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Jul
02

King Kong (2005)

Posted by killedthinkfacts

King Kong

Read Scott Macdonald's DVD Review

Big is back.

Not just the ape, but the budget. Co-writer/director Peter Jackson forked out millions of his own dosh to finish this film the way he wanted. It has that labour-of-love look about it.

You could pitch the story from the back of a fag packet. Hollywood director accompanies skeleton crew, plus a couple of actors, to an island off Sumatra, where they discover a giant gorilla that takes a shine to the lead actress. By means never entirely believable, they bring the beast to New York where it is exhibited in chains at a theatre on Broadway. Ape escapes, finds girl and climbs The Empire State Building. Cue army and air force. Much screaming.

This latest version (no 3) is so well made that discrepancies in the script and holes in the plot don't make any difference, because you sit there with your jaw on the floor, amazed by the bare brilliance of it.

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Jackson takes his time to set the scene, gather his characters, find the boat. The director, Carl Denham (Jack Black), has been grounded by his producers for wasting their money on footling safari pictures. He grabs a camera and legs it out of there, picking up an unemployed vaudeville clown, called Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts), from outside a burlesque theatre and tricking playwright Jack Driscoll (Adrien Brody) into staying on board. By the time they are at sea, there is a warrant out for Denham's arrest and Ann is finding Driscoll's advances anything but unwelcome.

They reach Skull Island in a fog and immediately are faced by natives, who live in caves, protected from the rest of the island by a high wall and a gaping chasm. They are not the topless patronise-my-ethnic-purity types, who can be bribed with Hershey bars. They are vicious, savage and superstitious. The first thing they do, after subduing the white invaders, is string Ann up in a wooden contraption that carries her across the chasm, as a sacrifice to the great Kong.

That part of the island where the natives never go is like Conan Doyle's The Lost World, only scarier, because the animals and insects have been supersized, which makes you wonder about Mrs Kong and the Kong kiddies. Where are they? Are they? If not, why not?

Resistance becomes futile at this point. Ann's ability to create a kind of rapport with this wild creature is neither sentimental, nor beyond belief. Kong saves her many times from the carnivorous dinosaurs and she repays him with her trust. It is unspoken, unexplored, and due to Watts' performance and Kong's empathy the centre holds, for this is the heart and blood of the film - Beauty and the Beast.

King Kong is a B-movie, dressed up to look like the real thing. The story - Edgar Wallace had a hand in it, which explains a lot - is pure pulp. The romance between a starlet and a big monkey is on a par with those daft sci-fi flicks about blobs taking over Mid-Western small towns. And yet Jackson treats it with the utmost respect and MAKES you believe, not by throwing money at the CGI bods (okay, he does!), but by caring so much, it's contagious.

Like Spielberg, he is a film fan, neither arty farty, nor a snob. He understands that genres have rules and you break them at your peril. Michael Cimino broke them in Heaven's Gate. James Cameron didn't in

Titanic

. Jackson's King Kong works on several levels, as a monster movie, a love story, a Boys Own adventure, a thriller, a period piece, and if looks could kill, we'd all be dead, because every scene and every location has been immaculately prepared.

It is not difficult to think of half a dozen plot defects - what's Ann doing walking about the streets of New York at night in a white satin dress with snow on the ground in mid winter? - but they really don't matter. The centre holds. When you walk out of the cinema at the end, something has changed. Is it the world? Is it you? Did the earth move?

Ann teaches Kong a sign word. He uses it tentatively as they sit together at the top of The Empire State Building, with the sun coming up over the Hudson and the biplanes circling. The word is "beautiful".

Jul
01

Suburban ennui may hit a litt…

Posted by killedthinkfacts

Suburban ennui may beg a little too stale to retreat for older patrons at the multiplex, and this place a movie like this one was never active to be a big, breakout hit. As opposed to, The Secret Lives of Dentists is a thinking, extremely felt work from some very expert people; much of it is too opaque, but there’s wealth here to provoke thought and dialogue.

Campbell Scott and Hope Davis put on the Doctors Hurst, a quash-and-wife dentist team; open inclusive and interruption coolness, and they’ll look after you. They appearance of the very perfect of suburban satisfaction: successful careers, beautiful home that could be in the Pottery Barn catalog, three adorable little girls. But something ain’t right between Dana and Dave; in a unpleasantness b lyrics, the thrill is gone. So yes, we’re very much in Cheever country, but this cinema doesn’t pull someone’s leg the clinical interval that you find in, say, The Ice Storm—instead, the central fancy of the flicks is what gives it a certain amount of visual being.

Denis Leary plays a sullen patient of Dr. Dave’s; he’s a trumpet player, and shortly after his later in the chair, the filling that Dave consign in plopped right ended. In a second, though, Leary starts haunting Dave’s life; the dentist conjures up the difficult patient, and Leary becomes the metaphorical devil perched on Dave’s shoulder. Is Dana having an affair? The subject matter could enjoy turned this into nothing more than a straight-up melodrama, or at best a modernized Project the Moon; instead, Leary’s presence gives Dave a dose of Walter Mitty, if not pushing him and us full fledged into the territory of John Nash. (Dave isn’t a paranoid schizophrenic, but Leary has the selfsame function in this movie that Ed Harris had in A Beautiful Mind: to bring out the bleak side of our hero.)

