends most of the time looking at the scenery and avoiding eye contact with Nick, her old flame. Along the way, of course, they will begin to bond and perhaps -- or perhaps not -- fall in love again. The film's subtle symbolism is delicious. Sarah sees her world, quite literally, through rose colored glasses. In contrast, the usually all-too-practical Nick prefers black horn-rimmed glasses. He is such a nerd at heart that he initially forgets to take them off when he and Sarah make love for the first time in ten years. Eventually his awkwardness subsides some, and the film's major loving making moment, which occurs later, is beautifully done. Most directors don't have a clue as to how to film sex. Many think that it's something akin to a wrestling match, while other directors test your willingness to suspend disbelief by suggesting that sex is normally performed with most of your clothes on. Along the way, Nick and Sarah's intimacy increases as they open up and share some of their hopes and fears. Much of this dialog occurs in the car as they are driving along. Most directors don't know how to make car conversation appear natural. There are so many ways to go wrong -- by having the actors maintain an unrealistic amount of eye contact, by amping down the natural road noise or by overstuffing the dialog. Cukor, using a simple set up of multiple cameras inside the car and letting the actors just drive along as they talk, captures this all perfectly and completely believably. While it's a movie without any big moments or dramatic story twists, BLUE ROAD is consistently satisfying. If there is a complaint to be made about it by some, it might come from an unconscious bit of jealousy. As George Bernard Shaw famously said, "youth is wasted on the young." Watching these two young adults, as free as the birds, travel our country's highways and byways, soaking up the scenery and enjoying their youth, one can't help but be a bit envious. BLUE ROAD runs 1:48. The film is being shown as part of San Jose's Cinequest Film Festival (www.Cinequest.org), which runs February 25-March 8, 2009. Web: http://www.InternetReviews.com Email: Steve.Rhodes@InternetReviews.com *********************************************************************** Want reviews of new films via Email? Just write Steve.Rhodes@InternetReviews.com and put "subscribe" in the subject line. From steve.rhodes at internetreviews.com Fri Mar 13 22:48:37 2009 From: steve.rhodes at internetreviews.com (Steve Rhodes) Date: Fri Mar 13 22:48:39 2009 Subject: Review: Two Million Stupid Women (2008) Message-ID: <_sCdndGXXIoTvC3UnZ2dnUVZ_vGdnZ2d@earthlink.com> TWO MILLION STUPID WOMEN A film review by Steve Rhodes Copyright 2009 Steve Rhodes RATING (0 TO ****): ** 1/2 TWO MILLION STUPID WOMEN is a title guaranteed to instantly capture the attention of potential viewers and to quickly infuriate every feminist. Both groups should relax, since the film is never as provocative as its title and it insults both sexes equally, making us all look like idiots at some point during the movie. While the film is nothing special, it is nice, silly fun. As we spend the night with Melissa, Anna and Todd, three young adults in their twenties, it's hard not to have a good time as they bicker and argue like friends do. Actors Sarah Hall, Katy Stoll and Mark R. Gerson give uniformly likeable readings of Melissa, Anna and Todd. The movie's setup is just about as stupid as its title, but it works in a wacky kind of way. When we meet Melissa, it is her birthday. She is excited since this is the first birthday she's had when she has a boyfriend. On previous birthdays, she was between guys. Yep, you guessed it. JT (Trevor Downie), Melissa's current squeeze, quickly becomes her ex after she walks in on him cheating on her with, in her words, "a bimbo that looks like a swizzle stick." A plan. Melissa needs a plan to deal with her addiction to failed relationships. She comes up with one, and, while it is a plan of sorts, it's a pretty weird one. She will go to all of her previous "hook-ups" and get them to tell her then and there these exact words, "You're stupid, pathetic and I should leave you alone." Not surprisingly, most of the guys who have bedded her over the years refuse to go along with her precise scripting. Along the way, she also finds out that what she thinks happened with them sometimes didn't because she was too drunk to know. Forgettable but fun, TWO MILLION STUPID WOMEN is unabashedly stupid, but it does manage to entertain fairly consistently. TWO MILLION STUPID WOMEN runs a bit too long at 1:42. The film is being shown as part of San Jose's Cinequest Film Festival (www.Cinequest.org), which runs February 25-March 8, 2009. Web: http://www.InternetReviews.com Email: Steve.Rhodes@InternetReviews.com *********************************************************************** Want reviews of new films via Email? Just write Steve.Rhodes@InternetReviews.com and put "subscribe" in the subject line. From steve.rhodes at internetreviews.com Fri Mar 13 22:50:49 2009 From: steve.rhodes at internetreviews.com (Steve Rhodes) Date: Fri Mar 13 22:50:51 2009 Subject: Review: Layover (2008) Message-ID: LAYOVER A film review by Steve Rhodes Copyright 2009 Steve Rhodes RATING (0 TO ****): *** In the sharply written LAYOVER, by writer and director April Wright, Tiffany (Stacey Miller) and Richard (Daniel Rhyder) are facing white-out conditions. This leaves them both stranded at an airport where they are attempting, unsuccessfully, to make connections to the next legs of their flights. When they run into each other at the airport, Tiffany and Richard realize that they were both in the same class in high school back in Grand Falls. While she is eager to chat him up, he looks at first like he wants nothing more than for her to shut up and leave him completely alone. This is no surprise, since they were complete opposites back in school, which must have been a decade or two ago. Tracy, a haggard looking blonde who is probably younger than she appears, was a cheerleader who married Whitey, a football jock. When she remarks to Richard, "Did you know I lost fifty pounds?" He answers quickly without thinking, "Fifty pounds -- I don't know where you'd put it." In contrast, Richard is handsome and slender and probably older than he appears. When she says, almost kidding, that she bets he must moisturize regularly and get Botox injections, he surprises her by saying that he does. He was a loner in high school who spent most of his time in the drama department. Shortly after high school, he moved to Los Angeles to work in the theater there. As it turns out, that is where Tracy is now moving as well. As they begin to drink, they begin to bond and to share stories about their lives with increasing candor. The film, which starts out heavy on the comedy, smoothly makes the shift to full-out drama with the revelations coming slowly at first but with rapidly increasing speed. Richard complains that life is made of up of clich?s and that Tiffany is a living clich?. Rather than take offense, she completely agrees but ticks off ways in which she is attempting to turn her life around. Richard isn't very happy with himself, admitting, "I'm a mediocre perfectionist, which can be problematic." He talks insightfully about the "charades" people put on. One of his, back in school, was acting like he didn't care that no one liked him, which in fact he cared about a whole lot. Filmed with a loving glow, the movie all set inside an airport will have you glued to the screen as these characters you've come to care about reveal more and more of their lives and, in particular, their personal tragedies. LAYOVER is a genuine and touching film that's put together very nicely. If I had one criticism of it, it would be that the director should give her actors more dialog-free moments when facial gestures could be used more to convey the emotions. But it's a minor quibble. LAYOVER is a lovely little gem. LAYOVER runs a fast 1:19. The film is being shown as part of San Jose's Cinequest Film Festival (www.Cinequest.org), which runs February 25-March 8, 2009. Web: http://www.InternetReviews.com Email: Steve.Rhodes@InternetReviews.com *********************************************************************** Want reviews of new films via Email? Just write Steve.Rhodes@InternetReviews.com and put "subscribe" in the subject line. From steve.rhodes at internetreviews.com Fri Mar 13 22:52:25 2009 From: steve.rhodes at internetreviews.com (Steve Rhodes) Date: Fri Mar 13 22:52:28 2009 Subject: Review: Billy Was a Deaf Kid (2009) Message-ID: BILLY WAS A DEAF KID A film review by Steve Rhodes Copyright 2009 Steve Rhodes RATING (0 TO ****): ** The problem with stupid movies is that they can be, well, stupid. So it is with BILLY WAS A DEAF KID, a movie that plays like a home movie of a couple of young adults horsing around. Archie (Rhett Lewis) and Sophie (Candyce Foster) are the two kids, about twenty years old, who are the stars of the picture. Zachary Christian, in the title role of Billy, and the movie's old and ubiquitous sofa are the film's wallpaper. They are always there but serve little purpose. Playing like a long ad lib comedy routine, the movie is one big goof, with Archie and Sophie clowning around. The surprising part of the movie has to be how well the actors captured the way people of that age are so silly that they are sometimes like grown-up toddlers. I could easily see my son and his girlfriend hamming it up just like Archie and Sophie. But just because something rings true doesn't mean you want to watch it on the big screen for an hour and half. And, while these very likable actors clearly had a really good time with their characters' high jinks, I rarely did. While BILLY WAS A DEAF KID had crazy stunts like riding the sofa down a steep road or riding it through a car wash, I never cared about the movie's characters, but my feelings about the two leads were very different. As I told them after the screening, I didn't like the movie or the script, but I would love to see them in a different movie. They clearly have talent, even if this film masked it. BILLY WAS A DEAF KID runs a long 1:29. The film is being shown as part of San Jose's Cinequest Film Festival (www.Cinequest.org), which runs February 25-March 8, 2009. Web: http://www.InternetReviews.com Email: Steve.Rhodes@InternetReviews.com *********************************************************************** Want reviews of new films via Email? Just write Steve.Rhodes@InternetReviews.com and put "subscribe" in the subject line. From kamhung.soh at gmail.com Fri Mar 13 22:53:55 2009 From: kamhung.soh at gmail.com (Kam-Hung Soh) Date: Fri Mar 13 22:53:58 2009 Subject: Retrospective: Cowboy Bebop =?windows-1252?q?=96_The_Movie_=28200?= =?windows-1252?q?1=29?= Message-ID: The crew of the spaceship Bebop, cowboys (bounty hunters) Spike Spiegel, Jet Black and Faye Valentine, and their companions computer hacker Edward and enhanced dog Ein, who previously appeared in a TV series that ran from 1998 to 1999, return for another adventure in this animated film. This time, an ex-soldier, Vincent Volajo, threatens to unleash a biological weapon to wipe out the people of Alpha, a Martian city. As the police and Spike hunt down Vincent, Spike meets Electra, an army investigator and Vincent's ex-lover. The film takes place somewhere mid-series but the back story doesn't matter much, though newcomers might wonder why the future looks like a mashup of high-tech metropolises and the wild west. Director Shinichir? Watanabe has a bigger budget for this film than in the TV series, and the higher art, animation and production values are obvious. The fight sequences between Spike and Vincent are quite amazing without the motion capture technology available for later anime films. The series is well known for its strong jazz soundtrack, and in this film, the jazz-pop music by Y?ko Kanno doesn't disappoint. Too bad that the screenplay by Keiko Nobumoto, based on a story by Hajime Yatate, doesn't actually make sense. The film also suffers, just a little though, from the dreaded anime mid-film sag when characters ruminate on life in the most boring way possible for minutes. For fans of the series, it's fun to watch the characters in action again. 3 out of 5 stars. 