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The Stoning of Soraya M. (2008)
A Shakespearean Tragedy
I saw this film last night and am finding it hard to shake off. It's truly a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions, not to mention a riveting conspiracy tale that unfolds with stupendous pacing. The film shares strong allusions to Mel Gibson's 'The Passion of the Christ', not to mention the coincidental inclusion of Jim Caviezel very ably playing the role of journalist Freidoune Sahebjam. Yet, I hope I'm not doing it a disservice by making such a comparison. This is a very powerful film and a very important story about the position of women in Islamic society and the antiquated medieval punishments that still hold strong in Asian countries. There is palpable tension that grips and shakes the audience in a sublime manner.
The film's success in large part stems from a strong ensemble cast, most notably Mozhan Marnò. I had never heard of her before this film and greatly hope she goes on to more roles that do justice to her magnificent talents. Likewise, Shohreh Aghdashloo delivers another fine performance in a role that demands empathy, resilience and compassion. The two women are very much the beating heart of this grand story and the impending tragedy of what we know is to come, feels all the more powerful because we have such emotional investment in their plight. The eventual stoning is barbaric and difficult to watch, particularly because Mozhan Marnò's stoicism eventually crumbles into heartbreaking vulnerability before our very eyes. It's chilling to watch. I felt each and every one of the stones thrown at Soraya and was shaken by the malevolence of mob-mentality punishing her. The pretence of Islamic justice is questioned, but not without balance. The film is surprisingly spiritual in tone. Despite the men around them abusing religious judicial practices, neither Soraya nor her Aunt lose their faith in the goodness of God and metaphysical assurance in divine justice. Furthermore, the notion of God/ Allah intervening and showing signs of cautionary obstacles are smartly handled by the director.
The film is not without faults, most disappointingly the rushed and superficial coda. It's also a shame more wasn't made of experimenting with narrative structure and intensifying the complexity of the unravelling conspiracy; perhaps including more cut-aways to Freidoune Sahebjam hearing the story of Soraya and questioning the actuality of events. I also found the final scene improbable and hard to digest. Nevertheless, I suppose it's important to end on a note of optimism, hence why such a dénouement exists.
I'm sad to see the film didn't get the award's recognition it most certainly deserved. Films like this can only survive by being discussed in the press. This film most definitely sparks debate and I cannot understand why it hasn't. Mozhan Marnò deserved an Oscar nomination and I can only assume it's the racism of the Hollywood system that denied her such deserved recognition. Talent always wins out in the end and I'm sure her time will come. All in all, I hope this film eventually finds its audience. Most importantly, I hope Iran eventually lifts the ban in place and allows distribution.
The Blind Side (2009)
Sarah Palin: the movie
America is a pretty good country. We are at once progressive and compassionate. We have an elected president who is not just a man of color, but also highly intelligent and supremely wise. Christ, not even the snooty British or other so-called inclusive European countries- who often rebuke our American character and psychology- can lay claim to such an awesome achievement.
While I am proud to be an American, I'm not too proud to have "The Blind Side" be our movie phenomena of the year. This is not cool. What has been created here is an insipid drama that insults audience intelligence. Not only that, it's ineffably racist and poorly dramatized.
Firstly, if I was a black guy I would seriously be insulted by this movie. The character of Michael Oher is little more than a modern reworking of Uncle Tom; while the nice white middle-class suburbanite characters pity his appalling ghetto poverty and nasty urban community whom peddle drugs, take drug or vilify nice white people who are trying to protect them from fooling with drugs and guns. There is not one character of color that can be regarded as three-dimensional. For that matter, there's not even one white character in this movie that's three-dimensional. Everything about this movie: from themes, characters and politics- is lowest-denominator.
The plot is totally by the numbers. I didn't know much about this film before watching it, but 5 minutes in I knew where it was going. I knew all the conflicts that were going to pop up and how effortlessly they'd be overcome. I knew there'd be no real character arc for Leigh Anne Tuohy, and the dramatic growth of Michael Oher's character was without any sort of surprise. It was simplistic in every way.
I read somewhere on in the comments pages that this was Sandra Bullock's 'masterpiece'. I beg to disagree. Ms. Bullock has yet to make a masterpiece, or deliver a performance that can be deemed masterful. (That's not saying she isn't a good actress or not pretty, because she is: very much so.) For that matter, hasn't Kathy Bates played the exact same role in her last 17 movies? Talk about type casting. Furthermore, the kid playing S.J. was the most annoying child depicted in film. He sucked. I wanted him to get written-off in the car crash scene.
This is a bad movie. One that doesn't deserve to be as huge as what it's become.
