tháng 11 2010 ~ The Larsen Film Review

The Sweet Hereafter (1997)

Sarah Polley stars in a film about a tragedy in a small town involving a school bus wreck on a snowy morning. Polley plays the only survivor that has to deal with the parents attempting to put together a lawsuit against the town. Ian Holm plays the lawyer, hired by Polley's father, trying to assemble the parents into a class action suit.

The film is sad and slow and incredibly cheesy. We get constant flashback to the kids before the accident. We sit through interviews with parents, the bus driver, and teachers like we are watching an episode of Law & Order. The film becomes an analogy between the Pied piper of Hamelin and the lawyer/father, with annoying narration by Polley herself.

I can see why this slipped out of the imdb Top 250 back in 2003. It was nominated for two Oscars for Director and Screenplay and won numerous awards at film festivals. I would not recommend this movie.

Vote: 5/10

IMDB Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120255/

The American Film Institute spent a decade creating Top 100 lists from American Cinema, the 100 Thrills, Passions, Laughs, Cheers, All-Time, Villains, etc. But they also started something new at the turn of the Century. They started releasing a top 10 American Films of the Year starting in 2000. This is one of the films on that inaugural list. Two months later it was also nominated for two Oscars. Laura Linney for best Actress and also for Best Screenplay. It didn't win either. It is also one of the last three films on my imdb Top 250 from 2003 and 2004.

Enough about why I watch it. This is a brother and sister drama centered around the brothers emotional issues; Terry played by Mark Ruffalo. After their parents die in a car wreck Sammy, played by Laura Linney, is left to take care of her brother. The children are now grown up and are both pretty screwed up. Terry can't handle the small town and lacks direction and Sammy is a single mother who works at the bank and lacks direction with relationships.

Matthew Broderick plays the new bank boss and Rory Culkin plays Rudy, Sammy's son. The film is an emotional mess. All of the characters have major flaws, and there is little to no resolution in the film to any of this. This is also the point of the film, life isn't easy and Hollywood doesn't have to make life look perfect all the time. I had trouble leaning either way on this film, and 6/10 seemed the most appropriate. I probably would have given it a higher rating if I would have seen it when it came out, but it just good acting in a forgettable movie.

Vote: 6/10

IMDB Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0203230/

The nominees from the 2009 Oscars (all released in 2008) for live action were a little more trouble for me to get a hold of this time around. The 2007 and 2008 Shorts were all released as a collection by Magnolia films. Starting in 2009, and again this year, they started releasing all the live action and animated short film nominees as a single theatrical film. Problem is they stopped putting out dvd's. After waiting over a year I finally found them all at the itunes store, and was able to get all of these, and next years [look for a post next week].

So like the animated nominees from 2009 [HERE] I have listed them in descending order, from favorite to leave favorite. Toyland: Spielzeugland won the Oscar, but I would have picked Auf der Strecke.

Film: On the Line: Auf der Strecke
Director: Reto Caffi
Runtime: 30 min
Country: Switzerland
Vote: 9/10
Review: My favorite by far. The story is about a man who works the security camera at a department store. He has fallen in love with an employee there, and since they take the same train home; he times leaving work so that they take the same one home every day. After a tragedy involving the girl and her brother that he could have intervened in, they begin talking. "Is he going to tell her?" is all that I could think about, it was gripping and interesting. All that you can ask for from a short film.

Film: The Pig: Grisen
Director: Dorthe Warnø Høgh
Runtime: 23 min
Country: Denmark
Vote: 8/10
Review: The simplest storyline. Man goes in for surgery, after an extended stay in the hospital he only has the painting on the wall for comfort. When the vacant bed in his room is filled, the picture mysteriously comes down. Turns out the family was offended... the family of a blind man was offended by a painting the man couldn't see. An interesting film about tolerance, I can see how some people would find it boring. I really liked it though.

