782. A TIZEDES MEG A TÖBBIEK (1965)

781. GHOST DOG (1999)

Title: Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai
Year: 1999
Country: France, Germany, USA
Genre: Crime, Thriller, Drama
Running time: 116 min.
Directed by: Jim Jarmush
Starring: Forest Whitaker, John Tormey, Cliff Gorman, Henry Silva, Isaach De Bankolé, Tricia Vessey, Victor Argo
imdb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0165798/

Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai illustrates that, in some bizarre way, artsy films can be subject to the same major flaws that often afflict Hollywood blockbusters. It's typical for a big budget motion picture to ignore logic and consistency in order to boost the level of adrenaline. Ghost Dog, the latest from iconoclast director Jim Jarmusch, commits the same sin, albeit for radically different reasons. Jarmusch is so infatuated with his subject matter and thematic content that he force-feeds his plot through a pair of totally incomprehensible twists (one near the beginning and one at the end) in order to make statements and get things moving in a particular direction. As a result, only the most ardent Jarmusch fan will be able to suspend disbelief, and the movie turns into an exercise in ideas rather than an excursion along a stable narrative route.
There's a lot to like about Ghost Dog. Jarmusch has an interesting idea - comparing and contrasting ancient Japanese culture with that of modern day American gangsters. By romanticizing the Mafia, Jarmusch emphasizes their code of respect. In that way, he is able to view them as an "ancient tribe" and the last of a dying breed. Despite centering on a hit man and being about his single-minded campaign against a crime family, Ghost Dog is more about honor than it is about killing or revenge, and that's where the film gets into trouble. Characters act irrationally just so that Jarmusch can get his point across. For example, near the beginning, a contract is put out on Ghost Dog's life, despite his impeccable record and obvious value to the mob. Why? No credible reason is given, but there wouldn't have been a movie otherwise. This is one of two key instances in the movie when Jarmusch expects us to ignore logic and accept something on faith. But, just as I won't do that for Armageddon, I won't do it for Ghost Dog, either.
Ghost Dog (Forest Whitaker) is a skilled and accomplished hit man who works for Louie (John Tormey), a middle ranking member of the local crime syndicate. The two communicate by the most unorthodox of means: carrier pigeons. When a hit goes wrong because of bad information given to Ghost Dog, the head of the mob, Vargo (Henry Silva), and his right-hand goon, Sonny Valerio (Cliff Gorman), put a contract out on Ghost Dog. Because Louie was ultimately responsible for the botched hit, he fears for his life. So, to protect him, Ghost Dog swings into action, and, wielding his gun like a sword, he begins to track down the men threatening him and Louie, one by one.
The juxtaposition of rules about samurai life (placed on screen through intertitles) with how Ghost Dog applies them is the movie's most successful conceit. Ghost Dog adheres religiously to the Way of the Samurai, as laid out in a book that has become his Bible. "The Way of the Samurai is the way of death," it states. "Meditation on inevitable death should be performed every day." Another lesson is that the samurai must devote his body and soul to his master, to the exclusion of all else. Ghost Dog lives by this creed. Because Louie once saved his life, he regards the gangster as his master, so everything he does during the course of the film is designed to protect Louie, not to save his own life.
The film is a little on the long side, but it's never dull. The revenge element - Ghost Dog hunting down and killing mobsters - forms the core of the story, but it is less compelling than similar situations in recent movies like The Limey and Payback. This is not a high-energy motion picture. In fact, in keeping with the cool, detached attitude one associates with samurai, Jarmusch allows Ghost Dog's tone to become aloof. And, as a means of contradicting the seeming seriousness of the underlying plot, Jarmusch introduces the comedic interplay between Ghost Dog and his good friend, Raymond (Isaach De Bankolé), an ice cream salesman. These two don't understand each other - Ghost Dog speaks only English and Raymond speaks only French, so their exchanges are often amusing, with each of them unwittingly echoing the other.
In the title role, Forest Whitaker underplays the part nicely. He's certainly more successful as a hit man here than he was in 1991's Diary of a Hit Man. The various actors essaying mob guys look like supporting players from "The Sopranos." They basically fill familiar cliches, with personalities just a shade above the level of a caricature. Isaach De Bankolé, who previously worked with Jarmusch in Night on Earth and later appeared in The Keeper, gives an effectively offbeat turn as the English challenged Raymond.
In many ways, Ghost Dog is typical Jarmusch. The director, while admittedly talented, is afflicted with an Oliver Stone-sized ego and his movies often come across as needlessly pretentious. His reputation also outstrips his ability. His last picture, for example, was the exceedingly wretched Year of the Horse, a Neil Young documentary that easily stands as the worst concert movie ever committed to celluloid. Ghost Dog is a huge improvement, but Jarmusch's need to emphasize his involvement through dispensable stylistic flourishes stands out like a sore thumb.
There's certainly a lot to chew on in Ghost Dog. The film is ripe with interesting ideas, social commentary (especially about how violence permeates every aspect of today's world, including cartoons), and other points worth mulling over. Had the plot been better anchored, this would have been a strong, well-rounded film. As it is, many critics will probably willingly overlook the plot holes and rave about the stylistic and thematic elements. I prefer a little more meat, so the best I can muster for this movie is a lukewarm response.

Cosmopapi rating: 81%

780. DIRTY DANCING (1987)

Title: Dirty Dancing
Year: 1987
Country: USA
Genre: Drama, Romance, Music
Running time: 100 min.
Directed by: Emile Ardolino
Starring: Jennifer Grey, Patrick Swayze, Jerry Orbach, Cynthia Rhodes
imdb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092890/

I'm embarrassed to say that if you had asked me in 1987 what my favorite movies of the year were, DIRTY DANCING would have been one of them. In fact, I paid to see it several times. Looking back on it, I can understand why a young girl would be so entranced with this story – ugly duckling becomes swan and gets to dance and make out with super sexy dance teacher. I watched it again recently to see how out-dated and silly the film had become. What I discovered through this experiment is films that touched you as a youngster will always hold magic for you – no matter how unbelievable and over-acted they truly are. Everything about this film is overdone, from the story to the acting, but it still managed to catch my heart. What young woman, or slightly older one, can escape the secret yearnings in her soul to be loved for her true self by such a hunky guy? To be turned into a "princess" or, in this case, a beautiful dancer while finding first love with your sexy, dangerous instructor? Of course, if this happened in real life, especially in the 50s, Mr. Swayze's character would have found himself in jail for having sex with a minor faster than you can say mambo, especially since he was one of the help. The story begins with Frances "Baby" Houseman trying to fit in with the cool, sexy dancers at the Catskill resort her parents drag her and her older sister to every summer. Only this year, Baby is old enough to start having sexual urges of her own and her yearnings are pinned on the lead dance instructor, Johnny Castle. (Can you believe it?) When Johnny's dance partner gets accidently knocked up, in order to save their jobs, Baby steps into her dancing shoes and becomes Johnny's de facto partner. She begins intense dance training trying very hard to learn all the steps, but it's not easy. Plus all their lessons must be done secretly because if the management found out what was going on everybody would be in a whole heap of trouble. The help was not supposed to socialize with the guests and if caught, Penny and Johnny would be fired. With very little time before their secret performance, Baby and Johnny spend every free moment rehearsing. Her ineptness infuriates him, but she stands up for herself and doesn't let him push her around. Of course, they fall for each other in the process.
"This is my dance space. This is your dance space. I don't go into yours, you don't go into mine. You gotta hold the frame."
The night of their performance finally arrives and all goes as well as can be expected. When they return to the hotel, they find Penny in excruciating pain from her visit with the abortion doctor. With no where else to turn, Baby gets her father, a doctor, to help Penny. Baby is forbidden to spend any more time with those people, but does she listen? Of course not. She does the one thing her father would hate more then anything else in the world...falls in love with and sleeps with Johnny. The film then descends into a pseudo class war subplot, which gets more than a little tiresome. I didn't pay for a lecture about why some people are better than others, I want to see dancing and love. It's no surprise that Johnny is fired for his affair with Baby. What is surprising is that she doesn't get punished as well. In fact, her losing her virginity is flaunted as a good thing, as a step on the road to independence and womanhood. You won't see that happen very often in the world of cinema. Yes, she gets in trouble with her father, but that was going to happen eventually anyway. At least it was over a tryst with a sexy older man instead of something silly like red nail polish or missing curfew. I can't see why anyone would sit through this movie in this day and age. It has it's funny, romantic and sweet moments, but overall it's extremely hokey. The acting is at times so earnest it's annoying. The soundtrack is one of the only things that is still pretty decent...mainly because the music used was already classic. DIRTY DANCING is a fun trip down memory lane, but I'm glad I don't have to stay there.

Cosmopapi rating: 71%

779. OHAYO (1959)

Title: Ohayô (Good Morning)
Year: 1959
Country: Japan
Genre: Drama
Running time: 94 min.
Directed by: Yasujiro Ozu
Starring: Fujiki, Koji Shigaragi, Masahiko Shimazu, Keiji Sada
imdb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053134/

Ohayo is a clever, humorous, and lighthearted glimpse into contemporary Japanese life, as seen through the eyes of the Hayashi brothers: Minoru (Koji Shidara) and Isamu (Masahiko Shimazu). In a close knit suburban village of 1950's Japan, there is only one television set in the neighborhood, and the children religiously make an after school pilgrimage, often at the expense of their English lessons, to catch their daily dose of sumo wrestling. Returning home, their dinner conversations inevitably turn to incessant pleas and temper tantrums for their parents to buy them a television. But their father (Chishu Ryu) is against buying one, believing that its presence in the Japanese home will spawn "100 million idiots." When the boys are ordered by their father to remain silent about their tireless campaign, they vow not to speak to anyone. However, their protest is mistaken for an intentional snub when a neighbor, Mrs. Haraguchi (Haruko Sugimura), assumes that their silence is associated with an earlier misunderstanding with Mrs. Hayashi (Kuniko Miyake) regarding payment of club dues. Soon, news of Mrs. Haraguchi's "pettiness" over personal grudges spreads through the village, and the neighbors collectively take turns to visit Mrs. Hayashi and return all their borrowed items. Meanwhile, things prove to be equally difficult at school, as Isamu's signal for permission to talk is construed by his teacher as a request to go to the bathroom, and Minoru is punished for refusing to read a passage aloud in class. When Minoru's teacher stops by the Hayashi home after school to inquire about the boys' refusal to talk, Minoru and Isamu decide to run away to avoid being scolded.Yasujiro Ozu takes a whimsical and comic, yet socially astute commentary on formality, etiquette, and consumerism in Ohayo. Through the children's perspective, polite conversation is a meaningless exercise in civility. Yet, through the course of the film, speech becomes an indispensable means for conveying thought, profound emotion, and resolving misunderstandings: the confusion over the misplaced club dues; the children's inability to ask for lunch money; the English teacher's affection for Aunt Setsuko (Yoshiki Kuga). Inevitably, communication proves to be the most effective means of social interaction - the indispensable, universal key to all human relationships.


Cosmopapi rating: 79%

778. FEUX ROUGES (2004)

Title: Feux rouges (Red Lights)
Year: 2004
Country: France
Genre: Drama, Thriller
Running time: 105 min.
Directed by: Cédric Khan
Starring: Jean-Pierre Darroussin, Carole Bouquet, Vincent Deniard, Carline Paul
imdb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0365190/

Red Lights consists of a lot of driving, but unlike those trips you took with your folks and their array of Air Supply and Anne Murray cassettes, it’s never boring. This movie is a riveting look at manhood and marriage. It’s also legitimately frightening.A Parisian couple in their 40s set off on a lengthy trip to pick up their kids from camp in Southern France. Hélène (Carole Bouquet) is a successful attorney who is a beloved, crucial part of her firm. Antoine (Jeane Pierre Darroussin) works for an insurance company, and it’s very apparent that this trip has a very different meaning for him. In the movie’s early moments, you see that he’s dissatisfied with his role in the relationship. He’s waiting on her to arrive; she’s the one with the demands. He leaves work without any notice.So, the tension is already in place before Antoine takes the wheel. And as he drives more aggressively and she voices her concern, we see Antoine’s attempt, misguided as it is, to establish his dominance. The constant stopping at taverns and drinking like Zelda Fitzgerald in her prime is another step in Antoine’s asinine program.Hélène, eventually, gets fed up and leaves Antoine to pick up the kids by train. Antoine pursues, and eventually gives up, deciding to finish what he started: Visiting another bar and striking up a conversation with a young man in the hopes of some male bonding. He winds up picking up the worst hitchhiker short of Carrot Top (Vincent Deniard, looking exactly like Ben Affleck in Chasing Amy), which leads to a horrible accident and a frantic search for the suddenly missing Hélène.Red Lights is so impressive because it’s able to condense years of machismo struggle into about an hour and 45 minutes. Director/writer Cédric Kahn shows how ridiculous the concept of being a man is, or rather shows the right definition of it. Antoine believes the young hitchhiker is the personification of that principle, but Antoine’s search for Hélène is much more accurate, though he’s too frazzled to realize it, as the price for this perk turns out to be much too high.Kahn does more than just present his answer on an age-old question; he convincingly builds unease better than most big-budget fright fests. He captures the mounting tension of a long car trip gone bad: the endless stretches of highway, the dying need to get to the destination, the endless monotony. By keeping the action inside four doors, Kahn highlights how a symbol of freedom can quickly become a prison on wheels, speeding us to a place you dread. With that knowledge, he keeps driving you down those dark roads, and you become increasingly aware that something will go wrong.Usually the sign of a director without a clue, Kahn mixes in different themes and styles in Red Lights. However, the maneuver pays off: You get more than a few cheap scares or a rambling parable on domestic contentedness, but a movie with intellectual and psychological oomph. Right in time for Halloween, too.

Cosmopapi rating: 77%

777. THE FALLEN IDOL (1948)

Title: The Fallen Idol
Year: 1948
Country: UK
Genre: Drama, Mystery, Thriller
Running time: 95 min.
Directed by: Carol Reed
Starring: Ralph Richardson, Michèle Morgan, Sonia Dresdel
imdb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0040338/

From the opening shot of The Fallen Idol, we see the world through the eyes of a young boy on the verge of adolescence. Phillipe (Bobby Henrey, a non-actor in his screen debut) is the son of the French Ambassador to England and lives in the ambassadorial mansion in London. From the living quarters on the second floor, he can be found peering through the banister down into the grand entry room below, a space where public and private life converge and a stage where the adult world plays out for his not quite comprehending eyes and ears. The staff below bustles about to prepare for the ambassador’s absence over the weekend, oblivious to Phillipe above except for the efficient and thoroughly professional butler Baines (Ralph Richardson), who always makes time for a friendly wink and a conspiratorial glance up to Phillipe. The boy adores Baines, who regales him with grand adventure stories from his time in darkest Africa, and looks forward to his weekend with Baines while his parents are away. Baines dotes on the boy who is otherwise friendless in residence. Mrs. Baines (Sonia Dresdel) is another matter, an authoritarian housekeeper who acts like a strict, disciplinarian headmistress around Phillipe. He quite understandably keeps his pet snake, MacGregor, hidden from Mrs. Baines, and the warm, accepting Baines conspires to keep Phillipe’s secret and keep the harmless snake safe from his wife, with whom relations are visibly strained and formal.
In close collaboration with Reed, Greene expanded and reworked the original story. He turned the murder into an accidental death which the boy only sees in glimpses and fragments. Convinced he’s witnessed his best friend commit murder, he’s wracked with fear but beholden by loyalty, and he unwittingly imperils his friend as he lies to cover up the deed. Reed suggested turning the pre-war British mansion of the story into the residence of the French ambassador in London, which not only explains the opulence of a lavish household with servants in post-war England but also sets it apart from the outside world even more literally – it’s technically foreign soil. Phillipe is spelled in the French fashion but always pronounced as the British “Philip” by the butler Baines and the rest of the staff. Greene added the snake, MacGregor, which is a marvelous, boyish touch and suggests a touch of symbolism: there is a snake in the mansion that is this boy’s Eden, but it isn’t MacGregor. It was a happy collaboration and a fortuitous partnership for both of them: Greene found in Reed a sensitive and savvy collaborator who understood the essentials of a good story and the art of writing for the screen, and the two worked together on two subsequent occasions: Greene wrote The Third Man (1949) and adapted his comic thriller Our Man in Havana (1959) for Reed. The Fallen Idol remained his favorite of his films.

Cosmopapi rating: 72%

776. RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY (1962)

Title: Ride the High Country
Year: 1962
Country: USA
Genre: Adventure, Drama, Western
Running time: 94 min.
Directed by: Sam Peckinpah
Starring: Joel McCrea, Randolph Scott, Mariette Hartley
imdb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056412/

Before Sam Peckinpah reinvented the Western in 1969 with his bloody classic The Wild Bunch, he paid tribute to it with his second feature film, Ride the High Country in 1962.
Part of the homage is in casting the veteran actors Joel McCrea and Randolph Scott to the lead roles. McCrea and Scott appeared in nearly two hundred films between them -- this would be Scott's last. Neither was a major star along the lines of a Bogart, Gable or Grant, but they were pros in many forgettable Westerns. Those who followed the Western genre appreciated McCrea and Scott, but in the studio era of the 1940s and 50s, Westerns were about as common as teen sex comedies in the 1980's.
McCrea plays Steve Judd, an aging gunslinger who has been on both sides of the law. As he matured, he chose the righteous path and became a lawman. He has come to learn that violence is a necessary evil in the West, though he would prefer to avoid gunplay, if possible. His reputation for honesty runs so deep that a banker hires him -- sight unseen -- to safely escort gold from the mountains back to the bank.
When McCrea arrives in town, he is nearly run down at the finish line of a bizarre race between a horse and a camel. Escaping the animals, he is almost hit by a crazy new transportation mechanism known as a car. The automobile would become a recurring symbol of modernity in Peckinpah's films. The Old West is fading away and a New World, ushered in by the automobile, the airplane, the telephone and the radio, was arriving.
McCrea makes it to the banker's office and surprises the banker and his son with his age. After quelling their fears about his abilities, he signs a contract (which he reads with glasses) to haul the gold from the mountain. From there, he begins a search for a partner.
On the other side of town is Scott -- lampooning himself as a carnival sharpshooter known as "The Oregon Kid". Scott's character, Gil Westrum, has spent more time on the wrong side of the law than McCrea's. Inevitably, McCrea comes across Scott and asks him to be his partner in his new job as courier/protector of gold. Without reluctance, Scott accepts and he and his young sidekick, played by Ronald Starr, are off to the mountains the next day. Scott, of course, has no intention of returning the gold to the banker. This is to be just the latest in a litany of schemes. Herein lies the essence of the western in general and of this story in particular. One man's code of honor (McCrea) pitted against the criminal avarice of another (Scott).
Early in the journey, the threesome stop at the homestead of an edgy, religious widower. The landowner repeatedly recites scripture and McCrea happily joins him. However, where McCrea has come to terms with himself, the widower has not. He has buried his late wife -- who betrayed him for another -- on the land and brainwashed his daughter (Mariette Hartley), into sexless oppression. It comes as no surprise then that she is attracted to the youngest of the traveling threesome -- Starr. The next morning, Hartley sneaks away with Starr in the dark of night, much to the dismay of McCrea. This is no journey for a woman. In the frontier world, women are seen and heard, but stay out of the men's business.
Peckinpah beautifully photographs the climb to the mountain. He constructs gorgeous contrasts between the dull plains and the soaring mountains. Metaphorical? Probably. At the end of this journey either McCrea or Scott will stand tall and the other will be laid low.
When the group reaches the settlement on top of the mountain, they learn that Hartley is actually betrothed to another. The husband-to-be is the hooligan responsible for swiping the gold from prospectors and other folks with good intentions. The man also has four ghastly brothers who believe that what belongs to one belongs to the other -- and that includes women.
It becomes McCrea's burden, a duty in his mind; to not only make the mountain safe for the bank's prospectors, but to extricate Hartley from an abusive husband and to return Scott to the straight and narrow. Up and down the mountain, Scott plots and schemes with Starr about how they will swipe the gold from McCrea.
Who rides the high country, from a moral perspective? The great Westerns have always appealed to us because they strip a man down to the core of his character. One choice will determine a man's epitaph. That is the case here. One man seeks redemption (Scott) while the other (McCrea) provides it.
by Shawn Drury

Cosmopapi rating: 76%

775. THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD (1965)

Title: The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
Year: 1965
Country: UK
Genre: Drama, Thriller
Running time: 112 min.
Directed by: Martin Ritt
Starring: Richard Burton, Claire Bloom, Oskar Werner
imdb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059749/

The grim, dangerous work that makes up the core of spying is displayed in exquisite and fascinating detail, in this excellent adaptation of John Le Carre's novel. With the cold rain pouring down on the murky streets of Berlin, Checkpoint Charlie doesn't seem to have much to recommend it. Yet this symbol of the Cold War represents hope and freedom to those oppressed in the East and, conversely, the malignant presence of Communism to the West. In this transition zone stands Alec Leamas (Richard Burton), a British agent waiting for the defection of one of his spies. The man in question appears over the border and looks set to make his escape when, suddenly, he is cut down in a hail of gunfire. Leamas is recalled to London by his boss, Control (Cyril Cusack), expecting to be fired. Instead Control decides to keep Leamas "out in the cold" a while longer. However, Leamas is soon looking for work and ends up with a menial librarian job. With his only friend, whisky, for company, Leamas stews in his own thoughts, building up resentment against the British Secret Service. Nothing seems able to penetrate his shell (built up over the years as a spy) although his fellow librarian, Nan Perry (Claire Bloom), takes a liking to him. Unfortunately, Leamas assaults a shopkeeper and ands up in jail.
Nan must like him though, and vice versa, since she meets him on his release from prison. Interestingly, there is another there to see his return to society and he approaches him in the park. Claiming to be from a charity which helps ex-convicts, Carlton (Robert Hardy) takes Leamas to an expensive lunch. This is all double-talk of course -- in reality it's an approach from the enemy, checking out a disgruntled ex-spy and finding out if he'll defect. Leamas seems to feel that he doesn't owe Britain anything and, somewhat grumpily, seems to accept (purely for the money). Then Leamas circuitously makes his way to Smiley's (Rupert Davies) house, for a meeting with Control. Everything becomes clear Control outlines the plan, a devious and cunning attempt to discredit the top East German spy, Hans-Dieter Mundt (Peter Van Eyck). With haste, Leamas is flown to Holland for de-briefing by Fiedler (Oskar Werner), the second in command to Mundt. The crux of the plan is that Fiedler detests Mundt and would do anything to destroy him.
By dropping subtle hints during his conversations with Fiedler, Leamas allows the agent to draw his own conclusions without injudicious prompting. The incredible skill that Leamas has for espionage, and his years of experience, hold him in good stead as he weaves a convincing tale for Fiedler. Realising the "truth", Fiedler bundles Leamas back to East Germany, where he hopes to bring down Mundt in a closed trial. Leamas is an added complication though since he insists that Mundt couldn't have been a double-agent (he was head of East German operations and would have known). Fiedler still manages to force a trial though, absolutely convinced that Mundt is betraying his country, and the closed session begins. It seems as though the tribunal will rule against Mundt, resulting in his execution, until his defense lawyer presents an unexpected witness. This pastes a whole new complexion on the proceedings and the fate of everyone involved.
As the flip-side to the cartoonish antics of James Bond, this movie is both a welcome antidote and a snapshot of the now departed Cold War era. The script itself is tremendous, combining believable dialogue (most of the time the characters talk in metaphors, never actually voicing the real meaning) with a slow, deliberate pacing which reflects the nature of spying. However, Richard Burton's acting as the burnt-out, disillusioned, semi-alcoholic, shambling agent is nothing short of incredible. He full deserved his Oscar nomination and, in my opinion, should easily have triumphed. The supporting actors are really quite good, but their performances pale in comparison. The technical aspects, such as the cinematography, are noteworthy, working together to create an atmosphere where human lives are somehow worthless, where scraps of information are all that matter. In summary, a cracking story with superb acting which reflects on a thankfully-passed period.
by Damian Cannon

Cosmopapi rating: 80%

774. LAMERICA (1994)

Title: Lamerica
Year: 1994
Country: Italy, France, Germany
Genre: Drama
Running time: 120 min.
Directed by: Gianni Amelio
Starring: Enrico Lo Verso, Michele Placido, Carmelo Di Mazzarelli, Piro Milkani, Elida Janushi, Sefer Pema
imdb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110299/