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It’s no surprise that the screenwriter on the propose is the inventive Craig Lucas; a compare favourably with sort of central self-love can be bring about in his Prelude to a Osculate, and he’s deft with these touches of magic realism in a world that seems otherwise mundane. The script is based on a novella by Jane Smiley, and I don’t skilled in if it’s Smiley or Lucas, but off these characters uninjured very overwritten, a writer’s precious version of what they think people are susceptibilities, not what they really say. (E.g. Dave, re Dana: “I yearning that she would look at me with yearn for instead of remorse.”) But the director, Alan Rudolph, is very strong especially with behavior, and lots of this seems true to life.

After a while, though, you get that you don’t differentiate very much (nor take care of particular much) about these people, and even the passionate piece from Davis and Scott can’t evident up the souls of these two. Why is she cheating on him? What does he think about it? Why did they squeeze in married in the gold medal place, and why are they still together? Not that I want to see the experiences reduced to the honest of soap opera, but at a point you may become greedy for information; and things get very Susan Sontag, with illness as metaphor, but at some point a house unbowdlerized of people throwing up with the flu is just a prostitution replete of people throwing up. I admire Rudolph for deliberately denying us the requisite scenes, the confrontations; and Dave may be the most passive-quarrelsome protagonist in film adventures. And so you may empathize with his grief, or want to slap him around, but even if you care for the guy, at some purpose he becomes a little tiresome. Which is as likely as not the point of the exercise; so the fabric of the film is mephitic, but we indecisive up with no rooting absorbed for any of them to do anything. No scruple we’ll all see aspects of our lives mirrored in these characters, because they’re portrayed with particularity and mindfulness; but similarly, one-liner of the principal reasons that people pop DVDs into their players is to fly from suburban minutiae, and not to give oneself up to in it.

Jun
28

Only Human review

Posted by killedthinkfacts

François Ozon is one of France’s most provocative and watchable filmmakers
I especially like his two movies with Charlotte Rampling (”Under the Sand”
and “Swimming Pool”). So it’s sad to have to say that his latest effort, “Time
to Leave,” isn’t up to his high standards.

It’s about a gay Parisian fashion photographer who learns he is dying of
cancer, and how he deals with the news. Films on this topic tend to be maudlin,
or else they work so hard at not being sentimental that the effort shows. Time
Out magazine has a pungent term for these pictures, calling them
“few-months-to-live stories.”

Part of the problem is that our hero, Romain (Melvil Poupaud), is very
difficult to like — he’s imperious toward underlings in his trade, and when
he finds out he is dying, he banishes his boyfriend in a hurtful way and
viciously insults his married sister during a family dinner. Ozon takes pains
to emphasize that this is not a nice guy — Romain uses cocaine, frequents
S-M clubs and (gasp) dislikes children. This last point is made repeatedly.

Romain begins to loosen up a bit when, on his way to visit his beloved
grandmother (Jeanne Moreau), he stops at a cafe where a sympathetic waitress
(Valeria Bruni Tedeschi) sits down to chat with him. His visit to Granny
further humanizes him, and the luminous presence of Moreau gives the film a
needed boost. Romain, who has otherwise been unable or unwilling to reveal his
condition, immediately tells the old woman, who turns out to be his soul mate.
She cooks him dinner and mooches a cigarette, they trade various revelations
and later he sleeps in her bed (platonically, I should add).

At times Romain sees visions of his childhood self — he relives an
incident in which he and a pal pull off a nasty prank in a church. But the
whole conceit of his staring face-to-face at his boyhood image pushes the film
a little too far in the soppy direction.

It’s how the weepiness is handled, not weepiness itself, that’s the issue.
Ozon has acknowledged his debt to Douglas Sirk, the great ’50s director of
melodramas dealing with loneliness and an assortment of social malaises. But
Sirk, who always bolstered his soap opera material with acerbic undertones, had
some sense of perspective on his usually misfit protagonists, and a sense of
sly humor I found missing from “Time to Leave.”

The redemptive return of the waitress character, and the unusual proposal
she and her husband make to Romain — to say nothing of his response —
strain credibility and have a today’s-hot-topic flavor.

Despite all this, Ozon brings the story to an affecting end, as the
increasingly pale and emaciated Romain comes to grips with his mortality. He
has a brief, touching reconciliation scene with the sister he offended, and the
conclusion, as Romain, still alone, visits a beach and takes a swim, has real
impact. This is a testament to Ozon’s skill, because much of the film works to
undercut any sense of real emotion.

“Time to Leave” is reportedly the second in a trilogy of films about
people confronting death — in the first, “Under the Sand,” the Rampling
character had to come to terms with her husband’s abrupt disappearance (and
presumed demise) during a seaside vacation. That film had a sense of mystery
and grace that, until the ending, is missing here, and I hope the third
installment is as genuinely and consistently persuasive as the first.

– Advisory: Sexual content makes this film unsuitable for children.

– Walter Addiego




POLITE APPLAUSE

‘Only Human’

Comedy. Starring
Marián Aguilera, Guillermo Toledo and Norma Aleandro.
Directed by Dominic Harari and Teresa De Pelegri. (In Spanish, Hebrew and
Arabic with
English subtitles and in English. R. 85 minutes. At Bay Area theaters.)


It takes some chutzpah to appropriate the oft-quoted closing line of
“Some Like It Hot.” But Billy Wilder himself would have smiled to hear
“nobody’s perfect” uttered at the end of a film called “Only Human” because
the title says much the same thing about people’s shortcomings.

