January 3rd, 2010 admin
2009
Starring: Heath Ledger, Christopher Plummer, Tom Waits, Verne Troyer, Lily Cole, Andrew Garfield, Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell, Jude Law
Director: Terry Gilliam
Runtime: 122 Minutes
Distributor: Sony Picture Classics
Rating: PG-13
The passing of Heath Ledger was a tragedy, and with it we mourn the loss of a great and gifted performer coming into his own and standing on the cusp of greatness. But if there is one tiny nugget of positive impact we can salvage from such tragic circumstance it is the effect his untimely death had on his dear friend and director Terry Gilliam. Midway through his dark hearted Faustian saga in which a thousand year-old carnival owner battles The Devil for souls in an unwise wager, Gilliam suddenly found himself without his leading actor.
With much of the real-world action wrapped already, Gilliam hit on a stroke of genius whereby he envisioned that each of the three times Ledger’s character, the enigmatic, amnesia-stricken George, would step through the mirror into the Imaginarium, a surrealist netherworld where temptation battles imagination for the right to consume you or set you free, he would be played by a different actor (first Johnny Depp, then Jude Law, and, finally Colin Farrell). At the time the idea seemed risky to say the least, but having now been realized the notion of a man with no conscious memory being different each time his subconscious is tapped into seems so natural and straightforward it is difficult to imagine how such scenes could have been more effective had Ledger played the parts himself. This unforeseen obstacle jolted Gilliam and sparked within him an explosion of ingenuity, channeled like a diamond bit to the purpose of salvaging his picture from disaster.
Click here to read the full review at Uinterview.com.
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January 1st, 2010 admin
2009
Starring: Emily Blunt, Rupert Friend, Paul Bettany, Miranda Richardson, Mark Strong, Jim Broadbent, Thomas Kretschmann
Director: Jean-Marc Vallee
Runtime: 100 Minutes
Distributor: Momentum Pictures
Rating: PG
It’s a testament to the reserved and unobtrusive sense of the direction from helmer Jean-Marc Vallee that no reactionary lips were set a quivering by the realization that this intimate portrait of the eponymous monarch comes not from a Brit, but instead courtesy of (gasp) a French-Canadian. In fact, as evidenced by his poking a little fun at the overblown opulence of the coronation ceremony Vallee understands all too well that the monarchy of that time, tied as it was to Europe’s precarious political situation and various power struggles, was one gigantic circus act that needed little further embellishment from him. Before the pre-teen princess, set to inherit her uncles’ throne, has finished hop-scotching across a manner foyer we’ve already been to Belgium, Germany, and back to England to meet the various aristocracy desperately maneuvering to make a grab for the levers of power.
Chief amongst them is Sir John Conroy (Mark Strong), advisor to Victoria’s mother, The Duchess of Kent (an impressive Miranda Richardson), hoping to rule as regent in her stead. Scheming and purposeful, Conroy is the closest the film musters to an out-and-out antagonist, but his threat is never fully realized as the second Victoria comes of age he his banished from court and spends the rest of the story scuttling about the fringes in frustration. Such is the nature of the rigidly structured political system that the primary conflict is handled so much by proxy, with various players plotting away quietly and avoiding anything approaching a traditional confrontation.
Click here to read the full review at Uinterview.com.
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December 24th, 2009 admin
A long-running, picturesque television series centered on an all-female workforce who come together in fellowship to revive the fortunes of the flagging Drover’s Run cattle ranch, McLeod’s Daughters is considered something of a national treasure in it’s native Australia. After eight successful seasons culminated earlier this year with the show’s 224th and final episode (how many U.S. shows make it that far?), we are treated to this DVD re-release of the 1996 television movie where the journey first began.
A good old fashioned melodrama set against the gorgeous backdrop of big sky country, McLeod’s Daughters is a wildly uneven affair where some solid performances by the female leads are consistently undermined by poor scripting, an overblown soundtrack, and the sadly all too frequent intrusion by moments of appalling technical incompetence. The story begins with city-girl Tess (Kym Wilson) making the long journey into the heartland to deliver news to her estranged father, Jack McLeod (Jack Thompson) that his ex-wife, Tess’ mother, has died of cancer. Welcomed with open arms by her father, Tess is greeted with suspicion and resentment by her half sister Claire (Tammy MacIntosh) who blames Tess’ mother for driving Jack into the bottle when they left all those years ago. After Jack dies in a riding accident (quite possibly the single worst stunt sequence of all time) Tess and Claire must put aside their differences and work together to save the ranch from financial ruin.
Click here to read the full review at JustPressPlay.net.