Having come to Austin screens sporting an impressive pedigree of critical acclaim, the award-winning Lamerica certainly holds quite a bit of promise for foreign cinema buffs, and thankfully, for the most part it lives up to its stellar reputation. Gino (Lo Verso) is an ambitious young entrepreneur who has come to the impoverished countryside of Albania from his native Italy with dreams of getting rich quick, only to find his life changed forever as he becomes stripped of his material possessions and is forced to bond with the country's poor and oppressed peoples, and with one man in particular, a 70-year-old derelict named Spiro (Di Mazzarelli, who turns in a truly mesmerizing performance despite having no acting experience whatsoever). While lesser films might have used Gino as a kind of surrogate in order to keep the audience safely distanced from the onscreen events, Lamerica boldly avoids such potentially embarrassing melodramatics by, instead, using the character as a means of commenting on the increasingly materialistic nature of modern Italian society as it grows more and more infatuated with capitalism. With this in mind, Lamerica is ultimately less about the day-to-day struggles of contemporary Albanians than a critical examination of a new generation of young Italians, who have, in the eyes of co-writer-director Amelio, lost touch with their history. The fact that the film almost never needs to preach in order to get its point across is a glowing testament to the talents of Amelio -- the acclaimed Italian filmmaker also responsible for the widely praised Stolen Children and Open Doors -- who not only draws strong, natural performances from a cast made up almost entirely of non-professional performers, but also exhibits a keen eye for crafting haunting, poetic imagery. In the latter department, he is aided by the spectacular cinematography of Luca Bigazzi, who makes the most of Albania's desolate but beautiful landscape and helps Amelio to create a motion picture that is both intimate and epic. That seemingly contradictory description more or less sums up the content of Lamerica: a complex, intelligent study of cultural identity told with great dignity and humanity.
by Joey O'Bryan

Cosmopapi rating: 71%

773. THE LAST OF SHEILA (1973)

Title: The Last of Sheila
Year: 1973
Country: USA
Genre: Crime, Mystery, Thriller
Running time: 120 min.
Directed by: Herbert Ross
Starring: Richard Benjamin, Dyan Cannon, James Coburn, Joan Hackett, James Mason, Ian McShane, Raquel Welch
imdb: hhttp://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070291/

As cinematic mysteries go, THE LAST OF SHEILA ($20) is about as difficult to solve as a Rubik’s Cube. While the solution is logical, makes perfect sense and all of the clues are laid out for the audience to discover, one isn’t likely to connect all the dots on the first viewing of the film. Featuring a screenplay by actor Anthony Perkins and composer Stephen Sondheim (who were supposedly consummate gamesters and puzzle-masters), THE LAST OF SHEILA contains all of the requisite Hollywood bitchiness and backbiting to make the film fun to watch, in addition to offering the audience a genuine mystery to solve. The plot of THE LAST OF SHEILA concerns Hollywood movie producer, whose wife Sheila was killed by a hit and run driver after leaving one of his parties. A year after Sheila’s death, the producer decides to through a party on his yacht, complete with a series of party games to reveal dirty little secrets about each of the suspects, as well as rooting out the killer. The cast of THE LAST OF SHEILA features Richard Benjamin, Dyan Cannon, James Coburn, Joan Hackett, James Mason, Ian McShane and Raquel Welch.
Warner Home Video has made THE LAST OF SHEILA available on DVD in a 1.78:1 wide screen presentation that has been enhanced for playback on 16:9 displays. This is a very nice looking transfer that makes the most of the film’s beautiful location scenery from the south of France. The image is generally sharp and nicely defined, although there are some softer looking shots spread throughout the course of the movie; something attributable to the original production and not a flaw in the transfer. While the hues show that decidedly early seventies look, through a combination of film stock and production design, colors reproduction is still pretty good- with respectable saturation, very nice flesh tones and minimal fuzziness. Blacks appear solid, whites are clean and contrast is good. Shadow detail has its limitations, but isn’t bad. The film element used for the transfer is reasonably clean, showing few blemishes and little appreciable grain. Digital compression artifacts keep a low profile throughout.
thecinemalaser.com

Cosmopapi rating: 78%

772. SHALL WE DANSU? (1996)

Title: Shall we dansu? (Shall We Dance?)
Year: 1996
Country: Japan
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Running time: 136 min.
Directed by: Masayuki Suo
Starring: Koji Yakusyo, Tamiyo Kusakari, Naoto Takenaka, Eriko Watanabe, Akira Emoto, Yu Tokui
imdb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117615/

Shall We Dance? proves that Japanese film makers can fashion charming, feel-good movies every bit as effective as their Hollywood counterparts. Unlike the Australian comedy, Strictly Ballroom, which used ballroom dancing competitions as arenas for romance and satire, Shall We Dance? uses them to explore one man's struggle for freedom from the suffocating repression that characterizes Japanese society. This is a film for anyone who prefers to leave the theater smiling.
In Japan, where public displays of affection between a husband and a wife is considered scandalous behavior, the concept of two unmarried people holding each other close in a dance is "beyond embarrassing." For that reason, ballroom dancing is not popular, and anyone caught engaging in it risks being labeled as depraved and lecherous. Nevertheless, for some men and women trapped in such a restrictive culture, dancing offers the seductive, forbidden allure of slipping the confining boundaries of what is socially acceptable and finding a measure of liberty.
Shohei Sugiyama (Koji Yakusyo) is a forty-two year old Japanese businessman who lives in a comfortable house with a loving wife and an adolescent daughter. But all is not right in his world. Now that he has attained his goals (a home, a family, and a successful career), his life feels empty. His wife notices his growing depression, commenting that "he really should get out and enjoy himself more often." One day, while riding the train home from work, Sugiyama spies the figure of a sad, beautiful woman (Tamiyo Kusakari) gazing out a dance school window. Day after day passes, with Sugiyama watching for this mysterious woman on each trip home. Eventually, he summons all his courage, exits the train at the stop nearest to the dance school, and enrolls for lessons. However, what begins as an attempt to get to know a pretty woman turns into the cure for Sugiyama's soul-sickness.
The parts of Shall We Dance? that are done well, are done very well, muting the negative impact of certain less successful elements. One of the most interesting aspects of the film for a Western viewer is that we're offered an opportunity to peer through an open window into Japanese society, especially as it addresses issues of intimacy. For those of us who are used to the idea that dancing is an integral part of the cultural fabric, understanding how the Japanese view this activity can cause a shift in perspective.
Sugiyama is developed as a low-key, likable character who fills the role of the Japanese "everyman." His relationship with Mai proceeds along a natural path, shunning romantic hyperbole in favor of a refreshingly believable tangle of feelings. Watching both Sugiyama and Mai grow as a result of each others' influence is one of Shall We Dance?'s subtle pleasures. Ultimately, the results of all the dance competitions pale in comparison to understanding the unique relationship that develops between these two.
Shall We Dance? is not without its share of flaws, however. Several subplots are largely ineffective, due in part to the director's unfortunate tendency to use caricatures to generate both sentiment and comedy. Several supporting characters (especially an overweight dance student named Tanaka and a wild Latin dancer named Aoki) are poorly-developed types whose primary purpose appears to be to act as foils for some of the film's more elaborate jokes. And, while this humor does generate laughs, it results in ill-defined individuals whose dramatic effectiveness is diluted.
Nevertheless, subplots excepted, Shall We Dance? navigates the tricky waters of the dramatic comedy with surprising ease. Writer/director Masayuki Suo, who has designed the film primarily as a heartfelt tale of one man's solution to a mid-life crisis, keeps Shall We Dance? fresh and free of heavy melodrama by leavening the script with universal humor. And the ending satisfies in part because it doesn't conform to all the expected clichés.
Miramax Films will almost certainly back Shall We Dance? with a sizable advertising campaign -- of all the distributor's late-spring releases, this has the most potential to be a crowd pleaser. The pleasant emotional aftereffects are a testimony to Suo's ability to fashion a story whose appeal reaches far beyond the shores of his native country. Shall We Dance? promises a convivial evening at the movies, and a rare chance to mix culture with pleasure.
by James Berardinelli

Cosmopapi rating: 75%

771. ERIN BROCKOVICH (2000)

Title: Erin Brockovich
Year: 2000
Country: USA
Genre: Biography, Drama, Romance
Running time: 130 min.
Directed by: Steven Soderbergh
Starring: Aaron Eckhart, Julia Roberts, Albert Finney, Conchata Ferrell, Jamie Harrold
imdb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0195685/

Roberts' Brockovich is trashy without being trash, sexy without being particularly sexual. You at least expect to catch this creature sipping on a Coors or sitting around with a 120-millimeter cigarette hanging out of her mouth. But the only vestiges of her maverick sexual history are her three children, with different daddies, and the Harley-riding boyfriend (Aaron Eckhart) who baby-sits them while she's out bringing justice (and a huge settlement) to the people of a small California town whose water supply was polluted by the Pacific Gas & Electric Company.
This is all well within the realm of possibility. But Soderbergh chooses to flash a "based on a true story" disclaimer before we see Roberts for the first time. Always a cop-out, this device is the wimpy equivalent of saying, "Hey, you wouldn't hit a guy with glasses
'Erin': Julia Roberts is sassy, brassy
(or in this case, a girl in a Wonderbra) would you?" It opens a floodgate of confusion: based on which story? Sure, there's the tale of Erin Brockovich herself, the scantily clad legal secretary who uncovers some files that suggest PG&E was aware that it was making an entire town sick.
The film is not as stylistically propulsive as Soderbergh's "The Limey" or "Out of Sight," but it doesn't look all glossy and compromised the way a big Hollywood movie made by an inscrutable director usually does. This is still a Steven Soderbergh joint - loose and funny with verve.
Susannah Grant's script gets to the engrossing bare bones of Erin's search for justice, throwing in some good sparring with her crusty boss Ed (Albert Finney) and her co-workers, and avoids the courtroom completely. Grant has given Erin an incredible memory that's lacerating, and the dignity for witty, enraged speeches that made me want to testify.
But what about the shambles of Erin's domestic travail? Her ramshackle life is a matter of fact into which Roberts pours a great deal of sadness and reflection. "God. I don't know what happened," she mewls to Eckhart's George. "I was Miss Wichita, for Chrissake." It takes that teary breakdown for the two to consummate their otherwise platonic relationship.
Thematically, Roberts' Erin Brockovich is, simultaneously,
every woman, no one woman in particular, and a woman only Roberts could get away with playing. It's the last of these that makes the film more than watchable. But the woman in this film is compromised by the message. We are supposed to believe that the rigors of this case put her on the path for redemption, but for what is she being redeemed? Leaving her kids in Eckhart's benevolent care while she throws herself into the first respectable job she's ever had? She's an ideal woman whose single flaw is that she comes to work dressed in Roberts' "Pretty Woman" wardrobe.
Both the movie and the woman are a tease. Erin winds up putting her life at risk, Karen Silkwood-style, but like all Soderbergh's work, the film only flirts with being a thriller. While she is out using her rack to get incriminating records from the guy (fine Jamie
Harrold) at the county water department, Soderbergh and Grant make us think this film is going to transcend being "Pretty Woman Saves a Town." Still, if you're going to be taunted by a saint in whore's clothing, better Roberts than some other actress.
If in the script, Brockovich is a conceptual mistake - Norma Rae in heels - in the flesh, she's a volcano of furious self-doubt and haplessness. Despite its problems, this is the most assured and unapologetic of Roberts' greatish performances - great-ish because you can't spackle the holes in as many problem characters as Roberts has without seeming more like a fantastic handywoman than an actress for the ages. Conversely, this also makes her the best movie star around.
Erin also affords Roberts the privilege of saying things like "Goddamn, that's a heavy door!" and "As long as I have one ass instead of two, I'll wear what I like." That's a tame sample from an actress whose dexterity here with the word "f- - -" would've guaranteed her a spot on HBO's "Def Comedy Jam." I haven't enjoyed hearing anyone cuss up this much of a storm since Richard Pryor's "Live on the Sunset Strip."
But the character is also a wounded, plaintive creature, sprung to life from a Loretta Lynn record or from the pages of Dorothy Allison's fiction. And some of Grant's dialogue is that good, too.
Most of the scenes between Roberts and the effortless, gentle Eckhart (miles away from "In the Company of Men") are shot through with a spontaneity abetted by Ed Lachman's hand-held camerawork, which seems to undulate for most of the film.
Her ostentatious tumbleweed is drawn to the hairy out-of-work Zen biker in him: They're two shockingly decent people whose exteriors all but say "judge me." The plot just sneaks into the film and into the relationship and threatens to ruin both. Soderbergh seems more at ease in scenes be
tween the two of them than in the ensuing legal matters.
As it becomes increasingly clear that Erin sees George as a glorified baby sitter, the movie grows ordinary and deflated as she tries to bring down PG&E. Eckhart is relegated to special appearances, while Roberts spars with Finney, who hasn't been this alive since "Annie." The knowledge of this evokes Daddy Warbucks, which evokes lots of money, which brings us back to "Pretty Woman," which is what Erin and Ed's tit-for-tat relationship is like. Only there are no shopping sprees and the sexual favors are only lewdly joked about. But, alas, Erin's equally obscene paycheck is definitely real.
by Wesley Morris

Cosmopapi rating: 76%

770. NEVER CRY WOLF (1983)

Title: Never Cry Wolf
Year: 1983
Country: USA
Genre: Adventure, Drama
Running time: 105 min.
Directed by: Carroll Ballard
Starring: Charles Martin Smith, Brian Dennehy, Zachary Ittimangnaq
imdb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086005/

The bond between people and animals is one of the more fascinating aspects of human psychology, although, more often than not, portraying that bond on a movie screen has proved to be a daunting task that falls short of success. Filmmaker Carroll Ballard (Black Stallion, Fly Away Home) uses subtle imagery and gorgeous cinematography to make Never Cry Wolf a marginally successful tale of a man who discovers his soul through his connection with nature. We are able to identify with Tyler (Charles Martin Smith) right from the start because he has no past. A brave, naďve man, he embarks on a journey known as the Lupine Project. He will travel to a remote section of the Arctic to study wolf habitat and discover whether the wild wolves are killing off the highly valued caribou. If they are, then the Canadian government will have all the reason it needs to exterminate the species. From the start, Never Cry Wolf seems as if it might become a study of Murphy’s Law in sub-zero temperatures. During Tyler’s first few months in seclusion, anything and everything goes wrong – wrong enough to make him begin the most disgusting rodent-eating habit this side of the television program, Survivor. Through all his adversity, however, Tyler bonds with a wolf pack, and comes to admire the subtlety and cleverness of their behavior. But Tyler is not as alone as he believes, and soon a group of hunters threatens to disrupt the wolves’ peaceful habitat. Tyler is forced to make a choice between going home and standing up for this new world that has become his own. Never Cry Wolf is based on a book written by Farley Mowat, and one gets the feeling that the story was more effectively told on the printed page. This is often a beautiful film to look at, and some of Tyler’s narration borders on the profound, but the truth is that there isn’t much going on for a large portion of the movie’s105 minutes. Those accustomed to fast-paced filmmaking are advised to stay away. According to Martin Smith, the one-and-a-half year shoot was a grueling experience. The movie was filmed in difficult conditions, including freezing temperatures and remote locations. Curtis Hanson, who went on to direct L.A. Confidential and Wonder Boys, co-wrote the screenplay, but large portions of the movie were filmed without scripted dialogue. It shows. But if you can get past the lack of significant dialogue then you will find a touching tale of one man’s journey – a journey that can teach us all a little bit about ourselves.
by Akiva Gottlieb

Cosmopapi rating: 77%

769. L' ARMEE DES OMBRES (1969)

Title: Armée des ombres, L' (Army of Shadows)
Year: 1969
Country: France, Italy
Genre: Drama, War
Running time: 145 min.
Directed by: Jean-Pierre Melville
Starring: Lino Ventura, Simone Signoret, Paul Meurisse, Jean-Pierre Cassel, Claude Mann, Paul Crauchet
imdb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064040/

With each film that becomes available, the stature of French filmmaker Jean-Pierre Melville (1917-73) increases. Until recently, he was largely unknown outside France, which is ironic in that his work is very much in the American vein. He made well-plotted genre movies, but he made them like no one else: sober in tone, meticulous in their observation, methodical in their presentation and philosophical in their assessment of the human condition. His scenes of violence are always effective and never frivolous, rife with an understanding of the consequences for all concerned.
"Army of Shadows" deals with the French resistance during World War II, but it's nothing like any other French resistance film ever made. There's no romance and no thrilling escapes, and not a single character experiences a flicker of satisfaction at pursuing a just cause. Instead, life is grim and ugly, a succession of ambiguous victories, moral compromises and the constant threat of capture. If anything, the resistance members act as if they've all sold their souls to the devil and can't get them back.
A telling moment comes early in the film, when Philippe (Lino Ventura), a resistance captain, and his associates capture a former member who has turned informant. They bring him back to an apartment to kill him, but there are too many people within earshot. So they gag him and proceed to discuss how to go about killing him silently. There's no doubt they'll go through with it, but there's equally no doubt that, in carrying out this order, they are killing a part of themselves -- and they know it. It's a scene even more effective and morally complicated than the killing of the Dutch spy in "Munich."
Further indication of Melville's specific and unique point of emphasis comes in yet another early scene, in which the hero escapes from Nazi headquarters. A typical filmmaker would have turned that into a moment of adventure, but Melville cuts off the scene early. His idea of drama has nothing to do with action as mere titillation. Thus, he focuses more on the scene that follows, a seemingly low-key interaction in which Philippe hopes to hide by going into a barbershop for a shave. Is the barber a collaborator? Will he turn him in? And what's the meaning of the political sign on the wall? Everything Melville shows us, he shows us for a reason, and these reasons are never obscure but are rather pertinent to the action and to the moral movement of the world and the characters.
Perhaps in Melville's own time, his pictures were considered both too much like American films (crime films, thrillers, noirs) and yet not enough like them to please American audiences. But a generation later, there's no mistaking that he was a master.
by Mick LaSalle

Cosmopapi rating: 80%

768. SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE (2008)

Title: Slumdog Millionaire
Year: 2008
Country: UK, France
Genre: Crime, Drama, Romance
Running time: 115 min.
Directed by: Danny Boyle
Starring: Dev Patel, Irrfan Khan,Anil Kapoor, Madhur Mittal, Freida Pinto
imdb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1010048/

Deep down inside, I personally believe some game shows are rigged to a certain degree. After all, organizers do try to profile you through a questionnaire which also contain clauses such as telling-nothing-but-the-truth-or-you-risk-forfeiting-any-prizes-won. So you're presenting yourself on a silver platter for opportunities to exploit both your strengths, if they choose to make you a hero, or your weaknesses, should you so be deemed as being there for entertainment value. This of course does not apply to some situations where obvious hints are provided so that you're given an idiot-proof situation to make away with some cash, should the sponsors be generous.Game shows are mathematical and probability at its best, and of course one that can be programmed such that the house can win all, or choose to let you go for a little bit of laughter at the side. You can be asked questions that you know or to do something that you're comfortable with, from the profile you built, or when the stakes are too high and the house's appetite for risk is somehow subdued, in comes the real challenge to see if you'd buckle under pressure, or can overcome your fears. For Jamal, (Dev Patel), he's one question away in India's Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, hosted by Prem Kumar (played by Anil Kapoor, and in real life hosted by Amitabh Bachchan who gets some mention here), to winning 20,000,000 (count the zeroes, man) rupees, given that he's answered seemingly random questions correctly, but on the show's logical break, get arrested on suspicion of fraud and tortured during interrogation to spill the beans.Based on the novel "Q&A" by Vikas Swarup, this Danny Boyle-Loveleen Tandan co-directed film brings us on an incredible journey through the chapters in Jamal's life, where each episode of his tremendously rich tale of survival had Destiny place every nugget of required information toward those million dollar rupees. Hailing from the slums of Mumbai, we see how Jamal and his brother Salim carve a living out of exploiting their street smarts, even at one point being little artful dodgers themselves in a Charles Dickens tale. It boggles everyone that someone without a formal education could nab those random questions correctly, a tea boy working in a call centre, beating participants like lawyers and doctors. He captured the imagination of the entire nation, that sometimes the wildest of dreams can come true.You'll find yourself rooting for Jamal, because here's a character crafted so earnestly by the storytellers that it's hard not to root for the underdog. And his story as told to the police inspector (played by Irrfan Khan), especially in his early life, set the stage thanks to the two adorable boys playing Jamal (Ayush Mahesh Khedekar) and Salim (Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail) who arrest your attention in a solid tale of two brothers growing up who eventually set foot on very different paths - one unassuming, while the other ambitious. And nothing better to drive the wedge between them than a girl Latika (Rubiana Ali) they knew by chance, and grew up with.One of my favourite films of Danny Boyle's was Millions, where a cute little boy with tremendous imagination, held court when a bag full of cash come literally crashing down on his play house. Boyle seems to hold court again with a tale of the little ones overcoming impossible odds of survival through the honing of their street-smarts and instincts, and again shows his eclecticism in direction with some dizzying cinematography by Anthony Dod Mantle. And providing the score and music to punctuate the movie is none other than the Mozart of Mumbai A.R. Rahman, whom I hope gets his due recognition with non-Indian film fans, and even though I felt that his work here might not have been the best I've heard, it's still a great introductory platform to everyone caught up in the buzz for this movie.For a story with events firmly written in the stars, and had plenty of coincidence and luck playing a part, it never for one moment felt forced nor contrived. Everything seemed possible, which makes it magical with Destiny having a big say, but one primary fact here is that Jamal had entered the gameshow not to win money beyond his wildest dreams, but to try and reconnect and search for a love that is lost, through a media platform. It's not that far fetched an idea, because I do know from personal experience that this type of scenarios do happen, with differing success results of course.Slumdog Millionaire is up against very strong contenders for the Best Picture Oscar, but it firmly has my support as one of the best this year so far, and I'm rooting for it to take home the statuette. It's a magical film with Destiny playing a huge part in changing the lives of underdogs, where hope and belief are made chic themes again.
by Nutshell

Cosmopapi rating: 83%

767. EL ABUELO (1998)

Title: Abuelo, El (The Grandfather)
Year: 1998
Country: Spain
Genre: Drama
Running time: 151 min.
Directed by: José Luis Garci
Starring: Fernando Fernán Gómez, Cayetana Guillén Cuervo, Rafael Alonso
imdb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0176415/

It's frustrating that the foreign-language films nominated for Oscars rarely become widely available to the movie-going public. It's doubly frustrating, then, when a nominated film gets picked up for American distribution only to be dropped off in a few select theaters much later. José Luis Garci's 1998 film El Abuelo—helpfully translated to The Grandfather by the folks at Miramax—was unfortunate enough to be Spain's Oscar entry the same year Life Is Beautiful contended, meaning his movie never stood a chance. An extremely leisurely story about aging and honor, The Grandfather's two-and-a-half-hour running time handicaps what could have been a particularly good parable. When an aging, bitter, turn-of-the-century Spanish aristocrat (Fernando Fernán-Gómez) learns that his son has died, he travels back to his family estate in Spain to confront his detested daughter-in-law (Cayetana Guillén Cuervo), whom he suspects of bearing him an illegitimate granddaughter. But which one is it? Which granddaughter will gain his blessing, and which his curse? If the story sounds Shakespearean, it's probably intentional: The Grandfather is peppered with references to Macbeth, Hamlet, and especially King Lear. Yet while scheming characters plot to imprison the volatile Fernán-Gómez, or characterize him as insane, the vicious curmudgeon remains sharply intent on his task. Fernán-Gómez is memorably mean, and the scenery is gorgeous, but The Grandfather ultimately succumbs to sentimentality laced with shallow philosophizing. It doesn't help that the political subtext concerning the fall of Spain's privileged class is only intermittently addressed. Add to that a tendency toward exaggerated acting that's better suited for the stage, as well as an overbearingly maudlin score, and The Grandfather falls short of its potential.
by Joshua Klein

Cosmopapi rating: 72%

766. THE RAILWAY CHILDREN (1970)

Title: The Railway Children
Year: 1970
Country: UK
Genre: Drama, Family
Running time: 109 min.
Directed by: Lionel Jeffries
Starring: Jenny Agutter, Dinah Sheridan, Bernard Cribbins, Sally Thomsett, Gary Warren
imdb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066279/