Film: New Boy
Director: Steph Green
Runtime: 11 min
Country: Ireland
Vote: 8/10
Review: I actually saw this one at a film festival in Fort Worth. To this day, it stands as the only short film I have ever seen in the theater before getting a nomination. It was also the only one of the five that I could find on youtube instead of having to purchase on itunes. The film is about an African boy that is the new kid in class. He just moved to Ireland we learn through tragic events. It is sad and heartwarming. A little too short to be my favorite, but it was my favorite at the festival so I was happy to see it included (I picked it for the win, and was wrong two years ago).

OSCAR WINNER

Film: Toyland: Spielzeugland
Director: Jochen Alexander Freydank
Runtime: 13 min
Country: Germany
Vote: 6/10
Review: A German film centered around World War II and concentration camps. Instant winner when it comes to the Academy.. even if it wasn't good and incredibly confusing. I actually watched it twice and I still couldn't put it together. Basically a mother tells her son that the neighbors are leaving for Toyland and that he cannot go. In reality they are being shipped off to concentration camps, and the boy sneaks off from his mother, and onto a train. All to pull off an elaborate swap to save the neighbor boy?

Film: Manon on the Asphalt: Manon sur le bitume
Director: Elizabeth Marre & Olivier Pont
Runtime: 15 min
Country: France
Vote: 6/10
Review: Manon gets into a wreck with a car. She is dieing on the street while the ambulance is arriving. Instead of reflecting back on her life, you know her life flashing before her eyes... she instead of thinking about how all her friends and family are going to coup with her dieing. Not a bad concept, but depressing, and in some ways incomplete.

Surprisingly I gave all 5 at least a 6 out of 10. Pretty good bunch actually, they all were at least average and three out of five I felt were worth watching. Hopefully next years are as good!

Shrek "4"ever after, the 4th movie in the series that won't go away. Hey, at least they are keeping Eddie Murphy, Mike Myers, and Cameron Diaz busy so there are working less on crap like Norbit, The Love Guru, and Charlie's Angels.

This one was a rebound for me from the 3rd film, another 5/10, that was still the worst in the series. It really seems more like something I would watch on television and not in a theater. I'm sure we will see this on a family channel soon enough, maybe the 3D would have added something, but I doubt it. A big pro is that it has a low kids scare factor 2/10. Besides being ogres and witches they are not really scary and there are very few scenes that would be unacceptable for little ones.

The storyline is that Rumpelstiltskin finds a way to con Shrek into handing over the kingdom. Shrek now has to reverse the contract by falling in love with Princess Fiona again. It is kind of a cute storyline, but remains just for kids. It has definitely lost the double entendres that made the first film so special.

Vote: 5/10, KSF: 2/10

IMDB Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0892791/

Films like this remind me that I am not a student of film. I never studied it and I could care less about how fluid the film was or the social commentary, or whatever metric that doesn't add up to an enjoyable and interesting storyline. The fact is, this movie was dull. The elements of slapstick comedy do not find in well with the seriousness and romance. We have multiple tangled affairs and no real main character.

I don't like hopping around following different people if there is no central theme and storyline. I'll take Jean Renoir's Grand Illusion over this one any day.

I really don't have much more to say, this was a struggle to finish and motivate myself to get through. Good luck if you are watching it to complete a list.

Vote: 2/10

IMDB Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0031885/

Wow am I lost. Does anyone remember details from a movie they saw a decade ago? I started writing this blog to remind myself of all the movies I watch. I don't see how anyone will understand what is going on in this movie without the first six films even a little fresh in their minds.

I will "re-review" this in June when I rewatch the entire series the month before the final chapter is released. Until then I have to critique the fact that the director does a horrible job catching people up in the story.

If you ever watched LOST you know that they take 2-4 minutes every week to give you the necessary background to follow the episode. They assume that the audience did watch the previous episodes, but do not require them to have memorized the details. Harry Potter movies have never ever done this. Why? Don't you realize these film won't be able to stand on their own even twenty years from now because of this?

