I watch a pretty good number of films each year, enough so that some of the least memorable ones tend to fall through the cracks in my conciousness. In order to help me remember what I have actually seen and what I thought of it when I saw it, I began keeping a record (sometimes with little reviews) of what films I have seen. Since the middle of 2006, these are the films I have seen.
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June, 2010
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2010-06-18 05:21
Man on Wire (2008)
4.5/5
This is not just a documentary about a tightrope walker. this is not just a wistful homage to the Twin Towers. This is the best heist movie in a long time.
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2010-06-18 05:10Avatar (2009)
4/5
It's shiny, it's colorful, it's a Cowboys 'n' Indians movie where the Indians win. It's almost completely hokey, but it's also a major work, a first-class piece of big mainstream filmmaking.
0.3 March, 2010
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2010-03-07 21:06A Boy and His Dog (1975)
3.5/5
"A Boy And His Dog" regularly shows up on most lists of the Top 10 Science Fiction Films Of All Time, and I certainly rank it alongside another independent S.F. marvels like "Dark Star" and "THX 1138". Produced in the days when "indie" typically meant "exploitation", "A Boy And His Dog" was a guerilla project for several Hollywood veterans who craved to do something different outside of "The System". Ellison had turned down big studio offers from Warners and Universal and instead handed over screen rights to L.Q. Jones, who had best been known as a stuntman (and still appears to this day in such fare as The Edge and Walker, Texas Ranger) to write and direct. The late Alvy Moore, of television's Green Acres, produced the film and appeared as Robard's accomplice "Dr. Moore". Tim McIntyre provided the voice of Blood and composed the music. Ellison wasn't happy with the Topeka sequences (and blamed his own story for their shortcomings) and was even less pleased with the film's final spoken line (a morbid pun penned by Jones). He offered to re-loop the dialogue out of his own pocket, but audiences loved the line. Despite Ellison's protests, the film impressed his peers enough for them to award it the 1976 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation. Fourth-time director Jones displays such a gifted eye for widescreen compositions and maximizing limited resources, and propels the story forward so breezily with witty voice-overs and bouncy acoustic score that it's amazing that he's never directed another film. The assured depiction of difficult character "Blood" is a true revelation: as voiced by McIntyre, reading dialogue more or less verbatim from Ellison's prose, the shaggy Rover ranks as one of the most believable and three-dimensional non-human screen characters--ever. I never cried when Old Yeller got shot, but I still get moist-eyed when Blood and Vic part ways at the entrance to Topeka.
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2010-03-06 21:37Fish Tank (2009)
4/5
Starring a girl the director met at the train station near my flat when I lived in Essex, this is a real and raw look at the lives of women in what is known in England as the "spiritual home of the 30 year old grandmother".
0.3 February, 2010
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2010-02-23 22:48Das weisse Band - Eine deutsche...
4/5
The quintessential art film: slow, demanding, and rewarding for those willing to put forth the intellectual effort necessary to puzzle out its ambiguities. One of the best film endings in a long time.
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2010-02-05 12:16Zombieland (2009)
0.5/5
Supposedly a "horror comedy" with pretension of being in the vein of "Shaun of the Dead", this is instead, my nomination for the most vapid, pointless movie of 2009. Instead of a film, Zombieland is a series of advertisements for Cadillac, Hummer, Twinkies, Ghostbusters, etc... It is basically the Fox News of film; advertisement masquerading as entertainment/information: consum-o-tainment. I understand the succes of the film though - it seems to appeal to the part of the modern psyche that (only somewhat metaphorically) spends its days wandering through a consumer wasteland consuming canned entertainment and searching for processed snack foods.
0.3 January, 2010
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2010-01-05 12:24The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard (2009)
1.5/5
If this film had been pulled off flawlessly, it could have been another "Anchorman". Despite such a low threshold for success, it misses completely. The characters are detestable, the jokes crude, the language foul. The attitudes towards homosexuals, the disabled and paedophilia are horrendous.