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December 20th, 2009 admin
2009
Starring: Morgan Freeman, Matt Damon, Julian Lewis Jones, Langley Kirkwood, Tony Kgoroge
Director: Clint Eastwood
Runtime: 134 Minutes
Distributor: Warner Bros.
Rating: PG-13
These days Awards season just doesn’t seem complete without a Clint Eastwood period drama, and looking at the Oscar-baiters this year it seems clear that Apartheid is the new Holocaust. While we have learned to never underestimate the Old Master this ambitious portrait of the former South African leader Nelson Mandela might at a distance seem a step beyond even him. An adaptation of Jon Carlin’s book Playing the enemy Invictus shows how Mandela risked much of his political capitol in throwing his full support behind the South African rugby team, viewed by the newly empowered black majority as a fierce symbol of the Apartheid regime, in the hope that they could triumph at the upcoming Rugby World Cup.
Cooked up out of such unpalatable ingredients as foreign countries and funny accents, it’s a story that tackles such prickly issues as race (eww!) and politics (ugh!) and this funny sport with complicated rules that most Americans have never seen. Then there is the issue of Mandela himself. Arrested for anti-apartheid activities, imprisoned for twenty-seven years, released and finally elected President, Mandela is of such reverence and stature – considered saintly by some – that you wonder who in the world could ever effectively show us Mandela the man?
Click here to read the full review at Uinterview.com.
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December 2nd, 2009 admin
2009
Starring: Viggo Mortensen, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Robert Duvall, Guy Pearce, Charlize Theron
Director: John Hillcoat
Runtime: 119 Minutes
Distributor: The Weinstein Company
Rating: R
It’s both ironic and at the same time strangely appropriate that Australian director John Hillcoat should deliver this diligently faithful adaptation of Cormack McCarthy’s relentlessly bleak end-of-the-world parable so soon after the release of Roland Emmerich’s bloated pixel-fest 2012. Where as that disaster picture chose to depict the end of all things as bloated CGI spectacle, pre-occupied with the eye-candy of the event to the exclusion of almost everything else, McCarthy’s story makes the event itself almost an afterthought.
Through a story that begins after everything we know came to and end we find a nameless father (Viggo Mortensen) and his son (Kodi Smit McPhee), who is maybe ten-years-old, on a relentless grueling death march through blackened forests and over barren hillside, hoping to reach the coast before starvation takes them. As they huddle together, filthy, amidst the freezing earth, we come know through dreams and flashbacks that at some point there was a cataclysm and everything was laid waste. It’s never made clear what exactly the event was, or whether it was caused by man or some cruel act of nature, and in the context of a hardscrabble existence driven by the unending search for scraps of food and shelter it simply doesn’t matter.
Click here to read the full review at Uinterview.com.
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September 10th, 2009 admin
2008
Starring: Tilda Swinton, Saul Rubinek, Kate del Castillo, Aidan Gould, Jude Ciccolella, Bruno Bichir, Horacio Garcia, Rojas
Director: Erick Zonca
Runtime: 144 Minutes
Distributor: Magnolia Pictures
Rating: R
One of the unwritten rules of the crime genre is that the more pathetic and desperate your perpetrator is, the worse things will invariably work out for them, and as the shambolic, self-centered drunk at the center of French helmer Erick Zonca’s overwrought kidnap caper, Tilda Swinton’s titular protagonist is so low she is practically underground. But having endured her antics for the better part of 150 minutes Zonca decapitates the story with an ending so arbitrary that it robs the viewer of the payoff they have waited so patiently (being the operative word) to see.
A spiteful, alcoholic, user she crashes around the remnants of her life from one blackout drunk fuck to another with any random stranger who will refill her glass. Her only friend at this point is Mitch (an underused Saul Rubinek), who has been bribing her with rent money (which she then spends) to go to AA meetings (that she then sleeps through). Feigning interest outside one such gathering she runs into Elena (Kate del Castillo, a somewhat deluded Mexican woman engaged in a futile battle with her wealthy father-in-law over access to her son, Tom (Aiden Gould), the father of whom is dead.
Click here to read the full review at JustPressPlay.net.
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September 7th, 2009 admin
2006
Starring: Lorraine Stanley, Georgia Groome, Johnny Harris, Nathan Constance, Sam Spruell, Alexander Morton
Director: Paul Andrew Williams
Runtime: 85 Minutes
Distributor: Outsider Pictures
Rating: R
For as riotously entertaining as both Lock Stock and Snatch were, Guy Ritchie has a lot to answer for. While international audiences were largely spared the brunt of the pain the misery by a lack of international distribution, most Americans will never know the excruciating pain that even a single viewing of such piss poor clones the likes of Rancid Aluminum, The 51st State, and Love, Honor, and Obey can inflict. Thankfully these last few years have seen something of a moratorium on wearily hip tales cock-er-ney wideboys and their harebrained, desperately ironic escapades, and with it a welcome return to the kind of arresting, gritty, and disgustingly grubby crime dramas Britain used to be very good at.
