The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford - I found this very boring. I think it was the narrative voice over that made you step out of the immersion of the movie and explain things better left explained inside the story.

Margot at the Wedding - Margot (Nicole Kidman) is bitter, repressed and unhappy in her marriage. When she and her son travel to Long Island for the wedding of her sister (Jennifer Jason-Leigh) to Malcolm (Jack Black), a failing artist/musician, she can't just be happy for them; she proceeds to spoil the party. A quirky, occasionally annoying film that isn't as funny or insightful as the director's previous effort, The Squid and the Whale.

The Brave One with Jodie Foster and Terence Howard. Excellent flick with superior performances from the two leads. The one scene in the bar together where each knows what the other is thinking but neither ever verbalizes it, is worth the price of the rental alone.

From director Ang Lee, Lust, Caution is an erotic espionage thriller set in Hong Kong and Shanghai during the Sino-Japanese War. It depicts a group of patriotic Chinese students plotting to kill a member of the Japanese collaborationist Kuomintang (KMT) government using a young woman as a lure.

In its uncut form the movie features three separate graphic rapacious sex scenes, with full-frontal nudity. The ten minutes of sex scenes reportedly took a gruelling 100 hours to shoot, and it has never been clarified by the film makers whether or not the sex scenes were simulated.

I believe that the inclusion of these scenes was necessary to explain the development of the characters, their feelings, and motivation.

Excellent movie, but ultimately very depressing.

Death at a Funeral - When a family of oddballs gathers at a country estate for the funeral of their patriarch, chaos and hilarity break out. Well, not so much hilarity. And, of course, somebody who's not dead ends up in the coffin.

La Vie en Rose - The turbulent life of French singer Edith Piaf is revealed through a series of non-chronological vignettes and the songs that immortalized her.

The story is decent but not evenly-well told. The real reason to see this movie, however, is for Marion Cotillard's stunning performance and for the poignant music of Ms. Piaf.

(Note: As pointed out here (http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=74965), the video is non-anamorphic. Not a big deal, but a bit of a disappointment.)

The Djarleeng Limited - Three brothers try to reconnect on a train journey through India. Another offbeat comedy examining damaged relationships from Wes Anderson that's not without its charms, a few laughs and many head-scratching moments (as in how does Jason Schwartzman get all the babes?).

This is the newly remastered DVD boxset by Criterion and is a huge improvement over previous DVD releases. Unfortunately, despite this being the cleanest and best transfer to DVD to date, it did not use the film's original aspect ratio of 2.35:1 but rather 2.00:1 so a lot of the widescreen spectacle is lost.

Still, I loved this movie the first time I saw it in 1987, and still love it today. It tells the story of Aisin Gioro Pu Yi, the last Manchu Emperor of the Qing Dynasty of China who becomes Emperor at 3 years old.

Redacted - Brian DePalma's documentary-style film that tells the story about the brutal rape of a 15 year-old Iraqi girl by American soldiers is raw, rough, uneven and burdened by amateur actors and a mishmash of narrative techniques. This feels more like an experiment than a fully-realized film; worthy, but mostly frustrating.

This is the newly remastered DVD boxset by Criterion and is a huge improvement over previous DVD releases. Unfortunately, despite this being the cleanest and best transfer to DVD to date, it did not use the film's original aspect ratio of 2.35:1 but rather 2.00:1 so a lot of the widescreen spectacle is lost.

For this release Criterion likely used an HD master minted from a 70mm print of the film that had 2:1 aspect ratio (not a 35mm print that had 2.35:1 AR)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093389/technical

You Kill me.


With Ben Kingsly. I like it! Kinda simple, kinda short, but entertaining for sure.

He Was A Quiet Man - Bob (Christian Slater), a downtrodden office geek, is about to "go postal" when a colleague beats him to the punch. Bob kills the colleague to save wounded Venessa - his office dream girl - and becomes a hero to everyone but Venessa, who believes she would have been better off dead. Bob's desire to redeem himself in Venessa's eyes wins him her affection, while his inadvertent heroics earn him admiration and a promotion. Everything seems to be going well for Bob until, thanks to a tug of doubt, the dream starts to unravel...

This quirky sleeper flick features an excellent performance by Christian Slater, a simple but effective story, snappy writing and brisk pacing. A very pleasant surprise!