0.3 September, 2009
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2009-09-06 19:10District 9 (2009)
4.5/5
A Summer movie that doesn't offend by it's mediocrity? You don’t feel bamboozled, fooled, or patronized by District 9, as you did by most of the summer blockbusters. You feel winded, shaken, and shamed.
0.3 June, 2009
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2009-06-21 14:46"Frontline" Storm Over Everest...
4/5
This edition of "Frontline" heads to Mount Everest, where climber and filmmaker David Breashears relives the rescue effort to save climbers who were stranded in subzero extremes caused by a ferocious storm on May 10, 1996. When the storm hit during filming of the IMAX documentary Everest, Breashears and his crew risked their lives to save fellow climbers. Now, Breashears searches for answers to the disaster in which eight people lost their lives.
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2009-06-21 14:40The American Hobo (2003)
3.5/5
Academy Award winner Ernest Borgnine, star of the classic train movie "Emperor of the North", hosts this remarkable examination of the uniquely America Hobo. Hear compelling tales of life as a migratory worker from these notable former Hobos, such as Pulitzer Prize winner, James A Michener, country music legend Merle Haggard, and many other adventurous free spirits who have crisscrossed our vast nation on the awesome railroads
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2009-06-06 08:18
Frankly, I'm shocked by the number of critics who have been praising the film. To my mind, the movie doesn't even rate to be called camp. It's simply a bad idea gone wrong.
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2009-06-02 08:29
Like her previous films VANITY FAIR, MONSOON WEDDING, and HBO's HYSTERICAL BLINDNESS, Mira Nair's THE NAMESAKE is a lush, beautiful film bursting with rich color and visual texture. Based on the bestselling book by Jhumpa Lahiri, the film follows two generations of the Ganguli family. After wedding via an arranged marriage, Ashima (Tabu) moves with Ashoke (Irrfan Khan) from her native Calcutta to New York. As Ashima struggles to adjust to life in her new home, a true love grows between the newlyweds. When they give birth to Gogol (who does not learn the true origin of his name until adulthood), the Gangolis decide to stay in American for their child's sake, settling in the suburbs and eventually giving birth to a daughter, Sonia (Sahira Nair). While Ashima and Ashoke attempt to balance their new life with Indian traditions, their children have the very different experience of being raised first-generation Americans. With little interest in their ancestry, both Gogol and Sonia disappoint their parents by having little respect for the sacrifices their parents made for them. Gogol's desire to change his name, and his relationship with a wealthy American girl (Jacinda Barrett), places a strain on the family which Gogol will later regret. Here, Penn proves he can play a serious role while still using his comedic skills to great affect. The actor shows impressive range in growing a clueless teen to a man his father would be proud of. Nair's skill at directing can be felt in the film's many great performances. Both Tabu and Irrfan Khan embody their characters so fully that the viewer really feels a personal connection to the story. As the head of the household, Khan's character will subtly make viewers laugh while breaking their heart. Packed with unique characters, THE NAMESAKE offers audiences an outlet into Bengali traditions and the immigrant experience while telling a universal story of family bonds which all parents and children should connect with. Nair excels in what is her most personal work to date.
0.3 May, 2009
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2009-05-27 11:04Zerkalo (1975)
5/5
With THE MIRROR, legendary Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky crafts perhaps his most profound and compelling film. What started off for Tarkovsky as a planned series of interviews with his own mother evolved into a lyrical and complex circular meditation on love, loyalty, memory, and history. Time shifts and generations merge as a single extraordinary actress (Margarita Terekhova) plays the narrator's former wife as well as his mother. Tarkovsky's memories as well as those of his mother are intermingled as a dark, sumptuous, and dreamlike pre-World War II Russia is evoked, accompanied throughout by the voice of Tarkovsky's father reading his own elegiac poetry. The spectacle of nature and its ubiquitous and ever-shifting presence is captured by Tarkovsky's camera as if by magic--the family cabin nestled deep in the verdant woods, a barn on fire in the middle of a gentle rainstorm, a gigantic wind enveloping a man as he walks through a wheat field--all creating indelible images with deep if mysterious emotional resonance. As the timeline shifts between the narrator's generation and his mother's, newsreel footage of Russian wars, triumphs, and disasters are juxtaposed with imagined scenes from the past, present, and future, crafting a silently lucid cinematic panopticon of memory, history, and nature.
