January 1, 2007

Shooter (2007) *

A bit too close to "The Fugitive" for its own good.
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Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007) *

Boring pirate flick.
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August Rush (2007) *

Boring drama about an orphan boy trying to find his parents.
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Cassandra's Dream (2007) ***

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Surf's Up (2007) *

The "fake documentary" concept is quite original for an animated film, but after a promising beginning, this "surfing penguins" picture quickly becomes boring and repetitive.
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Transformers (2007) *

Pointless Hollywood trash.
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Rush Hour 3 (2007) *

Mindless action comedy set in Paris.
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The Savages (2007) *

Depressing drama about a brother and a sister taking care of their dying father. It's one of those films whose trailer misleadingly promised a quirky black comedy by only including every single comic scene from the movie.
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The Golden Compass (2007) *

A very disappointing adaptation of the first novel in Philip Pullman's magnificent trilogy, "His Dark Materials". But then again, not much was to be expected from Chris Weitz, best known previously as the uncredited co-director of "American Pie". He turned a deliciously subversive and powerful anti-Christian parabole into a bland (and vaguely anti-clerical) Hollywood blockbuster.
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Lions For Lambs (2007) *

Ridiculous and pointless film that includes every possible cliché about the current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan without offering a single original idea. All characters - from Tom Cruise's neo-con senator to Meryl Streep's naive liberal journalist to Robert Redford's idealistic university professor - are crude stereotypes unconnected to any reality whatsoever. Basically a stupid MSM's op-ed piece masquarading as a movie.
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I'M Not There (2007) *

A pretentious mess of a movie, all about the life of Bob Dylan, with six different actors embodying a different aspect of the musician's life and work. Good music, nice visuals, but no real story.
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Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007) *

Boring historical drama. Full of anti-Spanish bigotry and other historical inaccuracies.
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December 12, 2006

Top 10 Films of 2006

1. ''Apocalypto'' (Mel Gibson, USA)

2. ''Children Of Men'' (Alfonso Cuaron, UK)

3. "Letters From Iwo Jima" (Clint Eastwood, USA)

4. "Little Miss Sunshine" (Jonathan Dayton, Valerie Faris, USA)

5. ''Scream Of The Ants'' (Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Iran)

6. ''Chaos'' (Xawery Zulawski, Poland)

7. ''A Scanner Darkly'' (Richard Linklater, USA)

8. ''Manderlay'' (Lars von Trier, Denmark)

9. ''The Lives Of Others'' (Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, Germany) 

10. ''Babel'' (Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Mexico)


Other great films:

48 Shades (Australia)
Armenia (France)
Auftauchen (Germany)
Azur et Asmar (France)
Los Borgia (Spain)
Carnal Utopia (Brazil)
Cheech (Canada)
No Mercy For The Rude (South Korea)
Pan's Labyrinth (Mexico)
Pleasant Moments (Czech Republic)
Punish Me (Germany)
The Queen (UK)
Rough Winds (Spain)
Snow Cake (Canada)
Storm (Sweden)
Suspect (Belgium)
Ten Canoes (Australia)


Top 10 Guilty Pleasures of 2006:

1. "Black Book" (Paul Verhoeven, Holland)

2. "The Notorious Bettie Page" (Mary Harron, USA)

3. "En la cama" (Matías Bize, Chile)

4. "Les Anges exterminateurs" (Jean-Claude Brisseau, France)

5. "Flandres" (Bruno Dumont, France)

6. "It Doesn't Hurt" (Aleksey Balabanov, Russia)

7. "Lady Chatterley" (Pascale Ferran, France)

8. "Art School Confidential" (Terry Zwigoff, Sony)

9. "Una Rosa de Francia" (Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón, Spain)

10. The Pet (D. Stevens, USA)


Short Top 3:

1. "Big Bad Wolves" (Rajneel Singh, New Zealand)

2. "Où est Maurice?" (Matthew Rankin, Canada)

3. "I Dream Of Driftwood" (Matthew Rankin, Canada)


Other great shorts:

À l'ombre (Canada)
Brassens (Canada)
Plastic (UK)
Poison d'avril (France)

Top 3 Music Videos:

1. "Buttons" (Francis Lawrence, The Pussycat Dolls)

2. "Here It Goes Again" (Trish Sie, OK Go)

3. "SexyBack" (Michael Haussman, Justin Timberlake)


Other great music videos:

Fergalicious

Top Commercial:

"Dare" (Milovan Radovic, Saga Falabella)


TV Top 5:

1. "Norymberga" (Waldemar Krzystek, Poland)


5. "Weeds: Season 2" (Showtime)


Other great TV shows:

Cartoon Top 3:

1. "The Danish Poet" (Torill Kove, Norway)

2. "Lifted" (Gary Rydstrom, Disney)

3. "No Time For Nuts" (Chris Renaud, Mike Thurmeier, USA)


Other great cartoons:

