| Movie | Rating | Review | Date | Your Rating | Match | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| December Bride - Unrated | November 24, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| The Visitor - PG-13 |
Thomas McCarthy's brilliant but simple study of a lonely professor (a widower) who has an apartment he hasn't been to in years. In New York City for a weekend seminar, the Connecticut professor finds a couple of foreign squatters in his old apartment and lets them stay. The man is a Syrian drummer and his girl is a Senegalese jewelry maker who sells her wares in the Saturday market. They soon become good friends but a misunderstanding poises the Syrian for deportation. This is a powerful film centered on a lovely performance of few words by recurring "Six Feet Under" guest star Richard Jenkins. Hiam Abbass is wonderful as the Syrian's mother, who might want to help Jenkins' professor through his lonely life. Simply put, this is a wonderful film.
NOTE: This was deservedly nominated for a 2008 Oscar for Best Actor. |
November 24, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Taxi to the Dark Side - R | Writer-director Alex Gibney's Oscar-winning documentary is a horrifying, unblinking and appalling account, confirming your worst fears about the terrible, no-good, very bad things that your government is up to in the name of protecting "freedom." It begins with an inquiry into the mysterious disappearance of Dilawar, an Afghan taxi driver who was sold out by a paid informant, named as a terrorist, and taken to Bagram Air Base, an American prison facility in Afghanistan, where he was subsequently tortured to death. Your hard-earned tax dollars at work, no? Gibney ("Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room") then takes to looking into the scandal over the torture going on at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib - the site of the infamous photos leaked of US soldiers "interrogating" (read: humiliating) prisoners beyond the call of "duty." Gibney gives us interviews with several US officials and former officials, all of whom testify with remarkable candor and, in some cases, remorse about the terrible things they did, or allowed their subordinates to do in the name of "national security." In 2006, Bush signed his own pardon, stretching just to himself and his Administration, leaving the soldiers who were following orders out to dry, to be court-martialed and given jail time for "doing their job." To do such things to another human being is wrong, no matter the reason. Should the soldiers in question have disobeyed such orders? It would be easy for any one of us sitting here to diagree with their decisions to go along with it, but it would be hard to resist if we were only in their shoes. Something to think about. | November 24, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Starting Out in the Evening - PG-13 |
Andrew Wagner's deep, sweet, thoughtful film is a vision of the solitary life of writing as it opens up to the input of others. We first see him eyes closed, hands clasped in front of him, almost praying, sitting in front of his typewriter. Here is a man who is uncertain where to go next. His name is Leonard Schiller (Frank Langella) and he was once a decently famous author in New York who wrote four published books (and two unpublished ones) and has been working on his latest work for over ten years. Then, a breath of fresh air. Into his life comes Heather Wolfe (Lauren Ambrose of TV's "Six Feet Under"), an ambitious and surprisingly thoughtful young graduate student who has fallen in love with Leonard's work and wants to write a critical career-spanning piece on him for her Master's thesis. Leonard is at first resistant to her advances, but is soon agreeing to meet and discuss his work with her on a weekly basis. Leonard is not well after a recent stroke and is trying desperately to get his final work out in the world, and at first sees Heather as a distraction before coming to appreciate her company, as well as her appreciation of his work; there is no greater aphrodisiac to an artist than finding someone to love their work. Early in their discussions, Heather kisses his hand and may in fact be infatuated with him - does she love him or his work? We think we know where this will go - a May-December romance for the ages with all the care and meaning of a sexual fling, but it's more than that; how much more I will leave you to discover. Meanwhile, Leonard has a daughter, Ariel (Lili Taylor), a 40-ish pilates instructor who desperately wants to have a baby - so desperately, in fact, that she is currently having unprotected sex with her boyfriend