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2009-05-26 12:29Offret (1986)
4/5
Set in Sweden, Andrei Tarkovsky's last film follows the travails of wealthy patriarch Alexander (Erland Josephson), a former actor and critic who lives in a remote home on the edge of the Baltic Sea. One year on his birthday, a sudden television announcement interrupts the celebration with news of a nuclear holocaust. His family and guests suffer through violent fits of hysteria and emotional turmoil in the ensuing days, but the previously troubled Alexander finds a clearness of mind when he makes a pact with God--offering himself as a sacrifice in order to redeem the fallen earth for his cherished son. Supremely poetic, THE SACRIFICE is filled with achingly beautiful images, expertly shot by Ingmar Bergman's trusted cinematographer Sven Nykvist. As Alexander goes from self-contented ease to crippling animal fear and existential anguish and finally to spiritual abandon, the troubled journey is illustrated with a haunting succession of images, tableaus, objects, dreams, and gestures--all sewn together in a seamlessly elliptical vision. As in all of Tarkovsky's haunting and mystical films, the characters are forced to come to terms with their own physical and spiritual existence, with redemption coming through faith--in this case, Alexander's faith in his love for his young son.
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2009-05-18 06:31Angel Heart (1987)
3.5/5
In Alan Parker's ANGEL HEART, based on the novel FALLING ANGEL by William Hjortsberg, a New York City gumshoe is hired to find an aging blues singer. Harry Angel (Mickey Rourke) follows clues from the ominous ghettos of Harlem to the witchy backwoods of Louisiana, where he takes up with Epiphany Proudfoot (Lisa Bonet), the beautiful young daughter of a voodoo priestess, whom he believes will be able to shed light on the growing mystery surrounding the missing musician. As Angel closes in on the truth of the case, his contacts start turning up dead. He begins to suspect he might be next. Parker (MISSISSIPPI BURNING) threads a commentary on the limitations of modern Western society into his sensual, suspenseful thriller. As the story unfolds, Angel relies less and less on his failing, overwhelmed rational mind (and handgun) and more on Epiphany's ancient mojo. Rourke captures the unraveling protagonist perfectly, and Bonet adds an erotic and mysterious edge with her performance. Robert De Niro is both funny and malevolent as Angel's mysterious client, Louis Cyphre. Shimmering with a beguiling mist of the macabre, ANGEL HEART provides an unexpectedly haunting dose of gothic noir.
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2009-05-12 05:00Stalker (1979)
5/5
With STALKER, Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky returns to the mind-bending, philosophy-tinged science fiction of SOLARIS. The setting is an unnamed country in an unforeseen postapocalyptic future. A meteorite has landed, and its impact has created a mysterious phenomenon known as the Zone, within which resides a sinister room said to grant humanity's deepest desires. Only Stalkers are able to enter the Zone, bringing intrepid citizens to test their strength and desires against the Zone's enigmatic treacheries. The film follows one such Stalker (Alexander Kaidanovsky) as he attempts to bring two characters known as Writer (Anatoli Solonitsyn) and Scientist (Nikolai Grinko) into the Zone. The hapless trio makes a difficult and mud-drenched journey, dodging military guards and invisible traps and enduring extreme psychological strain. While Tarkovsky avoids any direct political reading of STALKER, the film's allegorical structure presents a powerful and disturbing metaphor for humanity's loss of and subsequent quest for faith. The Stalker's struggle to rescue himself and his family while guiding those more wretched than himself creates a physical and metaphysical drama that leaves the viewer breathless. Blending visual, narrative, and cinematic conventions to portray the fractured logic of the Zone, Tarkovsky conjures a universe of despair and desire in which science, rationalism, and technology must face off against love, humanism, and faith.