28 February 2009 Kam-Hung Soh http://morvahouse.blogspot.com From kamhung.soh at gmail.com Fri Mar 13 22:54:35 2009 From: kamhung.soh at gmail.com (Kam-Hung Soh) Date: Fri Mar 13 22:54:38 2009 Subject: Retrospective: Kongekabale / King's Game (2004) Message-ID: Eleven days before a Danish general election, the opposition Centre Party is riding high in the polls. Then, the unexpected happens: their leader is hospitalized due to an accident. Deputy leader, Lone Kjeldsen (Nastja Arcel) makes a tilt for the leadership. When journalist Ulrik Torp (Anders W. Berthelsen), recently appointed to the parliamentary news desk, starts getting wind of a possible fraud committed by Lone's husband, Mads (Lars Brygmann), he wonders he's a pawn in a party coup. Could it be organized by the shadow finance minister Erik Dreier Jenssen (S?ren Pilmark) and his press secretary Peter Schou (Lars Mikkelsen)? This film criticizes the media's cosy relationship with political parties and government, where the press is all too willing to participate in spin rather than to discover the truth. However, it's not subtle in presenting this point of view: Ulrik seems much too idealistic and na?ve to have lasted long in journalism, Lone is too ineffectual to be the deputy of a political party and Dreier just radiates animosity. Also, Nicolas Bro, as free-lance journalist Henrik Moll, gives Ulrik an unexpected lecture on the problems of the modern media. After getting that message off their chests, writer Rasmus Heisterberg and co-writer and director Nikolaj Arcel pick up the pace, making the second half of the film a more involving thriller. Moderately good thriller, though a little too contrived and earnest at the start. Danish with English subtitles 3 out of 5 stars. 28 February 2009 Kam-Hung Soh http://morvahouse.blogspot.com From steve.rhodes at internetreviews.com Fri Mar 13 22:57:09 2009 From: steve.rhodes at internetreviews.com (Steve Rhodes) Date: Fri Mar 13 22:57:11 2009 Subject: Review: Lightbulb (2009) Message-ID: LIGHTBULB A film review by Steve Rhodes Copyright 2009 Steve Rhodes RATING (0 TO ****): ** 1/2 In Jeff Balsmeyer's LIGHTBULB, Dallas Roberts (3:10 TO YUMA) and Jeremy Renner (28 WEEKS LATER) play Matt and Sam, a couple of lovable losers. Compulsive gamblers who jointly run a novelties company, they live for a breakthrough product that will give them the riches they think they deserve. Until their lucky break comes along, they bet whatever money comes their way at the track and at the card tables, telling themselves that they are doing this to make more money to add to their company's coffers. The owners of International Gifts, a company that sounds important but isn't, Matt and Sam have some great ideas currently rolling out. The "best" of their recent inventions are various novelty watches. And the most promising of the recent lot of their kitschy gadgets is the "Dreaming Dog Watch." With this watch, the dog's owner can see what the dog is dreaming of, shown in chintzy animation on the watch. Another big idea is the "Lucky Lottery Watch," which can generate random digits that the wearer can use to play the lottery. Of course, these watches, designed in International Gift's dilapidated headquarters, look cheap and ridiculous, but, as the guys say, they don't sell watches. They sell dreams. About to go bankrupt, the men are trying hard to think of some product that will finally sell in enough quantity to pay for their miniscule overhead. They dream really big, but, when they do succeed, it is usually very small. Although the guys' failures are funny, including a u-shaped two-layer toothbrush for speed brushing and a dangerous head-mounted video viewer for joggers, the movie is never quite as funny as the gags might suggest. Eventually, Matt and Sam do come up with a product that might actually sell enough copies to make their company modestly successful. Of course, their journey from idea to realization will prove to be filled with pot holes, even when they think their road to success is finally going to be smooth. I found the director's previous film, DANNY DECKCHAIR from 2003, to be much more consistently successful. While I liked LIGHTBULB just enough to be able to recommend it, its jokes aren't cute enough to be particularly memorable. Once the plot is set up, most of the jokes and the conclusion are fairly predictable. The only part that is a surprise is the exact gizmo that Matt and Sam design that may finally provide them a modicum of success. A two-word review of the film might be: Cute enough. LIGHTBULB runs 1:30. The film is being shown as part of San Jose's Cinequest Film Festival (www.Cinequest.org), which runs February 25 - March 8, 2009. Web: http://www.InternetReviews.com Email: Steve.Rhodes@InternetReviews.com *********************************************************************** Want reviews of new films via Email? Just write Steve.Rhodes@InternetReviews.com and put "subscribe" in the subject line. From steve.rhodes at internetreviews.com Fri Mar 13 22:57:55 2009 From: steve.rhodes at internetreviews.com (Steve Rhodes) Date: Fri Mar 13 22:57:58 2009 Subject: Review: Nome Proprio (2007) Message-ID: CAMILA JAM A film review by Steve Rhodes Copyright 2009 Steve Rhodes RATING (0 TO ****): ** Some movies effectively shoot themselves in the cinematic foot by choosing a narrative structure that is almost impossible to pull off properly. So it is with CAMILA JAM (NOME PROPRIO), which is filled with interior monologues and long periods of solitude. Almost completely silent for long sections, the film is one that tries viewers' patience and then provides them little payback if they stay with it. When we meet the film's title character, Camila, she is completely naked. Sitting in a chair whimpering, she watches in horror as Felipe (Juliano Cazarre), her boyfriend, packs up all of her stuff. Although it's her apartment, or so she claims, he is kicking her out. Angry and uncontrollably furious, he literally throws her stuff into boxes. Much later in the story we learn that he has a history of sleeping around, but, when he caught her in the act with a stranger, he completely lost it. But, the story is told from her perspective, so we're not sure what the truth is. Leandra Leal, a black-haired beauty last seen in the United States in the marvelous THE MAN WHO COPIED (O HOMEM QUE COPIAVA), plays Camila. While she is fetching, her skills are not enough to overcome the difficulties of the uninviting narrative. Semi-crazy Camila spends much of the movie typing on the internet. In email messages and in blogs, she rants profusely about how awful her ex-boyfriend is. Some of the camera angles, such as the one in which we watch her toes curl up when she types mean phrases, do provide some interest. More often, however, the camera work is one long distraction. A love making sequence, for example, appears as random shots of out-of-focus flesh. Only the large tattoo on her back provides us some clue as to whose flesh we might be seeing or, more precisely, attempting to see. Easily the most uninteresting scenes are the long, silent ones of Camila cleaning the new apartment where she goes to live. Scrubbing with a vengeance with no spoken dialog comes across as just short of completely pointless. Only Leal's nude scenes, the ones in focus that is, stir at least some interest in the audience. A lot of people walked out of my screening, and I must admit that I can't blame them. CAMILA JAM runs a very long 2:00. The film is in Portuguese with English subtitles. The film is being shown as part of San Jose's Cinequest Film Festival (www.Cinequest.org), which runs February 25 - March 8, 2009. Web: http://www.InternetReviews.com Email: Steve.Rhodes@InternetReviews.com *********************************************************************** Want reviews of new films via Email? Just write Steve.Rhodes@InternetReviews.com and put "subscribe" in the subject line. From zoeb at bytenoise.co.uk Fri Mar 13 23:13:26 2009 From: zoeb at bytenoise.co.uk (Zoe Blade) Date: Fri Mar 13 23:13:29 2009 Subject: Review: Watchmen (2009) Message-ID: Film: Watchmen Year: 2009 Rating: 4/5 Summary: Stylised and glossy, a faithful adaptation, but incoherent. Watchmen is a comic book written by Alan Moore and drawn by Dave Gibbons in the eighties. Twenty years later, it was finally adapted into a movie. I'll try to briefly summarise whether you'll like the film or not based on whether you've read the book or not. If you've read the comic book, then the film adaptation of Watchmen is slightly less camp and slightly more violent. Very little was made up for the film, making it quite a faithful adaptation, but some parts were told out of order, and a lot - mostly character development and the unease of the people - was missed out from the theatrical cut. Hopefully the full version, to be released on video, rectifies most of the omissions. The only thing you really need to know about the adaptation is this: if you liked the book, you will probably like the film. If not, then not. If you haven't read the book, then you're probably going to be confused for most of the movie. A lot of things are shown that don't make sense without knowledge of their context or backstory. For a very minor example, there was an advert for Millennium near the end of the film, which is pointless without reading the internal office memo about the product, showing what its marketing says about the mindset of the people and of one of the main characters. There are many more prominent examples of things that make sense in the original comic but don't in the film. As the book was split up into twelve different chapters, each one with its distinct tone and sometimes even its own narrator, it seems curious that the film's director didn't keep the order of events intact or make the chapter breaks more obvious. Simply fading to black at the appropriate points would probably have gone a long way to helping the film look like several coherent stories instead of one big incoherent mess. If you've read the comic, and you think it would be neat to see it come to life, then you'll probably like this film. If you haven't read the comic, it'll probably look like an incoherent mess, but a fun incoherent mess nevertheless. From steve.rhodes at internetreviews.com Fri Mar 13 23:15:04 2009 From: steve.rhodes at internetreviews.com (Steve Rhodes) Date: Fri Mar 13 23:15:06 2009 Subject: Review: Mannen som elsket Yngve (2008) Message-ID: THE MAN WHO LOVED YNGVE A film review by Steve Rhodes Copyright 2009 Steve Rhodes RATING (0 TO ****): ** 1/2 In THE MAN WHO LOVED YNGVE (MANNEN SOM ELSKET YNGVE), Jarle Klepp (Rolf Kristian Larsen) complains to the audience that, it being 1989, he doesn't have a cell phone or an iPod. The girls all want to leave Norway and go to America to become au pairs. He wonders what an au pair really is and why all the girls want to becomes one. While trying to get his rock band off the ground, Jarle is a disaffected teen living his life as the events of the world, including the breaking down of the Berlin Wall and the ending of the Cold War, swirl around him. Called the Mathias Rust Band, Jarle's group of three aspiring musicians finally gets a gig. They will be the opening act for Mighty Dog Food. Since they are too young even to get into local clubs, such as Checkpoint Charlie, the thought of his band playing at one of them is pretty exciting. Another exciting part of Jarle's life is that Cathrine Halsnes (Ida Elise Broch), the beautiful brunette he has been chasing for six months, is finally and officially his girlfriend. She is a pretty young lass who eagerly supplies him with all of the sex that he wants. "I'm glad you're mine," Cathrine tells him midway through the story. This line, although honest, is ironic, since by then Jarle finds that his gaze is now always on a gorgeous new blonde at school -- his name is Yngve Lima (Ole Christoffer Ertvaag). While sporadically interesting, the movie was never compelling enough for me. Still, it was never a bad movie. I found myself more interested in hearing the similarities between Norwegian and English than I was interested in the story. But the actors do give genuine performances, that much is certain. THE MAN WHO LOVED YNGVE runs 1:38. The film is in Norwegian with English subtitles. The film is being shown as part of San Jose's Cinequest Film Festival (www.Cinequest.org), which runs February 25-March 8, 2009. Web: http://www.InternetReviews.com Email: Steve.Rhodes@InternetReviews.com *********************************************************************** Want