Operation: Filmmaker - A noble project by Liev Schreiber to pluck Muthana, a young Iraqi film student, from Baghdad to bring him to Prague and help him learn more about his craft on the set of his new film, Everything is Illuminated, soon degenerates into a seemingly endless series of requests for money, help to get visa extensions and growing animosity between the subject and the filmmaker hired to document the story. At first, it's hard not to root for Muthana as he struggles with the culture shock of his new life and the expectations others have of him, but as he continues to squander opportunity after opportunity, it becomes clear this story won't end happily.

Berlin Alexanderplatz -- This mesmerizing 13-part German miniseries with its two-hour epilogue is probably not to everyone's taste. But for me it was exciting, even thrilling, to discover a more than 20-year-old work of this extraordinary quality that I had never seen before.

Berlin Alexanderplatz was written and directed for German public television by one of the great new-wave German filmmakers -- Werner Rainer Fassbinder -- in the early 1980s, only a few years before his death in his mid-thirties. It's based on Alfred Doblin's classic 1930s novel of the same name, which has been compared to Jame Joyce's Ulysses and, according to Fassbinder, transformed his own life.

The series tells the tale of Franz Biberkopf -- a child-like pimp, robber and murderer in the Weimar Republic of the late 1920s. The story begins with Franz' release from prison where he'd been incarcerated for killing his girl friend -- a prostitute who supported him -- for threatening to leave him. Release from jail shatters and disorients him. He vows to go straight, trying unsuccessfully to making his living as a street vendor, seller of newspapers and door-to-door salesman in the collapsed Weimar economy of the 1920s. Eventually, he falls back into crime, first as a pimp and then as a robber. The only light in his life is his new girl friend, Mieze, a naive and pretty young runaway turned prostitute. But even she cannot prevent Franz' accelerating downward spiral, which destroys everything. There is a hint of redemption at the end.

When Berlin Alexanderplatz aired on German public television in the early 1980s, it was almost universally reviled. One reason was that it was shot mainly with a soft focus in 16 millimeter film and the transfer to videotape was less than perfect, to put it mildly. Night scenes were often so dark that nothing could be seen. These problems have been fixed in the present Criterion Collection DVDs taken from a new remastering of the film that restores Fassbinder's original vision for the film.

Another reason for the public protests in the 1989s was the subject-matter, which many viewed as sordid and even corrupting. Certainly, it is hard to imagine such a miniseries being made under the Canadian Tories' vague new rules regarding "offensive content." It is even doubtful that the CBC with its emphasis these days on populist programming would underwrite such an experimental production.

This is a shame. This is a compelling and hypnotic masterwork by one of the twentieth century's greatest filmmakers. Public funding and public broadcasting exist in part to support such endeavours.

Lust, Caution - In WWII China, a student actress is recruited by the Resistance to befriend and set up for assassination a powerful and dangerous Japanese collaborator. Numerous delays with the execution of the plot force her deeper into her role and, despite her initial hatred of the target, blur the line between duty and desire.

The minimalist yet reasonably-interesting story sprawls across the screen, bolstered by excellent cinematography, wonderful set and costume design, decent acting and explosively urgent sex scenes. (Director Ang Lee has a fetish, perhaps? ;) ) The movie is reminiscent of "Brokeback Mountain", but it is much more satisfying.

Hmmm, seems we've all been hitting the Lust, Caution; I watched it last night and I thought it could have been a half hour tighter, but otherwise, a fine film, beautifully crafted. The ending is devastating.

Micahel Clayton

Not bad, not great. I dont know how Swinton won best Supp. actress, she was barley in the movie and wasnt that great IMO.

Martian Child - John Cusack goes all Hugh Grant as a successful science fiction writer who tries to find a larger purpose for his life after the death of his wife by trying to connect, and possibly adopt, a quirky orphan who thinks he's a Martian. Dull, mostly charmless and totally predictable. Notable for lacking the requisite John Cusack-in-the-rain scene, even though it was filmed in Vancouver where there's never a shortage of precipitation.

Today I bought:

Inconvienent Truth - Soooooooo boring. This movie made me care less about global warming and more about driving my pickup and suv.

Things we lost in the Fire - To watch tomorrow
Fracture - haven't seen it yet
We are Marshall - haven't seen it yet

Inconvienent Truth is a brilliant movie. If Gore was like this during his campaign he would have easily won the White House. Well deserved Oscar.