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2009-05-01 07:59Cypher (2002)
1/5
This is basically a Philip K. Dick story for stupid people: all of the painful twists and telegraphed reveals, none of the humanity or wit. Or, perhaps(?) more kindly, an entire season of Alias crammed into 90 minutes. Either way, it sucked.
0.3 April, 2009
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2009-04-30 06:52The Call of Cthulhu (2005)
4.5/5
The best, most faithful adaptation of an H. P. Lovecraft story yet. Done in retro 1920's silent movie style, this is a fantastic piece of weird-horror expressionistic film-making, and the most faithful screen translation of the author's work to date.
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2009-04-23 06:29The Bourne Ultimatum (2007)
4/5
A significant achievement, held back but not much diminished by the unavoidable excesses of the genre.
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2009-04-23 06:28The Bourne Supremacy (2004)
3.5/5
Greengrass proves himself equally adept at action, building on the edginess of Doug Liman’s original with a feverish handheld camera and frenetic editing.
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2009-04-19 17:40The Conversation (1974)
4.5/5
Francis Ford Coppola's THE CONVERSATION is a towering achievement, a masterfully constructed portrait of one man's descent into madness. Gene Hackman delivers a devastating performance as Harry Caul, a surveillance expert who gets paid to invade the privacy of strangers. With Harry Caul, Coppola and Hackman have managed to create one of cinema's most unforgettable characters, a man who appears to be in control on the outside but who is, in fact, crumbling on the inside.
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2009-04-18 22:09The Bourne Identity (2002)
4/5
Doug Liman's adaptation of Robert Ludlum's best-selling novel is a remarkable exercise in straightforward storytelling, with the director wisely choosing to focus on Bourne and his quest for identity. The fight sequences are thrilling, but never overly glamorized, and the film's pacing is engaging and deliberate. Damon, who displays genuine bewilderment as his character discovers his almost-superhuman abilities, anchors the proceedings with the subtle charm of an unlikely action hero. Potente also shines as Bourne's road companion, a savvy woman who slowly builds an utterly believable relationship with the confused man. Bearing distinct affinity for its European setting and classic Hollywood suspense films, THE BOURNE IDENTITY succeeds as an unusually smart character-driven thriller.
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2009-04-14 12:57Viskningar och rop (1972)
4.5/5
ngmar Bergman's acclaimed drama, which deals with the fractured relationships between three sisters, is set in a vast turn-of-the-century manor house where unidentified voices are continually whispering and mingle with a dying woman's cries of pain. Karin and Maria (played by Ingrid Thulin and Liv Ullmann, respectively) have come to stay with their sister Agnes (Harriet Andersson), who is suffering from cancer, during the final stretch of her illness. Attending to Agnes is her faithful maid Anna (Kari Sylwan), who, in spite of her apparent social inferiority, is the only one who remains steadfast and dauntless until the very end--the two other women, plagued by guilt, loneliness, and jealousy of one another, are unable to offer assistance or even sympathy in their sister's hour of need. Lauded often for its innovative stylistic elements (such as flashbacks introduced by a fade to red--a color that dominates the picture as a whole--and extreme, expressive close-ups of the actresses' faces), CRIES AND WHISPERS features sumptuous period costume design and stunning photography by longtime Bergman cinematographer Sven Nykvist.
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2009-04-14 12:55Hamnstad (1948)
3.5/5
Ingmar Bergman's early romantic drama PORT OF CALL is set in the depressing milieu of the harbor slums of Göteborg, where much of the filming also took place. Nine-Christine Jönsson plays Berit, a young woman who has lost her self-respect and her will to live. At the beginning of the movie, a sailor (Bengt Eklund) prevents her from committing suicide, and a relationship develops between the two. Berit tells her newfound confidant of her troubled reform school past, and as other characters are introduced, the film touches on controversial issues such as illegal abortion and the dire consequences of a limited social welfare system. Like much of Bergman's work, it can also be construed as an indictment of a morally oppressive cultural environment. Cinematographer Gunnar Fischer's contribution to the artistic success of this movie, which represents his first collaboration with Bergman, has been noted by critics, and the director himself has acknowledged the stylistic influence of renowned Italian neo-realist Roberto Rossellini.