to "trick" him into having a baby, although she sees him more as a means to an end, not as part of the actual life of the child. She once broke up with the love of her life, Casey (Adrian Lester of "Primary Colors") because he didn't want children and, it's hinted, all but forced her to have an abortion - a decision neither one of them could withstand the strain of. When he comes back into her life unexpectedly, will either of them have the fortitude to see their relationship through this time? The film was directed and co-written by Andrew Wagner, who made the semi-autobiographical pseudo-documentary about his troublesome family, "The Talent Given Us" (2004). This film, based on a novel by Brian Morton, is just slightly more dramatic and less like a documentary. The characters are all bright, intelligent, thoughtful and literate people who are well-spoken and well-read, careful about the words they use, goal-oriented but sensitive to the needs of others. Frank Langella gives the performance of his career as Leonard, a fiercely smart, uncompromising but kind-eyed old soul who is afraid to move forward in his life and yet doesn't precisely want to remain in neutral either, though his work suggests otherwise. Ambrose is strong as the young firebrand who catches his fancy and attracts his intellect, an intelligent and well-read romantic who thinks she wants to be close to the man whose work inspired her to be a writer; how close is too close is unclear. This could've been simply about these two intellectual writers with a massive age difference coming to terms with one-another and, perhaps, falling in love, but I also cared for Ariel as the self-doubting (perhaps, indeed, self-loathing) daughter who is aging too quickly and can hear her biological clock echoing in her mind, and Casey as the well-meaning and nice young man who loves Ariel but has always put his own desires and needs first - at no point including having children on his radar screen. These four people are searching for, in their own way, love and happiness and some of them go about it in the wrong way, and some of them may never be completely happy; their struggles are believable and absorbing, never punched up for dramatic effect. The results are oddly fascinating and utterly moving; one of the year's best films!
NOTE: Nominated for Best Male Lead and Screenplay (Wagner and Fred Parnes) at the 2008 Independent Spirit Awards. |
November 24, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Snow Angels - R |
David Gordon Green's "Snow Angels" is a mosaical slice of life in a small town (filmed in Nova Scotia). It concerns the converging lives of everyone from a young dishwasher in a Chinese restaurant (Michael Angarano) to his sexy coworker (Kate Beckinsale), a mom in the midst of a separation from her deadbeat, suicidal husband (Sam Rockwell), the dishwasher's classmate (Olivia Thirlby), and the co-worker (Amy Sedaris) and her unfaithful husband (Nicky Katt). Green's fourth feature (after the superb "George Washington," "All the Real Girls" and "Undertow"; he has Judd Apatow's production "The Pineapple Express" coming in August!) is a powerful little movie based on the Stuart O'Nan novel. The only confusing thing is that it seems to be set in the 70s or 80s, yet Beckinsale has a very new looking cellphone at one point. Anachronism? Very good work on all accounts. |
November 24, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Sicko - PG-13 | November 24, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Ratatouille - G | November 24, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Persepolis - PG-13 | Marjane Satrapi's "Persepolis" is the autobiographical story of an intelligent but impressionable youth living in Iran during the revolution who grows up with an ever-changing and enlightened perspective thanks to open-minded Communist parents and a thoughtful, guiding force of a grandmother. Her black-and-white animated odyssey from young girl to full blown womanhood is enchanting from start to finish. A gorgeous film. | November 24, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Paranormal Activity - R | November 24, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| No End in Sight - Unrated | November 24, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Munyurangabo - Unrated | November 24, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Michael Clayton - R |
Tony Gilroy's "Michael Clayton" is a high-powered yet subtle legal thriller in which we begin to have empathy - first for one man deemed crazy by his employer and his closest friend, and then for the friend, who must determine just how crazy his friend and colleague is.