E. Nesbit’s beloved tale of three children shipped off to live in the country beside a railway line with their mother after their father is arrested on mysterious spying charges and they are left penniless. Yet, it proves the making of them, as they discover a way of helping their father from afar.
A comfortable, prettified adaptation of one of E. Nesbit’s less showy books, i.e. it’s free of fantasy elements but still set amongst the petticoats and tidy manners of Edwardian England. A charming if glassy setting that keeps the film a perennial Christmas favourite. The actor-comedian Lionel Jeffries stays behind the camera, gilding sensitive performances out the three children — interestingly Jenny Agutter’s serious Bobbie was two years younger than “younger” sister Sally Thomset, and, soberingly, both would grow up to be sex symbols — and portraying the healing effect such an idyllic community can have on a troubled family.
The contrast between the Waterbury’s well-heeled London life and the cottagey existence they are forced into following their father’s calamity is, by today’s notions of hardship, not quite the lurch it aims for. Yet, there is the sense of something undone — the children, especially Bobbie, have adulthood and responsibility thrust upon them as their mother sickens and life unravels. Their adventures along the railway sidings (not the beset message to send out to watching kids) skids into heroics as they rescue a schoolboy who breaks his leg on the track, and eventually through an unlikely communication with an old man on a London bound train, find the solution to all their troubles — papa, free again!
It is all a bit a bit far-fetched and sentimental, but delivered with such calm grace by Jeffries with the assistance of cinematographer Arthur Ibbetson, the exaggerations don’t seem to matter. It just looks the piece, an England, green and pleasant, a forgotten realm of pleasantries where total strangers turn into friends rather than threats, and stationmasters are loveable locals. Which, when you think about it, is a whole lot more fantastical than anything Harry Potter dabbles in.
by Ian Nathan

Cosmopapi rating: 67%

765. WHITE DOG (1982)

Title: White Dog
Year: 1982
Country: USA
Genre: Drama, Horror, Thriller
Running time: 90 min.
Directed by: Samuel Fuller
Starring: Kristy McNichol, Christa Lang, Vernon Weddle
imdb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084899/

It begins with a black screen and the sound of a dog yelping in pain--a noise sure to set any animal lover’s teeth on edge. As the screen comes to life, we see Julie Sawyer (Kristy McNichol) on a dark and empty road. She’s just struck a white german shepherd, who lies motionless on the highway. Soon that very dog is a major part of her life. When a man breaks into her house and attempts to rape Julie, the dog defends her, refusing to let the attacker go until the police arrive. Julie’s told that she’s lucky to have such a guardian.Unfortunately for Julie, it turns out that this particular dog is a “white dog,” an attack dog raised and trained by a racist to viciously assault and even kill people with black skin. Julie, understandably, is reluctant to put down the dog that saved her. Her only hope is a black animal trainer named Keys (Paul Winfield), a man driven to deprogram the white dog in what he sees is a direct conflict with white racism. But can anyone undo the damage that’s been done to the poor dog’s mind? And how many have to be put at risk before the white dog should be put down?
Samuel Fuller’s White Dog kind of looks like a TV movie, and is more-or-less acted like one. Still, it’s not without its charms. While the main focus of the film is certainly racism, another, just as important theme is man’s cruelty towards animals. The white dog is an innocent, in a sense; we learn that, since it was a puppy, it has been programmed to attack black men, and the process was probably something like this: a black bum or junkie, having been paid by the dog’s owner, repeatedly beats the animal, until it learns to fear and hate black men on sight. As Keys explained, to the white dog, black men are only that--men with black skin. It’s merely a colour that the dog recognizes and attacks, without all the ideology of human racism. No matter how evil the dog may seem, it is only acting out human evil. One can’t help but sympathize with the dog.But the violence against animals doesn’t end with the dog. Keys works with a man named Carruthers, and together they operate a business that trains wild animals for use in show business. The film doesn’t pussyfoot around exactly what this entails; the violence that is required to turn wild animals into trained, docile beings is displayed in full. Deprogramming the white dog (which never receives a name, oddly enough) is a violent affair as well, though in this instance it’s mostly a case of the dog attacking Keys until exhaustion again and again.
Certainly there are no A-list actors in the cast, but at least the principle actors acquit themselves well--most of the time. Paul Winfield (best known to fans of The Simpsons as the voice of Luscious Sweet) plays Keys (an otherwise underdeveloped character) as a man single-mindedly driven to “save” the white dog. To put the dog down, he believes, is to let the racists win, to let them destroy something else. Certainly it stretches believability when he is willing to circumvent the law in serious (and questionable) ways to give himself more time with the dog, but he’s convincing enough in his determination that we can almost buy it. Kristy McNichol, at least, plays a dog-lover well.The real star, though, is the white dog itself, played by five different stunt dogs. They are really beautiful dogs, and even when the white dog is charging someone, intent on ripping that person’s throat out, you can’t help but notice what a stunning animal it is. It’s easy to empathize with a dog, too--a racist human, of course, would be far less sympathetic.
moviefeast.blogspot.com

Cosmopapi rating: 70%

764. OPERATSIYA Y I DRUGIYE PRIKLYUCHENIYA SHURIKA (1965)

Title: Operatsiya Y i drugiye priklyucheniya Shurika (Operation Y and Other Shurik's Adventures )
Year: 1965
Country: Soviet Union
Genre: Comedy
Running time: 95 min.
Directed by: Leonid Gaidai
Starring: Aleksandr Demyanenko, Natalya Varley, Ruslan Akhmetov, Yuri Nikulin
imdb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059550/

As the title says, this is a collection of three short films, each about an adventure involving the indomitable bespectacled student Shurik (Aleksandr Demyanenko) who would go on to earn more glory as the intrepid bespectacled student Shurik foiling the evil designs of the rather incompetent trio of criminals that makes its appearance in the third film of this collection.
The first is Naparnik (Partner) and tells how Shurik, a student part-time construction worker gets into a bus brawl with a bully named Fedya (Aleksei Smirnov) when the latter refuses to offer his seat to a pregnant young lady. Fedya is sentenced to 15 days of community work and just happens to get posted to the same construction place where Shurik works. Of course, he tries to exact his revenge but little does he know how inventive (and plain lucky) Shurik can be. Some excellent acting on both sides, and some particularly funny moments (e.g. Fedya chasing Shurik who has just stolen his clothes around the construction site...
The second adventure is Navazhdenie (Suggestion) --- the word really implies something like extrasensory suggestion or telepathy --- is about Shurik freaking out on the day of an important exam. Everyone is either cramming, or finding creative ways to cheat, or, in Shurik's case, simply finding someone who has actually attended lectures and taken notes. He finally stumbles across the beautiful Lida (Naralya Seleznyova) but never notices either her or where he actually is or happens to be going. She is deeply engrossed in studying from the notes herself and when her girl friend falls asleep, she never notices that Shurik is following her around reading along with her. After the exam, a common friend introduces them to each other, and they, completely unaware of having spent the entire afternoon studying together go to Lida's apartment where Shurik experiences deja-vu and Lida manages to do test his supposed telepathy with a fairly unconventional suggestion.
The third adventure introduces the famous bumbling trio of the Dimwit (Yuri Nikulin), the Chicken (Georgi Vitsin), and the Old Hand (Yevgeni Morgunov). The three are hired by a corrupt depot director (Vladimir Vladislavsky) who is facing an financial inspection. Of course, in good socialist tradition, most of the goods that are supposedly stored in his depot have already been stolen, so he needs someone to rig a break-in and to make it appear as if the goods have all disappeared in that burglary. This plan gives the title to this epoisode: Operatsiya Y (Operation Y). The nightwatch on the night of the action is just an old lady whom they plan to chloroform. Unfortunately (for them), on that fateful night Shurik trades places with the old lady and finds himself in the midst of some hot and incredibly funny action.
As with all other of Gaidai's comedies, this one is not to be missed. Some really great humor, both of the slapstick and the verbal variety. Demyanenko's performance as Shurik put him on a comedic trajectory that really managed to typecast him for a very long time, leading many directors to neglect his rather versatile talents. The attraction of the nerdy student who always manages to foil the bad guys, get the girl, and study, while at the same time being mostly clueless (although quite inventive) and depending on luck, has been consistently strong.
Unlike the rather preachy American films like Revenge of the Nerds, this is no sermon about how "cool" it is to be nerdy. It is not. Shurik is just the way he is because... well, he's just that type of guy. There is really no "uncoolness" to overcome, just his own absent-mindedness among other things.
Don't miss Vitsin's performance in the third film, especially as he staggers in search for the can while still heavily sedated. I also enjoyed Nikulin's acting, but then who doesn't?
by Branislav L. Slantchev

Cosmopapi rating: 65%

763. LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN (1945)

Title: Leave Her to Heaven
Year: 1945
Country: USA
Genre: Drama, Film-noir, Thriller
Running time: 110 min.
Directed by: John M. Stahl
Starring: Gene Tierney, Cornel Wilde, Jeanne Crain, Vincent Price, Mary Phillips
imdb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0037865/

Gene Tierney proved how wicked a woman consumed by jealousy can be long before films like FATAL ATTRACTION came on the scene. While there's nothing particularly deep or complicated about this tale of marital devotion gone awry, Tierney makes it a rollercoaster ride of emotional devastation you can't stop watching. Cornel Wilde plays the writer of her dreams, a man she loves way too much. Her seductive, mysterious beauty draws him into her web of lies and deception from which there is no way out. He initially finds her desperate need to have him all to herself adorable, but when this exclusion includes members of their immediate family, he begins to feel the noose tighten. On the surface her actions appear to be loving and decent, but they conceal a cold, bitter heart and a mind constantly working any angle to keep them together. Those that don't go along with her plans are taken out of the game for good. When she realizes her husband is in love with her adopted sister (Crain), she sets her final plan in motion. She'd rather die than lose him and she'll be damned if they're going to live happily ever after. Once you've committed several murders, a little perjury isn't going to weigh too heavily on your soul. This is a ridiculous romance wrapped in a taut thriller that works like gangbusters because of the stunning performances of Tierney and Crain. Both are intelligent, beautiful and strong women. The former just turns her passion into an all-encompassing stranglehold of obsession. Crain is the only one who stands up to Tierney and you can feel the sparks of hatred when they share a scene together. This may not be high class filmmaking, but it makes for great entertainment. That is if you like your leading ladies lean, luscious and lethal.
crazy4cinema.com

Cosmopapi rating: 71%

762. TOTO LE HEROS (1991)

Title: Toto le héros (Totò the Hero)
Year: 1991
Country: France, Belgium
Genre: Drama
Running time: 91 min.
Directed by: Jaco van Dormael
Starring: Michel Bouquet, Jo De Backer, Thomas Godet, Gisela Uhlen, Mireille Perrier
imdb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103105/

Here’s a riddle? What kind of movie would you have if a circus clown became a film director? Answer: Toto the Hero. O.K. It’s not funny, but it just happens to be true. Since there are sad clowns and happy clowns, you get a movie that is both tragic and funny. You get a film about the human condition that is also a thriller. You get a magnificent collage of fantasy and imagination that was all the rage at the Cannes Film Festival in 1991, winning the Prix de la Caméra d’Or. You get a genuine three-ring circus with candied apple that is one of the best kept secrets in cinema. Historical Background: Jaco van Dormael was born February 9th, 1957 in Brussels, Belgium. He grew up in Germany before studying film in Brussels and Paris. In 1975-6, he worked as a circus clown with the Big Flying Circus in Belgium. He then became a producer of children’s entertainments for three different European theatres. In 1980, he began writing and directing short films for children, documentaries, and promotional films. Toto le Heros (“Toto the Hero”) was his debut feature film, made in 1991. It is a masterful film by any standard, but truly amazing for a first film. Van Dormael produced a second highly regarded feature in 1995, called Le Huitieme Jour (“The Eighth Day”). The Story: The story covers the full lifespan of its protagonist, Thomas van Hasbroeck. Thomas is played by three different actors. Michel Bouquet plays Thomas as an old man, Jo de Backer plays him as a young adult, and Thomas Godet plays him as a child. As the story unfolds, Thomas is already an old man in a nursing home, chafing at the pain and lost opportunities of a largely unfulfilled life. We learn about his younger years through his trips down memory lane and his dreams, presented as a series of fluid flashbacks. Although the following plot outline presents the events linearly, the film presents the three life stages concurrently through montage editing. Thomas has been convinced since childhood that he was switched at birth, during a chaotic fire in the pediatric clinic, and is really the child of the rich family that lives next door. Their son Alfred (played as a child by Hugo Harold Harrison) was indeed born on the same day as Thomas, but nothing in the story supports Thomas’s claim other than his own memory, which can hardly be held reliable at day one. Thomas feels that his life was stolen from him by Alfred. To add insult to injury, Alfred is also a bully, both physically and verbally, calling Thomas “Van Chicken-Soup.” Thomas’s own childhood begins happily enough. His mother (Fabienne Loriaux) is loving and his father (Klaus Schindler) is bigger than life in Thomas’s eyes. He does magic tricks, flies an airplane, disappears mysteriously when he goes to work or hides in a closet, and sings a joyful chanson about love, called “Boom!” (“Boom! When your heart goes boom! It’s love, love, love!”) Thomas believes that his father landed by parachute in his mother’s garden. Thomas has two siblings – a pretty and clever older sister named Alice (Sandrine Blancke), whom he admires intently, and a retarded younger brother, of whom he is protective. Thomas’s idyllic youth is plundered by a series of tragedies. His father is reported missing after a plane crash during inclement weather and is ultimately found dead. The father had been hired for the fateful flight by Alfred’s father, Mr. Kant, a prosperous businessman, to pick up some overdue goods (marmalade) from England. Thomas and Alice blame Mr. Kant for the loss of their father and vow to burn down the Kant’s house. The mother becomes distraught and struggles to support the children, leading to further humiliations. The mother is caught shop-lifting a piece of meat, which she had concealed under her cap, from a grocery store, when blood starts to drip down her face. The mother is called away for awhile to settle business relating to her husband's death and arranges for the two older children to spend time at a camp. The children, however, intentionally miss the bus, deciding to stay at home and fend for themselves. At about this time, Alice is in the early stages of thelarche and, rising out of a bubble bath, asks the innocent Thomas to pass her a towel. His eyes widen noticeably and he asks, “Why didn’t you tell me you had breasts?” She replies smoothly, “I thought you’d read about them in the newspapers.” Still mystified, Thomas replies, “It was in the papers?” That night, the pair sleep side by side in bed. Alice asks, “Do you like my nose?” “Do you think my legs are too skinny?” “Do you think my hands are pretty?” “Which hand do you prefer?” He, of course, prefers them both as well as every other square inch of her lovely blossoming body. He stares raptly at the profile of her face and places his little hand on one of her small breasts. She lets it rest there. After a few moments, Thomas asks if Alice knows that Nephritides was Egyptian? “In Egypt, you can marry your sister,” says he. Under normal circumstances, this understandable infatuation would have melted harmlessly into nothing more than fond nostalgia, but Thomas is deprived of that opportunity. Alice acquires the attentions of Alfred as well, causing Thomas pained jealousy. He bitterly reminds Alice of her promise to burn down the Kant’s house and locks himself in his room. Alice, wanting to please her little brother, hauls a tank full of petrol into the Kant’s garage, but it explodes, destroying both the garage and lovely little Alice. Thomas is scarred forever and even Alfred, to a lesser extent. Thomas daydreams of becoming an heroic secret agent named “Toto” and avenging himself on the Kants. Thomas progresses into young adulthood and becomes some kind of pencil-pushing clerk. His life is drab and dissatisfying – not hardly the secret agent scenario he had envisioned. One day, he spots a young woman in yellow, Evelyne (Mireille Perrier), at a soccer match who reminds him distinctly of Alice, whose loss still haunts him. He chases after the woman and manages to overhear her providing her address to a clerk in a store. Tracking her down, he initially frightens her with his intense interest in learning about her, but she ultimately humors him with a meeting. Gradually the pair falls hopelessly in love, despite the fact that Evelyne is already (unhappily) married. In one bedroom scene, Evelyne asks Thomas if he like her hands and which one he prefers, which dredges up painful memories for him. Nevertheless, the two make plans to run off together. Just before their rendezvous, Thomas pays a visit to Alfred (now played by Didier Ferney) and discovers, to his amazement, that Evelyne is his wife. Apparently Alfred had also been moved by the same resemblance between Evelyne and Alice. Thomas runs away, leaves town, and fails to keep his meeting with Evelyne. Now, as an old man, Thomas has much to regret. He gave up the love of his life in adulthood after a series of childhood tragedies. His one solace lies in fantasizing about killing Alfred (played by Peter Böhlke as an old man) who he still believes stole his real life. Alfred’s life, however, has been no less unhappy. Evelyne left him anyway, despite Thomas’s disappearance. The Kant fortune had grown into an industrial conglomerate, but had collapsed in financial ruin. Terrorists are determined to assassinate Alfred. Thomas is determined that it is his right to kill Alfred and no one else’s! Thomas escapes from the nursing home, complete with stolen pistol, and the stage is set for a dramatic conclusion. I won’t give the finale away except to say that it is utterly fantastic: shocking, magical, transcendent, and sublime. Themes: Despite the arson, bullying, gunplay, tragedies, obsessions, and incipient incest, this film is more up-lifting than downbeat. The film argues, first of all, that it is love that makes life worthwhile. It adds, further, that happiness in life need not be attributed to the luck of the draw – which family we were born into, what tragedies do or do not befall us, or meeting or not meeting our soul mate, for example. Thomas wasted a lifetime imagining that he would have been happy had he been Alfred, only to discover that his life, troubled as it was, was freer and happier overall than Alfred’s. Yet even with both good luck and concerted personal efforts to achieve happy circumstances, there will be times in many, if not most, lives when one is alone and love has perished. This film then argues that, at such times, there is still happiness in learning to celebrate the memory of love that has passed. There is always, as well, the joy in the small glories of life: a flower, a sunny day, or the taste of cherry. Each individual’s life may be miniscule in the context of eternity and the firmament, but that life is simultaneously everything that is important. Van Dormael treats us to a kind of pantheistic finale, demonstrating that the individual after death remains incarnate in the universe when their ashes merge with the fields. Production Values: The script for this film is very tightly constructed. It flows smoothly across time without being confusing. The thriller element – whether Thomas will act on his obsession to murder Alfred – is always kept in the forefront by the script’s design. It’s superlative story telling, filled with revelations, twists, and drama. The images are visually rich with respect to both color and surrealism. Michel Bouquet was very effective as the elderly Thomas. His previous work included La Femme Infidele (1969), Mississippi Mermaid (1969), and Just Before Nightfall (1971). Gisela Uhlen, who played the elderly Evelyne, was also in The Marriage of Maria Braun (1978). Mireille Perrier, who was the younger Evelyne, had worked in Bad Blood (1986). Bottom-Line: Alive with wit, magic, romance, and intrigue, Toto the Hero is a charming film. It’s original in both structure and style. Although this film is not a whole lot like any other, its fanciful quality gives it something of the same luster as films like Amélie, The King of Hearts, and Ma Vie en Rose. Check out this film and I guarantee you’ll come back and thank me for it.
by metalluk

Cosmopapi rating: 78%

761. ENEMY OF THE STATE (1998)

Title: Enemy of the State
Year: 1998
Country: USA
Genre: Action, Drama, Thriller
Running time: 132 min.
Directed by: Tony Scott
Starring: With Will Smith, Gene Hackman, Jon Voight
imdb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120660/

Will Smith does it again. Another great movie. How does he do it? He is very good at picking movie scripts. Enemy Of The State highlights Smith as the main character, the one through whom we experience this movie. Smith is, perhaps, the actor with whom I am able to identify most with on screen, which is another topic of discussion in and of itself. The movie also shows off Smith's fast and sarcastic mouth in the fun-filled way that we are used to seeing. However, this movie gets much more intense that Smith's other movies and weaves an intricate plot into the works.
The basic theme of the movie is that the NSA, in an attempt to provide America with security from terrorists, gets a little megalomaniacal and tries to invade America's privacy and strip away our civil liberties. And Will Smith finds himself caught between the NSA and a hard place.
The adrenaline of this movie never seems to stop. And the chase scenes are some of the best that I have seen. Watching someone run from the NSA is almost like watching a mouse run through a maze trying to get away from the cat watching over it. By the time Gene Hackman arrives on the scene, I had already felt like I had received my money's worth. Hackman's part in the movie as Brill, a former NSA agent turned underground information broker, was very entertaining. A question: Is Will Smith establishing a pattern of teaming up with old white men?
I had to laugh though at the software used in this movie. As I am a software developer, I found it funny that the NSA's software was so graphical. For instance, when doing a social security number search, a set of numbers in a large, red, 3-D font go scrolling across the screen. Ha ha! Also, from a computer perspective, I found it funny that all computers were SUN workstations. Can somebody say, "Commercial Endorsement?"
What perhaps could have been done better would be to delve into the lives and the decisions of the "bad guys". Jonathan Voight is a particularly good actor and played his part well, even though he didn't have much to work with. I feel that the movie would have been much more interesting to see him struggle with his evil motives or to see him evolve into the ruthless person that he embodies throughout the movie. On the other hand, this may have taken away from the man-against-the-system feel of the movie and given way to more of a man-against-the-man-who-became-corrupted-by-power aura.
What I truly LOVED about this movie was the ending. I don't want to spoil it for those who haven't seen it, but I truly enjoyed strategic heroism rather than the overdone physical heroism.
the-reel-mccoy.com

Cosmopapi rating: 76%

760. ROOM AT THE TOP (1959)

Title: Room at the Top
Year: 1959
Country: UK
Genre: Drama
Running time: 115 min.
Directed by: Jack Clayton
Starring: Laurence Harvey, Simone Signoret, Heather Sears, Donald Houston
imdb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053226/

Room at the Top was adapted from John Braine's first novel, about an ambitious young man in a local government office in a large and bleak northern town who makes a set for a wealthy industrialist's daughter, and when thwarted turns to in older married woman. Eventually he is forced into marriage with the girl, the older woman meeting her death after a drinking orgy.
The character of Joe Lampton is ambivalent, bitter, his social animus perhaps deriving from a slum childhood and a war spent mostly in a prison camp, but driven forward by a kind of confident, day-dreaming quality, a refusal to admit the impossible. His eventual translation from the cobblestones of the lower end of the town to the tudorized gables at the top is meant to show his sublimation of life's values to ambition. He has destroyed one life and knowingly goes into a loveless marriage accompanied by the material comforts for which he has always hankered. It is, in his terms, not a bad jail sentence.
In retrospect, Braine's book is hardly as startling as it may have seemed at the time. The stance is a traditional, stolid one of disapproval. In the film the tight-lipped and rather frigid performance of Laurence Harvey does not explain the character's motivation. Donald Wolfit, as the industrialist, delivers an impressively theatrical portrait of a nineteenth-century mill-owner, although the performance hardly fits this particular film. Simone Signoret, as the older woman, is not too happily cast, either, volatile Gallic temperament not mixing well with Yorkshire reticence.
But the critics' admiration was mainly on account of the love scenes between Harvey and Heather Sears; at last someone in a British film actually admitted that the sex act was enjoyable and for the first time such dialogue was passed by the British Board of Film Censors. What seemed startling in 1959 had later become banal, but Room at the Top was at least a turning point in this sense.
britmovie.co.uk

Cosmopapi rating: 73%

759. BANG BOOM BANG (1999)

Title: Bang Boom Bang - Ein todsicheres Ding
Year: 1999
Country: Germany
Genre: Action, Comedy
Running time: 110 min.
Directed by: Peter Thorwarth
Starring: Oliver Korittke, Markus Knüfken, Ralf Richter, Diether Krebs, Martin Semmelrogge, Heinrich Giskes
imdb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0135790/