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2009-04-14 12:54
THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY won Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film for the second year in a row. (It was preceded by THE VIRGIN SPRING, which won in 1960.) The picture represents Bergman's first experiment with what he referred to as the chamber play, featuring only four characters whose configuration resembles that of a string quartet. Karin (Harriet Andersson), a young woman recently released from a mental institution, is on holiday on a secluded island with her father, David (Gunnar Björnstrand), a writer; her husband, Martin (Max von Sydow); and her younger brother, Minus (Lars Passgård). The presence of her family, who are caught up in their own problems and unable to offer her the love and emotional support she requires, proves detrimental to Karin's mental condition instead of bringing about her recovery. Soon she is undergoing an emotional crisis, culminating in the memorable hallucinogenic episode in which she envisions God as a spider. This was the first film of Bergman's trilogy of faith--which also includes WINTER LIGHT and THE SILENCE--though this is a concept discredited later on by Bergman himself, who ultimately saw few thematic links among the three movies.
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2009-04-06 06:15Persona (1966)
5/5
One of Bergman's undisputed masterpieces is a seminal work of psychonalayis and metacinema, raising more complex questions about identity and role-playing than it could possibly answer, thus deliberately encouraging ambivalence and ambiguity.
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2009-04-06 06:10Passion, En (1969)
4.5/5
A bad film from Bergman is still better than most films ever made, and so it is with Passion. The lightness and flow that are the hallmarks of Bergman at his best are nowhere in evidence, but still it is a powerful, bold film analysis of human isolation, pulsing not with the rhythm of film, but with the rhythm of life.
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2009-04-06 06:07
Okay, so it's full of product placement sponsorships and the acting is not exactly going to win anyone an award. On the other hand, it is a really pretty film, and is really more of a love letter to the AT than anything else.
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2009-04-06 06:05
This is, by far, one of the worst movies of the 1980's. Sam Elliott is the one small bright spot in an otherwise perfect Swazye vehicle: hopeless caricatures flexing their muscles and a lot of man-flesh slapping man-flesh.
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2009-04-02 11:35
The problem with sequels is that you get judged against every good point of the first movie and all of its bad bits get forgotten. That said, this isn't nearly as good a film as Casino Royale. Daniel Craig single-handedly saves Marc Forster's bacon, as the latter is not up to the task of directing this movie. Oh well.
0.3 March, 2009
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2009-03-27 09:19Tystnaden (1963)
3.5/5
In "The Silence," God has totally disappeared from the world. We are now faced with an absolute silence, resulting from a complete breakdown of communication between human beings.
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2009-03-27 09:18Jungfrukällan (1960)
4.5/5
Set in beautiful 14th century Sweden, it is the sombre, powerful fable of peasant parents whose daughter, a young virgin, is brutally raped and murdered by goat herders after her half sister has invoked a pagan curse. By a bizarre twist of fate, the murderers ask for food and shelter from the dead girl's parents, who, discovering the truth about their erstwhile lodgers, exact a chilling revenge.
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2009-03-22 17:50Törst (1949)
3.5/5
Several stories by Birgit Tengroth intertwine. In 1946, nervous ballet dancer Rut and her husband Bertil are returning to Sweden from his scholarship tour around Italy. In a Basle hotel room and on a train they quarrel, give food through the window to starving Germans, overhear wisdoms about marriage by Swedish clergymen returning from a conference, and finally make up. In flashbacks, Rut reminisces her romance with middle-aged officer Raoul, her subsequent abortion, and her ballet career. In a seemingly separate episode set in quiet Stockholm during Midsummer, middle-aged widow Viola is harassed first by a psychiatrist, Dr. Rosengren, and then by a lesbian old school-friend Valborg, with tragic consequences.