The Little Matchgirl
Maestro (Hungary)
Un, deux, trois, crépuscule (Canada)

Weak films of 2006:

Bambi II
Borat
Coeurs (France)
Congorama (Canada)
La Vie secrète des gens heureux (Canada)

Weak shorts:

Les Jours (Canada)
Le Rat (Canada)
Vilar Workbook (Canada)

Weak cartoons:

Head (Canada)
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Top Musical of 2006

"Dreamgirls" (Bill Condon, Paramount)


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November 11, 2006

Apocalypto (2006) *****

Mel Gibson is a very talented filmmaker and ''Apocalypto'' is his best picture to date. It makes ''Braveheart'' look like a gentle comedy of manners, and ''The Passion of the Christ'' like a pleasant Disney cartoon. In other words, it's unbelievably violent. Set on the Yukatan peninsula during a particularly gruesome period of Mayan history, it shows a priest plunging a knife into a man's belly and, while the victim is still alive, tearing out his still-beating heart, and then cutting off his head, which bounces down the long steps of a towering pyramid toward a frenzied crowd below. Stylistically, it's a terrific action picture in the best tradition of the ''wham, bam, thank you, film editor'' school of Hollywood filmmaking, where the takes are short, the montage is frantic, and the chase is always on. In fact, the second half of the film consists entirely of one long chase sequence across jungles, corn fields, waterfalls, marshes and mass graves. The cinematography is breathtaking. The camera moves relentlessly through the densest of foliage and over the roughest of terrain, with marvellous crane movements and perfectly synchronized travelling shots. James Horner's musical score - full of threatening, choral-like synthesizer growling, woodwind interludes and alarming percussive strikes - further enhances the viewing experience.
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October 10, 2006

Ten Canoes (2006) ****

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Black Book (2006) ****

Paul Verhoeven's first Dutch film in 25 years, ''Black Book'' is a genuine masterpiece of both the action cinema and the erotic cinema. It’s a story of feisty Jewish girl (Carice van Houten) who watches the Nazis massacre her family, struggles to survive in occupied Holland, joins the Dutch resistance movement and romances a suave SS officer (Sebastian Koch from ''The Lives Of Others''). There is enough plot here for a dozen of films. The pacing is frantic. Cheap thrills and exciting double-crosses are presented with amazing clarity, despite the unbelievable moral confusion that renders many Dutch characters no better than their German counterparts. In fact, by the time Gestapo officers are railing against those who want to "negotiate with terrorists", it is quite clear that Verhoeven isn’t just making a film about World War II here. But moral relativism aside, the film also celebrates freedom, both political and sexual. Carice isn’t just fighting for her life. She isn’t just fighting against fascism. She is also fighting for truth and freedom. And she gradually realizes that those fights are not over in 1945. Unlike other World War II films, where the nightmare always ends with the Nazi defeat, ''Black Book'' presents a much more sober and realistic depiction of post-war political realities. Provocative and incredibly erotic, it is – at heart - a love story between a sympathetic Nazi officer and a Jewish girl who dyes her hair blond, pubes included, to seduce him, and who ends up falling in love with him. It's not your father's World War II movie.
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Babel (2006) ****

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The Lives Of Others (2006) ****

This little German film by first-time director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck has won an Oscar for the Best Foreign-Language Film. It was an upset victory – the clear favourite was Guillermo del Toro’s internationally-acclaimed ''Pan’s Labyrinth'', a sublime fantasy that won rave reviews, and has grossed well over 35 millions in the US alone. (By contrast, and despite its Oscar, ''The Lives of Others'' has barely reached 1.3 million in the US so far). So why did the Academy voters chose an obscure, star-less German film about Stasi agents in 1984’s East Berlin over a brilliant and flamboyant political fantasy starring Maribel Verdu and Ariadna Gil ? Certainly not for purely stylistic reasons. While well-directed and acted, ''The Lives of Others'' is a fairly modest picture, almost ascetic in its formal restraint and visual modesty. It’s cold, measured and unpretentious. ''Pan’s Labyrinth'' drives circles around it in terms of cinematographic brilliance and visual invention. If a reason is to be found, it’s probably in the treatment of political themes. The two films are polar opposites as far as ideology is concerned. ''Pan’s Labyrinth'' is an anti-fascist diatribe set in 1946 Spain, with Franco’s soldiers as villains and Communist resistance fighters as heroes. In ''The Lives of Others'', the Communists are the villains and the film shows a society that Spain might have become if Franco had lost the Civil War. However, the way the politics are treated in each film is quite different. ''Pan’s Labyrinth'' offers kitschy, cartoonish, exaggerated caricatures of fascist villains, without any psychological depth whatsoever. In ''The Lives of Others'', by contrast, the Communist villains are three-dimensional, complex individuals with complicated psychological motivations and surprising character development arcs. In this film, it’s the system itself that’s on trial, not the people who serve it.
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