CinemaWatch

The Usual Suspects (Singer 1995)

2008-10-12T20:41:00.001+08:00

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114814/ 5 crooks get rounded up after an arms transport disappeard. They realise they can start their own next mission together, but it goes wrong, with a ship going up in flames and lots of people dead. It is Verbal Kint (Kevin Spacey) who survives and through his interrogation, we learn how the story around the plotting of

The Evil Dead (Raimi 1981)

2008-10-03T11:43:00.001+08:00

Group of young people, weekend out in the countryside, cottage in the woods, mysterious book and tape discovered. Do I need to say no more? This is the classical setting for the demons to come in, and they do come with a surprising amount of humour, especially when the last girl (forgive me if I do not remember any of the characters' names) turns into a hysterically giggling girl-demon. Sam

Paul Newman (1925-2008)

2008-09-30T06:47:00.002+08:00

One in an endless stream of moving Paul Newman moments, but one that really feels special: Never mind what happened in 1969. I'll dig up the old magazine and put it on the web site. Let's move forward to 1995, and listen very carefully. When I walked into his room, he said, "Aw...it's you again." The point is not that he remembered me. The point is how he said "aw..." Imagine it in Paul Newman's

Slacker Uprising (Moore 2008)

2008-09-28T20:19:00.001+08:00

Less interesting for the audience abroad, more a technical tool for reviving the memories of the 2004 presidential election defeat the Democrats suffered, the documentary is covering a tour Michael Moore organised through more than 60 cities in the four weeks before that election. Including local celebrities and international stars from the region, he is calling for the people to register and to

Doomsday (Neil Marshall 2008)

2008-09-24T02:51:00.003+08:00

Some years ago (30? Ca.) Scotland (of all places, again, wasn't that already suffering from British incompetency in "28 days later"?) was scourged by an apocalyptic plague. A virus infection turning every human being into a ravaging - and soon dying - power-zombie emptied the lands and threatened to eliminate all of UK's - and the world's - population. Just in time, Scotland was sealed off by a

Vantage Point (Travis 2008)

2008-09-23T16:14:00.002+08:00

The US president is being assassinated on a Spanish town square while trying to set up an international peace conference against terrorism. In slightly updated Rashomon style, the events leading to the assassination and beyong are being re-told from various characters' perspectives. If you approach a story with this script twisting technique, you need to turn the plot upside down in every

The Happening (Shyamalan 2008)

2008-09-23T16:07:00.001+08:00

What is happening is unclear, but in effect, people start killing themselves in great masses. A group of people is on the run, and slowly it occurs to them what is goind on and that there is very little they can do about it. 1) the film has surely been written because the scriptwriter came up with the idea of showing 18 different ways of people committing suicide. They show this, and it is kind

Wolke 9 (Dresen 2008)

2008-09-23T15:55:00.001+08:00

Ursula is more than 60 years old, and falls in love with Karl, who is 75. The victim of this very unintended family upset is her husband Werner, who is strangulated by despair, but unable to find a strategy to cope with it. Andreas Dresen is one of the very exciting current generation of directors. His form of New German Ultra-Realism is characterised by very ordinary people leading their very

The Incredible Hulk (Louterrier 2008)

2008-09-23T15:46:00.001+08:00

Bruce Banner has disappeared into a Brasilian day job, but he is still trying to find a cure against his Hulk nature. Meditation helps, science does not. The military is still chasing him, and when they find his trace, they (namely William Hurt and Tim Roth) get some new ideas, such as greening themselves up a little. At the core of the Hulk issue lies the problem that it is not a very

Michael Clayton (Gilroy 2007)

2008-09-10T13:12:00.003+08:00

After Arthur Eden, a lawyer representing an agricultural corporation in a lawsuit against some residents suspecting the products of the company to be harmful to their health, breaks down and becomes a threat to the corporate interests as well as to the existence of the law firm, his partner and friend Michael Clayton is being sent to fix it. The desperation boils high on all sides, and a rogue

Son of Rambow (Jennings 2007)

2008-09-09T17:48:00.000+08:00

A little boy trapped in a religiously fanatic family finds his dream counterpart, a spoiled brat who is completely disobeying any rule the world has ever invented for 10-year old kids. Through the joint work on a "screen test" movie, "Son of Rambow", they both learn a bit about the charms of leading other lifes. If not for the high praise that travelled

Kung Fu Panda (Osborn/Stevenson 2008)

2008-07-14T15:56:00.002+08:00

Po, the son of a great noodle chef (which must have been a true amour fou - but we are not told what the mother looks like) daydreams about his future career as sword-fighting, iron-willed Kung Fu warrior, fighting his fiercest enemies with the speed of light and without so much as a flinch in the face of danger. More than surprising, when real life danger comes about and the Kung Fu Grandmaster

Hancock (Berg 2008)

2008-07-08T12:47:00.002+08:00

Will Smith is Hancock, a superhero with superpowers, ability to fly and shave with his fingernails. Unfortunately he is a smelly bum, permanently drunk, disappointed by his own life, wondering why everybody calls him an asshole despite the fact that he keeps destroying half the city of Los Angeles and everybody's front yard and Mercedes just to stop a car chase. When he saves the life of a PR