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2009-03-22 17:49
On a cold winter's Sunday, the pastor of a small rural church (Tomas Ericsson) performs service for a tiny congregation; though he is suffering from a cold and a severe crisis of faith. After the service, he attempts to console a fisherman (Jonas Persson) who is tormented by anxiety, but Tomas can only speak about his own troubled relationship with God. A school teacher (Maerta Lundberg) offers Tomas her love as consolation for his loss of faith. But Tomas resists her love as desperately as she offers it to him. This is the second in Bergman's trilogy of films dealing with man's relationship with God.
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2009-03-16 09:16Kris (1946)
3.5/5
Young Nelly lives a quiet life with her foster mother until her real mother makes an appearance. Attracted by the fancy dresses and daring adult life in Stockholm offered by her real mother, Nelly leaves the small town and discovers the darker sides of human nature...Bergman's debut film.
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2009-03-16 09:12
Stig, a visiting soloist to a small Swedish orchestra, marries fellow musician Martha, but the inner torment and sense of failure in Stig leads to an extra-marital affair and a tragic ending. An early and well worth seeing Bergman film.
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2009-03-16 09:08High Fidelity (2000)
4.5/5
This is John Cusack's best performance by far. A pop-music soaked tale of self-consciousness, renewal and yearning cleverly disguised as a romantic comedy.
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2009-03-08 13:35Smultronstället (1957)
4.5/5
WILD STRAWBERRIES is among Ingmar Bergman's most rich and contemplative films, a lyrical reflection on guilt and disappointment in the form of a spiritual journey. The movie stars Victor Sjöström as Professor Isak Borg, an elderly academic who takes a trip by car from Stockholm to Lund to receive an honorary university degree, accompanied by his daughter-in-law (Ingrid Thulin). Along the way, they meet various passengers who seem to be weighed down by unresolved ethical dilemmas. Meanwhile, Borg's own existential crisis is triggered by dreams and memories in which he is confronted with past disappointments, missed opportunities, and troubled personal relationships with those close to him--his son (Gunnar Björnstrand), his mother (Naima Wifstrand), and his late wife (Gertrud Fridh). The film features stunning imagery, most notably in the flashback, dream, and nightmare sequences, as well as an outstanding final film performance by Sjöström (who is also a famed Swedish director of the silent era). This film was released soon after THE SEVENTH SEAL, which had earned Bergman accolades from film critics and moviegoers the world over. Though similarly challenging and philosophically complex, WILD STRAWBERRIES is often considered the more accessible of the two movies because of its ultimate warmth and affirmation of life.
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2009-03-06 10:41Vargtimmen (1968)
4.5/5
This surreal Gothic drama by Swedish master Ingmar Bergman stars Max von Sydow as Johan, a troubled artist who is literally haunted by demons from his past, and Liv Ullmann as his loving wife Alma, who eventually experiences the same nightmarish delusions. A local aristocrat (Erland Josephson) and his clan, who reside in a forbidding castle and appear to possess supernatural powers, might have a hand in Johan's undoing. The film is told mostly in retrospect after Johan has disappeared, leaving behind only a diary from which his mental and emotional decline (perhaps an allegory on the difficulties of the creative process, one of Bergman's favorite themes) can be reconstructed. Borrowing stylistic elements from classic Hollywood horror movies and occasionally featuring graphic material (one scene prompted a contemporary reviewer to recommend averting one's eyes from the screen), this unusual (black-and-white) film also retains the psychological astuteness and technical finesse that earned Bergman worldwide critical acclaim and his status as Sweden's premier filmmaker.