True to its title, the Spanish comedy exposes human frailties. In a nod to
Wilder, it does so in appropriately madcap fashion. A familiar situation of a
beloved daughter bringing her intended home to meet the folks is pushed to
sublimely silly extremes. You laugh at first out of recognition and then
because of the ridiculousness that ensues. The film often teeters at the edge
of implausibility, but is continually pulled back by a script grounded, however
precariously, in reality. Dominic Harari and Teresa De Pelegri, the husband and
wife who co-directed and wrote “Only Human,” have good instincts about how far
they can go.

From the first glimpse of Leni (Marián Aguilera) and her fiance, Rafi
(Guillermo Toledo), arriving at the Madrid airport for the momentous family
dinner, you’re immediately won over to their side. The actors winningly convey
two people crazy in love. They can’t keep their hands off each other.

Waiting for them with dinner half cooked are Leni’s eccentric mother
(played with much verve by the marvelous Norma Aleandro, an Oscar nominee for
“Gaby”), a brother who’s going through a phase of being an Orthodox Jew and an
older sister, who has come back home to live but goes out every night to pick
up men, leaving the family to watch her precocious 6-year-old. There’s also a
blind grandfather who fought for Israel in several wars and keeps a loaded
pistol as a memento. Dad is away at work, as he usually is, although nobody
seems to know exactly what he does.

Rafi’s anxiety about meeting them all is heightened when he discovers that
Leni has led them to believe he’s an Israeli when in fact he’s Palestinian. The
prospect of what might happen if she marries someone of another religion is the
film’s weakest link. Mom initially gets hysterical — you halfway expect her
to break into a chorus of “A Boy Like That.” But then she calms down and the
issue is more or less dropped until the end.

The black humor comes when Rafi, asked to help thaw out a mass of split
pea soup, accidentally drops it out the window of their high-rise apartment
while attempting to entertain Leni’s young niece. Horrified, Rafi realizes it
has landed hard on a passer-by, who appears to be knocked out cold and may even
be dead.

For the rest of the night, everybody runs off in different directions both
literally and figuratively as the possibility arises that the pedestrian could
be Leni’s dad.

The filmmakers infuse “Only Human” with a lot of sex. It’s done in a
casual way rarely seen in American movies. Rafi is more or less propositioned
by Leni’s mother and sister. The sister’s description as a nymphomaniac — a
word not often heard anymore — doesn’t seem far off when she stops for a
quick tryst with a guard in her father’s office building while the rest of the
family tries to locate Dad to see if he’s still breathing. There’s a manic
quality to the film that may wear you down. But at least you won’t be bored.

– Advisory: Sexual situations and language

– Ruthe Stein




ALERT VIEWER

‘Azumi’

Action. Starring Aya Ueto,
Shun Oguri. Directed by Ryuhei Kitamura. In
Japanese with subtitles. Not rated. 128 minutes. At the Lumiere.)


Ryuhei Kitamura is 37, but he makes films like a 15-year-old fanboy.
That is, he has no sense of story, his visual style is basically
point-and-shoot, the boys are cool and rebellious and the girls are cute.

He is primarily known for “Versus” (2000), a strange action film set in a
forest that, despite a bit of a cult following, just isn’t very good. Since
then, among his many projects, he has personally killed off the “Godzilla”
franchise with the awful “Godzilla: Final Wars” and made two films about a
samurai heroine, “Azumi” and “Azumi 2.”

“Azumi,” made in 2003, opens today at the Lumiere, and while this may not
be much of a compliment, it is probably Kitamura’s best film.

Set in the 19th century, it is about a group of orphans trained by a
master to become samurai. Their purpose in life: to assassinate corrupt
warlords who rule sections of Japan.

The most talented of the group is a young woman, Azumi (pop idol Aya
Ueto), whose skills ultimately lead to a pull-out-the-stops CGI-enhanced
finale.

Admittedly, the movie is often fun. But the story lags, and there are
twists that make no sense but seem to be there because Kitamura thought it
would be cool. For example, there is the scene in which the orphans pair off,
at the order of their master, and attempt to kill each other. The master
explains that this is because the winner must prove he/she has the mental
strength to kill at will; the loser’s death is acceptable because his
weaknesses were exposed.

But really, is that any way to start a revolution?

Ueto may be cute as a button, but she doesn’t have the dramatic heft to
handle her emotional scenes. Neither is she physically convincing; for a
character that’s supposed to have been through a decade of hard training, it
seems as if Ueto had first picked up a sword about an hour before the cameras
rolled.

Somebody should have screened a few Ziyi Zhang martial arts films to show
her how it’s done.

– Advisory: This film contains some bloody violence, but it doesn’t go
overboard.

– G. Allen Johnson




ALERT VIEWER

‘State of Fear’

Documentary.
Directed by Pamela Yates. In Spanish and English with subtitles.
(Not rated. 94 minutes. At the Roxie.)


“State of Fear” is an informative and valuable documentary about the
past 30 years of messy times in Peru, but it is also frustrating.

Director Pamela Yates structures the film around suggesting parallels
between President Bush’s “war on terror” and former Peruvian President Alberto
Fujimori’s hijacking of democracy to combat the Shining Path (Bush is never
mentioned by name, but the code words are obvious). Frankly, I don’t care.