George Clooney plays the title character, a "fixer" for legal messes, who when we first meet him, is world-weary, beaten down by his job, and yet, still trying to commit to what he does for a living. Colleague and friend Arthur Edens (Tom Wilkinson, in the year's first sure-fire Supporting Actor nomination deserving performance), believes that he too has been corrupted by his work, protecting an agro-chemical company for years against allegations of pollution causing deaths in small towns. Clayton must seek out the truth at all costs, including potentially, the life of Edens, as well as his own. Gilroy, a first time writer-director who is famous for penning the Bourne movies, keeps the film at a remarkably steady pace, drawing us in rather than assaulting us with improbable action in corporate settings. The supporting cast, including Wilkinson (the anchor of the film), Sydney Pollack as Clayton's off-the-books employer, and Tilda Swinton as a remarkably nervous agro-chemical employee who knows more than she's letting on, is quite simply, uniformly, superb. This is definitely one of the year's best films. Nominated for 7 Oscars, including Best Picture! |
November 24, 2009 | N/A | |||
| The Kite Runner - PG-13 | "You should come home. There is a way to be good again." This is what Amir (Khalid Abdalla) is told by an old family friend (Shaun Toub of "Crash") in an urgent phone call to his home in San Francisco in the year 2000. The now adult Amir then flashes backward, and so begins Marc Forster's affecting, thoughtful story of long-held regrets, shameful secrets, and the power of redemption. Growing up in Kabul, Afghanistan in 1978, Amir (played as a kid by Zekiria Ebrahimi) is the son of Baba (Homayoun Ershadi), a kind-eyed intellectual with no use for the radicals taking over the country. Amir's best friend is Hassan (Ahmad Khan Mahmoodzada), the son of Baba's servant Ali who has been with the family for a long time. Amir and Hassan are partners in local kite flying competitions, and are bullied by Assef, the local thug who interprets their friendship as being "payed for" because of their parents' relationship. Amir's friendship with Hassan is forever tarnished when he secretly witnesses Hassan's assault and rape at the hands of Assef without intervening or even revealing his knowledge of it. Soon, the Soviets are invading and Amir and his father must emmigrate to America. By 1988, Amir is a college graduate and aspiring writer, living with his father in California and trying to make ends meet. There he meets his future bride Soraya (Atossa Leoni), the daughter of a once great Afghan General. Forster and screenwriter David Benioff (Spike Lee's "25th Hour") have adapted their story from the best-selling novel by Khaled Hosseini, and the transition is smooth as silk. This is a wonderfully involving and moving tale of innocence lost, friendships torn asunder, and the adult need to atone for one's past. "I'm through forgetting," adult Amir says late in the film. The film takes on many tones as it goes on, ranging from childhood fancy to an almost thriller-like dread, to light and fragile romance. Marc Forster has formed a pretty amazing little filmography in a very short amount of time: he began in 2000 with "Everything Put Together," starring Radha Mitchell, and followed it with Halle Berry's Oscar-winning performance in "Monster's Ball" (2001). He's since gone on to direct Oscar-nominee "Finding Neverland" (2004), the psychological thriller "Stay" (2005), the whimsical metaphysical comedy "Stranger Than Fiction" (2006) and now this; if you can spot a pattern here, by all means let me know! The performances are all strong (the actor who played young Hassan was relocated after his government threatened his life for appearing in the PG-13 appropriate rape scene), but I responded in particular to the kind eyes, soft voice, and good intentions of Amir's father, played here with amazing grace by Homayoun Ershadi (he reminded me of my Iranian uncle Ali). This film is physically beautiful, with CGI-augmented kite-flying scenes of great beauty and exhilirating effect. Above all else, this is a film about standing up for what is right when you aren't helpless, and making up for mistakes of the past; a lesson we all need reminding of once in a while. NOTE: Forster's filmography continues to follow an unclear path with the latest 007 film "Quantum of Solace" (2008). Huh?!? Also: Homayoun Ershadi starred in one of the WORST films I ever saw - Abbas Kiarostami's "A Taste of Cherry" (1997). | November 24, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Kærlighed på Film (Just Another Love Story) - Unrated | November 24, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| In the Valley of Elah - R |
Paul Haggis' sophomore effort is a gripping police procedural, a gut-wrenching emotional drama, and a brilliant anti-war film all in one. Tommy Lee Jones is the former Military Police father of a soldier who doesn't quite make it home from Iraq. When it appears his son's been murdered in a field in Texas, Jones enlists the aid of a tough female detective (Charlize Theron) to investigate and finds some things out he wishes he hadn't. Susan Sarandon is Jones' wife, resentful of a husband who inspired (we sense, not intentionally) two sons to go to war, only to have them both be killed. Writer-director Haggis is the screenwriter behind Clint Eastwood's "Million Dollar Baby" (in my humble opinion, the best film of 2004, and the Oscars agreed), and also wrote and directed the best film of 2005, "Crash" (which also won Best Picture). Here, he's crafted an involving mystery, wrapped in deceit, cover-up and a heartbreaking human element. As Haggis peels back the layers of truth upon truth, the mystery gets more bizarre - though not as factually complex as it first seems. When the shocking truth is revealed, you will be confused, appalled, and have tears in your eyes. This is a great film; one of 2007's best!