reviews of new films via Email? Just write Steve.Rhodes@InternetReviews.com and put "subscribe" in the subject line. From steve.rhodes at internetreviews.com Fri Mar 13 23:16:04 2009 From: steve.rhodes at internetreviews.com (Steve Rhodes) Date: Fri Mar 13 23:16:06 2009 Subject: Review: Canary (2009) Message-ID: CANARY A film review by Steve Rhodes Copyright 2009 Steve Rhodes RATING (0 TO ****): * 1/2 After watching CANARY, I think my mind may have exploded, since it was so purposely obscure. Since the film is about organ harvesting and selling, maybe I can put my order in for a new brain, since the film short-circuited my current one. Writer and director Alejandro Adams, whose first film was the imaginatively constructed but challenging AROUND THE BAY, comes up with a second film, CANARY, that's a couple of orders of magnitude even less user friendly. As Adams drops us, without explanation, into some story in progress, we sit completely baffled as the first ten minutes is a very talkative narrative, all in some foreign language. As we were told before the screening, the movie, by design, has no subtitles. We finally get to scenes with people speaking a language that we understand, but the story itself doesn't become much clearer. It is as if Adams, a very talented filmmaker whom I've talked with many times, wants to specialize in films that no one can figure out. To be fair, however, CANARY does eventually explain enough so that, at least on an outline level, we can comprehend the story. Canary Industries is in the organ business. With a friendly looking heart logo, the company encourages parents to have a Canary representative present at the birth of their babies so that the babies can have all of their organs registered. After all, there is a ten percent chance, they are told, that one of the baby's organs could fail later, making them a potential client of Canary Industries. A mysterious woman named Carla, played with a child-like innocence by Carla Pauli, is seen frequently, as she surreptitiously steals people's organs and puts them in a Canary Industries' box. Carla never speaks, so far as I can remember. The movie is constructed of several long vignettes of various people. Typical of these is one that seems to go on literally forever, as a young mother argues back and forth with a kindergarten teacher over whether the mild behavioral problems of her child mean anything. Like most scenes in the movie, you find yourself wondering what in the world it has to do with the rest of the movie and whether the scene will ever end. This very slow and off-putting film had a lot of people walking out at my screening, which started out quite full but was much less so by the end. I think Adams is quite talented, but, if he continues on his current path, his films could soon be unwatchable. The phrase "too smart for his own good" kept running through my mind afterwards. I really hope Adams can successfully switch gears and learn to apply his skills and produce more digestible products. CANARY runs 1:31. The film is in English, Russian, German and Vietnamese. The film is being shown as part of San Jose's Cinequest Film Festival (www.Cinequest.org), which runs February 25-March 8, 2009. Web: http://www.InternetReviews.com Email: Steve.Rhodes@InternetReviews.com *********************************************************************** Want reviews of new films via Email? Just write Steve.Rhodes@InternetReviews.com and put "subscribe" in the subject line. From steve.rhodes at internetreviews.com Tue Mar 17 00:17:36 2009 From: steve.rhodes at internetreviews.com (Steve Rhodes) Date: Tue Mar 17 00:17:39 2009 Subject: Review: Crude Independence (2009) Message-ID: CRUDE INDEPENDENCE A film review by Steve Rhodes Copyright 2009 Steve Rhodes RATING (0 TO ****): *** In CRUDE INDEPENDENCE, documentary director Noah Hutton explores what happens to a small farming community during a sudden oil boom. Setting on top of the "Bakken Shale," the town of Stanley, North Dakota has been a small farming community ever since it was founded generations ago by Norwegian immigrants. Unable to drill water wells, the immigrants were force to trek three or four miles to the closest stream in order to obtain water. These immigrants lived a hardscrabble life, but, eventually, the town grew to the 1,300 people who are permanent residents today. Proudly conservative, Christian folks, they are pure American heartland inhabitants. Filmed at a time when gas was getting closer and closer to five dollars a gallon, as we witness the price signs on the local gas station being changed higher, the oil industry was eager to find more sources of domestic crude. With the advance in extraction technology and the rapidly rising oil prices to $147 a barrel, the land in and around Stanley was, for the first time, profitable to drill. CRUDE INDEPENDENCE deserves an A -- no, make that an A+ -- for honesty and integrity, as it eschews the easy path of making one side or the other into villains. In addition to the obvious potential for conflict between the roughnecks, who come to live temporarily in Stanley, and the farmers, there is also a distinct dichotomy between the land owners who had kept their mineral rights and those who had sold them, figuring that they'd never be worth much of anything anyway. But the biggest surprise in CRUDE INDEPENDENCE becomes the movie's fatal flaw, a lack of demonstrable conflict. There is very little tension discovered between the various groups. The mayor remarks, almost matter-of-factly, that their police force has had to be beefed up by adding another officer, and the local sheriff says that the motels, the houses and the jails are full. But the interviewers discover very little substantive disagreement among the various factions. One woman who doesn't own the mineral rights under her land shows some resentment of those who do. She says that some residents, who are in it only for the money, may become millionaires, and she could have, too, if money was all she cared about. The roughnecks have only one worry on their minds, the inevitable bust that they fear will abruptly take away their income. As they point out, they have to work non-stop even when it gets to forty or fifty below zero. For this, they are well compensated. Well compensated, that is, until the next time the oil price turns sharply lower. (Now, of course, is that time, but the film was made when oil was predicted to be on its way to way north of $200 barrel with $500 a distinct possibility. Ah, how things change.) CRUDE INDEPENDENCE runs a quick 1:11. The film is being shown as part of San Jose's Cinequest Film Festival (www.Cinequest.org), which runs February 25-March 8, 2009. Web: http://www.InternetReviews.com Email: Steve.Rhodes@InternetReviews.com *********************************************************************** Want reviews of new films via Email? Just write Steve.Rhodes@InternetReviews.com and put "subscribe" in the subject line. From mleeper at optonline.net Tue Mar 17 00:19:58 2009 From: mleeper at optonline.net (Mark R. Leeper) Date: Tue Mar 17 00:20:00 2009 Subject: Review: Watchmen (2009) Message-ID: WATCHMEN (a film review by Mark R. Leeper) CAPSULE: CAPSULE: After years of its fans waiting, Alan Moore's mammoth graphic novel WATCHMEN has come to the screen. This is a film of violence, sex, breaking glass, and spattering blood--dark both literally and figuratively. Zach Snyder (director of "300") gives us a more-than-ample 163 minutes in this gaudy, ugly world. If you are looking for a highly digitally enhanced, noisy, explosion, hot-grease-in- the-face, fighting, meat-cleaver sort of film with plenty of people being thrown through plate glass windows in slow motion this could be one of the biggees of the year for you. Rating: -1 (-4 to +4) or 3/10 I expect this to be one of my unpopular reviews. Your mileage may well vary on WATCHMEN. Roger Ebert gave it four stars, his highest rating. I have friends who were really looking forward to this film. I read the graphic novel years ago and it did not stick with me. I saw the film minutes ago and it did not stick with me much either. Much of that is by choice. This is a cold, ugly, violent film. The characters are more than one-dimensional, but I hesitate to say they made it half way to two-dimensional. Besides the bizarre problems that the plot hands them, their personal problems are melodramatic and cliched. The original comic book of the story was twelve issues long and set in an alternate 1985, though it was released in 1986 and 1987. The Watchmen are a team of superheroes centered on Dr. Manhattan (played in the movie by Billy Crudup), the only one of their number who actually has super powers. And his powers are almost god-like due to his having received a lethal dose of strange radiation. Other heroes seem more Batman-like with natural, if exaggerated, skills. They are the Comedian, Nite-Owl II, Rorschach, and Silk Spectre II. Actually, the film begins with the Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) being murdered. The other Watchmen to varying degrees think about their relationship to the dead less-than-super not-really-hero and try to find his killer. All this is told against a backdrop of rapidly escalating Cold War tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union. Somewhere in there manipulating events is Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger. Speaking of Richard Nixon let me add an aside here. Having Nixon as a character might have been an interesting touch in the comic book. As bad as I found watching the film, it always got worse when the storyline visited Nixon. Robert Wisden plays the ex-President in what looks like a satirical Halloween mask. It features a big Cyrano nose. Seeing Nixon played this way is a lot like hearing a song you never liked in the first place sung so off-key as to send chills down your spine. The design of the superhero costumes may have come from the comic but look just horrid on the screen. Night Owl II (Patrick Wilson) comes off the best looking like a parody of Batman. The Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) looks like a middle-aged cigar chomping version of Robin the Boy Wonder. Silk Spectre II (Malin Akerman) looks to be dressed in vinyl in a style you generally see only in the wrong part of town. Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley) wears a mask with black Rorschach-test-like symmetric black splotches that constantly move around and re-form themselves. It quickly becomes a major distraction. Dr. Manhattan is big and can grow to giant proportions while he gives off a Messianic-looking blue glow. He actually has too different costumes. One is no more than a revealing thong. That is the one he wears for serious occasions. Later in the film he seems to decide that is overdressed and just lets it all hang out. This film earns it R-rating and then some. (Side note: A family in the row ahead of us would let their four- ish son watch scenes that graphically show someone having hot oil thrown in his face or getting a meat cleaver embedded several inches into his head, but covered their son's eyes when characters were nude and having sex.) Zack Snyder's world of 1985 is dark and rainy portrayed with a subdued color pallet. It is deeply oppressive, which is probably precisely the idea. Something creative and original could have been expected from the Tyler Bates musical score given the pretensions of the film. If it was there, I missed it. Mostly what I heard was unimaginative "texture" music with dull chords and no attempt at any melody. Where they use source music it generally is badly chosen. A sex scene (in a flying thingee without wings, no less) to the tune of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah"??? Feh! The adapted screenplay by David Hayter and Alex Tse is trying to delve into what being a superhero is really all about. They give us some standard mother-daughter tensions, an obnoxious man whom you know not to like because he smokes a cigar, and lots of violent fights. A world-threatening plot is uncovered that might have graced a lesser James Bond film, but with a few tweaks for superheroes. Like THE RETURN OF THE KING the film seems to have multiple endings, in one of which Night Owl II tells us nothing ever ends, which for me was precisely the message I did not want at that moment. This was a