In his debut feature film, Peter Thorwarth managed to prove that Thomas Jahn's Knockin' On Heaven's Door (1997) wasn't some lucky fluke, but that Germany, the land supposedly lacking all humor, is also fully capable of producing some of the most blackly humorous, quickly paced postmodern crime films around. (Well, OK, it did so twice — the pickings have been pretty dry since then.)Displaying a light touch that reveals both a deep knowledge of film and technique, with Bang Boom Bang – Ein todsicheres Ding Thorwarth made a film that continuously entertains and never bores, successfully combining numerous characters, narrative twists and story-threads into a satisfying whole. The seemingly loose script ties up tightly in the end, the good dialogue and clear characterization underscored by some excellent "type" casting, the visuals a constant treat of sight gags and surprises, not to mention some excellent directorial flourishes. Combine all that with good editing, fine cinematography and some excellent music, and you got one good fucking film.Not that one would expect Bang Boom Bang to be any good if one doesn't make it past the first scene, in which the obnoxious jailbird Kalle (Ralf Richter) gives an aggravating tirade about wanting his dream car and girlfriend (in pumps) waiting outside of the jail when he gets released in two years. The guy is disgusting, and though the scene gets nervous laughs, one doesn't laugh with him or actually find him funny. Kalle is doing time for a bank robbery, the deal with his partner Keek (Oliver Korittke) being that Kralle does the time and then, once released, gets 90% of the take remaining. Unknown to Kralle, Keek, a video junkie whose brains have gone to mush from too much hash and too many crappy videos, has lost the money on horse races and is in no way capable of either buying the car Kralle has arranged or ever even paying him what he is owed. When Keek unwittingly gives Kralle a hardcore porno video featuring Kralle's slut girlfriend as the bonking babe, Kralle blows a fuse and escapes, forcing Keek to take more desperate measures to get the cash needed.Teaming up with his friend Andy (Markus Knüfken), a hot-headed local soccer player and mechanic, they get involved with the local loser Schlucke (Martin Semmelrogge) in a plan they think is to rob the crooked businessman Werner Kampmann (Diether Krebs). Propelled by greed, desire, stupidity, bad luck, revenge and chance, people die, a thumb gets locked in a safe, porno shoots get disrupted and everything dawdles out of control, much to the viewer's delight.Filmed in North Rhine Westphalia, Germany's central industry area commonly called the "Ruhrgebiet," Thorwarth makes good use of the area's overall grayness to underscore the bleak lives of his characters, all the men of which are too dense or brainless to realize the innate pointlessness and stupidity of their actions. (Don't be mistaken, though — this film is no "message film," and its last scene purposely takes the piss out of the little message Bang Boom Bang might have.)
by Bryin Abraham

Cosmopapi rating: 81%

758. MILANO CALIBRO 9 (1972)

Title: Milano calibro 9
Year: 1972
Country: Italy
Genre: Action, Crime
Running time: 100 min.
Directed by: Fernando Di Leo
Starring: Gastone Moschin, Barbara Bouchet, Mario Adorf, Frank Wolff, Luigi Pistilli, Ivo Garrani, Philippe Leroy, Lionel Stander, Mario Novelli
imdb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067429/

Milano Calibro 9/Milan Calibre 9(1972) contains a fast paced tightly edited prologue that is done with brilliance. The opening five minutes are both brutal and sadistic. Rocco played by Mario Adorf is introduced in the prologue as a psychotic mafia hood. The prologue is an example of setting up mood and story for the film.Mario Adorf gives a performance that brings to mind Joe Pesce in Goodfellas(1990) and Casino(1995), Takeshi Kitano in Boiling Point(1990), and Lee Marvin in The Big Heat(1953). He is excellent as the mafia hood with a sadistic streak. Mario Adorf plays his character with unbelievable and vicious conviction. His performance is one of the best acting jobs from the film.This movie along with La Mala Ordina/Hired to Kill(1973) and Il Boss/The Boss(1973) makes Fernando Di Leo the Italian eqivulent of Jean Pierre Melville. Fernando Di Leo is influenced by Melville in many aspects. Milan Calibre 9(1972) reminds me of Le Doulos(1961) with their use of anti heroes. One of many films that Jean Pierre Melville made an impression on.Has a double plot twist which is utilized in cleaver and unpredictable fashion. I was surprised by the first plot revealing twist. I was convincing stunned by the second plot revealing twist which was much more unexpected. The double plot twist is one characteristic that makes the film special.Fernando Di Leo stands out in the gangster craze of Italian cinema in the same way that Sergio Leone stood out as a master of Italian Westerns, Dario Argento as a master of Giallos, and Lucio Fulci as a master of Italian Zombie pics. He brings out a direction full of passion and spunk. The director films the violent scenes with panache and piazzazz. An underrated filmmaker in Italian cinema.Soundtrack of Milan Calibre Nine is awesome and cool. Luis Enriquez Bacalov is excellent at performing music for Italian Crime and Western motion pictures. The Police are depicted in a cynical and unsympathetic light. The only Police officer who comes out in a sympathetic tone is Fonzino who's only in the movie for a few minutes.The major action sequence in Milan Calibre 9(1972) prefigures John Woo. What's so twisted about the end of the motion picture is its Rocco whose the most trust worthy person in the entire story. Gastone Moschin gives a gripping performance as a man who cannot escape his tragic fate. Some wonderful performances are handed out by Barbara Bouchet, Philippe Leroy, and Lionel Stander.The scene where Nelly Bordon played by Barbara Bouchet is doing an erotic dance is filmed with multiple camera angles. An sensual introduction to the character of Barbara Bouchet. The editing in this one scene is good and imaginative. Barbara Bouchet is definitely one of the beautiful women from the 1970s when one sees Milan Calibre 9(1972).An example of the growing popularity of the gangster movie in Italy. Milan Calibre 9(1972) is in my opinion belongs among the top ten of Italian gangster pictures. The Godfather(1972) may have influenced the gangster film in Italy during the 1970s, but Milano Calibro 9(1972) takes on a life of its own. I've was very impressed by Milano Calibro 9(1972) that I've taken an interest in other films from this genre and decade in Italian cinema.Provided many influences and inspirations for filmography of Quentin Tarantino. His portrayal of tough guys in his films takes a page out of Milan Calibre 9 as well as other mafia features by Fernando Di Leo. The sadistic violence and unpredictable plot twists can be seen in Resevoir Dogs(1992) and Pulp Fiction(1994). No one filmmaker has influenced Tarantino more frequently besides Jean Pierre Melville than Fernando Di Leo.
by marquis de cinema

Cosmopapi rating: 70%

757. AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH (2006)

Title: An Inconvenient Truth
Year: 2006
Country: USA
Genre: Documentary
Running time: 100 min.
Directed by: Davis Guggenheim
Starring: Al Gore
imdb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0497116/

Is it possible to make a good picture by simply filming a very good lecture? Well, if you judge from the results achieved by director David Guggenhaim, the answer would be yes. And perhaps a little no. Having been to a fair number of lectures during my academic years, it doesn't take long to acknowledge Al Gore as a brilliant speaker. And his material as both captivating and engaging.
An Inconvenient Truth is first and foremost an important film. When it isn't a somewhat indiscrete semi-biography of Al Gore's childhood, the film has an important subject matter that should be passed around to as many people as possible. The film is probably more important in the United States than in most other parts of the world, seeing as the US hasn't even signed the Kyoto agreement. The problem for Americans, however, is that they are a dichotomic group: If you are a republican, the tradition is to doubt anything a democrat is telling you. Especially when it comes from a democrat as distinguished as Al Gore. One shouldn't worry, however, because An Inconvenient Truth very rarely borders on propaganda. Gore presents his agenda shrewdly, and if his film functions as an eye-opener for only half the people who watch it, it will be worthwhile.
by Fredrik Gunerius Fevang

Cosmopapi rating: 62%

756. VIVA ZAPATA! (1952)

Title: Viva Zapata!
Year: 1952
Country: USA
Genre: History, Western
Running time: 113 min.
Directed by: Elia Kazan
Starring: Marlon Brando, Jean Peters, Anthony Quinn, Joseph Wiseman, Arnold Moss, Alan Reed, Margo, Harold Gordon
imdb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0045296/

Before Hollywood's acceptance of global cinema producers took no care in regards to accuracy or authenticity when it came to telling history on film. And the idea of Marlon Brando playing the Mexican revolutionary general Emiliano Zapata is perhaps a head-turner now (the same goes for Charlton Heston’s turn as a Mexican border guard in ‘Touch of Evil’), but back in the day, it was common place for Americans to put on face makeup and butcher the legacies of history’s great figures.Before we discuss further, let’s get out of the way the fact that “Viva Zapata!” is NOT the definitive historical account of the great 20th Century revolutionary, or even a passing resemblance of history, let’s judge the film as a piece of Hollywood entertainment with the era in proper context. With that said, I don’t know much about Zapata’s mannerisms or personality or looks, but Brando’s Zapata surely retains the nobility, courage and reluctant hero qualities of the real life man.“Viva Zapata!” opens with a group of Mexican peasant farmers visiting the estate of the Mexican dictator Porfirio Díaz to reclaim the lands stolen from them. The peasants are easily dismissed by the superiority of Diaz, except for one, Emiliano Zapata, a humble farmer with a stubborn sense of pride and honour. Sensing trouble, Zapata soon becomes a target of the Diaz military. Though encouraged by his countrymen to lead them against their oppressors, and like the classic hero archetype, Zapata is reluctant. Eventually he puts the needs of his people over his own and leads the charge. Diaz is soon overthrown in favour of Francisco Madero, but almost immediately the political infighting between rival armies breaks the peace. With one despot gone another emerges. The army of Victoriano Huerto moves into power and targets Zapata for death. If this sounds familiar you’ll recognize the beats from virtually every film about revolutionaries. There’s the reluctant hero, the triumphant defeat of power, then the political in-fighting and emergence of a more villainous power, a betrayal from within from a close advisor, and eventually an assassination which martyrs the hero. Either all or some of these beats form the cinematic versions of “Lawrence of Arabia”, “Braveheart” and “Michael Collins” as well.But the film is all about Brando. It was his first film after “Streetcar,” his mumbling was still pronounced and almost incomprehensive at times. But that’s the fun of watching Brando. He chews the scenery and naturally draws all his attention to himself. I know someone who knew Brando well enough and by his accounts his style was not rehearsed or conscious. In front of and behind the screen he exuded a magnetic quality that draws the energy of the room towards him. We never feel as if we’re watching Brando ‘turn into’ Zapata, as say, Jamie Foxx turned into Ray Charles, it’s Brando being Brando, this time with a moustache and poncho.From 1951 to 1954, Marlon Brando redefined acting – four films in four years garnered him Best Actor nominations (“A Streetcar Named Desire”, “Viva Zapata”, “Julius Caesar” and “On the Waterfront”) and a win for “Waterfront”. Watching the performance is like watching those defining moments in cinema history – the rulebook being re-written right before our eyes.To give Elia Kazan credit, he was known primarily for his theatre-to-film adaptations, and “Zapata!” was his first big epic action film. For the most part he does the job admirably, his dramatic compositions, staging for action and fighting are worthy of John Ford’s work. Unfortunately Kazan doesn't flesh out any of the other characters. Despite the acclaim for Anthony Quinn's work (who plays Zapata's loyal brother), he is considerably underused and is relegated to 'sidekick' only.It’s worthy to note that the film was written by John Steinbeck - the socially conscious scribe of “Grapes of Wrath” and “Of Mice and Men”. So Zapata was, at the very least, in the hands of the greatest artists of the day. If I ever free nations and die tragically by an assassin’s bullet, that's all I'd ever ask for.
by Alan Bacchus

Cosmopapi rating: 73%

755. HARRY UN AMI QUI VOUS VEUT DU BIEN (2000)

Title: Harry un ami qui vous veut du bien (With a Friend Like Harry)
Year: 2000
Country: France
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Thriller
Running time: 117 min.
Directed by: Dominik Moll
Starring: Laurent Lucas, Sergi Lopez, Mathilde Seigner, Sophie Guillemin
imdb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0216800/

For American audiences, who have become conditioned to certain staples and formulas defining the structure of nearly every mainstream psychological thriller, With a Friend Like Harry may seem like a breath of fresh air. It isn't that director Dominik Moll wanders too far from familiar territory, but the manner in which he crafts the movie allows him to reject (or at least deviate from) many of the most common clichés. Consequently, With a Friend Like Harry is a more energetic and interesting entry than what one has come to expect from this overpopulated genre.
In terms of its antecedents, With a Friend Like Harry owes less of a debt to recent thrillers (like The Hand that Rocks the Cradle and its brood) than to the collected work of Alfred Hitchcock. Moll pays homage to Hitchcock in ways that are sometimes subtle (characters' names being the same as those of principals in the Master of Suspense's films) and sometimes obvious (aspects of the plot recall those of Strangers on a Train). And, like Hitchcock, Moll peppers his picture with elements of dark and delicious wit.
For Michel (Laurent Lucas) and Claire (Mathilde Seigner), the annual family summer vacation is starting off like a nightmare - the car is not air conditioned, the baby is screaming, and the kids are misbehaving. By the time they reach a rest stop, the long hours in the car have taken their toll. There, in the men's room, Michel meets Harry (Sergi Lopez), a guy he hasn't seen in 20 years. Michel doesn't remember Harry, but Harry definitely remembers Michel. In almost no time, Harry has invited himself and his girlfriend, Plum (Sophie Guillemin), for a drink at Michel and Claire's. At first, Harry is the perfect guest - offering to help out with chores and even buying Michel and Claire a new car. But there's a darker side to Harry - his interest in Michel runs deeper than is healthy, expanding into the realm of obsession. On the evidence of one juvenile poem written decades ago, Harry believes that Michel has the potential to be a great writer, and that his talent should be nurtured, regardless of the price.
Hitchcock's body of work isn't the only thing recalled by With a Friend Like Harry. Astute viewers may recognize a connection to the 1988 black comedy/thriller, Heathers. Both films feature a friend who helps eliminate the protagonist's problems via murder, and, in the process, gains the witting or unwitting complicity of the hero. The details are different, but many of the motivating themes are identical. In addition, the movies embrace the same gallows humor.
Moll has fun toying with audience expectations. Several of the murders, which would be the centerpieces of similar American films, occur off-screen. On at least two occasions, there is enough ambiguity about what actually happens that it's possible to construct entirely different versions of the event. And, by constructing the ending the way he does, Moll is able to play with us while still presenting a conclusion that is satisfying and offers a sense of closure.
As is almost always true of French films, the acting is top-notch. In the title role, Sergi Lopez (recently seen in An Affair of Love) manages the perfect balance between being a good-natured sap and a creepy, obsessed stalker. Laurent Lucas is rather bland - but that's by intent. Michel is supposed to be a passive individual and Lucas nails that portrayal. Mathilde Seigner has the rather thankless role of the long-suffering wife, and voluptuous Sophie Guillemin makes her presence known as Harry's impossible-to-ignore girlfriend, a role she plays with unimpeachable aplomb.
With a Friend Like Harry has received plaudits everywhere it has been shown, in large part because Moll avoids the fatal trap into which a majority of thrillers fall - underestimating the audience's intelligence. With a Friend Like Harry boasts a smart script that isn't overwhelmed by needless contrivances and implausible twists. This is the kind of motion picture that, if he was still alive, Alfred Hitchcock would almost certainly have given his approval to.
by James Berardinelli

Cosmopapi rating: 78%

754. A BRIDGE TOO FAR (1977)

Title: A Bridge Too Far
Year: 1977
Country: USA, UK
Genre: Action, War, History
Running time: 175 min.
Directed by: Richard Attenborough
Starring: Dirk Bogarde, James Caan, Michael Caine, Sean Connery, Denholm Elliott, Peter Faber, Edward Fox, Christopher Good
imdb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075784/

This was an enormous adaptation by director Richard Attenborough (Gandhi) of Cornelius Ryan's novel and it features one the largest all-star casts in cinematic history. The film explains the rendering of a daring, but ultimately disastrous, raid behind enemy lines in Holland during the Second World War, what became known as ‘Operation Market Garden’. In an effort to end the war sooner, the Allied High Command plans an attack that will drop thousands of paratroopers behind enemy lines and then send the armour (XXX CORPS) in to meet up with them and secure several strategic bridges.
The film boasts an excellent cast full of big name stars such as Dirk Bogarde, James Caan, Michael Caine, Sean Connery, Edward Fox, Elliott Gould, Gene Hackman, Anthony Hopkins, Hardy Kruger, Laurence Olivier, Ryan O'Neal, Robert Redford, Maximilian Schell and Liv Ullmann – just the top line. It secured good reviews at the time and was a modest success at the box office (competing with Star Wars!!). Lord Attenborough however can still look back and know that it was a worthwhile project despite the lack of obvious peer accolades. The film has been criticised by reviewers because has so many stars and, despite runtime, limited character development. I’m sorry but I just can’t agree. I found myself easily getting attached to Connery, Caine, Hackman and Hopkins characters.
All the players do a brilliant job – for a film packed with big name stars it has to be said there were no – ‘look at me I’m the best’ performances – perhaps because they were dealing with such as serious subject. Yet comedy still plays a large part, mostly British ‘stiff upper lip stuff’ that non brits will not readily identify with. Examples would be Connery's response when asked if he wants a cup of tea or Hopkins batman wondering why he’ll need a dinner jacket.
Edward Fox gets a lovely opportunity to show why he’s such a good actor with a great speech to his officers (that really occurred). Redford leads a boat crossing reminiscent the charge of the light bridge (but a little more successful) and Connery steals every shot he’s in, making you really believe he is Major General Urquhart. Lord Olivier plays a Dutch doctor (well he also has a Danish Knighthood) extremely well and with great sensitivity.
I have to say that it is small details that makes the movie for me, the blood dripping onto the blood beside the child, the brave paratrooper recovering the canister and Liv Ullmann reading to the dying soldier. Beautifully shot with reasonable pace and the increasing sense that this one may unravel means that, at least for this writer, the 3 hours flies by. The sense of hopelessness is nicely described by one of Connery adjutants when he states ‘it’s hard to stop tanks with rifles and machine guns’ after they leant they’ve landed on top of two SS Panzer divisions.
britishcinemagreats.com

Cosmopapi rating: 78%

753. RADIO DAYS (1987)

Title: Radio Days
Year: 1987
Country: USA
Genre: Comedy
Running time: 88 min.
Directed by: Woody Allen
Starring: Seth Green, Mia Farrow, Dianne Wiest, Michael Tucker, Julie Kavner
imdb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093818/

I can remember what happened to the Lone Ranger in 1949 better than I can remember what happened to me. His adventures struck deeply into my imagination in a way that my own did not, and as I write these words there is almost a physical intensity to my memories of listening to the radio. Television was never the same. Television shows happened in the TV set, but radio shows happened in my head.That is one of the truths that Woody Allen evokes in "Radio Days," his comedy about growing up in the 1940s. Another one is that glamor and celebrity meant something in those days. For millions of people living in ordinary homes in ordinary neighborhoods, the radio brought images of beings who lived in a shimmering world of penthouses and nightclubs, in dressing rooms and boudoirs.The hero of "Radio Days" is an ordinary person like that: an adolescent Jewish kid who grows up in Brooklyn in a house full of relatives and listens passionately to the radio. But the movie is not simply his story. It is also the story of 1940s radio itself, and it re-creates many of the legends that the kid hears.For example, the story of the burglars who answered the phone in a house they were burgling and won the jackpot on "Name That Tune," and the prizes were delivered the next day to their bewildered victims. Or the embarrassing plight of the suave radio host who liked to play around and got locked on the roof of a nightclub with the cigarette girl. Or the way the macho heroes of radio adventure serials turned out, in real life, to be short little bald guys. (The one legend Allen leaves out is the scandal of the kiddie-show host who growled "That oughta hold the little bastards" into an open mike.) "Radio Days" cuts back and forth between the adolescent hero's working-class neighborhood in Brooklyn and the glamorous radio world of Manhattan. And, like radio, it jumps easily from one level of reality to another. There are autobiographical memories of relatives and school, neighbors and friends, and then there are the glittering radio legends that seeped into these ordinary lives.Allen is not concerned with creating a story with a beginning and an end, and his movie is more like a revue in which drama is followed by comedy and everything is tied together by music, by dozens of lush arrangements of the hit songs of the 1940s. He has always used popular music in his movies, but never more than this time, where the muscular, romantic confidence of the big-band sound reinforces every memory with the romance of the era.There are so many characters in "Radio Days" and they are in so many separate vignettes, that it's hard to give a coherent description of the plot - or plots.In form and even in mood, it is closest to Federico Fellini's "Amarcord," which also was a memory of growing up - of family, religion, sex, local folk legends, scandalous developments and intense romantic yearn ings, underlined with wall-to-wall band music. In a way, both films have nostalgia itself as one of their subjects. What they evoke isn't the long-ago time itself, but the memory of it. There is something about it being past and gone and irretrievable that makes it more precious than it ever was at the time.As part of this nostalgic feeling, Allen seems to have made a deliberate attempt to use as many of his former actors as possible. The movie is a roll call of casts from earlier films, from Mia Farrow and Diane Keaton to Tony Roberts, Danny Aiello, Dianne Wiest, Jeff Daniels and Wallace Shawn. And viewers with good memories will notice there also are many actual radio veterans in the movie, such as Don Pardo and Kitty Carlisle, and the shadows of others, such as Bill Stern, whose inspirational parables about sports heroes are mercilessly satirized.The one actor who is not visible is Allen. But his teenage alter ego (Seth Green) provides a memory of young Allen in "Take the Money and Run," and then there is Allen's own voice on the soundtrack, evoking those golden days of yesteryear. There also is the Allen irreverence in several moments of absolutely inspired comedy, such as a classroom show-and-tell session, or the time the young hero collects dimes for Israel and then spends them on a boxtop secret decoder ring and has to face the rabbi's wrath."Radio Days" is so ambitious and so audacious that it almost defies description. It's a kaleidoscope of dozens of characters, settings and scenes - the most elaborate production Allen has ever made - and it's inexhaustible, spinning out one delight after another.Although there is no narrative thread from beginning to end, there is a buried emotional thread. Like music, the movie builds toward a climax we can't even guess is coming, and then Allen finds the perfect images for the last few minutes for a bittersweet evocation of goodbye to all that.His final moments are staged on a set representing a rooftop on Times Square, with a smoker puffing his cigarette on a Camel billboard, while in another direction a giant neon top hat is lifted and lowered.This set is so overblown and romantic, it's like the moment in "Amarcord" when all of the townspeople get into boats and go out to watch the great ocean liner go past, and we see that the liner is obviously a prop - a vast, artificial Christmas tree of shimmering lights and phony glory. Allen finds the same truth that Fellini did: What actually happens isn't nearly as important as how we remember it.
by Roger Ebert

Cosmopapi rating: 80%

752. TOM JONES (1963)

Title: Tom Jones
Year: 1963
Country: UK
Genre: Adventure, Comedy
Running time: 128 min.
Directed by: Tony Richardson
Starring: Rodrigo Noya, Carmen Maura, Julieta Cardinali, Mex Urtizberea
imdb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057590/

"It's not unusual to be loved by anyone, It's not unusual to have fun with anyone!" crooned Tom Jones in the opening lines of his first British number one "It's not Unusual" in 1965, but this isn't why we are here. It seems that many people immediately think that Tom Jones is about Tom Jones, even though the film Tom Jones is actually based upon Henry Fielding's 1749 novel The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling and not the Welsh singer - confused?
In actual fact, Tom Jones' manager changed the singer's name from Thomas Jones Woodward to link him with the good-looking, low-born stud womanising image of Tom Jones, the book and film's title character. This is becoming far too complicated, so let's start a fresh.
Tom Jones is a multi-Academy Award-winning 1963 British period comedy that stars a 27-year-old Albert Finney, who had just made his cinematic breakthrough three years earlier with Saturday Night and Sunday Morning considered to be the first of the "kitchen sink dramas". It was interesting to discover that acclaimed British director David Lean had wanted the relatively unknown Albert Finney to play Lawrence in the previous year's Best Picture winner Lawrence of Arabia, but Finney didn't believe the film would be a success and turned it down.
Finney was certainly careful over his roles because he even felt that Tom Jones wasn't serious enough, agreeing to star only if he got a producing credit, which he later changed for profit participation - the film has currently grossed over $50m, so he made a good choice. Tom Jones wouldn't be among many people's top ten Best Picture winners, including myself, and it would surprise me if many had even seen it, yet the movie does have many qualities that make it worth watching and then you have to watch it again to determine whether you really enjoyed it or not.
I think I did, at times anyway. It isn't often a movie leaves me in two minds as to whether it was a waste of my life or I'd recommend it friends. There are some unique comedic moments - unique for a 1960's Best Picture winner - such as the opening sequence performed in the style of a silent movie and the shock of the characters breaking the fourth wall giving asides to the camera/viewer, which must be the first Academy Award winning movie to do so.
However, it is the famous eating scene between Tom and Mrs. Waters (Joyce Redman), as they sit opposite one another silently consuming an enormous meal while gazing at each other, that sticks in the mind long after the closing credits. It is a scene often parodied in other movies and television shows, such as "The Simpsons", yet the improvised scene only took three hours to shoot, although it is said that the actors felt the effects from the food for days (Watch the scene here).
Let's skip over the later bedroom scene and the revelation that Mrs. Waters, a.k.a. Jenny Jones, is believed to be Tom's mother because there's nothing like the hint of incest to spice up a film! There are far stranger moments though, such as seeing David Tomlinson, better known for his role as George Banks in Mary Poppins the following year, attempting to rape Sophy Western (Susannah York), the only girl Tom really loves. I found myself cringing at the sight of one of my childhood favourites chasing a young girl around the bedroom in a dishonourable fashion.
Somehow Tom Jones managed to beat Elia Kazan's America, America, Walter Wanger's Cleopatra, Bernard Smith's How the West Was Won and Ralph Nelson's Lilies of the Field to claim the Academy Award for Best Picture, plus it also won Tony Richardson the award for Best Director, beating Federico Fellini for the movie 8½. Returning to the "kitchen sink drama" genre, only the year before Tom Jones was released Richardson directed The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, another of the great British classics of the 1960s.
The film claimed two other awards, Best Music, Score - Substantially Original and Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium, although sadly Albert Finney lost out to Sidney Poitier in the Best Actor in a Leading Role category. On a slightly more positive note, Tom Jones is still the only film Academy history to have three nominees for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar and it is the only time three British actresses have been nominated in the same category - none of them won though!
The inspiration for Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon twelve years later is quite evident, but I would have to say that Tom Jones is slightly better, albeit because it is funnier and quirkier, thanks to the humorous narration by Micheál MacLiammóir, "It is widely held that too much wine will dull a man's desire. Indeed it will... in a dull man." Take a chance on Tom Jones and once you have done so, watch the film again and try to confirm whether you enjoyed it or not… even now I am uncertain, but, as Tom Jones once sang, "It's not unusual"!
by Asa B.