Purana Mandir (1984)
One of the Best Films to come out of India
I remember my parents renting this from our local Hindi video library in the 1980s. I remember seeing the poster in the shop window and Saamri's grotesque face staring lustfully at Arti Gupta's body. We used to love this movie when we were kids because it was really scary. I hear it was a tremendous hit and people in Bombay were crazy for it. The Ramsay Bros. are fantastic filmmakers and know exactly which buttons to push in order to get the right response from the audience. More than this, they had really fantastic stories that were based on old Indian myths and superstitions and delivered them with plenty of style and energy. Much like the Hammer Horror films of Britain, the Ramsay Bros. had a visual aesthetic that was uniquely their own and has never been replicated. It's a shame that they no longer make movies and have chosen instead to concentrate on India's burgeoning television market. At a time when I really couldn't hack watching glossy Bollywood musicals or listening to soppy Hindi love songs, the Ramsay Bros. movies were about the only thing we could watch collectively and really enjoy. 'Purana Mandir' is a perfect example of good Hindi commercial movie-making and deserves to be hailed as a Horror classic.
SubUrbia (1996)
Really Enjoyable Movie
If "Dazed and Confused" was the 'high' then "SubUrbia" if most definitely the 'down'. It's basically the flipside of "Dazed and Confused", where youthful hedonism has been replaced by 20-something boredom. It's a post-college movie where characters have found themselves unfulfilled in every capacity. It's a pack mentality, where you hang-out with the same gang from high school only to find you've out grown each other and resent one another's ambitions because you know you yourself lack the impetus to do anything constructive with your life. These characters are losers in every respect, clinging on to their high school way of life, reluctant to take initiative and move on. They constantly put each other down, bicker and make efforts to humiliate, yet the depressing thing is they have no one but each other. This is a quality film that remains one of Linklater's most under appreciated efforts. No one has the ability to present young characters with the insight, skill and craft Lanklater possesses. He is truly one of America's finest filmmakers working today and "SubUrbia" is a great film that still holds up.
Stay (2005)
Awful
This film is really confusing and plot less. I find it insulting when people on this site claim those who didn't enjoy STAY are 'Dim-Witted'. I think the actuality this film cost as much as it did and reaped so little at the box-office is a testament to how univolving this crap is. It makes no sense and is pretentious beyond belief. You guys can pontificate all you want about the merits and masterful movie-making, but ultimately this is an empty film with very little to say. What's the point of making a film when so few people will actually watch it. Surely studios should be thinking about the audience before they do anything. If the aim was to make a small 'art' film then why'd this cost $50 million? Rupert Murdoch's gone crazy!
Menace II Society (1993)
Wicked
This is great! When you consider just how young the Hughes bros. were when they made this (20 years old man!)and how well executed the movie is, you just gotta give props. Hughes bros. are something else and we ought to consider them as a credit to American cinema. To think they made the epic Dead Presidents two years later and got V. little respect for it is just criminal. I'd like to see what other early 20-something filmmaking folk could mount such an ambitious, emotive and deep movie. Hughes, keep doing what you do. * *
Ju-on (2002)
This is Fantastic
I can't believe some of the messages here. This movie is one of the most intense, shocking and disturbing flicks I've seen in a very long time. Just when I thought I'd seen it all as far as horror films are concerned, along comes Ju-On and not only scared me in the theatre, I found that its effects affected my hope of a goodnight's sleep that evening.
It works brilliantly and the whole shift back and forth in time only intensifies the experience. The images shock you as it is, but then the brain works overtime trying to piece together the narrative, struggling to make sense of what is a total mind-f*** of a story (kinda like 21 grams', only way better). The sound effects editing on this film are something else; probably the best since The Exorcist'. It all works in unison to deliver what is probably one of the most terrifying movies to land this century. Look and learn Hollywood!
Bhoot (2003)
This film is a copy of The Exorcist
This movie is a rip-off of The Exorcist, but this version happens to be in Hindi. Even the sound design and production quality is completely lifted from the former. I'll admit, it's different from your usual Bollywood fodder, but when you think about it, what's new here? Gimme a hollow hindi musical instead... at least they're more honest about the sum of their parts.
Pearl Harbor (2001)
War, What is it Good for?
What a bunch of resourceful folk the Americans are! Run out of medical markers? No problem, we'll use our lipsticks. Guns too heavy to be placed in fighter planes? What's to worry about, we can use broomsticks and paint them black, thus fooling those Japanese foe.
If Pearl Harbor is anything to go by, America single handedly triumphed in the face of adversity and saved the world from the wrath of Nazi nihilism. Yet, how could the most expensive movie in cinema history manage to take a tragedy like Pearl Harbor and turn it into a cold, prosaic, limp story?
The plot can be summed up in a brief sentence. Two best buddies fall in love with the same woman, go to war, Pearl Harbor gets bombed, one friend gets killed and they live happily ever after
Nothing more! It takes three hours for Michael Bay to tell a story that Mills & Boon's would shun with disgust. Bay tells his tale with all the grace of an overlong car advert, replete with slow motion shots and over saturated lighting (did they polish the negative of this film with Mr. Sheen?)
So what do you get for your money? Well, there is the actual bombing which is impressive, but never exciting. How can it be when you don't care about the fate of any of the characters. Bay attempts to throw you into the action, but you feel absolutely no attachment to the events depicted, you sit back and watch the money thrown against the screen. Unlike Saving Private Ryan, where the first thing the audience is thrust into is full out war, Pearl Harbor waits almost two hour until the events ensue. By this point you're so fed up with the movie you just want all of the protagonists to explode along with the bombs. The Stars and Stripes shine with all their might and never lose their patina as shrapnel flies all over the place. In fact, Ben Affleck's hair never loses its gleam as all hell breaks lose. This is war Hollywood style!
