Category: Cinema

Oscars 2007: The Winners

The Oscars were on last night, and here are the results for the main categories:

Best Picture: The Departed

Best Directing: Martin Scorsese for “The Departed” (At last!)

Best Leading Actor: Forest Whitaker for “The Last King Of Scotland”

Best Leading Actress: Helen Mirren for “The Queen”

Best Supporting Actor: Alan Arkin for “Little Miss Sunshine”

Best Supporting Actress: Jennifer Hudson for “Dreamgirls”

Best Animated Feature: Happy Feet

Best Documentary Feature: An Inconvenient Truth

Best Music (Score): Babel

Best Music (Song): An Inconvenient Truth

Best Visual Effects: Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest

For the full list of winners in all the categories, check the Oscars website.

Apocalypto

On monday night, a friend of mine and I went to see Mel Gibson’s latest movie, as a director/producer, Apocalypto.

The story is set in the Mayan era; A small village in the jungle is attacked and brutally overrun, its residents slaughtered and abducted by a ruling tribe that needs a bunch of slaves and human sacrifices. We follow the steps of the warrior Jaguar Paw as he tries to get away to go back and save his pregnant wife and son.

Most of the film is set in the dense jungle, with the middle of the movie being in a grand Mayan city. The dialogue is in a Mayan dialect, with subtitles of course.

The movie is very well made and feels like it captured the era it’s set in perfectly; the design of the sets and costumes is dazzling, the acting is great, the character development very successful, the action really good; in short, this is one great movie overall.

Still this movie might not be for the faint of heart, it’s quite violent, there’s a lot of blood involved, a lot of dead bodies lying around, along with decapitation, impalement, disembowelment, snakebite, and what not. Personally, I thought it all played well into the story, and didn’t find anything to be just violence for the sake of violence.

Anyway, I truly recommend seeing this movie to everyone, even the faint of heart (just take a barf bag with you), it’s really worth every second of the 139 minutes. I applaud Mel Gibson for what is one of the best movies of the year.

The Guardian

Upon recommendation from my friends at the DVD rental store, I saw the movie “The Guardian” last night, featuring Kevin Costner and Ashton Kutcher.

Personally, I wasn’t planning on renting the movie until they told me what a great movie it was. I’m a big fan of Kevin Costner and his movies, I actually think he’s one of the best actors out there, still some of his latest movies haven’t been as good as I expected, and always quite long. With that in mind, and the fact that I wasn’t expecting much from a movie about coast guards, I didn’t feel that keen on watching it.

Fortunately, the movie turned out to be a lot better than I expected, and I really enjoyed it. It is long too, but it’s good enough that you don’t really feel the time.

The movie is about two interesting characters: a legendary rescue swimmer and a high school swim champion with a troubled past who enrolls in the U.S. Coast Guard’s “A” School, how the relationship between them develops and how they both learn some hard lessons about loss, love, and self-sacrifice.

My score for this movie is: 7.5/10

Lady In The Water

Last night, I finally watched M. Night Shyamalan’s last movie “Lady In The Water“, featuring Paul Giamatti, Bryce Dallas Howard and M. Night Shyamalan himself.

The reviews I read after the movie’s release were pretty mixed, and even a friend who saw it last week told me that it was so-so, but personally, I really really liked it.

The movie is about a depressed apartment superintendent who discovers a narf, a sea-nymph out of a bedtime story, who may hold the key to humanity’s hopeful future.

What I really liked about the movie is that it talks to the inner child in every one of us, taking us back to that world of fairy tales that we’ve been disconnected from for so long.
People don’t write fairy tales like they used to anymore, stories that used to inspire us as children, and that filled us with thoughts and lessons we carry with us to this very day; M. Night Shyamalan was successful in creating a new fairy tale of his own, and putting it onto film for the whole world to enjoy.

The movie also confirms how great an actor Paul Giamatti is; he did a great job here again.

I really recommend this movie to everyone who is into this genre of movies and who still has a connection with the inner child within them.

My score for this movie would be: 8/10.

The World’s 40 Best Directors

The Guardian compiles a list of the world’s 40 best directors. Personally, I don’t fully agree with their list, and there are many cited directors whose works I’m not familiar with, but here’s how it goes according to them:

1. David Lynch
2. Martin Scorsese
3. Joel and Ethan Coen
4. Steven Soderbergh
5. Terrence Malick
6. Abbas Kiarostami
7. Errol Morris
8. Hayao Miyazaki
9. David Cronenberg
10. Terence Davies

Continue reading The World’s 40 Best Directors

Casino Royale & James Bond

I must be one of the biggest James Bond fans; I grew up watching and enjoying James Bond movies, and have seen every single one of them multiple times.

My favourite Bond remains to this very day Sean Connery, followed by Pierce Brosnan; I think they embodied the character better than all the others.
My worst Bond was George Lazenby, I think a lot of people agree with me on that, the guy was just plain boring.

With “Casino Royale”, a new Bond is introduced to us, and the story takes us back to the beginnings of James Bond, just as he became a double-O agent.

When it was announced that Daniel Craig would be the new James Bond, a blond one, a lot of people were unhappy about it, and I myself was skeptical and thought it was a bad decision.

Anyway after watching “Casino Royale” yesterday, I can see that we were mostly wrong, Daniel Craig is a really good Bond; not the Bond we’re used to, but more of a Bond in the making, which is really interesting.