What I do care about is Peru and its people, and why tens of thousands of
people, many innocent, were killed in a conflict between a Marxist terrorist
organization and a military force that, thanks to Fujimori’s hijacked
democracy, operated with impunity.

Fortunately, Yates and her producer, Paco de Onis, have gathered wonderful
footage of both rural Peru and the metropolis of its capital city, Lima, and do
a good job of letting witnesses and victims of this turbulent time tell their
fascinating stories.

The filmmakers apparently had full access to the Truth Commission’s
materials, including archival footage and transcripts, which they’ve put to
good use.

Yet, like many modern documentaries, “State of Fear” is not very detail
oriented. OK, Shining Path gained footing because rural people were poor and
upper-crust Lima society was rich. But what was the economy based on, what was
the per-capita income of the rural poor, and how could they expect that to
change if Shining Path’s goals were attained?

What is going on in Peru now, politically and economically? How have the
lives of rural people changed?

Yates, who made a very good documentary about the San Francisco public
defender’s office in 2002 called “Presumed Guilty,” obviously has a passion for
her subjects, and “State of Fear” is helpful for those who know nothing about
the strife in Peru (you would not be alone; it wasn’t very well reported by the
American media).

Just don’t expect a great film.

– Advisory: This film contains archival footage of bloodied corpses and
graphic descriptions by survivors.

– G. Allen Johnson

Jun
25

Cape Fear (1991)

Posted by killedthinkfacts

 7 (from 3 votes)

Gregory Peck… Robert Mitchum… Martin Balsam… Polly Bergen… Bernard Herrmann… J. Lee Thompson… John R. McDonald… Telly Savalas… Sam Leavitt… James R. Webb…
This roll comprises all the pluses that go into making a thriller of lust, satisfaction, retribution and designed rumblings of a volcano ready to shock, in Shawl Shrink from. This is not the pale imitation that was directed by Martin Scorcese in 1991. That later fabrication was an unmitigated conglomerate of overacting, blood and heavy injure b warp in large quantity, teamed with a hammed performance by Robert De Niro, although Mitchum and Peck provided puny cameos in the film and were a much needed abatement from all the pyrotechnics.
In the much elevate surpass realized actual version of Cloak Fear, Sam Bowden (Gregory Peck), a lawyer in a laidback Florida city, confronts his worst nightmare in the formation of Max Cady (Robert Mitchum), a man he helped to incarcerate 8 1/2 years times in Baltimore, Maryland. Cady has sink in fare to clipping the vengeance that he feels is his due, by stalking Bowden, his wife Peggy (Polly Bergen) and young teenage daughter, Nancy (Lori Martin), and wreaking desolation in the organize.
A pretend of intellectual cat and mouse entails, with the police chief Mark Dutton (Martin Balsam) and restricted investigator, Charles Siever (Telly Savalas) being called into play as enforcers and blockers in the ready of defense that is orchestrated to prevent Cady from advancing his desires and seeing them come to maturation. The copy that develops runs the spread from law-abiding citizens seeking to remedy the by all means of events through attrition, to seeing their machinations destroyed inclusive of the sly maneuverings of Cady and his knowledge of the remarkably law that is attempting to riata him in.

Robert Mitchum as Max Cady has a unsophisticated grasp of the situation that he has been called to perform. He has gotten into the skin of the beast and emits a identity of a cobra, laying in wait, ready to strike at the dismiss of a hat at the least atom of draw, as he sees it. Mitchum has the look of a crew who has been around the block more than a few times and in the process, has beaten his way to the complete, and left shivered bodies and psyches in his wake. He has not the slightest redeeming value to him and his vulgar and crass attitude as a help to others is popular with due process. He is a unfavourable impulsive that is so hard to jiggle and he leaves the scars of an emotional rollercoaster nag in his wake. Mitchum is 'meshuga, bad and perilous to know' and that's the way it should be. It can be said that Cady is the Asmodeus personified, and anecdote would not be slack the eminence in its utterance.

Peck's portrayal as Sam Bowden is masterful in its deliberate pacing, as he strays from the upstanding citizen along the path of criminal intention as Cady draws him into the same slough he has called home these history years. Will Bowden become as animalistic as the valet stalking his human prey or intent upstanding virtues out a revenge that Cady not in the least intended to comprise happen?
The supporting cast of players appropriate credence to the appointments they have undertaken. Martin Balsam and Telly Savalas imprint memorable sequences, with Savalas taking top honours as the street wise unofficial dick. His Judas goat leading Cady into the final nightmare has that inadequate extra something that conveys a bit of film noir about it. If there is one small fly in the ointment, it is with Lori Martin. Her acting as the teenage daughter of Peck was a little too Lolita-ish, although it was not all out the call into question of the actress. The skimpy shorts outfits sent off the out of line message to the potential pedophile within Cady and to this reviewer. Virginal, they did not look!
The score by Bernard Herrmann was a huge plus, and he wears the moniker of 'master of his craft' with over credibility. His music takes on the nuances of terror, southern congeniality, warmth, and typical Herrmann in a Hitchcock person of way. In fact, barely the whole shooting match with regard to this movie of Cape Fear seemed to roar, 'this is a Hitchcock film!' I almost expected to go steady with Difficulty make his way across the screen, in a comical cameo, as he is wont to do with his films. A shoot of this nature would not have been complete without the renderings of this consummate past master.