It's true to say Pearl Harbor has no heart. It's a testimony to how Hollywood has managed to turn the simple art of filmmaking into a commodity. Having seen how Titanic succeeded in making money out of an actual tragedy, Jerry Bruckheimer took all the ingredients of that film (including love story, long-length and a British actress playing the all American girl) and rehashed it. Ultimately, all the failures of the former are epitomised here, apart from this is worse because the novelty has gone. This film is like the new range of DKNY sunglasses: it exists to make money. For God's sake, look how they've re-edited the film for Japanese and German markets. If this film really had any thing say about the atrocities of December 7th 1941, it would never shy away from profoundly expressing the horror of war. Instead, it knows by blocking out these lucrative foreign markets it stands to never recoup its money. Alas, this is all it boils down to.
What's hurtful are Evelyn's (Kate Beckinsdale) final lines `America suffered and grew stronger
through trial we overcame.' Do the words Hiroshima or Nagasaki mean anything to Bay and Bruckheimer? The carnage of America is completely forgotten. But I guess to the people watching the film in some fleabag cinema in Ohio, this is irrelevant. They want to be reminded of what a great nation of people they are; not how they vaporised a civilian population. Enjoy guy's
just hand over the cash, sit back and let them tarnish all historical accuracy.
Meet Joe Black (1998)
Joe Who?
I honestly can't believe some of the reviews posted here. This film was one of the most placid, sterile, coldest cinematic texts I've ever seen. For a film like this you should create a heart first and build everything else around it. Instead Mr. Breast believes that by placing star credentials and production values above all else we the audience will be gullible enough to lovingly swallow his shallow love story. Not only that, we'll pay him 10 bucks for the privilege of doing so.
I'm not gonna bore anyone with the plot because there isn't one. It's just a pure waste of time. Seriously, in three hours you can manage to convey some quite profound feelings (Godfather, Shortcuts, Schindler's List) but Meet Joe Black didn't make me feel anything. It hoped to latch on to the same elements that made Titanic a smash hit (love story, length, evil fiancées, floppy hair) but least that had decent special effects to salvage its hollow characterisations. Even the car accident that provides Joe with a ticket to `our' world looks crap. Brad Pitt wasted his talents in this week affair, as did Hopkins. Both of them look as if they are quite unsure of why they are here in the first place. As for the characters that comprise of Hopkins family, well what I was just hoping for was that Joe would have a sudden change of heart and decide to kill em all for being so darn ungrateful. I really can't hack listening to rich white people complain about how horrid life is because they can't find `true love'. I don't think that you need a three-hour time frame in order to accomplish that. These are the very same things that annoyed me about Notting Hill, yet that film at least didn't take its self as seriously as this drivel.
As for all this talk about Claire Forlani, well yes she is one amazing looking bird but she sure can't sustain a leading female role by herself. All she did is look like a sulky rich girl drifting from room to room, suffering from major existential teenage angst. She was about as animate as my Granny's antique wardrobe. It's a case of great face but zero charisma.
You know what, this might have turned out into quite memorable film if ... In the end you have enough time to think about the emptiness of it all and feel like cursing yourself for having gone to see it in the first place.
It's not just that it's such a pointless film that annoys me. Rather more it is the actuality that it cost $90 million to subsidise this wet, soppy, nonsensical mess. If you have a great desire to see what a personification of Death may look like, I wouldn't waste my time watching this filth
you may as well wait for the real thing! At least I bet it'll be more interesting this movie.
Tonite Let's All Make Love in London (1967)
What is this crap!
I swear to God this is one piece of cinematic filth that should be burned, it's soooooooo boring.
1: Don't rent it.
2) Don't buy it.
3) Heaven's forbid, if you find yourself enjoying it do make sure you get some much needed help.
The Innocents (1961)
Strangely Amazing
It's shocking that this film which is hailed as a British classic is no where to be found on the retail shelves in its native country. Nevertheless, we cannot deny the film's hypnotic and creepy power to shock and unsettle audiences. I first heard of this movie when I was at school in England some time ago when by chance some students recommended both The Haunting and this as an illustration of fabulous 60's horror cinema. Although I was reluctant to enjoy it at first, over time the film has seriously grown on me and has compeled me to read more about the fascinating history of the movie.
The acting is first rate, the photography is spellbinding, and the pacing is truly well structured. One cannot help but wonder how exactly Clayton got several of the subplots regarding paedophilia past the censors, my only thought maybe that his subtle approach to the subject meant that it went over the head of many of the audiences spectators back in 1960.
The film lingers long in the head after its initial viewing and you constantly attempt to run over earlier aspects of the film in a vain attempt to rationalise the shocking and abrupt dénouement. Alas, there are no clues and one has to accept the horror. This movie is a must for anyone into film. One thing for sure, you will never look at lakes in the same way again!