big disappointment. Watching it I found very quickly my wristwatch becoming my closest companion. With a film featuring all this violence and with superheroes the last thing you would expect is a film so dreary and tedious. WATCHMEN is overlong, painful to watch, and occasionally pretentious. It is intended to give us insights into the experience of being a superhero. So far nobody has stepped forward to endorse the accuracy of those insights. I rate WATCHMEN a -1 on the -4 to +4 scale or 3/10. Reportedly Alan Moore has not allowed his name to appear on the film. I know I wouldn't want my name on it. Film Credits: What others are saying: Mark R. Leeper mleeper@optonline.net Copyright 2009 Mark R. Leeper From mleeper at optonline.net Tue Mar 17 00:20:37 2009 From: mleeper at optonline.net (Mark R. Leeper) Date: Tue Mar 17 00:20:39 2009 Subject: Review: Skills Like This (2009) Message-ID: SKILLS LIKE THIS (a film review by Mark R. Leeper) CAPSULE: SKILLS LIKE THIS is a quirky comedy from first-time director Monty Miranda based on a screenplay by first-time screenwriter Spencer Berger who also stars in the film. Berger is surprisingly strong as both a comic writer and actor. This is not a great comedy, but it is quite accomplished for a film by newcomers. Spencer Berger in particular shows real potential. Rating: low +2 (-4 to +4) or 7/10 Max Solomon (played by Spencer Berger) is a playwright who has pinned his hopes for success on his play "The Onion Dance." It is having its premiere just before Max's 25th birthday. Max's whole future is tied up in his accomplishment of this play. Unfortunately, this magnum opus comes off as a pretentious pile of platitudes that puts most of the audience to sleep. The most extreme audience reaction is from Max's grandfather who has a heart attack. In depression, Max decides he wants to change his life. Over lunch Max is sharing his problems with his two best friends, Dave and Tommy. Dave (Gabriel Tigerman) is success-driven but becoming a non-entity in the company where he works, and Tommy (Brian D. Phelan) is deliciously warped out of reality. As they share their discontent the conversation drifts to robbing banks. With nothing to lose Max decides on the spur of the moment to cross the street and rob the town bank. So as not to hurt anyone he points the gun at his own head threatening to kill himself if the bank teller does not give him the money. (This is reminiscent of Cleavon Little's threat in BLAZING SADDLES.) Curiously it works. Can robbery really be so easy? Max tries more crime and finally finds it is something he does well. With the exception of Dave, Max's friends are thrilled to know a real criminal. By chance his path crosses with that of Lucy (Kerry Knuppe) the very teller who handed him the cash. From this shaky start begins a relationship with her. Lucy wants to reform Max, but Max does not want to return to being the nobody that he was just a day or so before. Each of the four major characters Max, Dave, Tommy, and Lucy have decided that they are at the end of their tether in their lives and each looks for a change. In a matter of three days each will be very different from what they started as. Berger plays a character whose writing career is ending, but Berger himself is probably going to be sticking around. It would be easy to believe that SKILLS LIKE THIS is the start of a notable career. Berger's gags for the film are funny, particularly those for Tommy, whose job-hunt and bizarre behavior lead to a string of disastrous job-interviews. Berger is lucky in that he has a comic face and a manner to match it. Someone once told me that Woody Allen could read the phonebook and it would be funny just because of the way Allen looks and talks. Berger similarly has a face and a method of delivery that invites the viewer into his comedy. There are some problems with the script. Max makes a rather incompetent thief. And one has to believe that the police in this town are far more incompetent than he is. The story is contrived for him to be very lucky. It is something of a stretch to believe much of what happens. Also toward the end the various flows of the film stop and crystallize into sugar. It is for a purpose, but it really does not work. Made on a smallish budget, SKILLS LIKE THIS has a lot to offer, reminding us of the adage that the cheapest way to improve a film is with solid writing. It has been picking up prizes at film festivals and gets a wider release March 20, 2009 in New York and April 3 in Los Angeles. I rate it a low +2 on the -4 to +4 scale or 7/10. Film Credits: What others are saying: Mark R. Leeper mleeper@optonline.net Copyright 2009 Mark R. Leeper From steve.rhodes at internetreviews.com Tue Mar 17 00:21:17 2009 From: steve.rhodes at internetreviews.com (Steve Rhodes) Date: Tue Mar 17 00:21:19 2009 Subject: Review: Tandoori Love (2008) Message-ID: TANDOORI LOVE A film review by Steve Rhodes Copyright 2009 Steve Rhodes RATING (0 TO ****): ** 1/2 TANDOORI LOVE, directed by Oliver Paulus, is a very unusual blend, as Bollywood comes to Switzerland. A musical that works more often than not, it is a romantic comedy that doesn't fit naturally into any genre. It's a cinematic melting pot that goes down as easily as the colorful Indian food that TANDOORI LOVE makes appear downright delicious in every single close-up of its preparation. Opening with some of the most unappealing shots that I've ever seen of Swiss-German cuisine, the movie makes you almost sad that the local Swiss residents have to count on greasy pigs' feet and bloated sausages for their diet. (Actually, I like Swiss food, save the pigs' feet, but I digress.) When we meet the clueless Markus (Martin Schick), he is announcing his upcoming marriage to Sonja (Lavinia Wilson). Too bad he didn't ask her in private first before he announced it to their friends and relatives. One day, a film company comes into the staid and stodgy Swiss village, high in the mountains where the story is set. They are there to make a traditional Bollywood movie, complete with lots of singing and dancing. With colorful costumes, they make quite a contrast to the drably dressed locals. While most of the people working on the film are full of their own self importance, Rajah (Vijay Raaz), the lowly cook isn't. Forming the third point of a love triangle, he too falls in love with Sonja. Using a traditional plot format, the guys, until the end, don't realize that they are in love with the same woman. Along the way, shopping and all other activities are shown to be good reasons to burst into song and dance, just like they do in Bollywood musicals. At first, it's mainly Rajah doing the singing, but, eventually, the Swiss do too. In one wacky number all their own, for example, they burst out singing, "Cheese and milk can be magical too." This is followed by the commercial worthy song lyrics of, "Chocolate makes all women melt." As the time and the songs begin to run out, the only question left is whether Sonja will make the safe choice to stay in Switzerland and marry the handsome Markus or whether she will throw caution to the wind and follow the homely Rajah back to his native India. Since this is a delightful and silly little fairy tale, you can probably write the ending yourself. TANDOORI LOVE runs a quick 1:32. The film is in German and Hindi, both with English subtitles and in English. The film was shown as part of San Jose's Cinequest Film Festival (www.Cinequest.org), which ran February 25-March 8, 2009. Web: http://www.InternetReviews.com Email: Steve.Rhodes@InternetReviews.com *********************************************************************** Want reviews of new films via Email? Just write Steve.Rhodes@InternetReviews.com and put "subscribe" in the subject line. From steve.rhodes at internetreviews.com Tue Mar 17 00:22:20 2009 From: steve.rhodes at internetreviews.com (Steve Rhodes) Date: Tue Mar 17 00:22:23 2009 Subject: Review: The Forest (2006) Message-ID: THE FOREST A film review by Steve Rhodes Copyright 2009 Steve Rhodes RATING (0 TO ****): *** I am always impressed when filmmakers attempt something really difficult and pull it off. There are few things harder than a film shot mainly in the natural light of the full moon in a dense forest. If you use natural lighting, as THE FOREST does, the net result is that the audience becomes clueless as to what is happening, since they can't see much. On the other hand, if a lot of artificial light is thrown in, the look is unnatural, plus, if you're trying to induce fear, the extra lights work against creating the intended mood. Written and directed by Ashvin Kumar, THE FOREST, while sometimes being hard to see, manages to be quite successful and downright creepy too. The effect is dramatically enhanced by some classic sounding movie music devised by Matt Robertson. He puts you in a dream-like state, while making your subconscious put itself on high alert. We follow Radha (Nandana Sen) and her husband Pritam (Ankur Vikal), two beautiful Indian socialites, as they go to spend a few days and nights in the forest observing the wildlife. Since there is a man-eating leopard on the prowl, Bhola Ram (Tarun Shukla), the local game warden, demands that they leave. But, since the couple's old friend from college, Abhishek (Javed Jaffrey), and his son Arjun (Salim Ali Zaidi) live nearby, Radha and Pritam go on a wildlife tour anyway, ignoring the warnings. The movie starts by pointing out that tigers and leopards, whose habitat is being encroached upon, actually kill about 300 people every year. In no time, the story dissolves into a frightening love triangle, as old wounds resurface. Radha dated both men back in college, and she still loves them both, creating a lot of tension, especially when a very hungry leopard shows up wanting to eat them all. Suffice it to say that it's pretty intense and that few characters make it out unscathed. You may leave kind of frightened too. THE FOREST runs a chilling 1:28. The film is mainly in English but there is some Hindi as well, and both appear with English subtitles. The film was shown as part of San Jose's Cinequest Film Festival (www.Cinequest.org), which ran February 25-March 8, 2009. Web: http://www.InternetReviews.com Email: Steve.Rhodes@InternetReviews.com *********************************************************************** Want reviews of new films via Email? Just write Steve.Rhodes@InternetReviews.com and put "subscribe" in the subject line. From steve.rhodes at internetreviews.com Tue Mar 17 00:23:46 2009 From: steve.rhodes at internetreviews.com (Steve Rhodes) Date: Tue Mar 17 00:23:48 2009 Subject: Review: The Nature of Existence (2009) Message-ID: THE NATURE OF EXISTENCE A film review by Steve Rhodes Copyright 2009 Steve Rhodes RATING (0 TO ****): *** Going in to see movies, it's impossible not to carry some expectations and built-in prejudices. Ever since I saw director Roger Nygard's TREKKIES back in 1997, I've been hooked. I really enjoy his movies and his fine comedic sense of story and pacing, In addition to Nygard's hilarious documentary on Star Trek's obsessive fans (TREKKIES), Nygard has done narrative films too, with his humorous take on used car salesmen (SUCKERS) being another favorite of mine. But, I've got to be honest, when I went to see the premier of THE NATURE OF EXISTENCE, I expected more than I got. He starts off the film by saying that, after the horrors of 9/11, he wanted to understand more about the meaning of life, so I expected a more serious treatment of the matter. While I expected to be enlightened, I was only entertained. Don't get me wrong. I was thoroughly entertained, but the movie proved to be good for lots of laughs but nothing more. It is, however, filled with one funny line after another, as Nygard finds a bunch of frequently bizarre characters to ask some very serious and fundamental questions about the nature of existence. The film has a chapter-like structure as Nygard, who places himself prominently in his own picture, asks various people a series of questions about life and what it all means. He starts off with "Why do we exist?" Some people answer seriously, but more typical is the person who says the answer is "sex (pause) and chocolate." The questions and answers are edited fast and furiously for maximum comedic effect. Nygard says that his religious background consisted of his time as a kid in the Episcopal Church. Describing that religion