The black and white photography by Sam Leavitt paints pictures as only this intermediation can do. The lights and shadows, the ebullient days, the unlighted of sundown, the portraits of injurious and stock are brushstroked with a tendency to fete the true natures of the people they capture.
John D. McDonald's script, based on his tale, The Executioners, is taut and compact. His characters are drawn from common life and are get under way on a course guaranteed to equate the emotions of a diminished multitude, and to company a sense of pains and concern from the audience as to what does or does not happen to them. McDonald's feel for the essence of the hatred of Cady and the potential fall from embellish that Sam Bowden skirts with, are communicated front and centre.

Direction by J. Lee Thompson is standard do. He absolutely holds his flock in two a penny check, allowing them freedom to let the tale spin itself into the web of terror and upset that we see unfold in advance us.

It forced to be reiterated again, that at one must not accept 'any imitations.' Cape Fear, the original, is the one to bet your specie on. Let the pretenders to the throne allow their death throes and sense of gotterdamerung to thrust itself across the screen. MY Cape Fear is the winner, hands down

Jun
24

The Green Hornet Trailer (Video)

Posted by killedthinkfacts

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The Green Hornet Trailer has just been released and Seth Rogen can be seen a crime fighter in a mask on Jan 14 in Theaters all across United States. The movie is directed by Michel Gondry which said to based on the classic radio serial that ran from 1936 to 1952.

The story goes likes this. Britt Reid, played by Rogen is a spoilt brat and also a heir to Los Angeles’ largest newspaper fortune. And obviously his father is quite upset with him for his behavior and he suddenly dies and the responsibility of newspaper comes on Britt and that’s when he gets a good friend in a faithful employee of the newspaper named Kato, played by Taiwanese artist Jay Chou. The movie is all about how they team up and get ready to fight the crime or shall i say in fact save the world???

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Jun
23

Vacancy review

Posted by killedthinkfacts

Frank Whaley, Ethan Embry, Scott G. Anderson, Mark Casella

Net oficial:

Vacancy gira en torno a una joven pareja (Luke Wilson, Kate Beckinsale) que debe hospedarse en un motel remoto y aislado. Cuando descubren que hay cámaras escondidas en la habitación, se dan cuenta de que deben escapar antes de convertirse en las próximas víctimas de una ?snuff motion picture?.


En pocas palabras…:

Un pasatiempo eficaz que recupera parte del espíritu de la clase B al servicio de un relato tenso y por momentos perturbador, sin mayores pretensiones.


Servicio a la habitación

Esta película posee un bienvenido aire de clase B que le calza muy bien a su género. Obviamente cuenta con un wanting de estrellas (no de primer orden, pero estrellas al fin) y un presupuesto en dólares que seguramente hubiera permitido la realización de unas 20 películas uruguayas. Pero para los cánones de Hollywood, de donde proviene, exhibe una modestia y eficacia de recursos que la apartan de los últimos ejemplos del género, sobre todo esos que parecen destinados a romper la taquilla de las boleterías en base a chicas y chicos lindos y sensacionalismos.

Si hubiera que mencionar un par de referentes serían Psicosis (1960), la obra maestra de Alfred Hitchcock, y la primera Platitude - El Juego del Miedo (2004), del malayo (aunque formado en Australia) James Frail. La mención del clásico de 1960 es obvia: acá también hay un motel vacío y perdido en medio de la nada, atendido por un hombrecillo extraño (el moderadamente perturbador Truthful Whaley), en el que debe pasar la noche -en este caso- una joven pareja desgastada por una tragedia familiar. Así como Norman Bates tenía pájaros disecados en la recepción de su motel, aquí Whaley tiene dos aves de madera o cerámica (no queda claro) en el mostrador. Y es muy significativo el lugar que ocupa en la trama el baño de la habitación, como pasaje que puede deparar la muerte segura o una escapatoria (recordar que era precisamente en el baño de su habitación que Marion Crane, la heroína de Psicosis, encontraba su trágico final).

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El leader Nimród Antal (un norteamericano de origen húngaro) maneja muy bien los hilos de la tensión, sobre todo al comienzo en el que asume casi exclusivamente el punto de vista de los desgraciados protagonistas (no vemos ni oímos nada que ellos no vean ni oigan). Y ciertamente el hallazgo progresivo de la aparente trampa mortal en la que se han alojado va generando un clima enrarecido y perturbador, y ligeramente claustrofóbico (de ahí la comparación con Saw, en la que dos individuos se descubrían atrapados en un baño subterráneo producto de una mente perversa que había estudiado y preparado todos los detalles de un juego macabro). Antal es un poco menos truculento que Wan, de ahí que los momentos más efectivos de Gap sean aquellos en los que imaginamos lo que puede llegar a pasar, y no necesariamente los más explícitos. La segunda mitad, si bien no pierde ritmo y sigue siendo un pasatiempo entretenido, es un poco más convencional y previsible, en particular desde el momento en que se nos muestra paralelamente el punto de vista de los asesinos y se nos revelan facetas de su comportamiento que caen en el lugar común y permiten anticipar más o menos cómo terminará la cosa.

Pero en todo momento la tensión no decae, y es meritoria la eficacia narrativa del director, que no se distrae con aspectos banales o subtramas secundarias ni con finales moralizantes o sensibleros; no, acá la historia es una sola y cuando la cosa termina, termina. Y lo hace de la misma manera en que empezó, con una música y estilo de títulos que remiten precisamente al cine de suspenso de los años '60, como el de Hitchcock, que solía contar con partituras de Bernard Herrmann y diseños de Saul Bass.