With that in mind we come to director Paul Andrew Williams 2006 study of urban sickness London to Brighton, a grimy shoestring tale of an on-the-run prostitute, her underage ward, and a perusing pimp it serves as an unpleasant excursion into the sewers of contemporary Britain that leaves a genuinely nasty aftertaste that’s difficult to rinse.
Click here to read the full review at JustPressPlay.net.
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July 17th, 2009 admin
2007
Starring: Carla Ribas, Vinicius Zinn, Ricardo Vilaco, Ze Carlos Machado, Felipe Massuia, Dona Jacira
Director: Chico Tiexeira
Runtime: 92 Minutes
Distributor: Indiepix
Rating: NR
While domestic dissatisfaction has long been a staple of European film (notably British) the stylistic explosion of Brazilian cinema has left a distinct impression that the Latin American nation is all about fighting and favelas, seemingly ignoring the large urban centers where people live out their lives in relative normalcy. Taking us inside the titular Sao Paulo dwelling, helmer Chico Tiexeira drifts amidst a humid air of simmering resentment, raging hormones and boorish male entitlement that illustrates how it can indeed be grim down south, too.
Mother to three lay-about teenage boys and wife to a neglected wife to a skirt-chasing hubby, Alice is a portrait of ruined passion and quiet melancholy. Toiling as a manicurist at a local beauty parlor where her day is typically filled buffing the feet of women such as stuck up regular Carman who delights in embellishing every detail of an infinitely more interesting romantic life.
Click here to read the full review at JustPressPlay.net.
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July 9th, 2009 admin
2009
Starring: Johnny Depp, Christian Bale, Marion Cotillard, Stephen Graham, Stephen Dorff, James Russo, Branka Katic
Director: Michael Mann
Runtime: 143 Minutes
Distributor: Universal
Rating: R
Michael Mann is a director who doesn’t do anything by halves. He’s a storyteller who knows exactly what he likes and returns to those themes again and again; skilled professionals compelled to do, be it good or evil; forbidden love; architecture and cityscapes; and the crisp visceral snap of digital video. Public Enemies, the tale of folk hero bank robber John Dillenger, is a film that brings together all of the above and more, but with a twist. This is not a period pastiche or a well-researched mock-up. Armed with light, portable, high definition cameras, Mann brings depression era America to life with highly mobile faux-documentary styling that sparks with a gloss and a sheen that positively pops off the screen.
Of course Mann has played cops and robbers before, and with 1995’s underworld epic Heat he brought together the two finest actors of their generation in Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino. Now with the casting of Johnny Depp as 1930’s Robin Hood opposite Christian Bale as the G-man Melvin Purvis tasked with his capture, you could make the argument that he has gone and done it again. But this is far from the dual character study of emotionally closed off mirrors mutually consumed by their work, though trace elements remain. Indeed Depp’s Dillenger is not a man to be found doing thrill-seeker liquor store hold-ups with a born to lose tattoo on his chest.
Click here to read the full review at Uinterview.com.
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June 19th, 2009 admin
1993
Starring: Robert Redford, Demi Moore, Woody Harrelson, Seymour Cassel, Oliver Platt
Director: Adrian Lyne
Runtime: 117 Minutes
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
Rating: R
Much in the way the Basic instinct the previous year had Sharon Stone uncrossing her legs and the whole world hitting the pause button to the exclusion of everything else in the movie, Indecent Proposal was a film that rode to success on a single, solitary aspect of itself – the premise. The oh-so nineties idea of a down-on-their-luck couple, David and Diana (Harrelson and Moore), facing financial ruin offered a lifeline by a billionaire industrialist John Gage (Redford) whereby he will pay them $1 million for on night with her put the question to couples all over the world – what would you do? In a time before the Internet and our tabloid culture had erased the word taboo from our vocabulary this became dinner-party catnip for the sexually repressed masses.
But while this simple tale of true love and sanitized prostitution marketed itself as a couple’s movie this is a flick aimed squarely at the ladies. A vicarious piece of candy-coated wish-fulfillment whereby the hunky billionaire and her suitably tenacious true love duke it out for her affections while a million middle-aged gals in frumpy nightgowns and curlers lean over to henpecked husbands and ask: “What if it were me?”
Click here to read the full review at JustPressPlay.net.
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