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2009-03-05 20:38
A psycho-physiologist doing experiments with human consciousness eventually decides to test his findings on himself. He becomes obsessed with performing these auto-sensory deprivation experiments... A psycho-physiologist doing experiments with human consciousness eventually decides to test his findings on himself. He becomes obsessed with performing these auto-sensory deprivation experiments until he actually changes form physically, ending up as a gorilla at a local zoo. He returns to his normal state, at which point he also involves his wife in the experimentation.
0.3 February, 2009
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2009-02-28 10:46Antonia (1995)
3.5/5
This Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language Film embarks on a fanciful, magical exploration of the life of a strong-minded, nonconforming Dutch woman and her descendants. As the story begins, the elderly Antonia is convinced that she is going to die that very day. With the end approaching, she reflects for the last time on her long, fruitful life. The film then flashes back to the end of World War II, when the 40-year-old Antonia returned to the small farming community where she grew up. With her teenage daughter Danielle in tow, and without a husband, Antonia intends to start a new life. Before long, she has become a successful farmer and an integral part of the village, although she challenges the strict customs so loved by many residents. In the process, she touches the lives of everyone around her.
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2009-02-24 11:00Shutdown: The Rise and Fall of Direct...
3.5/5
On March 20, 2003—the day after the war started—San Francisco was brought to a grinding halt by thousands of activists who occupied the streets to oppose the war. It was a mass uprising that forced the police to declare the financial district "shut down." The planning and outreach coordinated by Direct Action to Stop the War (DASW), filled downtown San Francisco with approximately 15,000 people clogging traffic, stopping business as usual, communicating with passersby, and creating a pandemonium that lasted for several days. But neither DASW nor the mass resistance outlasted Iraq's occupation. Shutdown: The Rise and Fall of Direct Action to Stop the War, is an action-packed documentary chronicling how DASW successfully organized to shut down a major US city and how they failed to effectively maintain the organization to fight the war machine and end the occupation of Iraq. Created by organizers involved with DASW, Shutdown combines detailed information on organizing for a mass action, critical interviews on organizing pitfalls, and the wisdom of hindsight. It is a must-see film for those engaged in the continuous struggle toward social justice.
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2009-02-24 10:59Sånger från andra våningen...
4/5
In this surreal Swedish film from director Roy Andersson, a toxic green light colors each scene, setting the story in a bleak post modern world. The economy is failing, as is the stability of the human psyche, and even as the story relies heavily on order and structure, rooting itself in organized settings--the train station, the board room table, the hospital, the business conference--the action and dialogue strays into a nonsensical, backwards, impossible place. Darkly comic and relentlessly bizarre, SONGS FROM THE SECOND FLOOR is like a Fellini film in slow motion, or a David Lynch film drained of color, or an abstract Monty Python comedy. Structured around the ominous statement "Beloved is the one who sits down" by the poet Cesar Vallejo, the movie is organized into vaguely related vignettes, all occurring in adjacent locations at almost the same point in time, and occasionally overlapping. The characters in Andersson's film wear business suits. They are sickly pale, and very puffy and unhealthy looking. They wander aimlessly but with instinctive purpose, perpetually suffering bad luck, and following daily routines that often end in gruesome injury, drunkenness, death, or just plain weirdness. A badly burned man who has just set his office building on fire rides the subway expressionless, while all the other passengers sing opera loudly and in unison. A failed crucifix salesman angrily unloads a truck full of Jesuses at the dump, flinging the crosses into a giant ghastly pile. A young girl is selected by a group of executives to be sacrificed, and at a ceremony attended by clergymen, businessmen, and hundreds of other officials, she is pushed off a cliff. This artistic, visually engrossing, and conceptually awe-inspiring film competed at Cannes in 2001.
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2009-02-13 13:37Jetée, La (1962)
5/5
One of the best of all SF films is this haunting, apocalyptic 27-minute French short by the great Chris Marker. After a global holocaust, humanity's hopes for survival hinge on time-travel experiments conducted upon a man whose dreams reveal a clarion recall of a defining moment in his childhood, when he witnessed a murder. Utterly ripped off by 12 MONKEYS.