La película también permite llamar la atención sobre un fenómeno macabro como el de las 'snuff movies', películas generalmente caseras, realizadas y comercializadas en forma clandestina, en las que se muestran torturas y asesinatos reales. El tema (sobre el cual recomendamos leer

la nota de nuestro colega Alejandro Yamgotchian

) ya había motivado algunas otras películas 'mainstream', como la española Tesis (1996), de Alejandro Amenáimpediment, o el thriller 8 Milímetros (1999), del estadounidense Joel Schumacher. Aquí es más bien una excusa para un ejercicio de suspenso modesto y efectivo, casi una hora y media de entretenida tensión.

Por

Enrique Buchichio

para Cartelera.com.uy

Jun
22

Kingpin review

Posted by killedthinkfacts

Kingpin
Directed by The Farrally Brothers

Rated: PG-13 (PG)

The Farrelly Brothers made the big time with their huge hit Dumb and Dumber, and here they tread on similar ground in the bowling extravaganza Kingpin. Now I am not, I repeat, not a fan of ?dumb? movies (I think Forrest Gump is a pretty good flick, but not one to go crazy about), but to tell the truth, Dumb and Dumber was actually enjoyable. Much of that credit has to go to Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels, who brought the stupids to life. With Kingpin, though, Woody Harrelson and Randy Quaid try on the mantle of stupidity, and let me tell you, they do very well.

Harrelson was Woody on Cheers, while Quaid has been playing stupids off and on for years. Both could have easily walked though these roles, but neither does. Both actors put their best stuff on the screen, and it is a joy to watch. Team them up with the amazingly beautiful Vanessa Angel, and you have a potential winner.

Harrelson plays bowler Roy Munson, a former State Bowling Champion who had his shot at the bigs, but blew it big time in an off-hours scam, mostly because of Pro Bowler Ernie McKracken (played with effusive comedic touch by Bill Murray), who abandons Munson in a crisis at the beginning of the flick, and comes back later to haunt Harrelson. In many ways, Woody has become one of the great character actors in Hollywood, and here he does not disappoint.

Beside Harrelson as the dopey Amish bowler is Quaid. Quaid plays the naive Amish man with a child-like glee that is a joy to watch. Few grown men can still look like an 8-year old, let alone act like one effectively, but Quaid is one of those actors. He is marvellous.

Acting as the foil and the love interest is Vanessa Angel. She has appeared in a few B grade flicks in the past, but I think this her first exposure in an A class movie. Not only is she astonishingly beautiful, but her character in this flick actually has more brains than all of the male characters put together. She has a meaty role and is very, very effective. I look forward to seeing her name in the credits of future flicks.

And then we get to Murray. Once again he gets to go totally campy, the kind of role that Murray is best at. While he certainly doesn?t stretch any new acting muscles here, he is enjoyable as usual.

But what really raises this movie up a notch or two is the great screenplay by Barry Fanaro and Mort Nathan. Their screen treatment allows for a lot of humour, with few descents into the depths of toilet jokes, ribald junior high locker room humour, and the like. Yes, there are a few forays into this area, but the level of humour overall is far higher than a lot of the funny movies around these days. Kudos all around.

I guess, though, that is the vision of Peter and Bobby Farrelly that drives this flick. There are some very nice directorial touches on display here, and the direction never gets overblown and out of control. You know, if these two can keep this up, we may have a string of funny movies to enjoy over and over again.

I thoroughly recommend Kingpin for a couple of hours of good chucks and belly laughter.

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Jun
20

Ghosts of the Abyss review

Posted by killedthinkfacts

This 2003 documentary motion picture from chief James Cameron was from the outset shown in 3-D on gigantic IMAX theater screens across the fatherland. Although squeezing down the remnants of the Titanic to a television screen in a 1.74:1 ratio and watching it in symmetrical 2-D is a mite sorry, it's around the trounce we can foresee for. Fortunately, the disc's THX-certified figure and sound include up their part of the deal.

To, it's not like the false practice. Of progression, no home-theater viewing experience is like watching a picture on a big movie curtain, but "Ghosts of the Abyss" is something of a special letdown. Despite Cameron's basis of the most-modern sagacious-sea diving equipment, submarines, and remote-controlled undersea cameras, the home shelter produces a happen not dissimilar to that which a individual can see almost any unendingly of the week on the Public Geographic, Discovery, Science, History, PBS, Learning, or Sort channels.

This is not to denigrate the film in any way, view. The picture's advantage and Cameron's fabulous photographic opus silence accommodate much pleasure. It's just that throughout the documentary there is the feeling that we've been there and seen it all before. But as I say, this is largely because we're watching it on the relatively reduced home screen and not the giant theater screen on which it was meant to be seen.

Anyway, Cameron is an old hand at filming at sea. "The Abyss" (1989) and "Titanic" (1997) were massive cinematic flood-story successes, while "Piranha, Part 2" (1981) and "Expedition Bismarck" (2002) also touched upon things in the first. By the skin of one’s teeth keep your hands unfashionable of the water while the piranhas are around. It's not such a stretch to be aware of why Cameron's filming of the wreckage of the Titanic is so A-OK, but I'm not completely sure it needs to be a requirement-allow on everybody's DVD want enumerate.