NOTE: Jones was a (deserving) nominee for the Best Actor Oscar. |
November 24, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Into the Wild - R | November 24, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Funny Games - R |
Michael Haneke's "Funny Games" (U.S.) is an unsettling stylistic exercise, a darkly funny social commentary, an existentialist nightmare (of sorts), and a bleak, nihilistic vision of the encroachment of evil on ordinary, everyday affluence. In short, a frightening and wickedly pointed tale of voyeurism designed to shock and sicken, implicate and accuse, and ultimately alienate whilst causing serious debate and discussion.
This gorgeously pretentious morsel comes from writer-director Haneke via English-speaking actors such as Michael Pitt (brilliant as Paul, or was it Jerry?), Tim Roth as the assaulted and ineffectual husband George Sr., and Naomi Watts as Ann, the traumatized housewife who first invites pure evil into the home (as personified here by Pitt and Mysterious Skin's Brady Corbet). Haneke has created basically a shot by shot remake of the original 1997 German version, this time in English and with better actors, yet I'm surprised to find this one with a slightly more obvious (if sick) sense of humor (though you'll be hard-pressed to utter a chuckle too often here), and also more of a clear perspective on what violence as entertainment really is like (and how we as audience members drink it up without thinking of the consequences). Some pointed dialogue toward the end of the film seems to have been added in (I think) about one of the psychotics' heroes, a fictional character whose family was in "reality" and who himself ended up in a fictional alternate universe. The suggestion is made that... well -- see for yourselves! |
November 24, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Encounters at the End of the World - G | Werner Herzog's fascinating, absorbing and visually stunning documentary is a feast for the eyes and the mind. | November 24, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Le Scaphandre et le Papillon (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) - PG-13 | November 24, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Chop Shop - Unrated |
Ramin Bahrani's raw, effective, moving slice of life doesn't just observe its characters, or paint a portrait of their lives - it appears to actually live and breathe them. In an area of Queens, New York known as the "Iron Triangle," a 12-year-old kid named Ale (Alejandro Polanco) is a young street hustler, and when we first meet him he's standing amongst a group of day laborers hoping to be picked for crawl space work for the day. In the shadows of Shea Stadium, Ale has his own little slice of heaven - whether it's re-selling candy bars on the subway, stealing hubcaps and selling them to a semi-shifty garage owner, Ahmad (Ahmad Razvi of "Man Push Cart"), or selling bootleg DVDs to people on the street. The "honest" work Ale does is in a chop shop, helping to strip and fix cars for re-selling. Ale lives in a plywood room behind the auto mechanic's shop with his 16-year-old sister Isamar (Isamar Gonzales), who goes to school, hangs out with her friends, and watches out for her little brother. The film largely concerns Ale and Izzy's attempts to save up enough money to buy a portable cart to cook and sell food out of (playing seemingly a different character with the same name, notice how the actor from "Man Push Cart" muses "I used to have one of those"); they have amusing arguments over whose name should be biggest, who gets to pick the color, and, crucially, who gets to hold the money. The closest thing that this movie gets to a plot is the way it comes to concern the relationship between Ale, the responsible younger brother, and his older sister who is keeping a secret that, when it's discovered, changes the way he sees her. The film was co-written, edited and directed by Ramin