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2009-02-13 13:35Othello (1995)
3.5/5
An intense adaptation of Shakespeare's classic tragedy about the Moorish general who "loved not wisely, but too well" -- and so is duped by his evil aide into thinking that his wife has been unfaithful. As war between Venetians and the Turks rages in the 16th century, Othello weds the beautiful Desdemona and promotes Cassio over his longtime assistant, Iago. Othello prepares to celebrate his marriage, but Iago -- furious over Othello's snub -- has dastardly plans in store for his employer. Iago begins to poison Othello's mind against Desdemona, claiming that she's having an affair with Cassio; he even manages to produce "proof" of the infidelity. It doesn't take long for the jealous general to start believing Iago's allegations, and he winds up on the path of destruction.
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2009-02-07 20:08Spun (2002)
2.5/5
I'm kind of ambivalent on this one. On the one hand, it is a pretty accurate portrayal of the insane, larger-than-life acting out of the dedicated speed freak, but on the other hand, that's all it is. Too much camera trickery and not enough non-speed-freak content to make it much beyond a low-rent version of a serious drug movie.
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2009-02-06 13:18The Order of Myths (2008)
3.5/5
Mobile, Alabama, 2007: the oldest Mardi Gras in the United States is a study in Black and White. Groups prepare coronations, parades, balls, and revelry. White and Black communities have separate royal courts and separate events. People comment on these vestiges of segregation, some critical and some okay with it. The Black king and queen come to the coronation of the White royal couple, and the White king and queen join the celebration at the Comrades party, a primarily Black event. City patriarchs agree to do more together, and the city's youth seem to want more interaction as well. The film explores possible contradictions between preserving traditions and putting the old Mobile behind them.
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2009-02-06 11:55
In a dreary, depopulated world where technology has been outlawed, a reclusive scientist named Walter secretly creates a self-aware android in his own image and names him Puzzlehead. Walter finds Puzzlehead useful - as a project, his companion, his housekeeper, and most significantly his connection to the outside world. Like a child, Puzzlehead develops his own personality and self-awareness through his experiences, ultimately leading to a curious love triangle when Puzzlehead meets Julia, a woman whom Walter has yearned for but never dared to approach. When Walter impersonates Puzzlehead to pursue Julia himself, the android and his maker are drawn into a sinister spiral of passion and betrayal.
0.3 -
2009-02-05 20:24
Terry Zwigoff finally follows up his 1994 breakout success, CRUMB, with this infectious, insightful, and ultimately sad look at teenage angst and boredom in suburbia that recalls such films as WELCOME TO THE DOLLHOUSE and RUSHMORE as well as MTV's excellent DARIA series. The screenplay, written by Zwigoff and Daniel Clowes, is based on Clowes's underground comic book, GHOST WORLD. Best friends Enid and Rebecca have graduated from high school, and now they need to figure out what comes next. Rebecca gets a menial job at a coffee shop and starts looking for an apartment, while Enid wallows in her miserable (Daria-like) worldview, in which all jobs are sellouts and nearly all people are creeps, geeks, and losers. But when she plays a practical joke on the biggest dud of them all, Seymour, a lonely man who lives only for his collection of classic 78s, her life gets turned upside as she finds herself needing him in ways she never thought possible. Thora Birch (Enid) and Steve Buscemi (Seymour) are nothing short of marvelous in their complex roles, and they receive ample support from Scarlet Johansson, Bob Balaban, Teri Garr, Brad Renfro, Illeana Douglas, and the great David Cross. The excellent soundtrack includes songs by Skip James, Blueshammer, the Buzzcocks, Lionel Belasco, Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks, and Mohammed Rafi, among others.
0.3 -
2009-02-04 17:43The Amazing Screw-On Head (2006) (TV)
5/5
Mike Mignola does steampunk werewolves, zombies, ancient gods and oh yeah, Abraham Lincoln!
0.3
List generated by WP Movie Ratings.
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