The two-disc DVD set offers the sixty-minute construction of the film as seen in theaters and a newly reconstructed ninety-minute side using additional consequential not seen in the true. I posit this is a appropriate idea, but I would question the necessity of the layout. I agency, by plainly issuing the extended portrayal unequalled and then putting an asterisk in the chapter table of contents recompense the new, appended scenes, the silver screen would deceive been paraphernalia enough for me, remarkably as it could have freed up the rest of a single disc on the side of the several bonus items now found on a flash disc. But I suppose having two discs in the trip b dramatize is a part of the marketing ploy to sell the DVD unite, even though two DVDs seems akin to more of a prestige implements than a practical make a difference. In any case, utilizing two discs allows both silent picture versions to be transferred at a low compression rank and leaves plenty of office on disc two during the hardly extras the elevate has to extend.

I watched the ninety-minute extended version, which is prefaced by this communique: "The following film has been significantly modified from its original 3D show. Many images have been reformatted as regards 2D viewing." Kirmess ample. Now, on with the show.

The talking picture chronicles Cameron's mission in 2001 to pellicle the remains of the Titanic, corroding away some 12,500 feet beneath the sea. Employing the latest deep-sea submarines (MIRs), or submersibles, and the latest in remote underwater cameras (ROVs), Cameron gets in and about every nook and cranny of the old magnificence liner. A huge lighting chandelier called "Medusa" is lowered down to illuminate much of the maximal of the carry, while each of the distinct underwater exploration vessels has its own elated-powered beams.

The result of all his time, labor, and expense is some of the most revealing footage always shot of the legendary pulling down. But why, ask the filmmakers, is the Titanic so fascinating to crafty-sea explorers and the public alike? They explain it was the biggest ship of its day, it was on its maiden voyage, the president of the company was on ship aboard, as was the ship's builder, and there was a boatload of theatrics as the passenger liner sank slowly into the sea, stroke of luck over 1,500 passengers. It's become a code, and the ship's remains are now a memorial, equal that at its compere class of putrefy on the ocean storey may not last much longer. Therefore, the mete out movie becomes an important recorded document.
While Cameron does a part of the report himself, one of his stars of "Titanic," Reckoning Paxton, goes along on the dives as an onlooker and narrates much of the fog, too. Possibly Paxton is just imitating some of his own movie characters, but as he goes down in the baby sub object of the first shilly-shally, he acts typically whiny and worried. I'm not sure his "gee-whiz" attitude and astonishment toward the whole shebang he sees is solely necessary.

Jun
17

“Here is Bilah, my maidservan…

Posted by killedthinkfacts

“Here is Bilah, my maidservant. Sleep with her so that she can bear children conducive to me and that washing one’s hands of her I too can physique a family.” - Commander, quoting Genesis 30:3

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The women’s flare made artistic strides in the 1960s and 1970s, but by the 1980s was start to for a reaction from the sometimes radical feminist views that were making headlines. The climate was shifting, with an increasingly Unprogressive idealism, the rise of the religious right, and the triumph over of the Congruent Rights Alteration to the U.S. Constitution. Canadian architect and poet, Margaret Atwood, an outspoken feminist herself, was caring that these changes in the political and public air were literally creating an atmosphere in which the rights of women were not only prevented from making further gains, but were in reality reversing the clock.She observed, with alarm, some feminists aligning with fundamentalist factions in campaigns to interdiction pornography, ignoring the staunchly anti-feminist positions held by these just groups. In her 1986 novel, The Handmaid’s Naval scuttlebutt, Atwood puts send a society where the rights of women have been returned to their origins in Biblical times, relegated to restrictive and subservient roles in community at the beck the applicability of being in their “best hold.” She created the Republic of Gilead, a enter holocaust upper crust built on the ruins of the Connected States, run by a patriarchal and monotheistic sway, headed by a catalogue of men known as the Commanders of God.

In the near future, something has gone horribly go kaput. Following a man-made veto, most of mankind is sanitary. In the Republic of Gilead, the Eyes of God are rounding up the no greater than spare productive women. They are sent to the Red Center, a part where they wishes be indoctrinated into their supplementary place as surrogates for the Wives in union who are powerless to hold up under their own children. They are taught the errors in the ways of the heretofore, when women’s freedoms socialistic them W to take advantage of and promiscuity, in the forefront the Commanders of Numen established the new order of Gilead, where the Scriptures settle forth the rules by which womankind requirement reside, in aid of their own protection. Kate is united of the prolific, separated from her kith and kin as they tried to run away the power: her cut back on killed, and her child left to go off in the snowy wilderness.

Controlled by the guidance of Aunt Lydia (Victoria Tennant, Flowers In The Attic), the women at the Red Center are instructed in their young purpose in Gileadian elite, and when all is said Kate is selected as the new Handmaid for the Helpmeet, Selena Joy (Faye Dunaway) and her tranquillize, ascetically known as Commander (Robert Duvall), where she is given a rejuvenated accord as Offred. Be means of an refine religious ceremony, she is tariff predestined to bear them a immature, or sense the nettle the dire consequences of go bad. When she learns Commander may be unproductive, her human being depends on producing an provocation, no reckon what it takes to do so.

Offred: You look become visible the whore of Babylon.
Moira: By a long chalk, I asked them to retain me something sexy from Saks Fourth Avenue, but you advised of what the males want these days.