as Catholic Lite, he says that all he remembers of church was his Sunday routine as he mentally counted down his "time to pancakes" during the service. Although some people he interviews believe in God, many don't. And some believe in God, but not organized religion. As one person puts it, "I don't doubt God. I just doubt his representatives." Among the many wacky people Nygard finds to interview, it would be hard to top the group called the "Ultimate Christian Wrestlers." Every week they climb into the ring to wrestle each other in the name of the Lord. Perhaps the most insightful answer given is that "People should be concerned about the meaning of their life, not the meaning of life." I didn't learn anything, but I sure had a good time laughing at the subject, which made it all worthwhile for me. THE NATURE OF EXISTENCE runs 1:34. The film is not yet rated but would probably be PG-13 for language and would be acceptable for kids around 11 and up. The film, which will be released later this year, was shown as the closing night film of San Jose's Cinequest Film Festival (www.Cinequest.org), which ran February 25-March 8, 2009. Web: http://www.InternetReviews.com Email: Steve.Rhodes@InternetReviews.com *********************************************************************** Want reviews of new films via Email? Just write Steve.Rhodes@InternetReviews.com and put "subscribe" in the subject line. From mleeper at optonline.net Tue Mar 17 00:24:59 2009 From: mleeper at optonline.net (Mark R. Leeper) Date: Tue Mar 17 00:25:01 2009 Subject: Review: Fermat's Room (2009) Message-ID: FERMAT'S ROOM (LA HABITACION DE FERMAT) (a film review by Mark R. Leeper) CAPSULE: Luis Piedrahita and Rodrigo Sopena write and direct a very different sort of suspense film in the Spanish language. Four strangers, mathematicians, must solve mathematics puzzles against a time limit. Each time they fail to solve the puzzle in time the walls of their room close in on them like the jaws of a vice. Can they solve the individual puzzles and the mystery of the room before being crushed to death? Rating: +2 (-4 to +4) or 7/10 Mysteries and thrillers occasionally have side themes of problem solving that become as interesting as the main storyline. In DEAD CALM the main character is thrown off of his yacht mid-ocean and has only another boat, one at the point of capsizing, with which to stay alive. He must save the doomed boat to get back to his own boat where a psychotic holds his wife. The main plot is a cliche but the seamanship makes the film fascinating. FERMAT'S ROOM is an Agatha Christie sort of murder mystery about four mathematicians who must solve puzzles to slow the walls of their room from closing in and crushing them. Anyone who has ever been given a tough mathematics exam understands what it is like to try to beat a clock to solve a difficult mathematics problem. It is that experience that is at the center of FERMAT'S ROOM. Four unnamed mathematicians each receive by mail a puzzle to solve. If they can solve it they will be invited to a nice dinner with other mathematicians. Each will, for the party, be assigned a false name, that of a great mathematician. The party night begins at a very remote house. Their host, Fermat, greets them, but tells them little of why they are here. A phone call summons Fermat away. In Fermat's absence the problems begin, but each time they do not find the answer to a problem in the allotted time the walls of their room crush in on them like the jaws of a very powerful vice. Can they solve the problems and of the mystery of the night before they are compacted. Mathematicians are generally not the type of people that hold much interest for most movie audiences. However, the nifty plot and the puzzles that keep coming should be a pleasure for any thinking viewer. Perhaps this film owes some of its success to television's "Numb3rs" which has romanticized mathematics in the same way that "CSI" has romanticized forensic detection. The idea of throwing puzzles into a film is not totally new. Most mystery films are puzzle films. That is what makes them a mystery. In DIE HARD WITH A VENGENCE Bruce Willis's character must solve puzzles to prevent crimes. The problem is given explicitly to the audience to solve them also. CUBE similarly has people in a bizarre sort of trap in which mathematical problems give clues for which cells are dangerous. There is less emphasis there on having the audience participate on solving the questions. I saw FERMAT'S ROOM in near perfect conditions. I watched it on video in a group of four people. None of us were professional mathematicians, but we each had an interest in math. We stopped the film and tried each puzzle. How did we do? I am happy to say we solved every problem. It was not always with the film's solutions, but with a workable solution for each. That brings me to my major complaint with the film. If these were real mathematicians it is unlikely that any of the problems would give them much trouble for long. A more realistic set of problems would probably have been incomprehensible to most of their audience and certainly would not be so easily solvable. Of course one accepts substitutions in films to make them more comprehensible. Spartacus speaks English and not Latin. Outdoors scenes that are supposed to be at night are sometime obviously shot in the daytime ("day for night"). It is a more enjoyable film if simpler problems are substituted for tougher ones. This is certainly one of the most enjoyable thrillers of the year. I rate it a +2 on the -4 to +4 scale or 7/10. One final question is how you would design a room for which the four walls can each crush in without getting in the way of the two contiguous walls. The solution is in the film and worked into the wallpaper pattern in the room. The answer is also in the poster of the film, but not made obvious. This film is available from Blockbuster by Mail and it has been shown on the Independent Film Channel. Film Credits: What others are saying: Mark R. Leeper mleeper@optonline.net Copyright 2009 Mark R. Leeper From kamhung.soh at gmail.com Tue Mar 17 00:27:15 2009 From: kamhung.soh at gmail.com (Kam-Hung Soh) Date: Tue Mar 17 00:27:18 2009 Subject: Retrospective: Va Savoir / Who Knows (2001) Message-ID: After three years' absence, stage actress Camille Renard (Jeanne Balibar) returns to Paris to perform in an Italian play. The company's director and her lover, Ugo Bassini (Sergio Castellitto) frets that the season would be a failure. Between performances, the two drift apart. Camille visits her ex-lover, Pierre (Jacques Bonnaff?), a philosophy lecturer who is still working on his thesis on Heidegger. She finds him rather cold towards her, and he is now married to Sonia (Marianne Basler), a ballet teacher. Meanwhile Ugo spends his time visiting libraries looking for a missing manuscript by an 19th century playwright, where he meets Dominique (H?l?ne de Fougerolles), a delectable graduate student. Ugo later discovers that Dominque's family may have a copy of the manuscript he is looking for. The circle of relationships between the characters closes when we find that Dominique's half-brother, Arthur (Bruno Todeschini), a gambler, is seducing Sonia with the intention of stealing her ring. Director and co-writer Jacques Rivette constructs a refined farce where the characters search for something that is right under their noses, and their story is reflected in the (uncredited) Pirandello play that Camille and Ugo are staging. It's a slow-paced film (the version I watched is 154 minutes long, and there's an even longer version!) and while I was not bored, this film is probably aimed at viewers more literate in theatre and literature than me. French and Italian with English subtitles. 3 out of 5 stars. 7 March 2009 Kam-Hung Soh http://morvahouse.blogspot.com From kamhung.soh at gmail.com Tue Mar 17 00:28:01 2009 From: kamhung.soh at gmail.com (Kam-Hung Soh) Date: Tue Mar 17 00:28:03 2009 Subject: Retrospective: Children Of Men (2006) Message-ID: In 2027, mankind is on the path to extinction because no children have been born in 18 years. While the world descends into chaos, Great Britain remains relatively calm but has become a police state. The government regularly extradite refugees (nicknamed 'Fugies'), though some citizens, the 'Fishes', are opposed to it. Some protestors take it a step further and become terrorists. Theo (Clive Owen), a public servant, is contacted by members of the Fishes, his ex-wife Julian (Julianne Moore) and Luke (Chewetel Ejiofor) to obtain some exit papers for a refugee, Kee (Clare-Hope Ashitey). When the Fishes' initial plan to steal Kee out of the country fails, Theo, his mentor Jasper (Michael Caine) and Kee's companion Miriam (Pam Ferris), find an alternative route. After previously directing possibly the best Harry Potter film, 'The Prisoner of Azkaban', I expected Alfonso Cuaron would make 'Children of Men' another exceptional film. The production and technical aspects of the film are fantastic; London feels like city under seige from within and there's some tour de force single-shot camera work by DoP Emmanuel Lubezki. However, other than one scene in a refugee camp, the film lacks emotional punch. Ironically, while the single-shot scenes are impressive, they removed instead of involved me because I spent more time admiring the technique rather than getting swept away by the story. Characters have rather predictable roles (Theo is the everyman hero, Kee the package, Miriam provides some exposition) or are discarded too quickly. The most annoying issue is that Luke's motivations, which drives most of the plot, are unclear. Good film, lots of technical aspects to admire, but too studied for me to fully enjoy. 3 out of 5 stars. 11 March 2009 Kam-Hung Soh http://morvahouse.blogspot.com From homeryen88 at gmail.com Sat Mar 21 03:02:53 2009 From: homeryen88 at gmail.com (Homer Yen) Date: Sat Mar 21 03:02:55 2009 Subject: Review: Watchmen (2009) Message-ID: <4a52a9000903192331t6086d49ak29dda1574056c8fa@mail.gmail.com> "Watchmen" - Makes a Welcome Difference by Homer Yen (c) 2009 It's a gloriously envisioned alternate 1985. Familiar but alien. The atmosphere is gritty. The city suffers from a lack of conscience. Ominous-looking dirigibles grace the cloudy skies. The world seems on the brink of destruction. Outlandishly costumed superheroes are part of the fabric of everyday society. And on one particular night, a comedian is murdered. The Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) is no ordinary citizen. He was once part of a band of crime fighters called the "Watchmen". His death causes a vigilante name Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley) to look into whether there is something sinister afoot. His quest reunites him with a handful of former colleagues, all superheroes themselves, though none are quite as dynamic and bullheaded as Rorschach himself. It sounds pretty simple, but the Watchmen provide an epic storyline that The Fantastic 4 could never hope to achieve. The Watchmen provide salacious thrills that the X-Men dare not offer. And, the Watchmen dwell in a fantastical existence that Hellboy would find enviable. The Watchmen have culled their own distinct niche. There's a lot going on here. Maybe too much. Lifting the pages of the graphic comic book up onto the big screen required ambitious cutting edge special effects. Most excellent was that of the glowing, blue-hued Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup). His special-effects suit was studded with 2500 blue lights. Therefore his glow follows his movements more closely than an on-set light could, and illuminates his surroundings in a more convincing manner than a computer effect would. There's an Oscar in special effects wizardry awaiting these guys. While he is a sight to behold (with his perfectly sculpted body and his unable-to-ignore genitalia), his character is so blas?. He can stop a war. He can pleasure a woman doubly so. But he doesn't have a purpose. Omnipotence can get quite boring. The evolution of the story and the characters required countless flashbacks. In fact, I think that some flashbacks required flashbacks. No matter. You'll certainly enjoy the opening 15-minute montage that propels you through a dystopian alternate version of history. This scene would be worthy of its own exhibit at one of the Smithsonian museums. As for the movie as a