Cosmopapi rating: 70%

751. UN HOMME ET UNE FEMME (1966)

Title: Un homme et une femme (A Man and a Woman)
Year: 1966
Country: France
Genre: Drama, Romance
Running time: 102 min.
Directed by: Claude Lelouch
Starring: Anouk Aimée, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Pierre Barouh, Valérie Lagrange
imdb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061138/

A chance encounter leads to a tentative romance in Claude Lelouch's Academy Award winning[1] Un homme et une femme, a sublime exploration of a love between two people with enough emotional baggage and personal demons to inhibit their chances at happiness. Jean-Louis Trintignant plays Jean-Louis Duroc, a semi-famous race car driver, who by chance meets Anne Gauthier (Anouk Aimée) at the Deauville boarding school both of their children attend, and offers her a ride back to Paris. They are each single parents coping with the tragic deaths of their spouses, although in their initial meeting, Anne gives the impression that her husband (Pierre Barouh)--a movie stunt man--is still very much alive. Jean-Louis arrives at the truth quickly enough to offer Anne a ride back to Deauville the following weekend, where they and the children go on a double date of dinner and a boat ride. Thus begins the process by which they fall in love, slowly and organically, through held gazes and lingering hands. And whereas many films would make the jump from the dinner table to the bedroom, Lelouch expands on the flirtation, delaying the payoff and layering the relationship with his character's backstories, the means by which they've come to this place. He shows us the untimely death of Anne's husband and the suicide of Jean-Louis' wife after a particularly gruesome crash, but more importantly he shows us a long montage of Anne and her husband completely and totally in love, accompanied by the enchanting sounds of Barouh singing "Samba Saravan"[2]. At first it seems like an indulgent flourish by Lelouch that takes the audience away from the romance on screen by showing in detail a past love, but it later gains more resonance as Jean-Louis and Anne grow increasingly closer and Anne attempts to rationalize this move away from a man she loved so dearly, even if he is long dead.All this culminates in the famous scene where after Jean-Louis successfully completes the grueling Monte Carlo Rally, Anne telegraphs him from Paris to tell him, finally, that she loves him. Without delay, Jean-Louis jumps back in the same car he's driven across Europe and speeds toward Paris, telling himself that when a woman sends a telegraph like that, you go to her no matter what, even if that means driving thousands of miles without rest. He reaches her, and they make love for the first time, but as they are, Lelouch cuts to images of Anne and her husband, indicating that while her body is with Jean-Louis, her mind is still devoted to someone else. She's even still wearing his ring. Eventually, Jean-Louis figures out that he's effectively making love by himself and they go their separate ways. It is at the same time bittersweet and beautiful.The story of Un homme et une femme is an endlessly fascinating one, made all the more interesting by Claude Lelouch's narrative choices. At numerous points, he eschews dialogue in favor of flashbacks, montages, music, and race commentary. This accomplishes several goals (in addition to making the film more financially feasible). It allows the audience to more easily project themselves into the characters, as an image of two people talking with music replacing the dialogue draws us into the interaction between the characters, rather than distracting us by what they're saying. We naturally assume that what they're saying to each other is similar to what we would say in that situation. As a result, we become more invested in the relationship. It also gives the film the feel of a fairy tale romance, thanks in large part to the enchanting score of Francis Lai and Baden Powell. Take, for example, the scene at the Monte Carlo Sporting Club where Jean-Louis receives the telegraph. Lelouch puts a camera on a balcony and films it in an uninterrupted long shot as Jean-Louis reads the message, excuses himself from the table, and leaves the ballroom. We hear none of this, but it's clear enough that's what he's doing. Most directors would have either cut to closer shots and given us the dialogue or eliminated the scene altogether, but neither choice would have been as effective. It's a vital part of Jean-Louis' character arc that he leave immediately, and the uninterrupted shots convey that perfectly, but it's also unnecessary that we hear what he says. In fact, it's better that we don't. Lelouch's choice is a perfect balance.The more celebrated choice of Un homme et une femme is the mixture of scenes shot in color with those shot in black and white. Much has been written about what Lelouch meant to convey with this device, whether the black and white serves as quotation marks or the color is meant to be a somewhat different version of reality or some such thing. The answer, however, is almost disappointingly simple. The budget for Un homme et une femme was not large enough to film the entire thing in color, but the potentially lucrative American market required color and an investor was willing to supply more money to the project if the film could play the American market. So, Lelouch filmed his interiors in black and white, as planned, and used color for the exteriors. The compromise is a practical one that people have been reading into since the film was released, and may have been a factor in Lelouch's Best Director nomination. It'll surprise no one to hear that the mixture has influenced many a filmmaker since, but had the project been able to raise more funds, it wouldn't have even existed. And for that, we're all thankful.
by lucas mcnelly

Cosmopapi rating: 71%

750. EL MARIACHI (1992)

Title: Mariachi, El
Year: 1992
Country: Mexico, USA
Genre: Action, Crime
Running time: 81 min.
Directed by: Robert Rodriguez
Starring: Carlos Gallardo, Consuelo Gómez, Jaime de Hoyos
imdb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104815/

Everyone know the story by now:Robert Rodriguez, a college student, wanted to make films. So badly, in fact, he was a scientific test subject at the University of San Antonio for several years. Soon, armed with $3000, a cheap camera, and a cast of friends and families, Rodriguez made this excellent action film. It set a trend for Rodriguez: he photographed, wrote, directed, produced, and edited this film himself. He would later handle those jobs on his bigger projects, like "Spy Kids" and "Once Upon a Time in Mexico.""El Mariachi" is the first film in the appropriately titled "El Mariachi Trilogy." It's about a young guitar player who comes to a town and is mistaken for a deadly criminal known to carry weapons in a guitar case. Soon, by a complete accident, his case is switched with the criminal's, and he must fight for his life against hordes of villains.Despite it's miniscule budget, "El Mariachi" looks considerably more expensive and is much more entertaining than the $100 million blockbusters cranked out by studios. Rodriguez shows one thing that those big Hollywood producers never show: a love for film. You can really feel his passion flowing through this film.Followed by the superior "Desperado" and "Once Upon a Time in Mexico."
by Jacob Hall

Cosmopapi rating: 66%

749. NI LIV (1957)

Title: Ni liv (Nine Lives)
Year: 1957
Country: Norway
Genre: Drama
Running time: 96 min.
Directed by: Arne Skouen
Starring: Jack Fjeldstad, Henny Moan, Alf Malland
imdb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050762/

Norwegian cinema is integrally rooted in the presentation of landscape as character, and this integration is particularly evident in Arne Skouen's Nine Lives. Told in extended flashback, the story is based on the real-life experience of resistance fighter Jan Baalsrud who became the sole survivor of a sabotage mission to blow up a German war boat anchored in then-occupied Norwegian territory, only to be betrayed at their reconnaissance point when their contact, a shoemaker named Hansen, is replaced by another shoemaker named Hansen who is sympathetic to the Fascist government of Vidkun Quisling. Forced to navigate his way through the mountains alone in order to cross the border into Sweden for safety and medical treatment for his injured leg (after sustaining a gunshot wound in the foot), Baalsrud inevitably stumbled into the kindness of strangers and other pockets of resistance fighters and sympathetic villagers willing to help him despite personal risk to ensure his safe crossing. Skouen's combination of spare dialogue with extended shots of Baalsrud and his guides navigating through the dangerous and inhospitable terrain (and unpredictable weather) of the mountains creates a taut and dramatic portrait of one person's perseverance and enduring spirit in the face of overwhelming adversity and seemingly inescapable death, a juxtaposition of man and unconquerable nature that also characterizes the atmosphere of the nation's wartime occupation.
filmref.com

Cosmopapi rating: 71%

748. FRIENDLY PERSUASION (1956)

Title: Friendly Persuasion
Year: 1956
Country: USA
Genre: War, Drama, Western
Running time: 137 min.
Directed by: William Wyler
Starring: Gary Cooper, Dorothy McGuire, Anthony Perkins, Richard Eyer, Robert Middleton, Phyllis Love
imdb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0049233/

The song was hokey enough for Pat Boone to do the honors of singing it for the Title credits of the movie, and (like millions of other educated and deeply discriminating Americans) I really loved it! Not only did I love it, I was also thrilled when it was nominated for an Oscar - even though it didn't win.As a matter of fact, even though I was convinced that Friendly Persuasion was one of the very best movies of 1957, it didn't win a single lousy Oscar for anything at all! It was nominated for Best Direction, William Wyler; Best Song, music Dimitri Tiomkin and lyrics Paul Francis Webster; Best Picture, William Wyler; Best Supporting Actor, Anthony Perkins; Best Screenplay, Michael Wilson; and, Best sound recording, Gordon Glennan and Gordon Sawyer.The only Awards actually won were the Cannes Film Festival Golden Palm to William Wyler, and the National Board of Review Best Actress Award to Dorothy McGuire. Oddly enough, even though he won the Best Screenplay, Michael Wilson wasn't credited in the film itself because of being blacklisted after he took the Fifth Amendment during the HUAC hearings on Communism in Hollywood. His name wasn't restored to the film until 1996.Based on the novel by Jessamyn West, Friendly Persuasion turned out to be one of William Wyler's very best movies. Starring Gary Cooper as Quaker Jess Birdwell and Dorothy McGuire as his wife Eliza, the film is rated as a drama -- but with a healthy dose of humor. Quakers, also known as The Society Of Friends (and Richard Nixon's religion at birth), is most recognized for their pacifism and their use of "thee" and "thou" in speaking to others. Both of these become sources of humor in the film.Supposedly devout, Jess demonstrated the deadly sin of Pride in his usual Sunday buggy race to Meeting against Robert Middleton and, talk about your French Connection auto chases -- wait until you see Gary and Robert tearing up the roads in their surries! Supposedly pacifist, the menfolk have an awkward tendency to resort to violence in the settlement of disputes, but do it in an innocuously amusing manner. Their pacifist goose, Samantha, is the most violent of the bunch, chasing everyone at the drop of a feather. Finally, there are eldest son Josh (Anthony Perkins) and Little Jess (Richard Eyer), and daughter Mattie played by Phyllis Love.Mattie is showing a definitely unpacifistic attraction to Union Soldier Gard Jordan (son of Jess' racing opponent Sam Jordan), despite the gathering thunderclouds of the Civil War. With this example courting his sister, Josh has expressed his desire to join the Army, too. Both Jess and Eliza are torn by the problems besetting their family, including Eliza's opposition to Jess' desire to buy an organ!As the war clouds draw nearer to the Birdwell farm, the pressures increase to the point of threatening to tear the family apart. When marauding bands of Confederates start raiding the area, something must be done -- but what; pacifist prayer or martial retaliation? I won't tell you the whole story, but will give you a hint. One of the most exciting sequences in the entire movie (aside from Samantha's predations) is Jess using his muzzle-loading long rifle ala Sergeant York!. Enough said?This is truly a heart-warming movie, with a theme song that was on the top ten seemingly forever. Dimitri Tiomkins' score was simply beautiful in its orchestral lyricism, and the Technicolor photography was glorious. Although there are moments of nail-biting tension, and moments that will touch you deeply enough to have you reaching for tissues, there are also generous amounts of chuckles to help the cake rise.This is a cinematic feast that I whole-heartedly recommend. It should be available on video but, if you can't find it in your area, check out gist.com for television scheduling in the U.S. One way or another, get it and watch it and feel good about it forever after!
by isinga

Cosmopapi rating: 72%

747. SIMON (2004)

Title: Simon
Year: 2004
Country: Netherlands
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Running time: 121 min.
Directed by: Eddy Terstall
Starring: Cees Geel, Marcel Hensema, Rifka Lodeizen
imdb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0393775/

'Simon' tells the story of the straight Simon (Cees Geel) and his gay-friend Camiel (Marcel Hensema). The film opens in 1988, Holland. Simon hits Camiel with his car and drives him to a nearby hospital. After Camiel has revealed he is gay Simon replies with 'better you than me,' and we know what kind of guy Simon is. Although Simon is pretty hard on Camiel, especially with his gay-comments, they become friends. Their story of friendship is moving and sad, although it comes in one hilarious package.
Simon owns a hash bar (in Holland we call it a "coffee shop"), has a girl named Sharon (Rifka Lodeizen), and two kids (one girl, one boy) with an ex-wife in Thailand. Once a year Simon and his friends all go to Thailand because Simon has things to do there. Since Camiel is part of the group he joins them. Unexpected things happen on the island and Camiel and Simon stop seeing each other.
The film shifts to 2002 where the real story starts. Camiel and Simon meet again, ironically because Simon almost hits Camiel with his car. Simon reveals he has cancer and is dying. Things have changed in fourteen years. Camiel is living with a man named Bram (Dirk Zeelenberg). Simon's kids have moved to Holland since their mother died, and are now in their teens. Sharon is married with another guy but is still friends with Simon. The friendship is renewed and becomes even better than before. Everyone around Simon knows his end is inevitable and when he announces euthanasia they, and Simon, have to prepare themselves for it.
Since this is a Dutch film, there is quite some nudity and sex. The good thing here is that both really have a purpose. One sex-scene in particular (it includes Simon and Camiel not in the way you might think) gives us one of the biggest laughs in the film. There are also a lot of jokes about gay people but I guess no one should be offended. Simon, who makes most of the jokes, means things well and I have to admit that basically every gay related joke is funny. Of course it helps that Simon is one of the most lovable rude characters I have seen. Like the rude Jack Nicholson in 'Terms of Endearment', another movie that ends with a deathbed, you just have to like him.
A lot of credit has to go to Cees Geel. If this was an American film his performance would be Oscar-nominated. In fact, this was the Dutch film to compete for Best Foreign Language Film over the year 2004. In my opinion it should have been nominated. The subjects of 'Simon' are handled in a terrific way but they are probably too heavy, or probably more so, handled too honest for some parts of the American audience. I am not sure since the Academy nominated Dutch movie 'Zus & Zo' in 2003 and that also dealt with pretty heavy material in the form of a comedy.
A comedy, that is what 'Simon' is. It has the same amount of laughs as the best Hollywood-comedies. When the film comes near the inevitable end it avoids the stupid melodramatic scenes and even knows how to stay funny. The beauty of 'Simon' is that it doesn't really asks for laughs or tears, it tells a story of extraordinary people and it simply gets them. 'Simon' is one of the best films of 2004. It is original, moving, funny and contains one of the best performances I have seen in a long time.
by Reinier Verhoef

Cosmopapi rating: 77%

746. ELMER GANTRY (1960)

Title: Elmer Gantry
Year: 1960
Country: USA
Genre: Drama
Running time: 146 min.
Directed by: Richard Brooks
Starring: Burt Lancaster, Jean Simmons, Arthur Kennedy, Dean Jagger, Shirley Jones, Patti Page, Edward Andrews
imdb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053793/

Elmer Gantry (Lancaster) is an energetic con man with an infectious, charismatic personality and a gift of gab. While traveling, he sees the road show of Sister Sharon Falconer (Jean Simmons) and is immediately attracted to the sincere, saintly healer and revivalist and, seeing the potential success in marketing religion for easy cash, he joins her band, developing what her manager calls a "good cop/bad cop" routine, with Elmer telling the audience how they'll burn in Hell and Sharon telling them how they'll be saved in Heaven. With Elmer's push, the band makes its way to Zenith, and, eventually, Elmer succeeds in seducing Sharon, and she becomes his lover. Their success is mired by Lulu Baines (Jones), Elmer's former girlfriend who fell into disrepair and became a prostitute when their affair ruined her standing in her minister father's eye. Lulu frames Gantry for revenge, but her inability to take the money for the photos of Gantry with her earn Lulu a beating from her liaison photographer, resulting in Gantry having to save her from the beating. Lulu confesses to having framed Gantry, but the damage is done.
Elmer returns to Sharon the night her tabernacle opens, and tells her that he wants them to live like a more normal couple, but Sharon is unable to give up her soul saving ventures, insisting that she and Elmer were brought together by God to do His work. Sharon tragically dies in a fire at her tabernacle, unable to see past her own religious zeal when the place is engulfed in a fire. Deeply saddened by Sharon's death and having reached something of a moral awakening, Elmer chooses not to go on exploiting the religion, even quoting from the Bible: "When I was a child, I understood as a child and spake as a child. When I became a man, I put away childish things.
nationmaster.com

Cosmopapi rating: 76%

745. VALENTIN (2002)

Title: Valentín
Year: 2002
Country: Argentina
Genre: Drama
Running time: 121 min.
Directed by: Alejandro Agresti
Starring: Rodrigo Noya, Carmen Maura, Julieta Cardinali, Mex Urtizberea
imdb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0296915/

If 8-year old Valentin (Rodrigo Noya) was any less optimistic and proactive, he might become one of life's casualties. Abandoned by his father (who is living in another city and too busy with his mistresses to have time for a son) and mother (who fled to get away from her husband), Valentin is being raised by his widowed grandmother (Carmen Maura). Without friends of his own age, Valentin seeks the company of adults, essentially looking for a surrogate family. He finds a father-figure in Rufo (Mex Urtizberea), a sad-sack music teacher, and a mother-figure in Leticia (Julieta Cardinali), one of his father's girlfriends.
Valentin doesn't have much of a story arc. Writer/director Alejandro Agresti is content to show slices of life from the point-of-view of the precocious 8-year old. The voice of the narrator belongs to the title character, although from the perspective of an undisclosed time in the future. The film concentrates on Valentin's relationships with his grandmother, his father (director Agresti), Rufo, and Leticia. Valentin is a clever and energetic child, and, rather than bemoaning his circumstances, he sets out to fix them. As in Amelie, here's a case in which the protagonist is forever meddling. In this case, however, Valentin does not become so enmeshed in solving the problems of others that he forgets his own.
Valentin doesn't have much to say, and, when the final end credits begin rolling, it has seemingly come to a conclusion without a real ending. During the final 15 to 20 minutes, the movie appears to be building to an emotional climax that never occurs. Instead, we get a final, cheerful act in which Valentin plays matchmaker, then, in a perfunctory voiceover, we are told that Valentin grows up to become a writer and lives happily ever after.
The unquestionable star of the film is young Rodrigo Noya, who is on screen for the majority of the short 85-minute running length. This is Noya's second role, and it is likely to bring him a fair amount of international attention. He is one of those rare child actors who can capture our sympathy without being too cute or too irritating. (Most thespians in the under-10 category inevitably fall into one category or the other.) His performance is natural; there's no hint of the awkwardness that sometimes occurs when children have memorized lines or are taking direction.
As a whole, Valentin is a moderately entertaining motion picture, but the lack of a satisfying sense of closure dims its appeal. Although Valentin is well acted and sporadically charming, it doesn't have much more heft that one might expect from lightweight multiplex fare. Valentin may possess a gentle disposition, but that doesn't automatically make it superior. And at least the average Hollywood filmmaker understands how to end a movie.
by James Berardinelli

Cosmopapi rating: 78%

744. TOKYO NAGAREMONO (1966)

Title: Tôkyô nagaremono (Tokyo Drifter)
Year: 1966
Country: Japan
Genre: Crime, Adventure, Drama, Western
Running time: 83 min.
Directed by: Seijun Suzuki
Starring: Tetsuya Watari, Chieko Matsubara, Hideaki Nitani, Ryuji Kita, Tsuyoshi Yoshida (II), Hideaki Esumi, Tamio Kawaji
imdb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061101/

Pop Art masterpiece amongst Japanese gangster films. Director Suzuki Seijun was a studio director who assembly-lined some 40 productions between 1956 and 1967 before finally getting sacked by studio bigwigs who found his style becoming too extreme. (As a result, he spent the next ten years working in television before finally returning to the cinema with Hishu Monogatari in 1977.) Tokyo Drifter is relatively bloodless, more so by standards present than past, but by the standards of any given generation it is an aesthetically bizarre and fascinating film indeed. The film tells the story of Tetsu (Tetsuya Watari), a Yakuza gangster — you know, those Japanese gangsters that like to implant pearls under the skin of their pricks — who, to help his beloved boss, decides to drift off around Japan, whistling or singing the film’s theme song and pondering about life until the end finally comes. Leaving his sweetheart behind, the nattily dressed Tetsu wanders through snow covered landscapes and western saloons without any real destination in mind, followed by "Viper" Tatsu (Tamio Kawaji), an enemy hitman out for blood. Whenever the end seems near, though, Tetsu whips out his guns and either shoots or fights his way to freedom. At times melancholic and often rather funny, the film is a violent contemplation about love, trust, honor and betrayal. However, the inane locations, total lack of any logic and continuity, extreme colors, stylized violence and overall inanity remove any vestiges of reality from the film. Tokyo Drifter is actually more a surreal, visual presentation of a gangster’s multicolored acid inspired nightmare than a normal crime film. The first five minutes alone, filmed in a greyless black and white and ending with the remnants of a neon orange gun lying on the ground, let the viewer know that they are in for one strange narrative roller coaster ride. Sixties Pop Inspired Avante-Garde Style-Conscious Japanese Gangster Cinema—what more can you ask for? (Tits, maybe, but back then you didn't find stuff like that in Japanese films.)
by Bryin Abraham

Cosmopapi rating: 72%

743. THE THREE BURIALS OF MELQUIADES ESTRADA (2005)

Title: The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada
Year: 2005
Country: USA, France
Genre: Crime, Adventure, Drama, Western
Running time: 121 min.
Directed by: Tommy Lee Jones
Starring: Tommy Lee Jones, Barry Pepper, Julio Cesar, January Jones, Dwight Yoakam, Melissa Leo
imdb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0419294/

Tommy Lee Jones directed and stars in this off-center movie about the life-enhancing personal discoveries that take place when a cowboy, a killer and a corpse journey into Mexico on horseback. As satire, "The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada" isn't funny or illuminating, and as a drama it has only a few scattered moments. The border zone between Texas and Mexico is nicely evoked -- psychologically and culturally, as well as geographically. But mainly the film is dreadfully slow without much in the way of rewards.
Then again, who knows? Maybe millions of cinephiles have been waiting for a movie to come along that shows Jones combing a corpse's hair or picking the flesh-eating ants from its dead face. There may even be people who will laugh out loud when Jones sets the corpse's head on fire to get rid of those ants. And by the way, why didn't the fellows in "Weekend at Bernie's" think to preserve Bernie's corpse by filling him with antifreeze? In "The Three Burials," Jones does that for his friend, and that's a laugh right there.
To be fair, "The Three Burials" has an elusive charm -- although it may elude everybody. The film starts effectively, albeit in a self-consciously art-movie way, by following two disparate sets of characters. Jones is Peter, a cowboy who insists that the police investigate the shooting death of his friend, Melquiades (Julio Cesar Cedillo), an illegal immigrant. And Barry Pepper plays Mike, a newly arrived border patrolman and all-around creep who treats his pretty wife (January Jones) with callous indifference and spends days in his patrol car leafing through Hustler magazine.
Gradually, and skillfully, Jones and screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga guide us toward the realization that we're seeing these characters at different periods of time. Mike, the border patrolman, is the one who accidentally killed Melquiades, and when Peter figures that out, too, the movie really begins: At gunpoint, he makes Mike dig up Melquiades' body and forces him to accompany him and the corpse on a slow trip to Mexico. He wants to bury his friend in a particularly nice spot, and he's going to do it, even if he has to set him on fire.
For those inclined to take the movie seriously -- and that includes the filmmakers -- "The Three Burials" can be looked upon as the story of an older man's attempt to teach a younger man a valuable life lesson. Mike needs it. Still, it's difficult to see what lesson our hero is imparting. Don't get stuck in a slow, pretentious art film? Forty minutes of corpse jokes just isn't funny?
As a good actor, Jones is alive to the nuances of communication, so the moment-to-moment interaction between Jones and Pepper is rich. Jones also does a fine job of conveying that sense one sometimes gets in border towns of floating in an overlapping, no-man's land, with all that implies in terms of customs, laws and morals. But the pace is enough to kill people, and after an hour and a half, viewers may start identifying with the corpse.
It's difficult to direct oneself in a drama. Comedians do it all the time, and that seems to work, but in drama, few thrive at it, Clint Eastwood being the most notable exception. Jones certainly doesn't embarrass himself; he survives, but with some mannerisms of recent years more in evidence than usual. For example, the way he trails off a sentence with his voice faltering as though he's lost in a deep reverie -- that one is all over "The Three Burials."
by Mick LaSalle