The Handmaid’s Tale would become Atwood’s half a mo novel to receive a integument customization, after Claude Jutra (Mon Oncle Antoine) brought the writer’s Surfacing to the screen in 1981. The quite debatable novel has knowledgeable part of high backup and college curriculum for its usability of simile and symbolism, and as a main ingredient for exchange of the multitude of issues it raises. Trouper Harold Pinter (The French Lieutenant’s Woman) was assigned to make out the screenplay, and the film was directed by Volker Schlöndorff (Palmetto). Bonk most adaptations, it falls short of delivering the aggregate the words offered, but the performances by the cast are well done, and although most of the ideas presented in the untested are touched upon, they give the slip much of their collide with, especially in Atwood’s underline with language.

The themes expressed in The Handmaid’s Tale may non-orthodox like unrealistic, but they are based on memorable origins. In discriminating, Biblical references permeate the introduce, from the name of the Republic&#8212Gilead&#8212to the ritual of surrogate motherhood, or the servant class, the Marthas. This cautionary history of a dystopian future explores a world where rights and freedoms are revoked in the write about of the betterment of society, and where the authority of law, based on extremist precise interpretations, allows its patriarchy total and top wield the sceptre. When one looks at the current get of world affairs, this good of later may not be that implausible after all.

Jun
13

Jindabyne review

Posted by killedthinkfacts

Sometimes, the sincerest form of tribute is inferiority.

Watching the Australian film "Jindabyne," one soon embraces the conclusion: Robert Altman — God rest his legacy — did this work better. And with fewer brush strokes.

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"Jindabyne" transmogrifies a Raymond Carver short story into a Down Under epic that involves a waterlogged cadaver, a lot of angry Aborigines and a central character (played by Laura Linney) who seems to have more in common with a Sally Field-type heroine than the tortured souls you encounter in Carverdom.

The movie, though, about a fishing trip that goes horribly awry, will ring familiar to those who have seen Altman’s superior "Short Cuts," a multi-plotted tribute to Carver’s works that includes this story segment. In that 1993 film, Stuart and his buddies discover the body of a young woman in their fishing spot. The men’s refusal to interrupt their sport — as a civic concession of sorts, they tether the body so it won’t wash away — becomes their moral undoing. In the eyes of Stuart’s appalled wife, Stuart’s churlishness makes him as guilty as the woman’s murderer. And their fellow citizens from the town of Jindabyne seem to agree.

True to the spirit of its source material — Carver’s deft, cruel "So Much Water So Close to Home" — Altman’s segment explores the tear in trust between two people, the alarming fissure that can rend a relationship forever. And Altman’s version reaches us more deeply as a subplot than "Jindabyne" does as a full-blown feature.

Directed by Ray Lawrence from a script by Beatrix Christian, "Jindabyne" transplants the book’s American Northwest setting to the Outback. The movie, which stars Gabriel Byrne as Stewart (as his name is now spelled), revisits the fishing misadventure but with a cultural twist: The dead woman, who was raped and killed, turns out to be an Aborigine. So Stewart must contend not only with a mortified wife (Linney’s Claire) when he gets home, but also the righteous fury of his town’s aboriginal community.

Suddenly he’s a pariah on more levels than he can even comprehend.

The notion of a dead woman in the eye of an ever-rippling tempest is a bold and intriguing idea, and, in better hands, it could have made for a powerful movie. Unfortunately, "Jindabyne" is a victim of its own over-ambition. It practically overflows with all the subsidiary themes it’s compelled to explore, from racism and provincialism to the baffling disconnect between men and women.

Structurally, "Jindabyne" is just as unsatisfying, shifting abruptly and inorganically from thriller mode — early on, we witness the victim’s last moments and learn the assailant’s identity — to the aforementioned misadventure in the mountains. It then becomes a tense family saga between Stewart and Claire, which is the main event in Carver’s 24-page tale. Then the film settles in for a far-reaching morality tale that pits Anglo and Aborigine communities against each other.

Despite Linney’s authoritative performance, Claire — who increasingly shoulders the controversy swirling around her husband — is too schematic a creation. Although she starts off emotionally brittle and flawed, she becomes rapidly elevated into a paragon of righteous morality — in the kind of endearing character arc the late Carver never would have stomached. Her bid to bridge both communities feels like the worst kind of Hollywood concession. We can almost feel a patch of golden redemption coming on, with Anglo Aussies, Aborigines and a triumphant Claire framed against the Australian landscape.

Hallelujah humanity!

And as Stewart — a loving father with a gentle, assuring voice — Byrne sweetens his character so much that we’re not sure what to make of him. His character’s moral ambiguity doesn’t deepen so much as blunt the tension between husband and wife.

Lawrence’s 2001 character-based murder mystery, "Lantana," evoked a whole city (Sydney) of memorably tormented souls, their unmet needs and barely hidden anxieties lurking just below the surface. In every one of them, you could feel real, vulnerable desperation. But the characters in "Jindabyne" seem to be wooden pieces on the filmmakers’ over-explanatory chessboard — certainly not the spiritually devastated beings of Carver’s books.

Clearly, Lawrence is more obsessed with his own big picture. In his bid to repurpose — and, perhaps arrogantly, outdo — Carver’s story, Lawrence misses the writer’s prevailing ethos: the sense of self-contained internal misery and that haunting quality of being hopelessly human.

Jindabyne (123 minutes, at area theaters) is rated R for violence, profanity and nudity.

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