I'm not quite sure I understand what was going on most of the time, and since this is a part one there isn't any conclusion at all. I'm sure I will like it a lot better when I know what is going on, but this was crap. 3/10 on its own, maybe an 8/10 since the acting was good next year... until then... if you decide to watch this one you better know what happened in the last 6.

Vote: 6/10

IMDB Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0926084/

In 1994 Ken Burns released a 19 hour documentary about the entire history of baseball. I watched the entire thing this past summer, reviewed HERE. To my surprise he released a "10th inning" continuation to the series, originally airing on PBS the last week of September. The "Top" of the inning is a 2 hour documentary about baseball from 1992 to 1999. And the "Bottom" of the inning is an hour and a half documentary on baseball from 1999 to 2009. I will discuss them in two parts, since they are quite different in my opinion.

So the top of the inning actually features a lot of different stuff. It talks about the Latin influence on the game, the strike of 1994, and how Cal Ripken, Jr. saved the game. OK, saved the game might be a little far, how about restored America's faith in baseball. I thought the top of the tenth did a great job talking about a lot of different teams. If went into the Atlanta Brave's dominance over their division, the Marlins run from the wild card spot to the World Championship. It went into the Diamondback vs. Yankees, and had a great feel of covering the entire league's development.

The bottom of the tenth was another story. The White Sox, Phillies, and Cardinals all won World series this last decade. Rather than talk about 10 different teams winning in a 10 year span we focused on the Yankees and Red Sox. By focus I mean this was all about the Northeast, sorry midwest, have you heard of this game called baseball yet? I found it almost offensive that it had such a narrow scope. Sure there was a lot about the steroid era. A lot of time on the Bonds, McGuire, and Sosa home run race. But the focus was all on the Red Sox coming back from a 3-0 hold in the ALCS to win 8 straight to their first World Series in almost a century. I get it, it was important. I just thought that once again, just like the EASTERN sports Network [ESPN] the whole focus was on east coast sports, forgetting everyone else.

This is still very much worth watching, and something that my kids will probably enjoy 10-15 years from now when the 11th inning comes out.

Vote: 8/10

IMDB Link(s):
Top of the Inning: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1738421/
Bottom of the Inning: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1777725/

With the announcement of the Oscar Documentary Short list, a list of the 15 finalists to get one of five Oscar nominations, I have started to look into watching these films. This one, considered by a few to be a front runner at the award this year, is one of the few already out on dvd.

The film is about an amateur film maker who followed street artists around. A man with no real ambition to create a film, but that was more obsessed with filming everything he saw. He starts by following around some pretty amateur graffiti artists, with little talent, and moderate levels of trust. As he learned more and more about this underground group of self proclaimed artists, he learned of an actual artist who made graffiti art famous.

His name is Banksy, and even if you don't watch this film you should check out his website to see some of his work. He is famous for painting on the Gaza Strip and pulling some complicated stunts, including hanging his own artwork in some of the most famous museums in the world.

The concept of turning the documentary back on the eccentric and nutty French-man that eventually becomes a fraud was pretty fun. Will this film get a nomination? I don't think so. The academy likes to pick films that actually make a positive impact on society and have a good message. Although a fun watch, I don't think this makes any sort of statement. See for yourself, it is not even an hour and a half long.

Vote: 7/10

IMDB Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1587707/

Sometimes simple drama, character studies can be the most interesting films of the year. Ebert seemed to think so when he saw this one at a festival, liked it so much, and featured it in his own festival later that year in Chicago. Another one that I happened across at the library, and one of Ebert's top 10 films of the year. Upon finding it I was actually very interested in it and excited to watch it.

The story is simple, it is about a Pakistani man who owns and operates a push cart in downtown New York City. He wakes up in his small single room apartment in the middle of the night. Travels downtown, gets to the warehouse, cleans and stocks his push cart, then drags it through the city to his usual corner. It is an interesting look at a lifestyle completely foreign to me, and made the first part of this film very interesting.