Cosmopapi rating: 81%

742. STRAIGHT TIME (1978)

Title: Straight Time
Year: 1978
Country: USA
Genre: Drama, Crime
Running time: 114 min.
Directed by: Ulu Grosbard
Starring: Dustin Hoffman, Gary Busey, Harry Dean Stanton, M. Emmett Walsh, Theresa Russell
imdb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078326/

Since 1972, Dustin Hoffman had been obsessed with making Straight Time, an adaptation of ex-convict Ed Bunker's novel No Beast So Fierce. It was meant to be the actor's directorial debut but, concluding that directing and performing were chores too big for him to handle in tandem, he brought in British director Ulu Grosbard to helm things behind the camera. Good move, because in 1978's sadly forgotten Straight Time Hoffman was obviously able to concentrate heavily on hischaracter. He's at his best as Max Dembo, a small-time thief who, upon his prison release, tries mightily to straighten up while fighting a bureaucracy that's cruelly written him off as a lost cause. Gary Busey (who appears with his then-young son Jake) is the lovable "Big Bear" whose kindness and slow-witted speed get the best of him. And Harry Dean Stanton hits a career high with a knotted-up portrayal of a restless ex-con who joins forces with Max in what is surely one of the most tense jewel heist scenes ever filmed. M. Emmett Walsh is a VERY assholish probation officer who gets his comeuppance. Kathy Bates (thin!) is Busey's long-suffering wife. And the crown of ALL these great performances here goes to the beautiful, smart, transfixing Theresa Russell, whose showing as Dembo's understanding---maybe TOO understanding--girlfriend was a career-maker. I could watch Russell all day, because there's something there behind those beautiful eyes! The writer, Ed Bunker, also cameos quite stunningly in Straight Time as Mickey, one of Dembo's shadowy associates. People should know that the autobiographical novel this was based on was written by Bunker while he was still in prison (he wanted to give the cons out there something to read about, so he says)! Bunker followed this movie with appearances in Miracle Mile, The Running Man, Walter Hill's The Long Riders and, most famously, as the ill-fated, under-used Mr. Blue in Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs. With its accuracy, grittiness, intimacy and cruelty, his Straight Time is one of the greatest crime films ever made.
by Dean Treadway

Cosmopapi rating: 77%

741. PREDATOR (1987)

Title: Predator
Year: 1987
Country: USA
Genre: Action, Sci-fi, Adventure
Running time: 107 min.
Directed by: John McTiernan
Starring: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Carl Weathers, Elpidia Carrillo
imdb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093773/

A few months ago, a couple of friends of mine were telling me about an acquaitance of theirs. Their friends oldest boy had recently begun to show an interest in dancing, singing, and other activities that most would consider less than masculine. The father of the child (who sounds like a major league asshole), fearing the worst put the child on a strict regimen of action flicks consisting of the masters (Stallone, Van Damme, Seagal, and of course Schwarzenegger) in an effort to slap the 'gay' out of the child. As misguided as his intentions were, I believe his course of action would promote rather than discourage the poor kids feelings, and help him to further embrace his inner Swayze. Allow me to elaborate.
Most of the movies in this child's steady diet of heterosexual cinema, subscribe to a formula of well muscled, sweaty, liberally oiled, predominantly shirtless men, posing with large, phallic artillery, that spew hot flame. One such movie destined to forge this young boy into a man's man, was Predator.
Now Predator, while being a kick ass action flick, is probably one of the gayest movies ever made. Here's the premise. Let's take a helicopter, loaded with artillery, pack it with testosterone in the form of seven special forces soldiers (Schwarzenegger, Carl Weathers, Bill Duke, Jesse 'The Body' Ventura, Sonny Landham, Richard Chaves, and Shane Black), and then deposit this penis party in the middle of a jungle.
Predator starts off it's sausage-fest with a 7 on 300 battle, and the special forces unit quickly dispatches this small army that Schwarzenegger easily could have wiped out himself (and actually did in Commando, in fact, I think this is the same exact cast from Commando called in to die as spectacularly as they did in that film) all in an effort to stimulate their already over-heated errogenous zones. Of course, in a lame attempt to not look like a completely misogynistic film, the Cock Squad recruits themselves a vagina, in the form of a women captive, who aside from a really long winded and uneccessary diatribe, adds nothing to the film, and is really just there to be the token female.
The big battle is just an hors d'oeuvre for these cock craving soldiers of fortune....the main course....the Predator! 9 feet of pure alien man love, sporting dread locks, a pair of speedo briefs, and stuffed into a fish net body stocking, the Predator is ready for a very heterosexual game of who has the biggest dick. What do the seven special forces soldiers do? Why take their shirts off and prepare for battle or course! By this point in the film, any homosexual desire you may have had, should be completely erradicated from your mind.
The Predator stalks the military unit and picks them off one by one, leaving Schwarzennegger as his final prey. Shirtless, and greased up with jungle mud (NICE) the two enter nature's arena to do battle and prove who is gay....I mean who is the champion!
As far as a homosexual exorcism kit.....Predator is not the movie for you. If you are comfortable with your sexuality, you will find it action packed, exciting and very entertaining. If you are on the fence however, Predator will drive you right to your knees.....where Fletch is currently positioned with a full mouth. GET TOO DA CHOPPPPAH!!!
by Patrick

Cosmopapi rating: 79%

740. DEN GODA VILJAN (1992)

Title: Den Goda viljan (The Best Intentions)
Year: 1992
Country: Sweden, Germany, Italy
Genre: Biography, Drama, Romance
Running time: 182 min.
Directed by: Bille August
Starring: Samuel Froler, Pernilla August, Max Von Sydow, Ghita Norby
imdb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104350/

Working from Ingmar Bergman's highly personal script, director Bille August (Pelle the Conqueror) gives us a glimpse into the lives of Bergman's parents, from their hesitant first meeting in 1909, to their move to Stockholm in the summer of 1918. When we first meet him, Henrik Bergman (Froler) is a reserved, almost painfully shy young theology student -- he looks like a character out of an Ibsen play. Invited to dinner at a friend's home one night, he meets, and simultaneously becomes enamored of, young Anna Akerblom (Pernilla August), the daughter of Johan (Sydow) and Karin (Norby). Against nearly everyone's better wishes, the couple fall in love, are married, have a son, Dag, and move to a country parish where Henrik finds himself torn between loyalty to his wife and family and his responsibility to his calling. At almost three hours length, The Best Intentions is a lush period piece that manages to keep the audience more or less absorbed despite its lengthy running time. Trapped in turn-of-the-century Sweden, where a rigid class-system holds sway, Henrik finds himself running up against the indomitable will of Anna's mother, a powerful matriarch who feels it would be beneath her daughter's standing to marry this meek little theologian. Von Sydow (who seems to be popping up all over these days -- he supplies the narration in the recent film Zentropa, as well) is here in a smallish part, that of Anna's elderly father, a kind and loving -- though ineffectual -- old man who wants nothing more than to see his daughter happy. It's not much of a role, really, though von Sydow's presence in the film no doubt adds marquee value that might otherwise be lacking stateside. August keeps the pace moving right along, never allowing the personal nature of the story to get in the way of his film's narrative drive. The Best Intentions, isn't for everyone, but then that should go without saying. If you're the type who thinks Wild Strawberries go great with Cool Whip, then maybe a three-hour rhapsody on the marriage of Ingmar Bergman's parents isn't for you. For those looking to be stylishly entertained while learning more than anyone might ever want to know about the formation of the Bergman psyche, well, here it is.
by Marc Savlov

Cosmopapi rating: 70%

739. DJANGO (1966)

Title: Django
Year: 1966
Country: Italy, Spain
Genre: Western
Running time: 91 min.
Directed by: Sergio Corbucci
Starring: Franco Nero, Loredana Nusciak, Eduardo Fajado, Jose Bodalo
imdb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060315/

The film's opening has achieved a certain legendary status. Greeted with a sense of prophetic foreboding by an over-the-top song set in the tune of the film's musical score (composed by Luis Enríquez Bacalov), the titular hero (played by Franco Nero) drags a wooden coffin through a muddy valley. Atop a cliff, he witnesses a band of Mexican bandits whipping a prostitute Maria (Loredana Nusciak), before being killed by a separate band of cultic racist soldiers who opt to burn the prostitute in a red-tagged cross instead. Showcasing his nimble fingers and his ability for gunslinging, Django kills each and every one of the girl's tormentor, rescues the girl, and brings her to safety in a ghost town inhabited by prostitutes and their kind-hearted brothel-owner.Django finds himself in the middle of an ongoing feud between the Mexican vigilantes under General Hugo (José Bódalo), and the cultic gringo army led by Major Jackson (Eduardo Fajardo). We learn from his trousers and certain hints that Django is a former Yankee soldier who would later turn into a soldier of fortune, using his talents and techniques to gain the amount of gold to leave (or metaphorically bury) the gunslinging Django of old. Furthermore, Django has a history with the respective leaders of the opposing camps. He once saved General Hugo from impending death while Major Jackson killed his wife, while he was away fighting for the Union. Their fates again intertwine in that ghost town. Is there redemption for the morally questionable Django?Nero's Django is stonecold. He does not afford any hint of emotionality in his exterior, even his striking blue eyes declare a shallowness that prevents character study. Nero's Django is more calculating than anything --- from the start (wherein he drags a prostitute and a coffin to that ghost town) to near the end, everything seems to be a product of his devious plans. Yet upon the unintended passing of fate and destiny, of awkward romanticism, Django's plans fall flat and he has to struggle to again take control of his world.It is that unintended glance at the anti-hero's humanity that keeps the film riveting. He starts out indestructible; he even becomes more superhuman when he reveals his secret weapon --- yet in a cruel twist of coincidence and accident, he is suddenly left with a choice to die with his conceived plans or to save himself and go with the spirit of the frontier; be swept away by that wind of possible new romance. It's nice in it's simplicity; that spark of hope for the ambiguous Django shines bright in the heap of dead bodies and bullets.Django is considered as the seminal spaghetti western. It ushered in a horde of sequels (all, except for one, are unrecognized by Sergio Corbucci), and likeminded films. Corbucci, himself, would remain in the genre and would later on craft even better films (like The Great Silence (1968)). Along with Sergio Leone (Corbucci served as assistant director in A Fistful of Dollars (1964)), Corbucci stands as a figurehead for European-made westerns, often considered lesser (described as B-type) equivalents of the American-made ones. Spaghetti westerns are pulpier, more visceral, with characters whose interests are not necessarily indicative of human nature (quite animalistic in fact --- sex, greed, vengeance). In that way, spaghetti westerns forego of those wistful ideologies and virtues of the frontierland and has exchanged it with frank fatalism with blood, violence, and multiplying body counts. Django, even more than Leone's A Fistful of Dollars (although I prefer Leone's film), establishes the staple of the genre.
by Oggs Cruz

Cosmopapi rating: 71%

738. THE COURT JESTER (1955)

Title: The Court Jester
Year: 1955
Country: USA
Genre: Adventure, Comedy, Musical
Running time: 101 min.
Directed by: Melvin Frank, Norman Panama
Starring: Danny Kaye, Angela Lansbury, Glynnis Johns
imdb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0049096/

I can safely say that The Court Jester with Danny Kaye is one of the funniest movies that I’ve ever seen. The film begins in medieval England with a band of outlaws led by the Black Fox, determined to put the rightful king of England on the throne. The king is only a baby, with the tell-tale birthmark, a purple pimpernel, on his royal bottom. In charge of the infant is Hubert Hawkins, a carnival performer played wonderfully by Danny Kaye. He and Maid Jean (played by Glynnis Johns) must take the child to safety, hidden inside a secret compartment in a cart, as Danny Kaye pretends to be an old man, who has to ‘interpret’ for his ‘deaf granddaughter’ when interrogated by the king’s men—a very, very funny scene—‘she stutters.’
They stay in a stable for shelter from a storm, and after revealing their true love for each other, and revealing the rebels’ plan needing to sneak into the castle for the audience’s sake, they are interrupted by another traveler seeking refuge from the storm—Giacomo (pronounced Jock-o-mo), king of jesters, and jester to the king! A quick blow to the head later, Maid Jean reveals her plan to Danny Kaye—he must impersonate Giacomo, sneak into the castle, meet their ‘inside man’ there by whistling a certain tune, and open the hidden passage so that the Black Fox and his men can storm the castle. Frightened but willing, Hubert (Danny Kaye) impersonates Giacomo, and the next morning is off to the castle, while Maid Jean plans to take the infant to safety.
While ‘Giacomo’ is on the way to the castle, the pretty Maid Jean is taken by the king’s guards to the castle as well. Once they are at the castle, misunderstandings and changing personalities come fast and furious. At the castle is the king’s romantically-frustrated daughter, Princess Gwendolyn, who’s maid Griselda has been promising that her ‘true love’ is about to appear—and the princess has had all that she intends to put up with, until Griselda persuades her that the newly-arrived Giacomo is her one true love. Being a bit of a witch (or a hypnotist) Griselda hypnotizes ‘Giacomo’ into being a brave, foolhardy suitor for the princess, leading to a hilarious scene where Danny Kaye is in the princess’ bedroom, when her father comes in—and every time someone snaps their fingers, Danny Kaye’s character changes from the bumbling Hubert to the swashbuckling suitor—and back again. More along this line happens later, when in a hilarious sword fight with the villainous Sir Ravenhurst, played wonderfully by Basil Rathbone.
But before then, Basil Rathbone’s character wants to meet with Giacomo for a different reason—the real Giacomo is not only a gifted jester, but an assasin as well—and later Griselda poisons the men that ‘Giacomo’ is expected to kill, in a very funny moment. But when the princess reveals her love for the commoner ‘Giacomo’, he’s going to be killed—until the king decides to make him a knight (Danny Kaye passing the knight tests is worth the price of admission) so that a jealous suitor can meet him in a jousting tournament, which the Princess is determined that he win—leading Griselda to put poison in one of the two goblets that the contestants will drink from, and leading to the one the greatest verbal comedy exchanges of all time—“the vessel with the pestle.” But ‘Giacomo’ miraculously wins without the poison, and the film, which wasn’t slow-paced before, really gains speed. Soon the Black Fox and his men (including Herbert’s friends, midgets) are in the castle, a frenetic battle happens, along with the “snapping” sword fight between Danny Kaye’s character and Basil Rathbone’s—utterly, tears-running-down-your-face hilarious. At the end, all is well, and this very, very funny movie is over all too soon. A very funny movie, and well worth watching—highly recommended.
by Tom Raymond

Cosmopapi rating: 76%

737. THE OTHERS (2001)

Title: The Others
Year: 2001
Country: USA, Spain
Genre: Horror, Thriller, Mystery
Running time: 101 min.
Directed by: Alejandro Amenabar
Starring: Nicole Kidman, Fionnula Flanagan, Christopher Eccleston
imdb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0230600/

The Others is what The Haunting and The Sixth Sense should have been — efficient, engaging, and, above all, scary. Having already tackled slasher thrillers and surreal suspense with Thesis and Open Your Eyes, Spanish writer/director Alejandro Amenábar turns his sights on an older form of horror — the ghost story. The resulting film is not only one of the scarier films in memory, but recalls the classic tales of terror from Roman Polanski, Val Lewton, and England's Hammer studios.
The year is 1945. The Second World War has ended at long last, but upper-class British housewife Grace (Nicole Kidman) isn't celebrating. She's spent the last few years under German occupation in Jersey, one of the English-speaking Channel Islands off of France's coast. Her husband went off to fight the Nazis and is missing, presumed dead. Her two young children, Nicholas (James Bentley) and Anne (Alakina Mann), suffer from a rare skin disorder that makes them highly allergic to sunlight, meaning they must been kept indoors, in the dark, all the time. To top it all off, her servants have recently quit en masse, leaving her and her brood alone in their foreboding, fog-swathed estate.
As bad as they are, things soon get worse for Grace. After a trio of new servants (Elaine Cassidy, Finnoula Flanagan, and Eric Sykes) almost magically turn up on her doorstep, uninvited, strange occurrences begin to bring chaos into Grace's orderly existence. She begins to hear things — footsteps, laughter, music — in locked rooms she knows to be empty. Her children begin to have visions of a young boy, his pianist father, and a freaky-looking old woman with blank, misty eyes. And then there's the matter of those gravestones that have been conveniently covered up in her front yard....
All this stress weighs heavily on poor Grace's brow, causing her stiff Victorian façade to crumble faster than Star Wars fans' optimism after the announcement of Episode II: Attack of the Clones' title. Since the apparitions themselves remain hidden until the harrowing final minutes, it's never clear whether or not the ghosts actually exist or are merely cackling, door-slamming, piano-playing figments of Grace's imagination.
This trip into the bowels of psychological terror wouldn't be possible without Kidman's solid performance as the mentally cracked Grace. Like Catherine Deneuve in Repulsion or Mia Farrow in Rosemary's Baby, Kidman is a portal through which the audience travels into a twisted universe. Amenábar's ratiocinative use of eerie silences and cinematographer Javier Aguirresarobe's ominous shadow-play subtly ratchet up audience anxiety, until viewers will be wondering if their own minds are playing tricks on them or if someone slipped peyote into their popcorn.
Like that of the underrated What Lies Beneath, it's The Others' subtlety that makes it such an unnerving experience. But whereas Robert Zemeckis' film veered off-course with an overblown conclusion, Amenábar keeps his film on the understated track to hysteria station. There's no corn-syrup gore, no cheesy effects, no ghost-faced killers, no shaky hand-held camera, no guy in a hockey mask stabbing girls in lingerie. The Others is about fear, pure and simple. And although the story may feel slow in parts, particularly when a certain blast from the past reappears, the tension never subsides, gently creeping closer until you can feel the person sitting next to you trembling in their seat. Or is that you?
by Tor Thorsen

Cosmopapi rating: 84%

736. JANE EYRE (1944)

Title: Jane Eyre
Year: 1944
Country: USA
Genre: Drama, Romance
Running time: 97 min.
Directed by: Robert Stevenson
Starring: Orson Welles, Joan Fontaine, Margaret O'Brien, Peggy Ann Garner, John Sutton, Sara Allgood, Henry Daniell
imdb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0036969/

Based on Charlotte Bronte's classic novel, an orphan becomes a governess and falls in love with her troubled boss.
Born in 1820, young Jane Eyre (Peggy Ann Garner) is an orphan and leaves the house of harsh Mrs. Reed (Agnes Moorehead) to attend a school for orphans. Henry Brocklehurst (Henry Daniell) warns the students and teachers that Jane is a liar and orders her to stand on a stool all day. Helen (Elizabeth Taylor) brings her bread. When Brocklehurst cuts Helen's hair, Jane intercedes; he punishes both in the rain. Dr. Rivers (John Sutton) has them brought in. Helen is ill and dies. Jane grieves, and Dr. Rivers counsels her.
After ten years at the school, Brocklehurst makes Jane Eyre (Joan Fontaine) a teacher; but she says she is leaving. Jane has letters and goes to Mrs. Fairfax (Edith Barrett) to become a governess of little Adele (Margaret O'Brien). Jane causes Edward Rochester (Orson Welles) to fall from his horse. He asks her to play piano for a moment. Mrs. Fairfax tells Jane that Rochester has bad memories of Thornfield. He hopes that Jane will amuse him, and she says she is not afraid of him. At night Jane sees a fire and rescues Rochester; they put out the fire and suspect the shut-in Grace Poole. Rochester tells Jane that Adele's mother was a French dancing girl who left him. Rochester leaves, and Jane asks Mrs. Fairfax why. Mrs. Fairfax tells Jane that she is not allowed in the tower.
Rochester arrives with Blanche Ingram (Hillary Brooke) and fifteen guests. When they show contempt for governesses, Jane slips out; but Rochester talks to her alone. Mason from Jamaica arrives to see Rochester. Someone screams, and Rochester says it was only a bad dream. He asks Jane to treat wounded Mason while he goes for a physician. Mason says he tried to help Grace Poole. Rochester tells Jane his dilemma that he might endanger the one he wants to protect. Rochester says he is going to marry, and Jane asks for a reference letter. Blanche and Rochester discuss where they want to live, and she criticizes his frankness. Rochester tells Jane that he found her a place in Ireland, but she does not want to leave. Rochester asks her to marry, and Jane agrees. Rochester buys her clothes. At the wedding a lawyer and Mason say that Rochester was married in Jamaica and that his wife is living. Rochester shows them the mad woman. Rochester tries to explain, but Jane leaves.
Jane cannot find employment and goes back to her childhood home and finds Bessie (Sara Allgood) and the ill Mrs. Reed, who asks her to stay. Dr. Rivers calls on Jane about an inquiry that they burn. During a storm Jane hears Rochester's voice. She finds Thornfield burned, and Mrs. Fairfax tells her what happened. Grace Poole died, and Rochester is blind. Jane asks to stay with him, and they kiss.
by Sanderson Beck

Cosmopapi rating: 70%

735. DAS SCHRECKLICHE MÄDCHEN (1990)

Title: Das Schreckliche Mädchen (The Nasty Girl)
Year: 1990
Country: Germany
Genre: Comedy, Drama, History, War
Running time: 92 min.
Directed by: Michael Verhoeven
Starring: Lena Stolze, Monika Baumgartner, Michael Gahr, Hans Reinhard Müller
imdb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100557/

I've just seen a really remarkable film by German filmmakerMichael Verhoven--called, somewhat inaccurately in English, "TheNasty Girl." A closer translation would be the horrible orterrible or perhaps better yet the terrifying girl, because it isterror that she strikes in the hearts of her fellow citizens ofPfiltzling when she starts writing an essay entitled "My HometownDuring the Third Reich." The film's chilling depiction of howpatriarchal institutions and the powerful individuals who controlthem will use any means to neutralize serious threats againstthem will also strike terror in the hearts of feminists andothers who work for radical change. Oddly enough this is a film that has been touted in ads as acomedy. That's either a misunderstanding or a misrepresentationof the film, but one which, at first, the film invites. Itstarts out with a seemingly happy and successful young womannarrating, in flashback, a rather good-natured, ironic, satire oflife in a conservative, Catholic, small Bavarian city in the1950s and '60s when our heroine was a bright and a very goodyoung girl; it pokes fun at the hypocrisy that won't allow apregnant married woman to teach high school students, for fearthey would "ask questions" while sex is the major preoccupationof most of her students not to mention the up-standing, up tightadult population. The films turns much more serious, however, when Sonja(played by Lena Stoltze) begins to ask questions of a differentsort for her essay which, she assumes, will show how the Churchin her town heroically resisted the Nazis. Only a few people will talk to her and nearly everybodyscapegoats the former Mayor as the only real Nazi. But a fewpeople drop hints of a cover up. So some people are doubtlessrelived when she misses the essay deadline, and, distracted bygraduation, romance, marriage and young children, drops theproject--for several years. She goes back to it in a much moremature fashion, however, when she enrolls at the university tostudy history with one of the most respected figures in the town,who also publishes the local newspaper. In her research shediscovers an incident in which two unidentified priests haddenounced a Jewish merchant as an enemy of the Reich and sent himto a death camp. To find out who they were she needs access tothe town archives and runs into a bureaucratic stone wall, evenafter winning several law suits to gain access. By this timeneo-Nazi hate groups and many of the "good citizens" of thisever-so-gemutlich little town are leaving hate messages andthreats on her and her family's lives on her answering machine,not to mention heaving bombs through her window. This is the only film I have ever seen in which a woman isdepicted as being single-mindedly obsessed by the pursuit of thetruth. That's a discourse that has always been reserved for themale hero. Several times Sonya is almost diverted from her questby the temptations society dangles in front of women to keep usin our places. Her husband does the prudent thing and movesaway, but though she loves him she does not follow him. Shewrestles with the fact that she's exposing her kids to real life-threatening danger, but she presses on. She's afraid for her ownlife and longs to live to a ripe old age, but still shecontinues. The most tempting snare of all comes when the townstops trying to destroy her and instead tries to coopt her bydoing an about face and honoring her as it's fearless heroine.She almost buys it, but then, in a scene that's perhaps unique infilm history, as she is being immortalized--that is, immobilized--at the dedication of a statue in her honor, she realizes it'sjust another way of silencing her and she cuts loose with atirade that will make feminist hearts swell with pride. Yet thatringing discourse of resistance is short-lived as we see her, inthe final sequence, fleeing with her daughter to the tree whichhas frequently been her solace, on the outskirts of town. Thelook in her eyes is one of terror. She knows, perhaps, that heroutburst of truth-telling, however empowering it might have been,gives the patriarchy yet another tool to use against her. Nowthey can say she is mad. See this film. It speaks truths,terrible, terrible truths.
by Linda Lopez McAlister