whole? Well, I think that Dr. Manhattan, with his infinite wisdom, stated it best when he mused that it would be a thermodynamic miracle to turn air into gold. Admirably, "Watchmen" treads where other superhero films have failed to go and frequently surprises us with its tactics. There is an ample amount of violence and I supposed that if I were someone with superhero powers and was bored at night, I'd go out and raise a little Hell. I was surprised to learn that the actor who played Rorschach also played the monstrously baseball-talented Kelly in the Bad News Bears (1976). I was surprised at how clever the villain actually was. But perhaps with all of the ground that this story wants to cover, it would've been better if it had been broken up into three films. Given how wonderfully graphic the movie could actually be and perhaps should have been, I would want to see the Director's Cut. Grade: B S: 2 out of 3 L: 3 out of 3 V: 3 out of 3 From steve.rhodes at internetreviews.com Sat Mar 21 03:03:29 2009 From: steve.rhodes at internetreviews.com (Steve Rhodes) Date: Sat Mar 21 03:03:32 2009 Subject: Review: Sunshine Cleaning (2009) Message-ID: SUNSHINE CLEANING A film review by Steve Rhodes Copyright 2009 Steve Rhodes RATING (0 TO ****): ** Not nearly dark enough to be even close to being a black comedy and not funny enough to be a comedy at all, SUNSHINE CLEANING works, when it works at all, as a small drama about people living a hardscrabble life. Mainly, however, the film is little more than a long series of misfires, which will likely have viewers leaving the theater disappointed. No matter how much the studio has tried to market the film as the next LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE, SUNSHINE CLEANING is no LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE, even though both films star Alan Arkin, share producers and have SUNSHINE in the title. LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE sizzled because of the sharply written script by Michael Arndt, who is currently working on TOY STORY 3. In contrast, Megan Holley's writing for SUNSHINE CLEANING completely lacks punch. With one exception, the character of Rose Lorkowski (Amy Adams, ENCHANTED), the characters are never developed enough to make us care for them, and the humor, which comes sporadically, is never worth more than a few fleeting smiles and certainly no laughs. The story does possess a promisingly off-beat set-up. Rose and her sister Norah (Emily Blunt, THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA), a quintessential screw-up, form a business cleaning up after deaths. When people are murdered, commit suicide or die of natural causes, Rose and Norah's company, the euphemistically named SUNSHINE CLEANING, is called in to clean up the mess, which is usually horrifically smelly and almost always contains some sort of biohazard. Of course, others are in this business as well, and most, like Carl (Kevin Chapman, "Brotherhood"), resent newcomers without the proper credentials who try to undercut the going rate in order to get customers. The movie consists of slow, plodding episodes that all sound funnier and more interesting than director Christine Jeffs can ever make them. This is the third film for Jeffs, and, at least in my book, three was not a charm for her. I really liked her first two films, RAIN and SYLVIA, but SUNSHINE CLEANING did nothing for me. It is never bad film, but, other than Adams's fine performance, there is nothing to recommend it. Looking more haggard and forlorn than ever, Adams is quite good as a poor woman with boundless ambition but no real skills, other than the willingness to work as hard as necessary in order to make a living for her eight-year-old son Oscar (Jason Spevack) and herself. Still stuck emotionally in high school, Rose is a former head cheerleader who continues to have an affair with her high school sweetheart and quarterback Mac (Steve Zahn), a local police officer who is married with a family and a very pregnant wife. Yes, you guessed it. Oscar is Mac's son. "You are strong," reads the post-it on Rose's mirror. "You are powerful. You can do anything. You are a winner." But, although Rose repeats these positive affirmations to herself, she is just the opposite of her little homilies. Like her dad (Alan Arkin), a loser of a salesman who drives an old Cadillac junker and who goes from one hopeless get rich scheme to another, Rose seems destined to be constantly falling behind on life's treadmill. SUNSHINE CLEANING is a frustrating film, since one suspects that, with some major script rewrites, it could have been terrific, especially with a cast this strong. SUNSHINE CLEANING runs 1:40. It is rated R for "language, disturbing images, some sexuality and drug use" and would be acceptable for teenagers. The film opens nationwide in the United States on Friday, March 20, 2009. In the Silicon Valley, it will be showing at the CineArts theaters. Web: http://www.InternetReviews.com Email: Steve.Rhodes@InternetReviews.com *********************************************************************** Want reviews of new films via Email? Just write Steve.Rhodes@InternetReviews.com and put "subscribe" in the subject line. From homeryen88 at gmail.com Sat Mar 21 20:42:55 2009 From: homeryen88 at gmail.com (Homer Yen) Date: Sat Mar 21 20:42:58 2009 Subject: Review: Duplicity (2009) Message-ID: <4a52a9000903211022s194b265bx69daddb5e1b3f5ca@mail.gmail.com> "Duplicity" - The Electricity is Static by Homer Yen (c) 2009 "Duplicity" is probably too clever for its own good. What should comprise the film's focus-of-fun isn't necessarily the switchback course the story takes. It isn't the smoldering tension between our two A-listers (Clive Owen and Julia Roberts). What should be the film's focus-of-fun is the intense hatred that two rival pharmaceutical company CEOs have for one another (played by Tom Wilkinson and Paul Giamatti). The opening of the film features those two running in the rain from opposite sides of a tarmac with brimstone in their eyes. It's the kind of scene that, in a way, made the WWE so entertaining. Unfortunately, this is the only time that we see the two interact together. And, oddly, for a movie about corporate spies and multi-million dollar secrets and a New York City setting, this first scene is the only scene that showcases any violence, if you can even call 50-year old men shoving to be a form of violence. To ensure their dominance in their industry, the CEOs let the Corporate Intelligence departments of their respective companies engage in a battle of wits. One company (headed by Wilkerson with Roberts on his side) needs to protect their secret. The other (headed by Giamatti with Owens on his side) wants to steal it. Now, this is probably a logical delegation of duties. But, the focus of the war-of-wits seems misplaced. The fun is watching Batman go against the Joker. It's not watching Robin go against the Joker's assistant. The fun is watching Jay Leno and Dave Letterman assert themselves. It's not watching Kevin Eubanks square off against Paul Schaffer. Yet, thanks to the star wattage of Roberts and Owen, these two good-looking 40-somethings are always endearing when they are on the screen together. Their characters were once operatives (she of the CIA and he of Mi6). Now, they work as competing spies, as mentioned above. I'm sure that it was refreshing for America's Sweetheart to have a little fun in the world of corporate espionage. The closest we've seen Roberts to this kind of role is when she starred alongside George Clooney in "Ocean's 11" (btw, that was a far more engaging film about duplicity). And, I'm sure that it was a relief for Clive Owen (after roles in "The International" and "Shoot-em Up") to be able to take a break from stressful thrillers to take on a romantic lead. In flashbacks, we see that they both shared intimate times together. But given their line of work, they can't really trust each other. And, they basically know how each other thinks. This hampers the romantic aspect of the film from blossoming. Since they are really perfect for each other, there's no romantic risk or that flash of OMG-I-love-you discovery. And, most frustrating, it minimizes Roberts's (with those lively eyes and sincere smile) ability to joyously burst forth with her sunny radiance. You could certainly do worse than watching these two lovebirds go at it in their personal and professional lives. And, I was awed at the amount of resources that go into corporate spying (rigged photocopying machines, mapping out parking lot utilization patterns, etc...). In this film, duplicity takes front seat to innovation. Maybe this kind of film would've worked better in the power-hungry/money-everywhere environment of the 90s. Today, with corporate responsibility tantamount to US economic viability, the film feels a little out of touch. Grade: C+ S: 2 out of 3 L: 1 out of 3 V: 0 out of 3 From sburridge at hotmail.com Sun Mar 22 12:00:11 2009 From: sburridge at hotmail.com (Shane Burridge) Date: Sun Mar 22 12:00:15 2009 Subject: Review: Sita Sings the Blues (2008) Message-ID: Sita Sings the Blues (2008) 78m Some stories have been around so long that they're never going to stop being told. China's 'Journey to the West', for example, has taken on a life far beyond its original narrative and is now more widely recognised as a TV series or movie than a text. As far as epics go, Ancient Greece had the Iliad, Mesopotamia had Gilgamesh, and India had Ramayana, a Sanskrit tale I was unaware of until viewing the animated feature SITA SINGS THE BLUES. Writer-director -editor-everything Nina Paley distils the saga into a tidy 80 minutes, telling the story through gramophone recordings (by jazz vocalist Annette Hanshaw) interspersed with a hilarious improvised narration by a trio of shadow puppets. She even has time to throw in a parallel storyline that takes place in contemporary New York. The notable accomplishment of SITA is Paley's adept maneuvering of disparate elements (animation/ Indian folk mythology/1920s blues) and different graphic styles (there are three different versions of Sita alone - narrated Sita, singing Sita, and talking Sita) into an engaging tale that never seems forced or rushed. Cinema purists may sniff at SITA's antiseptically smooth patina of flash animation, but animation has never been the domain of hand-painted cels alone, as pixilation, stop-motion, claymation, and CGI have all proven. In fact, the bright colours and clear-line technique of flash animation are highly appropriate for the presentation of the storybook illustrations that guide us through the movie. Paley's film, which on first description sounds too cluttered for its own good, avoids becoming pretentious or 'artistic' through a lively sense of humour that vies with the graphic design and Hanshaw's performances as SITA's main asset. Having three narrators casually discuss the plot is a masterstroke, making the synopsis of Ramayana feel like storytelling instead of a lecture (surely the way Paley first learned of the tale herself as a youngster) and preserving the tradition of oral history which passed along such stories centuries ago. SITA's agenda is clear from the outset that it wants to entertain first, inform second. The modern-day episodes could easily be jettisoned from the story, although as one of the protagonists, named Nina, is voiced by Paley herself, one suspects that there might be something autobiographical inspiring their inclusion. SITA takes the time-honored tradition of Bollywood pop movies, in which musical numbers slot into the story regardless of genre, and switches their eastern rhythms for vintage western jazz. It shouldn't work, but it does. As Sita's tale is one of continual suffering and hardship, the most logical choice for musical accompaniment is blues. Unfortunately it is this innovation which became a sticking point for the film, freezing its distribution due to the heavy licensing fees demanded by the copyright holders of the original 1927-1929 recordings. However, such muzzling is irrelevant in the days of cyberspace file sharing, and such is the wit and charm of SITA that it will be widely seen regardless of restrictions - or even because of them. Some stories have been around so long that they're never going to stop being told. Especially in the age of the internet. sburridge@hotmail.com _________________________________________________________________ Looking for a place to manage all your online stuff? Explore the new Windows Live http://www.windowslive.com/Explore From sburridge at hotmail.com Sun Mar 22 12:04:23 2009 From: sburridge at hotmail.com (Shane Burridge) Date: Sun Mar 22 12:04:25 2009 Subject: Retrospective: The Hellstrom Chronicle (1971) Message-ID: The Hellstrom Chronicle (1971) 90m If you're already thinking 'maelstrom' or 'hell storm' then you'll understand the marketing strategy writer-director Walon Green used to dress up this feature-length documentary about insects. Stitching together footage of various bugs, Green dispensed with offscreen narration and created a character named Hellstrom, (he is revealed as a fiction in the end credits) a doomsayer with a doctorate whose view is that the reign of humankind will be brought to bear by the massed insect population of our planet. While there's nothing too scary about butterflies and ladybirds, and no threat from mayflies whose life span encompasses a single day, THE HELLSTROM CHRONICLE bases most of its scaremongering on those insects who create social systems (ants, bees, termites) and are therefore capable of organizing themselves to get even for every one of them we schpritzed with a spray can. However, in a morbid reflection of the insect-human comparisons that Hellstrom is fond of quoting, they're too busy fighting among themselves to pay much attention to the rest of us. Entomological societies may invite parallels, but as individuals the insects are presented as completely alien beings worthy of Sci-Fi pulp mags and movies, and one can see the inspiration for such big-budget monster movies as ALIENS and STARSHIP TROOPERS in their physiognomy. As Dr Hellstrom, actor Lawrence Pressman tries not to play his role over the top although he's almost smacking his lips over such adjectives as "heathenistic" to describe the insect hordes that he appears to admire as much as loathe. Compare the opening scenes of this film to the 'other' cult 70s nature documentary THE SECRET LIFE OF PLANTS, which begins in the same way with a montage of volcanoes erupting and land masses forming but without the livid prose about the Earth being raped (the images could be of an apocalypse just as effectively as a creation). The Doc might be a few ants short of a picnic, but it didn't stop many viewers being suckered into believing that we were in imminent danger of swarms and infestation (the spread of killer bees in South America was making news at the time). HELLSTROM also draws upon our exposure to SF movies of the 50s, which saw any number of creatures surviving atomic blasts, to drum home the likelihood of insects inheriting the Earth after human beings have poisoned or irradiated themselves out of existence. For those unversed in mutant bug movies, he also throws in a biblical plague of locusts. Our fear response to the insect footage is further manipulated by spooky musical effects, of which three always seem to be popular in such docos, namely (a) arrhythmical pizzicato that sounds like comb teeth being plucked, (b) metal being scraped along piano strings, and (c) lettuces being sadistically sliced and crushed. The film goes too far trying to impress us, however, when it sets up Candid Camera style footage of people discovering cockroaches and suchlike in their food. For those of us who saw it on TV as impressionable kids, HELLSTROM is probably the one documentary from which we can remember the most images, even if they have been repeated in countless nature shows on TV. The insect photography is remarkably clear and colourful and holds up favorably in comparison to much later films like MICROCOSMOS, proving that no matter how much the technology of photography has developed over the decades, you still can't get any closer to a bug, and they're not going to behave any differently even if you could. sburridge@hotmail.com _________________________________________________________________ Looking for a place to manage all your online stuff? Explore the new Windows Live http://www.windowslive.com/Explore From sburridge at hotmail.com Sun Mar 22 12:08:23 2009 From: sburridge at hotmail.com (Shane Burridge) Date: Sun Mar 22 12:08:25 2009 Subject: Retrospective: The Fly (1958) Message-ID: The Fly (1958) 94m "I shall never forget that scream as long as I live," says the police inspector at the surprise ending of this distinctive 50s horror film. Prophetic words: the finale terrorized me as a kid, visiting me many times in wandering night-time thoughts for years. It was deflating, a short time afterwards, to learn that co-stars Vincent Price and Herbert Marshall hadn't been able to keep a straight face during the filming of THE FLY's climactic scene. They may have thought differently if they'd known then that it was to secure a place in horror/SF popular culture, spawn sequels and remakes, and even become an episode of THE SIMPSONS. THE FLY's underlying theme is nothing special - a family man and scientist (David Hedison) dabbles with things he shouldn't and creates a monster - but what separates it from other horror flicks up until that time was its solid budget (allowing for widescreen color photography, decent monster makeup, and believable sets), and its balance of horror, sci-fi, and drama. The elegant domestic setting and unobtrusive work by B-director Kurt Neumann no doubt provided an easy entry point for audiences of the 50s who normally didn't frequent horror films. Without resorting to spooky camera angles, shadows, and blatant musical stings, THE FLY reveals its story in a leisurely manner, usually in open, sunny rooms. Only when things get to the workshop in the basement are we taken out of the daylight. THE FLY hardly needed Cinemascope with these interior sets but perhaps the film-makers were saving the "big screen" effect for the iconic, if biologically incorrect, moment when Hedison sees the reaction of his wife through his new eyes. Now often imitated, this scene must have been an impressive shocker in 1958, particularly as it jumps out of a film which has to that point been free of tension or scares. Also unusual for the genre is that the protagonist's wife gets most of the screen time - the first time we see her she is fleeing a crime scene where she has just crushed a man's head to pulp. It's an intriguing hook into the rest of the story, compelling us not only to discover the motive, but also to chart the events which are capable of leading a pleasant and charming woman into such a gruesome act (note also the symmetry in the film's two death scenes, which both open and close the story). On the other hand, Hedison, who plays what should be the main role (he is, after all, the title character!) spends half the film mute and with a bag over his head. A lot of the film doesn't make sense - the fly/man size ratio; the lingering voice of the cat even though it has disappeared; Hedison's arm acting of its own volition - and makes a barometer for what some people perceive as funny and what others think is creepy. I sway to the latter, because unlike many other horror films I saw as a kid, THE FLY frightened me precisely because it was illogical. David Cronenberg's 1986 remake of the film sensibly avoided all the classic moments that made the original unique or memorable and headed into a completely different direction with the same basic premise, although it did retain the love and devotion of the leading couple and against all odds managed to give a horrifying and graphic film a strong romantic grounding. I doubt Price and Marshall would have been laughing that one off so easily if they'd been around for the final scene. sburridge@hotmail.com _________________________________________________________________ Find a way to cure that travel bug with MSN NZ Travel http://travel.msn.co.nz/ From sburridge at hotmail.com Sun Mar 22 12:11:58 2009 From: sburridge at hotmail.com (Shane Burridge) Date: Sun Mar 22 12:12:00 2009 Subject: Retrospective: Twins of Evil (1971) Message-ID: Twins of Evil (1971) 87m As soon as it became permissible to show some skin in mainstream cinema, Hammer Studios supplemented their established reputation for horror by adding nudity to their films. Although their blood looked like red paint, the Hammer films revitalized the icons of horror cinema - Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, Jekyll and Hyde, The Wolfman - in widescreen color for audiences who wanted to see their gore painted garishly onscreen and not modestly off-camera. Dracula, natch, provided the most opportunities to show blood, and, as would later become evident, eroticism. Based on Sheridan Le Fanu's novel 'Carmilla', the studios turned out what became a "tits'n'teeth" trilogy starting with THE VAMPIRE LOVERS (generally regarded as the best of the three), continuing with LUST FOR A VAMPIRE, and finishing with TWINS OF EVIL. You would expect the third film in the series to have even more nudity and eroticism than the previous two, but oddly it contains the least - which is even odder taking into account that the film boasts two former Playboy models. The hook for the film was the presence of 19-year old twins Mary and Madeline Collinson, but since one of them spends the entire movie fully dressed and we have to wait for over an hour for the other to let us cop a look at the real Twins of Evil, the premise doesn't live up to its potential. Having one twin in dishabille in one scene at one time is no different to the old schtick of having one actress playing twin roles against a body double or split-screen. Hammer should have adopted the adage 'four breasts are better than two', but with no exploitation to fall back on, TWINS OF EVIL becomes one of the studio's minor horror efforts. Although it's not erotic, TWINS is still fun, even if has to make do with being 'naughty' instead'. The Collinsons are photogenic enough to be the main drawcard for this movie and they get a lot of fetching closeups, but viewers can also enjoy a fiery performance by Peter Cushing. As Gustav, a witch-hunting fanatic whose idea of a boys' night out is to scour the woods for girls to burn, he's strictly one-note until the concluding scenes. However, he brings to his role the same sense of conviction that can be seen in all of his films for the studio, and there aren't many actors that can wear a witch-hunting hat and get away with it. The precise diction of the Collinsons has been dubbed in, but it doesn't distract from their performances, and Madeline (the Evil twin - doesn't there always have to be one?) doesn't waste time nominating herself More Likely to be Turned into a Vampire. Even though time has since separated the film from its Playboy gimmick, TWINS still has a campy feel to it. It's first evident when Cushing addresses his excitable posse, who respond with Monty Python-like outbursts of "Burn her!", and when Cushing, in a moment of clarity, makes a declaration that underlines the film's title. Other unintentional laughs come from the villainous Count Karnstein getting agitated with news from his mute manservant that a mob of villagers with torches and pitchforks are descending upon his castle; a young peasant girl trying to outrun pursuing horsemen by using the not-very-useful strategy of sticking to a long straight road instead of ducking into the woods beside it; and Cushing berating his nieces for wearing inappropriately colored attire while no-one notices his wife standing by wearing the exact same color. TWINS has flat-looking cinematography (by Dick Bush, and can anyone tell me why he didn't at least refer to himself as Richard to avoid oxymoronic puns?) and a score that could slot into a spaghetti western, but it does have the hallmarks of Hammer period films, with some production values shown in the sets and costumes, even if they had been recycled from previous movies. The vampire theme gets a bit muddled at first among all the witch-burning and devil-summoning, but there's enough mirrors, crosses and stakes to keep it from being altogether forgotten. Besides that, Madeline manages to look both cute *and* sexy with fangs. What red-blooded male could resist her? sburridge@hotmail.com _________________________________________________________________ Find a way to cure that travel bug with MSN NZ Travel http://travel.msn.co.nz/ From sburridge at hotmail.com Sun Mar 22 12:14:31 2009 From: sburridge at hotmail.com (Shane Burridge) Date: Sun Mar 22 12:14:33 