The film never fully explains the mans story. It is short, with a runtime of 87 minutes, and never makes an emotional connection with the audience. Maybe this is the point, but the film seemed to detour to an almost romance. Things don't work out, as usual for this man, and his existence stays about the same through the course of the film. I guess I wanted more, I wanted some better conclusions and plot development. The acting was authentic, and the story compelling at time. I can't see suggesting it because the build up in my own head about how good this was going to be saved it from being really boring.

Vote: 6/10

IMDB Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0464105/

I've noticed myself hating on Pixar for no reason lately. I think people are tired of seeing them win everything. Personally I get annoyed because my favorites (like Ratatouille) get less recognition than the ones I didn't like (Up or Cars). Before watching this one I watched and reviewed the two previous films in the [now] trilogy again.

I have to honestly say that this is my favorite in the series. It is now my favorite for the Animated Oscar and I'm on the Pixar bandwagon this year. The plot and storyline were well developed. The moved the story forward to the toy's owner, Andy, growing up and leaving for college. It is attic, charity, or trash for the toys, and after a mix up it is an adventure to stay together.

I loved it, it was a great sequel in an era where sequels are weak at best. As for the Kids Scare factor, there are some moments that the villain toys at the daycare would scary little ones. It was definitely made for those that have grown up with Toy Story 2 to watch, so the maturity level needs to be higher.

Vote: 9/10, KSF: 3/10

IMDB Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0435761/

I'm not sure how to describe why I didn't like this movie. I didn't hate it, and the cast was likable for the most part. I just thought that rather than have plot holes they just decided to tell us nothing. We don't know why they are on a mystery planet. We don't know why they are being hunted, other than to "learn"... really?!?

The film has a good cast with Adrien Brody, Topher Grace (That 70's Show main character), Laurence Fishburne, and Alice Braga. I thought that they were miscast though. Brody as an action hero? Grace's character was not realistic at all, and his storyline ended dumb.

The action was fun, the explosions were big, and I had zero expectations from this movie. A 6 is generous, and would be worth checking out if it came on tv.

Vote: 6/10

IMDB Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1424381/

Nominated for the Grand Jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival and one of Eberts favorite films of 2008, I happened across this film at the library and since it was fairly short I gave it a shot.

Let me start by saying that there are some opinions expressed in this documentary that can easily be argued as not the approach our country needs to take. They place blame on our financial crisis on this that might not necessarily the main reason. They do however NOT blame China, and address that our fear in China is exaggerated but somewhat realistic.

This film is all about the national debt and how the National Budget is dangerously high. No matter how you slice it, we are spending the next generations money, and we are sinking into a financial hole that we may never get out of.

Almost a horror film in some ways because the stark reality that our kids might be broke and that we will not have Social Security in 50 years is pretty scary. I enjoyed the film, and will leave it up to you to decide how realistic all of these problems really are.

Vote: 8/10

IMDB Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0963807/

This film makes Brokeback Mountain look like a G rated film. It opens with a sex scene that made me walk out of the room. I waited for it to end to come back in, then had to decide if I should even bother watching the rest of the film. The Asian couple are then looking for a waterfall and get lost, they break up and go through this strange relationship throughout the film. Sleeping around to get back at each other, laying around their slum apartment most of the day.

I really failed to understand the point of this movie. There are even scenes were we just watch a waterfall in silence for several minutes. Some scenes are in black-and-white, other in color, usually when the leading actor is in a good mood. I think film students have put this film on a pedestal for its usage of color. I can't seem to find merit anywhere else.

Part of the filmspotting forum's top 100 films of all time, I'm starting to wonder if that list has any merit. You have been warned.