Bahrani, an Iranian-American director who previously made the absorbing "Man Push Cart" (2005), about a former rock star from Pakistan now working as a Manhattan street vendor. His characters are ordinary people living on the fringes of society, unseen by the majority of people around them, who have small goals, perfectly capable of being realized, and who want desperately to attain them. The film may remind you somewhat of anything ranging from Satyajit Ray's "Pather Panchali" (of the Apu trilogy), to Boaz Yakin's "Fresh" (1994), from Hector Babenco's "Pixote" (1981) to, more recently, Fernando Mereilles' "City of God" (2002); and yet it is a true original. What is intriguing is that Bahrani's characters are seemingly in search not of a way out of their situation, but simply of another rung up the ladder; their goals are humble, realistic and attainable - if they dream, they do it so subtly they seem to withhold such aspirations even from themselves. In Alejandro Polanco and Isamar Gonzales, Bahrani has found two Puerto Rican kids who embody the film's sense of realism, lending it a documentary quality. Alongside the beautiful but not flashy hand-held camerawork of cinematographer Michael Simmonds, Bahrani and his cast have created a film that feels authentic down to its very bones. This is one of 2007's best films.
NOTE: Nominated for Best Cinematography and Director at the 2009 Independent Spirit Awards. Winner of the 2008 Independent Spirit Award for "Someone to Watch." |
November 24, 2009 | N/A | |||
| The Band's Visit (Bikur Ha-Tizmoret) - PG-13 |
Eran Kolirin's winsome fable is a warm, quietly charming human comedy which remembers with great clarity and attention to detail, a time not so long ago when a group of men from one culture spent a night with members of another culture and found commonalities between them. Lieutenant-colonel Tawfiq Zacharya (Sasson Gabai) is the hard-nosed, dour and serious conductor of the Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra, which has traveled from Egypt to perform a special concert at the opening of the new Arab Cultural Center, only to wind up stranded in a similarly-named, small desert town somewhere in Israel. The band leader, along with a tall ladies' man named Haled (Saleh Bakri), is invited to sleep at a diner owned by the dark, beautiful Dina (Ronit Elkabetz). The rest of the band are taken in at a small, nearby apartment occupied by Dina's associate. Throughout the night, time will pass, conversations will lead to careful observations and surprising discoveries of similarities between the Israelis and the Egyptians, and Dina and Tewfiq will find more in common than perhaps any of them. These two are slogging through middle age, with the old, widowed Tewfiq's life starting to wind down, grounded by years of conformity to discipline and order, and Dina's life just coasting by, never quite living up to any sort of expectations. The landscape around them and writer-director Eran Kolirin's easy-going pacing reflect the "seriousness" of the story; there is no action here, no big laughs, no grand dramatic payoffs, no great points to be made. The film never forces itself. What we get instead is a gently funny and surprisingly moving portrait of how two "enemies" (neither of whom would harm a fly) came together for one night and got along. There's something beautiful and endearing about it. This is one of the year's best films.
NOTE: The film was nominated for Best Foreign Film at the 2008 Independent Spirit Awards. |
November 24, 2009 | N/A | |||
| American Gangster - R | November 24, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| 4 Luni, 3 Saptamâni si 2 Zile (4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days) - R | November 24, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| 3:10 to Yuma - R | November 24, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| XXY - Unrated | November 24, 2009 | N/A |
3121 ratings
212 reviews