Cosmopapi rating: 78%

734. SOPHIE'S CHOICE (1982)

Title: Sophie's Choice
Year: 1982
Country: USA
Genre: Drama
Running time: 157 min.
Directed by: Alan J. Pakula
Starring: Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, Peter MacNicol, Rita Karin, Stephen D. Newman, Greta Turken
imdb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084707/

Alan J. Pakula has (almost single-handedly) converted William Styron's multi-layered novel to the screen. It is a movie featuring elements of some of the most tragic issues of WWII as our initially untouched young American narrator hooks up with a seemingly self-destructingly tight-knitted couple of different European ethnic descent. The histories of the characters are interesting enough on an isolated level, but Pakula ultimately cannot interweave all his themes and implications to a satisfactory unit, and too many of his conclusions and lines of thematic development seem forced and unnatural. The Kevin Kline character is the main source of suspense, but Kline's performance is overdone and his (more or less) hidden past is all to enigmaticized. To keep suspense in a drama like this one, you have to come up with a faster pace of narration than does Pakula here. There are moments of genuine dramatic value (and brilliant acting) such as a few scenes in our introduction to the Meryl Streep character plus the undoubtedly despairing scene involving the nature of the title, but for all the brilliance of Streep's performance (including an impressive accent), she's rarely supported by Pakula's somewhat pretentious direction. And the parallell love-story, involving the Peter MacNicol character, far from casts of sparks, leaving us with a movie that so badly wants to work on so many levels that it gets caught up with its own role.
by Fredrik Gunerius Fevang

Cosmopapi rating: 75%

733. SISSI (1955)

Title: Sissi
Year: 1955
Country: Austria
Genre: Biography, Romance, History
Running time: 102 min.
Directed by: Ernst Marischka
Starring: Romy Schneider, Karlheinz Böhm, Magda Schneider
imdb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0048624/

There was a time, about thirty years ago, when Marischka's SISSI trilogy was considered kitschy by many critics. Fortunately, these times are gone and again we all can see these beautiful films without being influenced by the critics and their politics.I must admit that Sissi has always been one of my favorite movies. Romy Schneider, her acting, gestures and her face are almost identical with real Sissi. Marischka could not make a better choice. However, I heard that this role had such an impact on Romy's life that she was associated with Sissi throughout her career. As a result, some people consider SISSI films the deepest insight into Romy's life. Hasn't she got through the terrible sorrows similarly as empress Elizabeth did?...Other cast are also very, very good. Magda Schneider, Romy's mother, gives a fine performance as Ludovika, Karlheinz Bohm (Franz Josef) does an excellent job. Vilma Degischer is particularly memorable as a cruel Sophie. Only Gustav Knuth's portrayal of Duke Max is a historical travesty. He was not so much attached to family life...Another reason why I like these films is the fact that despite its historical inaccuracies (their love did not look like that), these movies are very gentle, show the value of love between a man and a woman and as a result, they can be watched even by small children without harm done to their psyche.Some say that Sissi is for sentimental girls and old women. This viewpoint is absolutely wrong. I am a 25 year old man and come back to these films with great pleasure and so do a lot of my friends. See it and you will not regret. Make your personal judgments, not being influenced by the unexplained criticism.
by Marcin Kukuczka

Cosmopapi rating: 65%

732. HANA-BI (1997)

Title: Hana-bi (Fireworks)
Year: 1997
Country: Japan
Genre: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Running time: 103 min.
Directed by: Takeshi Kitano
Starring: Takeshi Kitano, Kayoko Kishimoto, Ren Osugi, Susumu Terajima, Tetsu Watanabe
imdb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119250

An impressive re-entry into the world of yakuza criminals and the cops who try to contain them, Hana-bi is notably lyrical and evasive in style. On the streets of modern day Japan a flashy motor carries three detectives towards a dangerous stakeout. Intent on trapping an armed and dangerous villain, Nishi (Takeshi Kitano) and Horibe (Ren Osugi) have his apartment staked out. By the time they arrive, however, Nishi has been persuaded to visit his terminally ill wife Miyuki (Kayoko Kishimoto), in hospital. To compound matters neither of the cops already on duty is willing to stay on with Horibe; they've both got lives to attend to beyond the daily grind of police work. Thus Horibe is left alone, a situation which has horrific repercussions when the gangster returns.
At a later date Nishi is no longer a detective, instead spending his days caring for Miyuki and brutally negotiating with yakuza loan sharks. To their annoyance Nishi has borrowed a large sum of cash and is refusing to pay back even the interest, let alone the entire debt. Whenever they send over some young thugs to play rough, Nishi bloodily assaults them. Hence there is an impasse. Down the road Horibe is confined to a wheelchair, abandoned by his once-loving family and contemplating suicide. Nishi seems to share his pain, perhaps remorseful at leaving his colleague, and does what he can to help. Back in the police force the eager young men who replaced Nishi and Horibe are confronting the very same problems; an endless circle connects as they find themselves becoming numbed in the manner of their predecessors.
In form and execution Hana-bi is so unlike traditional, principally Hollywood, films that an essay could be written on this point alone. At the eye of the action stands Nishi, played with affecting simplicity by Kitano. In a film that harks back to the silent era, so sparse is the dialogue, Nishi is taciturn to the point of appearing dumb. From his perspective almost everything worth saying has already been said, so why waste time on empty words; usually a look or a gesture is all that's required. The surprise is that this reluctance to elaborate and explain stretches over to Kitano's other domains; writing and direction. Throughout Hana-bi there are loose ends, looming holes which niggle for attention; Kitano ignores them. In a narrative as fractured as this, such features are merely an expression of the underlying anarchy. No one can really understand why another person acts in a certain way, so why should Kitano try to provide all the answers here?
The reason why this approach succeeds, where any other film might collapse in a quivering heap, is the strength of the performances. Kitano puts on a role superbly tailored to his strengths, injecting Nishi with a healthy dose of contradiction. In one instant a warm and gentle husband, in the next a sadistic and ruthless bully; two sides to a character that becomes three-dimensional in Kitano's hands. Working against him for much of the film is Kishimoto, carrying a burden of impending death with barely two sentences to express her grief. Her entire performance is composed of glances, expressions and unforced laughter. The chemistry between her and Kitano is so wonderful it illuminates the entire movie; where other stories might spend a hundred pages proving a love, here the harmony is obvious. The third leg of this emotional tripod is Osugi, perhaps even more opaque than Kitano. There is an indefinable weight to his character that resonates deeply, though much of this may be down to his associated art.
It is this latter element which makes Hana-bi so visually arresting; the placing of Kitano's own pieces throughout the film. A curious and disturbing mixture of flower and beast, these works both open up and obscure the dynamics of the characters. They hint frustratingly at worlds beyond the surface, yet never actually reveal them; perhaps this is the touchstone of the entire film. Hana-bi captivates and compels you to watch, then refuses to even consider resolving its ambiguity. On the other hand, however, this quicksilver quality allows Hana-bi to transcend its genre; this is a tale of people, not of guns.
A striking aspect of Hana-bi is Kitano's amaazing versatility. Not content with writing, directing and starring, he is also responsible for the razor sharp editing. Characterised by jarring but effective cuts between counterpoint scenes, Kitano is more than able in this field also. Interestingly while this makes Hana-bi something of a one-man show, he never forgets to include minor roles and give them the space to live. For memorable examples of this generosity in action, watch for the regretful junkyard owner and the beach walker who lets slip an impolitic remark. The texture added by these figures is a great aid towards understanding the main characters, which in itself is justification for creating them. However, lest you decide that Hana-bi is a sombre and chilling affair, be warned that it is anything but! Smartly written humour breaks up the poetic tone beautifully, a nod towards Kitano's comic roots and a welcome relief at all times.
by Damian Cannon

Cosmopapi rating: 78%

731. ASSAULT ON PRECINT 13 (1976)

Title: Assault on Precinct 13
Year: 1976
Country: USA
Genre: Action, Crime, Mystery
Running time: 91 min.
Directed by: John Carpenter
Starring: Austin Stoker, Darwin Joston, Laurie Zimmer
imdb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074156/

The expectation-challenging role reversals of John Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13 are but one of the silver linings to be found in what is one of the most efficient and startlingly restrained action films ever made, serving as both full-bodied entertainment and unstated political and social allegory (comparisons with Romero’s Night of the Living Dead are certainly appropriate). The film’s technical attributes are so tightly executed that admiration of them threatens to cloud the thematically rich underpinnings, but for as socially aware as the film is, it never fails to supplant the proceedings with tense interjections of charged violence and to the point, balls-on humor (no moment is more pointedly hilarious than when an adrenaline-charged black prisoner of the titular precinct, under attack, declares his intentions of carrying out his own devised escape plan, “Save Ass.”).Amidst youth gang riots by mindless rebels without a cause in a decrepit Los Angeles, one police station stands nearly deserted, it’s content and persons almost completely transferred to a newly erected location. Policeman Bishop (Austin Stoker) is assigned to baby-sit the station with the two remaining secretaries for the night, it’s electricity and phone lines to be turned off for good the following morning. A busload of prisoners en route to death row finds need to detour to the station when one of its occupants becomes violently ill. Meanwhile, a distraught father, having killed the gang member who senselessly shot his daughter, takes refuge from the armed on comers in the solitary Precinct 13, thus bringing down the wrath of the entire gang upon the building and it’s ill-equipped occupants. Ammo is low and, thanks to the enemies’ use of silencers, help doesn’t appear to be on the way anytime soon.Aside from maximizing the film’s lean plotting with finely tuned characters and minute details, Carpenter further titillates his film by shaking up the standard genre conventions typically defined by various gender and racial portrayals. The fine line between the attacking gang members and defending Precinct occupants is one notably reflected as the superfluous boundaries between male and female, black and white, and even officer and prisoner fall away in the midst of the senseless killings. Assault on Precinct 13’s attention to character traits maximizes it’s subtle dissections of moral upholding and personal awareness of action; the righteous officer Bishop left the gang-oriented slums of his own will in his youth, while death-sentenced prisoner Napoleon Wilson (Darwin Joston) came to accept a violent lifestyle of his own accord. By remembering that every individual has the capacity to determine the moral course of their own lives regardless of what privileges (or lack thereof) they enter society with, the film remains smart, subtle and enthralling, it’s conflict allegorical of the civilized participants of society setting aside their differences to overcome the barbarous potential within every one of us.
by Rob Humanick

Cosmopapi rating: 78%

730. WILLOW (1988)

Title: Willow
Year: 1988
Country: USA
Genre: Action, Adventure, Fantasy
Running time: 126 min.
Directed by: Ron Howard
Starring: Val Kilmer, Joanne Whalley, Warwick Davis, Patrick Hayes
imdb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096446/

George Lucas and Ron Howard both love high adventure and, apparently, Hobbits.Unfortunately, making a real version of Lord of the Rings is fraught with problems, as some directors know, so Lucas and Howard teamed up on an original short dude-goes-on-epic-adventure tale, this time having a "Nelwyn" named Willow (ex-Ewok Warwick Davis) finding a baby in a river, whom he must then protect from the evil Queen Bavmorda (Jean Marsh), who is seeking the baby to destroy her thanks to the classic she-will-grow-up-to-destroy-me prophecy. Willow teams up with a half-crazed human named Madmartigan (Val Kilmer), rescues a shape-changed sorceress, battles a two-headed dragon (allegedly named "Eborsisk" after a certain powerful pair of film critics) and converts the evil queen's daughter (Joanne Whalley) from the dark side, all in two short hours.Back in 1988, the digital special effects were groundbreaking -- with Willow pioneering "morphing" technology (and detailed at length on a documentary included on the special edition DVD. Today, they look a little silly -- no fault to the film, it's just that computer effects were half-baked at the time. The worst is the use of life-size actors playing nine-inch tall "Brownies," shot against a bluescreen and inserted into the footage. It looks cheesy, and their "comic relief" isn't really worth the problems caused by pulling you out of the film's world.Much has been made of Willow's similarity to the Star Wars universe -- the rugged loner and the child that eventually turns from evil -- but those are really just elements of classic fantasy. Willow in fact stands as one of the great fantasy movies put the film -- in fact, it's one of the only fantasy movies put to film, simply because working with magic, horse-riding armies, endless swordplay, and period sets and costumes on this scale is exhorbitantly expensive. Most of the time, Howard gets it right -- he's a bit heavy-handed with all the good v. evil, but the film is a lot of fun for kids and adults -- with Kilmer's goofy swordsman the best character in the bunch. The special effects aside (and you'll need to look past them -- there's even some Claymation in here...), Willow is grand escapism.
by Christopher Null

Cosmopapi rating: 80%

729. GRINDHOUSE (2007)

Title: Grindhouse
Year: 2007
Country: USA
Genre: Action, Horror, Sci-fi
Running time: 191 min.
Directed by: Robert Rodriguez, Eli Roth, Quentin Tarantino, Rob Zombie
Starring: Rose McGowan, Freddy Rodríguez, Josh Brolin, Bruce Willis, Kurt Russell, Rosario Dawson
imdb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0462322/

Editor's Note: Since we have separate reviews of the Death Proof and Planet Terror DVD releases, the information above reflects only the fake trailers by Rob Zombie, Edgar Wright, and Eli Roth (Rodriguez's Machete trailer was included on the Planet Terror DVD).
In Grindhouse, maverick directors Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino team up to teach modern audiences about the long-dead art of the grindhouse exploitation double feature of the 1970s. To recreate the experience, they've provided us with two feature-length films, fake trailers, and cheesy retro intertitles. In many ways, they are very successful in their educational endeavor. Rodriguez's segment, Planet Terror , shows us why these films were their own kind of art. Tarantino's segment, Death Proof , shows us why this art is now dead.
We'll break the experience (and we'll call Grindhouse an experience since it's really a container for the two films rather than a film unto itself) down to its component parts, since there's almost no connection between the individual segments (save a few tell-tale clues that they co-exist in the same universe).
Planet Terror
Too often in the world of film criticism, we try to justify a great movie intellectually, dissecting it until we find the seed from which the greatness originally sprung -- and then breaking down that seed until we can't see it anymore without a microscope. Certainly, this is a technique that we use throughout Classic-Horror. It's not a bad thing, necessarily; no well-argued analysis is without merit. That said, Planet Terror would like to give the middle finger to all such attempts at distilling its greatness. Then it would like to give that finger a little twist, just for emphasis.
You cannot make a smart, rational case for Planet Terror. It is not a smart, rational film. However, this doesn't make it a stupid movie, either. Rodriguez is an intelligent man and the sillier an intelligent director attempts to make his movie, the more his intelligence will shine through in all the right places (for an equally awesome example of this, see the early works of Peter Jackson). Like most things of raw, inexplicable beauty, Planet Terror overwhelms the senses and leaves you awestruck without reason. An attempt to graft deeper meaning onto the film would ruin it.
Deep in the heart of Texas, a toxic biochemical is unleashed on the unsuspecting populace of a small town, turning the majority of them into cannibalistic zombies covered in oozing pustules. Those unaffected must make a last stand against hundreds of purulent monstrosities. Luckily, the side of the non-flesheaters includes the mysterious and dangerous El Wray (Freddy Rodriguez) and his ex-girlfriend Cherry Darling (Rose McGowan), who has a machine gun where her right leg should be.
Let me tell you what Planet Terror is really about -- cramming every bit of 'holy crap!' that Rodriguez can think of into a 90-minute runtime. Gross zombies and prosthetic legs with unlimited ammo aside, Planet Terror also tosses in gigantic explosions, a hypodermic gun, helicopter-fu, go-go dancing, and the best damned BBQ this side of the Mississippi. It then adds a veritable who's who of B-list actors (Tom Savini, Michael Biehn, Jeff Fahey, and Michael Parks as Texas Ranger Earl McGraw) and a small, uncredited role for one major A-lister (Bruce Willis). All this combines to form a fuel made of pure awesome that powers Planet Terror from its lithe opening credits (yes, lithe) to its high-flying climax. The engine finally peters out during an overlong coda, but by that time, Rodriguez could've appended a short clip of Rose McGowan eating noodles and his film still would've been an outrageous success.
One particularly strong aspect of the script is how quickly Rodriguez manages to create easy-to-relate-to characters while giving us little to no background. Each of the major players comes from a specific mentality or motivation that they then use that to power their way through the storyline. To this effect, Rodriguez uses the tropes of the exploitation film to his favor; anyone who's seen an action movie in the last three dozen years is at least a little familiar with the templates from which his characters come -- the loner with a past, the stripper with a heart of gold, the avuncular redneck. From that basis, he then builds in just the right quirks to make them the living, breathing heroes of his story, and not just a group of walking trigger-pullers.
While Planet Terror certainly embodies the spirit of the grindhouse film, its single major flaw is that there's no way to pretend it actually is one. Rodriguez does make a concentrated effort to authenticate the look of the print by adding scratches, dents, and other bits of wear and tear (even to the point where the sexiest scene in the movie is so "worn down" that the film "breaks" and the movie skips ahead several minutes), but he cannot escape the fact that his movie looks like it was made by a major studio. Utilizing the same techniques that allowed him to digitally create an entire city out of thin air in Sin City, Rodriguez uses computers to create some seriously awesome whiz-bang effects, not least of which is Cherry Darling's prosthetic machine gun leg. Roughly eighty percent of the really amazing effects shots in Planet Terror would never have been possible on a 1970s exploitation budget, and the film frequently plays like what might have come out of the era if money had been no object and Adobe After Effects had been freely available for post-production.
With Planet Terror, Rodriguez effectively melds his unique brand of "everything and the kitchen sink" filmmaking with the horror genre, and does so in a much more cohesive fashion than his last horror outing, From Dusk Till Dawn (a film written by Tarantino that's similarly in the spirit of the great grindhouse horror features). If there's a Planet Terror 2, I'll be first in line.
Death Proof
Where Rodriguez's film works on pure adrenaline, Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof chugs along on nothing more than Tarantino's smug self-satisfaction. Some of his pride is well-deserved -- Death Proof contains some of the most amazing car stunts in recent history, all done with practical effects and almost no CGI. For the most part, however, Tarantino's segment is an old dog overly impressed with its own ability to perform old tricks.
In Death Proof , Tarantino attempts to create his own homage to three different genres: the slasher, the car chase action movie, and the women's revenge picture. The problem is that it doesn't really work as any of those things. Death Proof is just another Tarantino movie where characters sit around and banter about minutiae and pop nostalgia. Once they stop bantering, they wander through one or two of the aforementioned genres until Tarantino is done with them.
Most days, "just another Tarantino movie" would be fine by me -- the director has been nothing if not excellent in every film since Reservoir Dogs. The problem in Death Proof is that Tarantino is trying to make a horror/action exploitation film with Tarantino characters. In such an enviroment, his usual dialogue sounds hollow and banal; his characters are defined by their level of rudeness and their willingness to spout profanity, rather than, say, personalities. Characters in "pure" Tarantino films can survive being defined by their 'tudes and foul mouths, since they live in the director's mise-en-scène of cool. In an exploitation film, however, there's a strong desire to "cut to the chase" (an urgency spurred on by Death Proof's editing if not its content) and the very best exploitation cinema features characters defined by their actions (as exemplified in Rodriguez's Planet Terror).
Ostensibly, Death Proof is about misogynistic Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell), who gets his kicks from killing girls with his 1970 Chevy Nova, which he's reinforced to be 100% death proof (hence the film's title). The film is split into two sections. The first part acts as our introduction to Mike as he stalks a radio DJ and her friends in Austin, Texas. The second part follows a set of movie people (a makeup artist, an actress, and two stunt women) who have the misfortune to run afoul of Stuntman Mike -- until Mike finds that the misfortune is entirely his.
The key to an effective villain is giving him the proper set-up. Tarantino at least appears to understand that this is what made his favorite horror films work, as he makes a few references to Halloween early in the picture (the mysterious car with the unseen driver rolling slowly past the girls, for instance). Alas, Tarantino does not seem to grasp how to make a proper set-up work for him, at least, not on film. If you have a chance to read Tarantino's full screenplay (which is available in book form), do so. There are some passages in there that make Stuntman Mike unnerving and sinister well before he starts killing. Those bits, however, are nowhere to be found in the final product. The Mike that Tarantino shows us is an impotent lout who stuffs his face with nachos, does a passable John Wayne impersonation, and hits on women like a passive-aggressive dweeb. When he shepherds hippie-girl Pam (Rose McGowan in a blonde wig) into his car and tells her that she's "gonna have to get scared immediately," the first question that pops into mind is "why?" Soon after, Stuntman Mike performs one of the more impressive four-in-one kills in cinema history, but it's nearly impossible to actually attach him to the act he is committing. Since Tarantino hasn't shown Mike to be a potential threat, the focus of the scene shifts to the technical spectacle, where it should be on either Mike (who we should be afraid of, but aren't) or his victims (who we should care about, but don't). Mike's not a terrifying powerhouse of misdirected sexual rage -- he's an aging blowhard whose flaccidity doesn't end with his penis.
The effectiveness of the second half of Death Proof is heavily predicated on how unnerving Stuntman Mike is. Since he isn't unnerving at all, the focus again shifts to the impressive technical craftsmanship of the stunts and effects. Since the two car chases that comprise the meat of this half are some seriously slambang action sequences, this shift in focus is not necessarily a bad thing. Although both chases outlast their welcome by a few minutes, Tarantino ends the film at just the right moment, freezing the action right after an incredibly gratifying, if somewhat ridiculous, fistfight.
One thing I will give Tarantino is that of the two features in Grindhouse, his most closely resembles an actual grindhouse movie. He uses CGI sparingly (mostly only to erase wires and harnesses from the stunt people) and most of the effects are done in-camera. When stunt woman Zoë Bell (playing herself) is hanging onto the hood of a 1970 Dodge Challenger at high speed, she's really hanging onto the hood of the car and the car is really zipping along at 70 miles per hour1. Tarantino insisted that everything be as real as possible and for this, I commend him. The car chase sequences never cop out and they feel like they're running at 200 miles per hour. However, while the technology is accurate, the price is not. Tarantino used six 1970 Challengers and eight 1970 Novas in Death Proof2; the cost of the cars alone would have blown the entire budget of a grindhouse film several times over.
Unfortunately, the other major aspect of the grindhouse experience that Tarantino emulates is the piece of crap second feature that follows the completely awesome first feature. If this is his intent -- and based on statements he's made in several interviews, it isn't -- then he earns no points for his effort. I can accurately emulate a kick to the groin, but would you want me to? Sadly, with the exception of his impressive stunt work and effects, Death Proof is much like Stuntman Mike -- an impotent throwback that thinks it's more impressive than it really is.
Trailers
To keep with the spirit of the grindhouse experience, Tarantino and Rodriguez had fellow horror filmmakers Eli Roth (Cabin Fever, Hostel), Rob Zombie (The Devil's Rejects , the upcoming Halloween remake), and Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead) create trailers for fake grindhouse movies. Some of them are brilliant, all go for the humor angle, and all of them are worth at least a little discussion.
Machete (Rodriguez) - Rodriguez himself contributes the first trailer, which plays before Planet Terror. Machete, a former Mexican Federale (Danny Trejo) is hired to assassinate a U.S. Senator, but it's a set-up -- during the job, he's shot and left for dead by his employers. As the gravel-voiced narrator puts it, "they just f**ked with the wrong Mexican." Rodriguez's pastiche of the Charles Bronson revenge flicks of the 1970s is so dead on the money that plans are in the works to actual make the entire film. I say bring it on. Machete works the same kind of magic in a few brief minutes that Planet Terror does in a full hour and a half. It's action-packed fun, full of violence, bladed weaponry of all sizes, and gratuitous nudity.
Werewolf Women of the SS (Zombie) - Apparently, Hitler's plans for world domination included lycanthropic ladies. Who knew? The title evokes a heady whirlwind of naziploitation, horror, and sexploitation. The result is certainly a whirlwind, but it's more of a headache than heady. What could have been a sublimely perfect snapshot of exploitation in all of its glory ends up being a mess of clips that treat the concept as a winking joke. Zombie's trailer is a thorough disappointment, saved only by a full-blooded cameo by a cackling Nicolas Cage as Fu Manchu.
Edgar Wright's trailer (Wright) - I'm omitting the title of Wright's contribution because it's basically the punch line for a very funny joke. Wright seems to be doing a pastiche on the "torture house" films of fellow Brit Pete Walker (House of Whipcord). A group of people (including Matthew MacFadyen and Jason Isaacs) enter a house and are immediately beset by maniacs of all shapes and sizes. Shaun of the Dead actors Simon Pegg and Nick Frost both appear. The narration and featured clips fail to give a strong idea about what the film is really about, which probably makes Wright's contribution the most authentic of the four fake trailers, since British imports in the US frequently suffered that sort of treatment.
Thanksgiving (Roth) - Roth's spoof of an early 1980s slasher reportedly created some issues with the MPAA and suffered some cuts so Grindhouse could secure an 'R' rating. One scene that had to be trimmed -- where a topless girl on a trampoline does the splits onto the killer's waiting knife -- actually becomes the most brutal moment in the piece because Roth cuts away a half-second after the moment of impact (the original cut lingered much longer)3. Otherwise, Thanksgiving is Roth's famously over-the-top sensibilities running wild -- a boy gets decapitated while his girlfriend gives him head, a grandma is killed and roasted instead of the turkey, and a Thanksgiving parade is ruined when the killer slices off the turkey mascot's head. It's all more than we'd ever be allowed to see in a real trailer, but there's a vein of dark (meat) humor that prevents things from getting too stupid.
Grindhouse offers a lot in the way of fun -- Planet Terror and the majority of the fake trailers are an absolute blast. Were it not for the regrettable but occasionally interesting Tarantino film, it might be perfect. As far as I'm concerned, it still can be perfect. Watch Planet Terror, watch the fake trailers, and skip out before Death Proof. Go home and watch a real grindhouse film instead. I recommend The Candy Snatchers or Blood Freak.
By Nate Yapp