Vote: 2/10

IMDB Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118845/

Oops, I didn't know what I was getting into on this one. I'm sure I would have avoided it if I would have known that Megan Fox was in it. Sadly Josh Brolin and John Malkovich were not enough to make this film good. With an estimated $47 million budget and only grossing $11 million in three months at the box office, I would call it a pretty big flop. I'm not sure how
Jimmy Hayward makes a jump from directing Horton Hears a Who! to directing this film, and I'm not sure we will see him do it again soon.
Based on a comic book about a cowboy brought back to life by Indians is far from making sense. Not that this is the most extreme stretch that this film makes, but it gives you a taste of just how bad it was.

This outlandish action film really doesn't deserve to be discussed much. Malkovich was a pretty good villain and saved this film from being a 1.

Vote: 2/10

IMDB Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1075747/

This is the emotional war movie I expected The Messenger to be. A film that breaks your heart then drags you through a families misery. It is a difficult film to watch but some great acting from a young cast. Natalie Portman and Tobey Maguire are husband and wife. Just before heading back to Afghanistan, Maguire picks up his screw up brother [Jake Gyllenhaal] from prision where he has just been released on parole.

While Maguire is gone, Portman and Gyllenhaal become emotionally attached. Not necessarily in a sexual way, but he is there to fill a father role for the kids, and console her. I have to be vague and it is hard to go into detail about why I liked this film so much without spoiling it. It was nominated for two Golden Globes, but one was for a U2 song that played during the closing credits. So it basically had a single credible nomination for Tobey Maguire's performance.

Although difficult to watch, I really enjoyed it. Not a lighthearted film though.

Vote: 8/10

IMDB Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0765010/

An Italian epic film about a village in Sicily. An autobiographical film following three generations of the Tornatore family. Directed by Giuseppe Tornatore and focusing mainly on his fathers generation, this film was very long and hard to stay interested in.

Nominated for a golden globe, in a foreign language category that the more I watch the more I feel is much much weaker than the Oscar category. The film seems to lack direction as it wanders through the decades, it becomes difficult to tell exactly where we have progressed to. To top that off I was not impressed with Francesco Scianna's acting. The director is famous for his film Cinema Paradiso, and this almost seemed like a nomination to make up for that film.

That probably isn't fair, but the fact is that there were some really good foreign films last year and this was not one of them.

Vote: 5/10

IMDB Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1081935/

This winner of 4 Oscars in 1984 was the final film for me to finish several imdb lists (2004 and 2005 top 250 to be exact).Best picture nominee in the 1984 Oscars that lost out to an emotional film featuring a retired astronaut, Terms of Endearment. This film was nominated for 8 and won all of the non-acting awards, like Effects, Editing, Music, and Sound.

It is almost a film in two parts. The first half focuses on a group of pilots in the desert trying to break the sound barrier. It then transitions on to America int he Space Race. The tie-in is that the first astronauts consisted of pilots, and several of the first were also part of the effort to break the sound barrier.

The film is somewhere between biography, drama, adventure, and epic. This is obviously loosely based on factual events, we really don't get emotionally vested in any of the men in particular, and it is loaded with action and adventure as these men do what not other man has ever done.

I had reservations about making this a 9 or 10. There are too many 80's cheesy moments to make it a 10. The lack of getting emotionally involved kept this out of my 9 range. It really was good though, and has a fantastic cast, namely with Ed Harris, Dennis Quaid, Sam Shepard, and Fred Ward. I liked it a lot more than "Terms..." and am sure that I would have been pulling for it to win almost 30 years ago.

Vote: 8/10

IMDB Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086197/

I'm not quite sure were to begin with this one. It was nothing like what I expected from seeing it on people's "Best" lists. The film was nominated for an Oscar last year for some sort of film editing. It starts out with some fantastic action sequences introducing countless characters with cool visuals flashing either names up from behind building, etc.

The problem with this film is that it is not made for an international audience. It just makes no sense at all. They follow this guy who is like a political godfather in Italy. He has knocked people off to get as powerful as he now is, and we get to see him running for President. We don't really get to see the side that is trying to bring him down, and we actually spend most of the film talking about how so-and-so took out so-and-so, therefore so-and-so is linked to so-and-so. It is so utterly confusing that you only get the point that we know he is linked to the killings but cannot prove it in court.