The Bank Job (Donaldson 2008)

2008-07-01T20:51:00.003+08:00

In order to take posession of some incriminating pictures of a royal family member, an institution that has probably a fancy acronym, but that I call "Royal Family Reputation Maintenance Task Force" initiates a bank robbery through which those pictures can be withdrawn from the control of a politically inconvenient character. While being used for higher purposes, the group of bank robbers does

Mang Jing - Blind Shaft (Li Yang 2001)

2008-07-01T20:46:00.002+08:00

Two coal miners float from one occupation to the next, trying to find a victim who pretends to be a relative in order also to get a job. The they kill him in an "accident" and cash in the compensation from the mine. The scheme works fine for them until they meet a young boy who they start liking just a bit too much. While the film has the neorealistic touch to it that is typical of 6th

Nim's Island (Mark and Levin 2008)

2008-06-28T16:28:00.000+08:00

A young girl and her father live on a beautiful island, him studying nature, her hanging out with cute animals and reading adventure books. When the father goes missing with his boat after a storm, Nim - the girl - calls for help from the hero of her favourite books. Turns out this Alex hero is only a whimpish Jodie Foster author in real life, almost too scare to leave her Manhattan apartment.

10.000 B.C. (Emmerich 2008)

2008-06-28T16:25:00.000+08:00

The plot is … er … some stone age or something people hunt mammoths, and then … er … some of them get kidnapped and one of them follows them and then there or Kenian warriors and more mammoths, only now they are working on an Egyptianal pyramid. In the end, they kill the Egyptian Prime Minister with a white spear. The most horrible dialogues, and a narration that sheds light in the fact that at

The Flock (Andrew Lau 2007)

2008-06-21T17:08:00.000+08:00

Andrew Lau is representative of the very strange breed of Hongkong filmmakers who got a certain fame for being rather ruthlessly stylish and brutal in their films, and by influencing European and American directors with their overtly visual style. To me, these guys are notorious for hiding their lack of stringent story-telling behind recurring episodes with leg-cringing brutality, and usually

TV shows and other reflections

2008-06-18T15:54:00.002+08:00

I have hardly ever been expecting a tv show as eagerly as I was expecting the 4th Season of Battlestar Galactica over the last nine or so months (now how is that about being auspicious?). In the last two years, I have been catching up with quite a bit of tv show material that I could never be bothered to watch before, or where the sheer format - the weekly installments putting their cruel dictate

South Park - Bigger, Longer & Uncut (Parker 1999)

2008-06-04T16:02:00.004+08:00

After the kids of South Park get exposed to the barbaric humour of the latest Terence & Phillip movie, all hell breaks loose in South Park and they sing some brilliant songs. Kyle's mother (the "Big old bitch" of the song of the same name, probably the best musical song in 60 years - in good company with 14 others in the film, including the ear worm "what would Brian Boytano do?") seeks to ban

Se, Jie / Lust, Caution (Ang Lee 2007)

2008-06-04T15:32:00.002+08:00

The life of Wang Chia Chi, who shifts her life in Shanghai from being an normal student to cecoming an assassinating actress, trying to help the resistance movement to eliminate the collaborator Yee. Ang Lee films are always a bit strange for me: the little Americal bourgeois drama of Ice Storm qualities, the melancholy of Brokeback Mountain, the standard Hollywood ware of the Hulk … there are

Donnie Darko (Kelly, 2001)

2008-06-04T15:12:00.002+08:00

Donnie Darko learns in a dream or vision that the world will end in 28 days, unless he and the giant rabbit who told him … emmm … do something I do not remember. There's the president of the Colonies as his mother and the gay cowboy from Brokeback Mountain as Donnie, and the chubby girl from Charly's Angels, and the ... There is a book on time travel written by an old woman with white hair and

Jumper (Liman 2008)

2008-06-04T14:52:00.003+08:00

The story of a young boy who discovers his ability to leap though space at will, allowing him a life in style by withdrawing cash directly from the bank vaults (of which he makes generous use) and allowing him to safe people trapped in floods and take them out safely (of which he abstains). Trouble hits his calm life between breakfast on top of the Gize pyramids and taking a ride on a London

Iron Man (Favreau 2008)

2008-05-14T14:44:00.002+08:00

Weapons producer Tony Stark gets hijacked in Afghanistan, and develops scuples about his trade as well as an armed and armoured suit while in captivity. This does is not taken up friendly by hus business companion, who also wants a flying suit (and not such a "conservative one") and Stark out of the way. Stark discovers he wants to be a hero, and now he can. As predicted, the girls are in love

National Treasure Double Feature (2004, 2008)

2008-05-11T21:06:00.003+08:00

Part 1: National Treasure Ben Gates is Nichoals Cages is the son of John Voight, and like a scaled-down version of Doctor Indy he is being chased around the world by the quest after a giant treasure, hidden by Freemasions and Templers and all the usual suspects of hiding things and conspiring about it. Digging up a ship in the Arctic ice, stealing the American decleration of indepedence,