2009 Subject: Retrospective: International Guerrillas (1990) Message-ID: International Guerrillas (1990) 167m. The only way you'll see this all-singing, all-action, all-rabid Pakistani absurdity is through grey market video, which is just as well because the idea of sitting through it for nearly three hours in a cinema is unthinkable. When UK author Salman Rushdie published his novel 'The Satanic Verses' in 1988, the Ayatollah of Iran took offense at its depiction of Mohammed and issued an open bounty on Rushdie's head, forcing the author into seclusion. After a failed assassination attempt by a lone extremist the following year, enterprising Pakistani film producers figured they could give the public what they wanted, and make a bit of cash on the side, by fictionalizing an account of Rushdie's pursuit, capture and execution. It seemed, as in the case of much Pakistani cinema, or 'Lollywood' movies, that INTERNATIONAL GUERRILLAS was unlikely to ever be seen by western audiences, but the inclusion of Rushdie as a character gave it a leg-up into the bootleg market, and to the embarrassment of Pakistan's film culture, found an audience of schlock aficionados. You'd have to be a diehard aficionado to tackle GUERRILLAS in one sitting: it takes nearly an hour before the opening credits appear to announce the central characters as the guerrillas of the title. By this time they've already had practice beating up a few bad guys (though everybody would be easier to tell apart if they didn't all have the same mustache) and ready to do battle armed only with their list of Salman Rushdie insults, three Batman disguises, and a direct line to Mohammed for divine intervention; to wit, a flying Koran that fires lightning bolts. The next hour and a half is a shambles of various chases and shootouts until the inevitable showdown with Rushdie on his private island fortress. This finale contains a Pythonesque singalong which, even with half of the cast chained to crosses, doesn't seem any less absurd than the five previous musical numbers performed by sexily-gyrating young girls (I'm sure The Prophet would have approved) who insistently sing about how attractive they are. It should be conceded that the two heroines in the film are easy on the eye but with names like 'Dolly' and 'Shagutta', they sound like they would have been better off in a Pakistani Austin Powers movie. As in India's 'masala' films, GUERRILLAS pulls out all the stops to create a mixture of adventure, romance, comedy, espionage, musical interludes, and Rushdie being blown up. The end result looks like it was edited on steroids - EVERY character gets a reaction shot or a smash zoom whenever anything happens, and you'll lose count of how many times the director includes a close-up of someone's feet landing on the ground. You'll laugh at how awful the film is at first, but find it difficult to keep it up before halfway through. Stick with it though - by the final act, the film has gone so far over the top that it is parodying itself, and among the histrionic emoting you'll get such choice lines as "We'll mutilate your evil face so bad that even Satan won't recognize you!". 20th-century architecture may have argued that less is more, but GUERRILLAS decisively demonstrates that more is less. Characters deliver jingoistic diatribes at every opportunity and the frustratingly dramatic background music never stops. Rushdie himself is portrayed as a James Bond supervillain whose glasses are always poised on the bridge of his nose to better facilitate evil leering, all of which must have been much to the bemusement of the real Rushdie, who in any other film would been disturbed to see himself assassinated in effigy. Instead, he found GUERRILLAS so far removed from reality that he couldn't see any harm in allowing it to be screened in the UK. It would be unfair to assume all Pakistani films are as bad as this one, but if this is the sort of thing that's expected to garner big box-office receipts in their cinemas then it doesn't provide an incentive to seek out others. sburridge@hotmail.com _________________________________________________________________ Looking for a place to manage all your online stuff? Explore the new Windows Live http://www.windowslive.com/Explore From sburridge at hotmail.com Sun Mar 22 12:22:22 2009 From: sburridge at hotmail.com (Shane Burridge) Date: Sun Mar 22 12:22:25 2009 Subject: Retrospective: Virus (1980) Message-ID: Virus (1980) 155m Another import bites the dust: as was their custom with many a foreign film, U.S. distributors chopped up this Japanese end-of-the-world epic and served it to audiences with nearly 45 minutes missing. What makes no sense in this instance is that the producers had patently intended the film to be Western-friendly by employing an international cast (Glenn Ford, Robert Vaughn, George Kennedy, Olivia Hussey and several others) and having most of the dialogue spoken in English, mostly to the detriment of the Japanese actors who were reciting their lines phonically. It wasn't until the next millennium when movie fans had access to home cinema systems that VIRUS (along with a back catalog of other butchered, censored and re-edited foreign films) was able to be enjoyed in its original form. The world has been ravaged by pandemics several times in films and books and their storylines generally detail the accounts of survivors rebuilding communities in the face of adversity, but author Sakyo Komatsu takes no prisoners in his version: the virus HH88 is airborne and no-one is immune. It quite simply kills every living thing it comes in contact with. Komatsu, who has always had a thing about grand scale destruction (from an entire country in JAPAN SINKS to an entire planet in BYE BYE JUPITER) forces us to accept something unimaginable - that without compromise the virus will extinguish practically all life on Earth. From the outset we're aware that the sum total of human beings left on the planet amount to 863 people stationed on research bases in Antarctica, a fact that affects our viewing of the first half of the film, as we know that everyone we see will die, and worse, that they have no knowledge of this themselves. It's chilling to see a nurse escort a doctor away from a room of doomed civilians into another room full of doomed medical staff - the nurse, who in any other scenario we might think of as a surviving heroine, is just as disposable in this film as a background extra, and the next time we see her she is steering a power boat into the oblivion of the ocean. It's a haunting moment which leaves the final details of death to our imagination, fittingly echoing the situation experienced by the survivors on the research base, who know nothing about their loved ones or exactly what is happening in the outside world. Unfortunately, to emphasize this point, director Kinji Fukasaku inserts a clumsy scene in which a group of Antarctic survivors listen to a five-year- old boy (that is to say, a voice actor unconvincingly portraying a five-year- old boy) operating a ham radio, who delivers a speech to the empty airwaves concluding with the declaration "I don't want to be alone!", upon which he abruptly shoots himself dead without even taking his finger off the transmission button. Other unintentional laughs come from the bizarre casting of Chuck Connors as a British submarine captain (his sole attempt at sounding British is to say 'chaps' a few times) and the rostered "distribution" of the few women on the Antarctic base, who are outnumbered by the men by about forty to one. This in itself is an intriguing plot development and a provocative debate topic, but suffers from an unfortunate cut to 'One Year Later' with a row of women contentedly cradling babies in their laps. The only way to see VIRUS is in its complete form and on the biggest screen available (the photography of the opening credits alone is worth setting up a projector, and there's not a special effects shot to be seen). At two and a half hours it still might not seem as 'big' as it should, but there's no short way to document the end of the world and even serialized television scenarios don't waste much time in getting the actual apocalypse out of the way so that they can concentrate instead on the aftermath and all those interesting character dynamics it brings out. I find VIRUS balances the disaster and its consequences more evenly than any other film of this type that I can think of. It's a story of such tragic, inevitable decline that we almost become skeptical of anything that might turn out right. The ending, epic and primal, features a lone survivor spending four years walking the distance of half a planet, north to south - it would be a far-fetched notion if some rendezvous point hadn't been agreed on beforehand, but a plausible enough rationale in the circumstances: if you were the only survivor of an apocalypse, would you sit still or undergo a quest to give yourself a sense of purpose and an element of hope? sburridge@hotmail.com _________________________________________________________________ Looking for a place to manage all your online stuff? Explore the new Windows Live http://www.windowslive.com/Explore From sburridge at hotmail.com Sun Mar 22 12:24:35 2009 From: sburridge at hotmail.com (Shane Burridge) Date: Sun Mar 22 12:24:39 2009 Subject: Retrospective: Phase IV (1974) Message-ID: Phase IV (1974) 84m Made back in the days before any movie title with a Roman numeral in it was automatically a sequel. Those who knew about title designer Saul Bass, the designer of many memorable credit sequences for Hollywood movies (and co-author of the famous shower montage in PSYCHO) would have undoubtedly been curious as to what he might make as a feature debut if he ever had the chance. He certainly came up with something unexpected. PHASE IV has since become a cult movie, not only for Bass' involvement but also its odd premise - two scientists working in a metal dome are laid under siege by hyper-intelligent ants. Much comparison has been made about the 'other' classic SF 'ants in the desert' movie THEM!, mainly on issues of size, but the ants of PHASE IV are much scarier. Shot in breathtaking close-ups by Ken Middleham, which should forever dispel anyone's image of ants as little black dots, it's almost plausible to believe that these creatures really are communicating on a higher level. The vague cosmology that opens the film suggests a sort of evolutionary catalyst, reminiscent of Poul Andersen's economical novel 'Brain Wave', which had all life on Earth evolving higher intelligence after the Earth moved out of an interstellar inhibition field. 70s cinema was fond of ecological-revenge scenarios, with various inhabitants of the planet getting even with mankind for exploiting the planet. The ant-agonists in this case have a different agenda, although the assimilation and eventual extinction of humans seems to part of the process. By raising their consciousness the ants of PHASE IV realize that by ceasing their species rivalry and banding together they can enslave colony members of a much higher potential - namely, us. We're quick to notice the hive-like appearance of the scientists' dome, the insectoid biohazard suits and masks they wear, and the detached, distinctly inhuman approach to death of their kindred. The story doesn't really hang together on the first viewing - although the film is chaptered in 'phases' we're not really sure what each phase is - but the visuals easily compensate (this film needs to be seen on a big screen). The idea of creating ant-level views of the world and pushing his lens as close as possible to small objects, making them appear huge onscreen, was patently the appeal that this project had for Bass. From the opening shots of a truck roaring along the desert, his visual hold on the film is assured. Criminally, the closing montage, which would have no doubt been a highlight of Bass' style, was lopped off by the studio, explaining the film's abrupt ending - fans of Japanese percussionist Stomu Yamash.ita had reason to be twice as annoyed. Ironically, although being a poster designer for many other movies, Bass had no part in PHASE IV's artwork, which misused his homage to Bunuel/Dali by marketing the film as a horror flick. sburridge@hotmail.com _________________________________________________________________ Find a way to cure that travel bug with MSN NZ Travel http://travel.msn.co.nz/