Trying to follow this film was painful and pointless, unless you know Italian politics then forget it.

Vote: 1/10

IMDB Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1023490/

Nominated for a Golden Globe in the foreign language category. This Spanish speaking film based in Mexico and partially in Chile was actually pretty interesting to me.

Raquel (Catalina Saavedra) is a live-in maid that has been with the family half of her life. She acts as if she is part of the family, and when her stress level is dangerously high it takes several "other" maids to finally get her to calm down. She runs off a couple, then finally makes friends with another. She starts as the villain, then by the end of the film you pity and understand her a little better.

It is a pretty interesting character study. Some unnecessary nudity though. I'm not sure why we needed to see the different maids showering in the mornings or getting dressed. It seemed more like the drector, Sebastián Silva, just wanted an excuse to have them take their tops off.

Vote: 7/10

IMDB Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1187044/

The hard to find fifth and final documentary from last years Oscar nominations. I've talked a lot about the other films that "should" have been nominated without seeing the last one that actually was. Probably the most controversial subject manner of the nominees as well, regarding immigration.

The film is about kids that ride trains from Central America through Mexico trying to get to America. Some are murdered, some are captured by smugglers who try and collect ransoms, most are caught and sent back home. The survival rate is low, and the question here is who is letting these kids attempt these outrageous stunts.

It seems that the story with most is that either one or both parents have already made it into the US and they are attempting to find these relatives. Either dad left mom and kids to make money, or both parents left and the kids are stuck with their grandparents. It all boils down to a lack of responsibility on the parents for abandoning their kids. In some cases the kids just run away from home, which is a little different, and hard to place blame on either side.

The subject matter is powerful, but the inability to follow these kids all the way, and the attempts to draw emotion from the viewing audience was a little over the top for me. It was good but not that good.

Vote: 7/10

IMDB Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0489342/

Nominated for an Oscar for costume design, basically the end scene showcasing the Chanel line was enough for the nomination alone. On the other hand the entire film has great costumes, but the main thing is that the film has substance as well.

I consider this a sleeper. Nothing was mentioned about the acting or script at awards season but this one really impressed me. I love a good biography and I felt that I not only got a good feel for the life of Gabrielle 'Coco' Chanel, played by Audrey Tautou. But I also got a good plot with conflict and surprises. The men in her life were not easy to pin as either villain or hero, rather they had redeeming qualities and it seemed very realistic. I had to choose for myself what I thought was the better choice for her, rather than a Hollywood film that makes the villain so bad and the hero so good that you don't even need to think for yourself.

Foreign, so be ready to read, but this one is good.

Vote: 9/10

IMDB Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1035736/

A film about a struggling music hall in Paris in the 1930's. Starring Gérard Jugnot, Nora Arnezeder, and Clovis Cornillac, this is just an average foreign film with a decent storyline.

I didn't see this as a standout film, it was only nominated for a song, and the film borders on musical. It has several song and dance scenes but all on the stage, with the majority of the film being about the struggle of Gerard to find work, rebuild the music hall, and retain the talented Nora. The other half of the story is a tragic romance between Nora and Clovis characters.

There is nothing is really disliked about this one, but nothing that makes me want to watch it again or suggest it to others.

Vote: 7/10

IMDB Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0948535/

Thank god I didn't know what I was getting myself into on this one. Easily the worst film of the Oscar ballot of the year, right next to the other A ___ Man movie [A Serious Man]. The film is about a college professor, Colin Firth, struggling with the loss of his gay lover. Julianne Moore plays the girl he almost settled down with, but who still hangs around as a friend. Nicholas Hoult, better known from his role in About a Boy 8 years ago, now a young man, plays a college student with a crush on his professor.