The movie basically has no gadgets at all, has some great action sequences, which are pretty realistic compared to what we’re used to in other Bond movies, it is also very interesting visually, and well to keep it short, it’s not a regular James Bond movie. In fact, somewhere along the movie, you do get a sense that it’s not a 007 movie at all, but then you’re reminded that this is the making-of and that this is how Bond became what he is, and the end emphasizes that, especially closing with the Bond theme which didn’t appear anywhere else in the movie.

I’m guessing I’ll have to watch the movie again to better appreciate it as a James Bond movie and to have it fit in with the other ones, but even after the first time, I really like it and I do recommend seeing it.

I’ll have to see another James Bond movie with Daniel Craig in it before I can properly place him within my top Bonds list, but now I’m more confident he’ll do a really good job.

My score for this movie would be: 8/10.

Peter Jackson Not To Direct ‘The Hobbit’

In a letter to TheOneRing.net Peter Jackson, director of the “Lord Of The Rings” trilogy, officially announced that he would not be directing the movie incarnation of the LOTR prequel “The Hobbit” even though he wishes to.

The main reason why he and his company Wingnut Films won’t be making this movie is a financial dispute with NewLine over the money made from “The Fellowship of the Ring”. Wingnut believe they deserve a bigger cut of the profit and are suing NewLine for it.

NewLine offered to tie the settlement of the dispute with the making of “The Hobbit” and to negociate a new deal accordingly, but Wingnut refused that and said they wanted to first settle the lawsuit on it’s own without being tied to a new deal.

Peter Jacksons says about this:

“…In other words, we would have to agree to make The Hobbit as a condition of New Line settling our lawsuit. In our minds this is not the right reason to make a film and if a film of The Hobbit went ahead on this basis, it would be doomed. Deciding to make a movie should come from the heart – it’s not a matter of business convenience. When you agree to make a film, you’re taking on a massive commitment and you need to be driven by an absolute passion to want to get the story on screen. It’s that passion, and passion alone, that gives the movie its imagination and heart. To us it is not a cold-blooded business decision.”

And as NewLine say they only have the rights to make “The Hobbit” and another LOTR prequel for a limited period of time, they will be proceeding on the new Hobbit films without Wingnut.

I think it’s a shame that it won’t be Peter Jackson and his team revisiting Middle Earth and the Shire to bring the magic of “The Hobbit” to our screens.
I’ve been looking forward to this movie ever since I read the book and the LOTR trilogy ended, and I knew that it would be a great experience in the hands of Peter Jackson.
Anyway, I hope whoever takes the helm of this project realizes the responsability he has on his shoulders, and the kind of quality he has to live up to, and does something really good with it.

Snakes On A Plane

You know how when you hear about how bad a movie is, and how much it sucks, and it gets you curious to see how bad it could really be?
Well that’s what happened to me; I was at the DVD rental shop and among the available movies I found “Snakes On A Plane” featuring Samuel L. Jackson, and I simply got curious.

To say the truth, I’ve seen movies that were worse than this one, but still it doesn’t really make it any better. It’s B-movie, straight to television material at best.

It’s true there are some ok sequences of this snake or another killing a person, but other than that, this movie is basically a waste of time.
What’s weird is that NewLine actually went back to film more footage for this film upon recommendation of the fans, and I suspect those were actually the ok scenes, so I don’t even want to imagine what the movie was like before that.

I don’t get it why really good actors like Samuel L. Jackson agree to work on such bad movies sometimes, it’s a waste of talent, and an act of disrespect towards themselves.
I know everyone needs money, but when you’ve built a name for yourself, you should be a bit more selective when it comes to what movies you stick your name on.

Anyway, if I were to rate this movie, I think I’d give it a: 3/10.

Still, if you want, for some weird reason, such as owning a piece of cinematic history crap, you can buy the “Snakes On A Plane” DVD here.

Miami Vice

A couple of days ago, I watched “Miami Vice” upon the recommendation of my friend, the owner of the rental store, who said he enjoyed it a lot. The movie features Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx, and is written and directed by Michael Mann.

After seeing it, this is one movie on which I agree with the movie critics who gave it a hard time. It has almost nothing to do with the 80’s series, other than the names of the series, the city and the main characters; it feels like it goes nowhere, and it’s quite boring for an action movie.

That doesn’t mean this movie isn’t well made, on the contrary, it’s got all the cinematic magic we’ve gotten used to from Michael Mann, but that alone wasn’t enough to carry this movie.

Personally, I didn’t really enjoy this movie as much as I wished to, and I would only recommend it if there was nothing else better to see from this genre left.

My score for it is: 4/10.

Still, if you’re interested, you can but the “Miam Vice (Unrated Director’s Cut)” DVD here.

Click

I finally got to rent and watch “Click“, featuring Adam Sandler, Kate Beckingsale and Christopher Walken.

“Click” tells the story of a workaholic architect who gets hold of a universal remote that allows him to fast-forward and rewind to different parts of his life. Complications arise when the remote starts to overrule his choices wrecking havoc to his life.

I saw the trailer for this before its release and it looked really cool, then it came out and was met with mixed reviews, some positive and some not so, but me being an Adam Sandler fan, I kept looking forward to seeing the movie, and I didn’t regret it.

The movie starts off like a regular Adam Sandler movie, with the same type of comedy and humor, but then it gets a bit more serious, although it hangs on to its comedic nature, to pass a message that is a very simple yet important one, which is that family must always come first.

That message rang a big bell for me, especially now with the birth of my son and my own realization of the even bigger importance of family.

Personally, I really enjoyed this movie. It’s a light comedy with a message, and with the kind of laughs only an Adam Sandler movie can deliver. So yeah, I recommend watching it.

My score for this movie would be: 7/10.