728. LA REINE MARGOT (1994)

Title: Reine Margot, La (Queen Margot)
Year: 1994
Country: France, Italy, Germany
Genre: Biography, Drama, History
Running time: 162 min.
Directed by: Patrice Chereau
Starring: Isabelle Adjani, Daniel Auteuil, Jean-Hugues Anglade, Vincent Perez, Virna Lisi
imdb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110963/

The ageless Isabelle Adjani, one of France's most beautiful faces, has an undeniable screen presence. And, with his lean, well-toned body and finely-sculpted features, Vincent Perez is equally pleasing to the eye. However, put them together with the expectation that they'll play off one another, and the love affair that's supposed to sizzle instead fizzles. Not only is there no chemistry between these two, but the cold-as-ice Adjani never thaws, and Perez shows that in France, like elsewhere, physical attractiveness does not equate to acting talent.
Fortunately, there's a lot more going on in Queen Margot than the relationship between Perez' gallant La Mole and Adjani's title character. The film's primary focus is the bloody sixteenth-century struggle between French Catholics and Protestants, and the resulting political intrigue in the court of King Charles XI. Queen Margot opens in 1572 at the ostentatious wedding of Margot -- the Catholic daughter of Catherine de Medici (Virna Lisi) and the brother of Charles (Jean-Hugues Anglade) -- to Henri of Navarre (Daniel Auteuil) -- the leader of the Huguenots. While this arrangement is intended to secure peace between the rival religious factions, it is a marriage of convenience only. Margot makes it clear that Henri is not welcome in her bed.
Six days after the marriage comes the Saint Bartholomew's Day massacre, an event that sees the wanton slaughter of thousands of Protestants, including the king's confidante. Henri, like many of his subjects, is forced to convert to Catholicism to save his life. Meanwhile, Margot has taken a new lover -- a brave and dashing Huguenot by the name of La Mole. Yet the I Claudius- like scheming and political machinations have just begun.
Most of Queen Margot is a top-notch historical epic featuring impeccable costumes and grand scenery. Unlike the "typical" French film, this is not at all talky. In fact, amidst the swordfights, carnage, and battle scenes, there are occasions when dialogue is at a premium. Queen Margot is a sumptuous movie -- except when the focus switches to the poorly realized romance between Margot and La Mole.
Perhaps the most chilling sequence in Queen Margot depicts the dumping of hundreds of lifeless bodies into mass graves. Echoing Holocaust horrors, it's not a unique cinematic picture, but this type of scene is rarely associated with anything other than Nazi concentration camps. It serves as an unpleasant reminder that atrocities litter the entire spectrum of human history, not just the present and recent past.
Directed by Patrice Chereau and produced by Claude Berri (the director of such epics as Jean de Florette/Manon of the Spring and Germinal), Queen Margot never becomes tiresome despite a substantial running length (actually, more than 30 minutes were trimmed by Miramax from the original cut). There is enough energy to drive this film through its few slow spots on momentum alone, and Chereau fortunately doesn't subject us to too many scenes with only Adjani and Perez. Featuring the likes of Daniel Auteuil (Un Coeur en Hiver), Jean-Hugues Anglade (Killing Zoe), and Virna Lisi, the rest of the cast is impeccable.
Queen Margot has enough pomp and pageantry -- not to mention melodrama -- to alienate viewers who don't enjoy that sort of film. However, for those who appreciate bigger-than-life historical sagas, Chereau's entry is often impressive and almost always entertaining.
by James Berardinelli

Cosmopapi rating: 77%

727. LILIES OF THE FIELD (1963)

Title: Lilies of the Field
Year: 1963
Country: USA
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Running time: 94 min.
Directed by: Ralph Nelson
Starring: Sidney Poitier, Lilia Skala, Lisa Mann
imdb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057251/

Sidney Poitier won a Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal of Homer Smith, a cheerful, itinerant Baptist handyman who one day pulls off the road and approaches a house with no more thought than to get water for his car radiator. But the house belongs to a community of German women religious led by stern, iron-willed Mother Maria (Lilia Skala), who quickly sizes up this capable man whom God has sent her way, and decides to find something for him to do.
Smith is determined to move on, but soon agrees to a day’s work; and proceeds to find himself faced with one task after another. Exactly how much Mother Maria intends to ask of him — and how much she is able to pay him — are not immediately clear; nor is the extent to which the language barrier is a hindrance to her and the extent to which she is hiding behind it.
Despite the divergence in faith and culture, a tolerant ecumenical respect characterizes the relationship between Smith and the sisters. He cheerfully offers them free English lessons, and, in a joyous sequence, leads them in a united proclamation of the Gospel in song, teaching them the Baptist spiritual "Amen," which narrates the entire life of Christ from the Virgin Birth to the Ascension. The possibility of reciprocity is raised by Smith’s suggestion that the sisters likewise teach him the Latin chant they had been singing — the Tantum ergo — but this, alas, never materializes.
However, Smith does have something to gain from the encounter. True, he finds that the sisters’ austerity is not for him: "Is that a Catholic breakfast?" he asks dubiously when offered a single fried egg, and proceeds to illustrate, in a great sight gag, how a Baptist eats a Catholic breakfast. And when the sisters attend a local outdoor Mass (there is no church or chapel in the area), Smith withdraws to a nearby diner for a real Baptist breakfast. But when the full scope of Mother Maria’s vision is laid before him, the nun’s faith and conviction challenges Smith to confront his doubts and misgivings. Later, when the project is well underway, there is a more subtle lesson about pride.
Refreshingly candid cultural observations season the story: in the scene at the diner near the outdoor Mass, the counter-man complains to Smith about the priest, who is Irish and drinks — though the counter-man himself is a Mexican lapsed Catholic and Smith is a black Southern Baptist!
By Steven D. Greydanus

Cosmopapi rating: 74%

726. EKSTASE (1933)

Title: Ekstase (Ecstasy)
Year: 1933
Country: Czechoslovakia, Austria
Genre: Romance, Drama
Running time: 82 min.
Directed by: Gustav Machaty
Starring: Hedy Lamarr, Aribert Mog, Zvonimir Rogoz
imdb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0022867/

Neither experimental masterpiece nor pioneering stag movie, Gustav Machaty's controversial, even scandalous search for the female orgasm is to lascivious movie buffs like myself the earliest example of celebrity skin -- namely pre-MGM, 19-year-old Hedy Lamarr (née Hedy Kiesler), running through fields with nary a stitch on and mimicking rapture (in writhing close-up) as a brawny lover goes down on her. She plays a young bride laying heatedly on her honeymoon bedspread while her older, finicky hubby (Zvonimir Rogoz) spends the night organizing his toothbrushes. Her desires neglected, Lamarr files for divorce and runs back to her father's house, until one day she bumps (naked, natch) into virile handyman Aribert Mog, whose proletarian vigor finally delivers the head-tossing fuck denied by the circumscribed bourgeois Rogoz. Despite the association of life forces with working-class studs and the culminating montage of peons happily toiling the earth, the movie's politics are resolutely sexual, and its sense of nearly flabbergasted wonder at the sublime heights of female sexuality keeps interest from waning through an ocean of pedestrian symbolism. (Mostly clearance night at Freud's, opening with a key penetrating its hole and proceeding to toss in horses, trains, dew-dripping pods, phallically extended shoes.) Shot as a monosyllabic semi-talkie, the film is crammed with tilted angles, laboriously idiosyncratic camera placement, abstracting editing, and the poetry of flesh -- the kind of avant-garde sensuality panted over by horny Henry Miller during his European sojourn. (In fact, Miller did praise the work as worthy of D.H. Lawrence, though even as early as 1933 Eros had already been more expressively served by the likes of Dreyer, Von Sternberg, Buńuel, Vigo and Pabst.)
by Fernando F. Croce

Cosmopapi rating: 65%

725. KOMISSAR (1967)

Title: Komissar (The Commissar)
Year: 1967
Country: Soviet Union
Genre: War, Drama
Running time: 110 min.
Directed by: Aleksandr Askoldov
Starring: Nonna Mordyukova, Rolan Bykov, Raisa Nedashkovskaya
imdb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061876/

After 20 years of suppression, "Commissar" has been freed from the Siberia of Soviet film. It is an impressive first film, a classic constructivist work by Alexander Askoldov in which delicate gestures are set against a muscular structure. This so-called Zionist elegy has been shelved longer than any of the 140 other banned films. Sadly, its promising director has never made another.
Though the story takes place in a tinker's crowded cottage in 1922, the scale is as epic as the civil war outside. It expands to fit the hulking heroine, Red Army Commissar Klavdia Vavilova, a shovel-jawed monster with a heart harder than permafrost and the body of a linebacker. Despite it all, Klavdia has attracted the interest of a cavalry officer and become pregnant. Her belly swollen with his unwanted baby, she is forced to leave the front in the last weeks of her pregnancy.
Her superior officer appropriates the master bedroom of Yefim Magazanik, a poor Jewish handyman, and the dour Klavdia moves in. Yefim, his wife and many children are forced to crowd into the kitchen-dining-living room. But as the days go by, the Bolshevik dragoon is drawn into the family circle. Soon she is wearing a babushka.
The Magazaniks are an idealized Jewish family, headed by a Tevye-esque handyman who welcomes morning with a dance and a prayerful song. Such a simple, happy man! His adoring, earthy wife happily scrubs the clothes, cooks the daily ration of potatoes and bathes her adorable brood. It's a patronizing portrait, something of a Jewish "Cabin in the Sky." Yet in an almost casual counterpoint, the camera captures the younger Magazanik children playing pogrom. "Come on out. You have nothing to fear," they singsong to a shyer sister. Bloodthirsty as the boys from "The Lord of the Flies," they tie her up and terrorize her. "Even my own children," Yefim despairs.
There are also surreal scenes of the Holocaust, prescient dreams of the commissar, now Aunt Klavdia to the kids. These are considered the most controversial moments, for they accuse Mother Russia of complicity in the Holocaust. As Klavdia looks on, the family that has protected her selflessly is led off to die. Shaken by her nightmare and shamed by her cowardice, she awakes longing once again to prove her bravery in battle.
Askoldov bases his dense screenplay on a 1934 short story by Vasily Grossman, a Russian Jew whose writings also were censored. Though provocative and compassionate, this is a Russian movie after all, which means the pace is turgid as the "Volga Boatman's Song."
By Rita Kempley

Cosmopapi rating: 71%

724. [REC] (2007)

Title: [Rec]
Year: 2007
Country: Spain
Genre: Horror, Thriller
Running time: 85 min.
Directed by: Jaume Balagueró, Paco Plaza
Starring: Manuela Velasco, Javier Botet, Manuel Bronchud, Martha Carbonell
imdb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1038988/

A reporter and cameraman are filming a documentary about the daily life of a fire crew. When the firefighters are called out to a disturbance at an apartment block, they find themselves trapped in the building and attacked by zombies…
[Rec] is the latest in a spate of movies to play out its unfolding events through the wobbly eyes of a handheld video camera. But just because we’ve seen this device recently in Diary of the Dead and Cloverfield, and just because The Blair Witch Project used the same trick almost a decade ago, doesn’t lessen its impact. This is a gripping and genuinely frightening horror movie – we’ll be lucky to see a better shocker all year.
After a natural, unhurried build up, the firefighters and TV crew arrive at the apartment block – at which point the movie doesn't let up. Not a single frame is wasted. Directors Jaume Balagueró (The Nameless, Darkness) and Paco Plaza (Second Name) use the simple set-up and compact running time to their advantage, stuffing it with all the ingredients of a classic horror movie - claustrophobic setting, false hope, an air of paranoia and a nihilistic finale. Even a zombie child is thrown in for good measure.
The movie is anchored by a strong central performance from Manuela Velasco as TV presenter Ángela, who is on screen for virtually the entire running time. Beautiful but believable, she begins as a consummate professional who insists on keeping a record of events, before terror eventually envelops her.
The central device may not be new, but it's certainly exploited for all its worth. As events spiral out of control, the visuals become increasingly shaky and the sound more muffled, creating an ever-growing feeling of trepidation. Of course, you can quibble about whether a TV crew would really keep rolling under such circumstances (and there are perhaps rather too many cries of “Keep recording!”) - but you’ll probably be too busy shaking in your seat to care about a little thing like that.
Hollywood execs haven’t wasted any time in spotting the movie’s strengths – the American remake, Quarantine, arrives later this year.
by Matt McAllister

Cosmopapi rating: 80%

723. THE MAN WHO NEVER WAS (1956)

Title: The Man Who Never Was
Year: 1956
Country: UK
Genre: War, Drama
Running time: 103 min.
Directed by: Ronald Neame
Starring: Clifton Webb, Gloria Grahame, Robert Flemyng, Josephine Griffin, Stephen Boyd, Laurence Naismith, Geoffrey Keen
imdb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0049471/

I've become a real cynic about movies that are "based on a true story." So often these films take only the bare minimum of basic details from life and then invent an almost entirely new story to go with them, preferably one that involves explosions, car chases, and romantic entanglements. Thus, it's a real pleasure to find a film with the intelligence to stick to the truth, since the truth, in this case, is gripping enough on its own without any added furbelows.
The Man Who Never Was is based on the book of the same name, written by Lieutenant Commander Ewan Montagu about a fascinating plot that he spearheaded—one that played a significant role in the Allied victory in World War II. In 1943, England was preparing for Operation Husky, in which they would land in Sicily. Unfortunately, the Axis was well aware of this intention, so German powers were massed in Sicily, meaning that the English would suffer massive losses. Montagu wanted to find a way to divert German troops to another area and thus reduce the amount of damage the English would suffer in Sicily. His idea, which became Operation Mincemeat, was to plant fake official documents on a corpse dressed to look like an English soldier, then set the corpse adrift where it would wash up on the coast of Spain and come to the attention of a high-placed German operative. The false documents would speak of an upcoming English invasion of Greece.
The plan was seemingly small in scale but demanded scrupulous thoroughness and attention to the tiniest detail. Montagu and his colleagues knew that the slightest hint of falsity would awaken the Germans' suspicions, so Operation Mincemeat had to create plausibility in every aspect of the plan. They had to find a corpse with an appropriate cause of death; determine where and how to stage its "accident" (and how to preserve it on the journey); create false documents that would pass a thorough scrutiny; and, perhaps most important, assemble a credible identity for the nonexistent dead soldier, right down to letters from a nonexistent girlfriend.
The multitude of details of this plot—and the equally thorough way in which a German operative sets about checking up on the bona fides of the dead man—make for fascinating viewing. It's a pleasure to watch intelligence at work, and because the stakes are high every detail is invested with suspense and importance. Wisely, the film keeps the emphasis on the story; the performances, led by Clifton Webb (Laura) in an uncharacteristically low-key turn as Montagu, are straightforward, never threatening to steal focus from the intellectual maneuverings. Webb sheds his usual fussy demeanor to turn in a performance of quiet strength and convincing intelligence, and Robert Flemyng is solid as his right-hand man, Lt. Cmdr. George Acres. As Girl Friday to both men, Josephine Griffin is restrained but effective. The only performances that draw attention to themselves are those of Gloria Grahame (In a Lonely Place), whose romance with a flier inspires the letter planted in the dead man's pocket, and Stephen Boyd, as the clever German operative dispatched to England to determine whether the dead man was genuine. Grahame's performance, sadly, stands out for being poorer than most of her film work, but she is also burdened with the most floridly written material of the film. At first I thought that her presence was an attempt to sex up the material with an unnecessary romance subplot, but I soon realized that her character's story made an essential contribution to the central plot. Boyd's portrayal of the German agent, however, is chillingly effective, and it's all the more impressive a performance for being in sharp contrast to his almost simultaneous depiction of a drunken charmer in the glossy soaper The Best of Everything.
Like the acting, the film impressed me for taking such a no-nonsense approach to the material. The story is allowed to stand on its own, without unnecessary side stories about the characters' personal lives (again, with the necessary exception of Grahame's character). The necessity of invading Sicily is quietly accepted, without any philosophical perorations on the evils of war. The film even honors the desire of the dead man's family to keep his identity confidential; the camera respectfully averts its eye from the dead man's face throughout the film, and avoids any sensational shots of the corpse being prepared for its work. It's almost a documentary approach, although the use of color film and some impressive location work—not to mention the presence of A-list actors—shows that this film benefited from more money and resources than a documentary. I found this no-frills approach to the material refreshing and very effective; it's a shame that more recent (usually American) films don't recognize that solid material doesn't need to be tarted up with fictitious trappings to hold an audience's interest.
Fox has presented this absorbing film in a solid transfer. The flipper disc offers the film in both its original aspect ratio of 2.55:1 and a pan-and-scan hack job. Color has the richness of color films from this era, but the palette never becomes garish or unnatural. The picture is reasonably clean and sharp; altogether, it's a quietly attractive transfer, which doesn't distract from the suspense. Audio is presented in a 2.0 mix as well as mono; in stereo, the default track, the music is a bit flat and tinny, probably reflecting the limitations of recording technology of the day, but the audio overall features effective separation. The only extra offered is the film's trailer.
I'm not a fan of war films in general, but The Man Who Never Was was fascinating viewing. I particularly liked that it showed a side of war that I don't usually hear about: the careful thought, preparation, and downright cunning that goes into victory. Whether or not you find World War II an interesting subject, this intellectual cat-and-mouse game is a fascinating story, ably presented.
by Amanda DeWees

Cosmopapi rating: 77%

722. BABAM VE OGLUM (2005)

Title: Babam Ve Oglum (My Father and Son)
Year: 2005
Country: Turkey
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Running time: 108 min.
Directed by: Çagan Irmak
Starring: Çetin Tekindor, Fikret Kuskan, Hümeyra
imdb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0476735/

The village life and the relations between the family members which are sometimes full of contradictions between the old and young generations of the same family. The role of the strong mother (Hümeyra) who is trying to do her best to retain the relation between her husband and her son into its normal course and how she is keen to get her family back together was brilliant that she make you cry and laugh in the same time. The father (Çetin Tekindor) whose sorrow when he lost his son made me cry although I tried to control myself. The oldest brother (Çetin Tekindor) his natural simplicity which he conducted in his role of a loving older brother whose ill youngest brother was being fed by his own hands while he is waiting for his destiny at the hospital. The little boy (Ege Tanman), no one can deny the ability of this young boy who is living in his dreams that his father is his hero even after his death, his maturity in acting is quite spectacular. Finally, I would like to that the brilliant director and the writer (Çagan Irmak), his control over his cameras and conducting the actors accordingly was above imagination. Sincerely, all the members who worked in this movies deserves our hats to be taken off for them. It will be a pity if that movie is not nominated for Oscars. Simply a spectacular movie which deserves to be seen all over the world.
by Muhammed Leysi

Cosmopapi rating: 69%

721. THE GOOD GIRL (2002)

Title: The Good Girl
Year: 2002
Country: USA
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Running time: 93 min.
Directed by: Miguel Arteta
Starring: Jennifer Aniston, Jake Gyllenhaal, Deborah Rush, Mike White, John Carroll Lynch, Zooey Deschanel, John C. Reilly
imdb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0279113/

Stuck mostly in Hollywood spew, from Leprechaun to Rock Star, the underrated Jennifer Aniston seizes this Sundance-kissed indie to show she's more than just hair, boobs, Mrs. Brad Pitt and Rachel. Mission accomplished, though we see nothing wrong with Rachel's sexily lopsided smile. As Justine Last, a Texas flower wilting on the vine of a dull marriage to Phil (John C. Reilly), a pothead house painter, and a duller job riding the cash register at the local Retail Rodeo, Aniston is remarkable playing someone who's not remarkable at all. She eases into the role without overdoing the character's desperation or dowdiness. Better yet, she gets laughs without slipping into the sitcom rhythms to which screenwriter Mike White and director Miguel Arteta -- collaborators on the wonderfully perverse Chuck and Buck -- seem commendably allergic.
What passes for plot is the fuckfest Justine begins with jailbait Holden (Jake Gyllenhaal), the hottie cashier whose obsession with The Catcher in the Rye leads to violence beyond the literary kind. Given that setup, the sex could have been juicier. There are times when The Good Girl is so low-key it damn near flatlines. Luckily, White creates compelling characters with a few deft brush strokes. The actors fill in the rest. Besides Aniston, the ever-excellent Reilly and the up-and-coming Gyllenhaal (his Donnie Darko has spawned a video cult), there are pungent turns from Tim Blake Nelson as Phil's lecherous pal, Zooey Deschanel as Justine's nut-job co-worker and White himself as a Bible-toting security guard. It's a creepy, funny, steamy, oddly touching movie -- just the thing to bury Rachel.
by Peter Travers

Cosmopapi rating: 80%

720. HIGHLANDER (1986)

Title: Highlander
Year: 1986
Country: USA, UK
Genre: Action, Fantasy
Running time: 116 min.
Directed by: Russell Mulcahy
Starring: Christopher Lambert, Sean Connery, Clancy Brown, Roxanne Hart
imdb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091203/

Back in 1986 all the goodies were doe-eyed musclemen. The baddies rippled under black leather. A pumping hard rock soundtrack surrounded them all, and "Highlander" defined the moment.
A truly heroic stomp through time and space, "Highlander" is the tale of clansman Connor MacLeod (Lambert), flamboyant nobleman Ramirez (Connery), and the evil Kurgan (Clancy Brown). All are immortals, and can die only by decapitation. They are cursed to duel down the ages until the mysterious 'Gathering', when the few left will battle for 'The Prize'. Together, Macleod and Ramirez struggle to thwart Kurgan in his attempt to win 'The Prize', and save the world from his random ultra-violence and low-down wickedness.
From the moody, rain-soaked, noir-ish streets of late 20th century America to the wild open spaces of medieval Scotland, Mulcahy plunders movie history to set off his visceral fight scenes with suitably rugged locations. This epic quality makes up for the pretentious shifts in time and space, and drags the viewer into the sheer monstrous drama of it all. Throw in a beautiful, female weapons expert, and a warm-hearted Scottish farm girl, and director Mulcahy could rest assured the boys in the audience will be happy.
What the film loses through ham acting, weak narrative and pompous macho posturing it more than compensates with in sheer fiery bravado, pace and larger than life action.
Stylistically "Highlander" may have dated as badly as Christopher Lambert's mullet, but so what? For an honest-to-God, boys-own thrash you can't beat it.
by Matt Ford

Cosmopapi rating: 75%