This film moves very slow as Firth constantly laments on screen and we get glimpses of the relationship he once had. This one will put you to sleep.

Vote: 3/10

IMDB Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1315981/

Ben Foster, better known to me as a villain in films like Alpha Dog and a fantastic job with the film 3:10 to Yuma, plays the leading role here. He is a man just returned from the war in Iraq with slight injuries including a bad eye that is still undergoing medical consultation.

Home from the war but still in the Army he is assigned to assist Woody Harrelson in delivering news to families of fallen soldiers. The film has some uncomfortable moments when the news is broken, but that is to be expected going into this film. The relationship with Samantha Morton's character didn't make a lot of sense to me. It made the movie less compelling than the look at what it took to do this job. Harrelson was nominated for an Oscar for his role but lost to Christoph Waltz for Inglourious Basterds.

I really had trouble enjoying this film. I liked the idea, and I liked the dialog between Harrelson and Foster. It just turned into an awkward romance instead of a war drama. Not one I would suggest.

Vote: 6/10

IMDB Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0790712/

I'll try not to bash this movie too much. You know what you are getting yourself into, as far as characters and theme. It is pretty easy to figure out what is going to happen and watching doesn't require much thought.

Here is the problem I had with the movie... it didn't make much sense. It starts with a gay wedding and we never touch base with the couple again in the film. Maybe this concluded a long running relationship through the television series, so fine. We go on vacation and after 2 hours the script writers and director realize that there really hasn't been any sort of conflict in the entire movie. They then generate a couple ridiculous problems for them to run into. They get out of their tough situation, which was that they might have to fly coach! Yuck! Then everything is fine again.

I was just offended that two and a half hours got me no real plot or story. The first film had conflict, comedy, and resolution. This film just had them... like a dvd extra, no real point. I have seen worse, but this could have been better.

Vote: 4/10

IMDB Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1261945/

Considered the first British talkie film. This is an Alfred Hitchcock thriller about a shopkeeper's daughter and the criminal mess she gets herself and her detective boyfriend mixed up in.

The plot is simple, Detective Webber is too caught up in his work to spend time with his girlfriend, Alice. She decides to go out with another man instead. After a quarrel in "the artists" apartment she relies on her detective boyfriend to cover up her mess.

Using sound creatively and a fairly simple story, especially from Hitchcock, this wasn't a memorable film of his. It is however historically significant and good compared to other films of this generation.

If you want to watch the whole Hitchcock collection you shouldn't be turned away from this early one, but it was not my favorite. I watched it because it is part of the 1001 Movies to See Before You Die book.

Vote: 6/10

IMDB Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0019702/

November is catch up on last years Oscar and Golden Globe nominees month. Usually at this point the foreign films are finally out on dvd and finishing the ballot is actually possible without going to the theater for 3 days straight.

This film taking place in Israel is one of the most depressing I have seen all year. The story follows a small community and the series of disasters that lead to several deaths and some destroyed lives. Told in a disjointed fashion and in 5 chapters we hop around in time [which is hard to follow on foreign films because you have to keep track of people's faces as well as just reading the subtitles].

Another sad film showing that this region will never be stable because the culture does not allow for religious freedom and understanding. I'm not sure if it made a clear point, and just left me with the feeling of "wow, that sucks..."

For a foreign nominee it could have been worse, and it was actually pretty memorable. All cultures have strange rules and laws but the sequence that will make me remember the film is this. Man busts into a restaurant, shoots the ceiling a couple times demanding money, cook shoots him out of reaction to shots in the front room, family of dead gunman then shoot the cook, then kill a neighbor boy in an attempt to kill the cooks brother. The cooks family now has to pay the gunman's mafia family $50,000 US in 1 month time or they will kill the whole family. Did I mention this was the sum decided in a religious courtroom? It was just nutty. The need to get this money is what leads to what I consider a series of unfortunate events.

Interesting to say the least, very sad film...

Vote: 7/10

IMDB Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1077262/

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