Movie Reviews
Transformers 2 Reviews
Everything from the girls to the action in “Transformers 2” is designed for cheap thrills. Bay aims for every low-brow joke in the book. Racial stereotyping, bad sex jokes, and “hilarious” humping scenes are just a few of the gems he’s able to come up with. These cheap jokes actually went over well with the audience in my screening, but when a movie has three humping scenes and none of them involve an actual human doing the humping there’s something wrong with that…read more [Blogcritics]
This is all standard negative criticism for Bay movies, however. The question you’re all wondering has yet to be fully addressed: Are the action scenes good? My answer is that yeah, they’re pretty sweet. Bay manages to drop the pretense that he was trying to make a film with plot, and just let giant robots fight near or on pyramids. A special note should be made of their IMAX cinematography. The scale of the Transformers and the picture quality really do add a lot of enjoyment to some scenes, notably the ones where Devastator is involved. The acting even manages to improve a bit from bad comic acting to legitimate moments of care and concern for the characters. There’s not much else to say about this; the action is cool, but trying to describe why it’s cool is kind of a futile pursuit… read more [ScreenJunkies]
The film should really be called “Transformers: Bigger, Longer, Unintelligent.”
In case you missed the first movie and since both films are nearly the same in execution that isn’t really necessary the good robots, called Autobots led by Optimus Prime (voice of Peter Cullen), fight the bad robots, called Decepticons led by Megatron (voice of Hugo Weaving). A human named Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) gets thrown into the battle as the unlikely savior accompanied by a sexy love interest, Mikaela (Megan Fox). Sam’s parents, Ron (Kevin Dunn) and Judy (Julie White), provide comic relief as does John Turturro as Agent Simmons…read more [MetroWest]
The Hangover Review
“The Hangover” is a worthy entrant into the “guy movie” hall of fame. It’s got laughs, drugs, tomfoolery, bodily harm, strippers, and a Mike Tyson cameo. If you were going down the list of things needed for a comedy to take flight you’d find them all here; the three main players pass the ball, the chemistry works, and the film never devolves into that most debilitating trope of the romantic comedy - a serious third act. If you’re a fellow, or the person who monitors your fellow’s entertainment intake I highly recommend giving this a watch. It’s nicely done.
Essentially, The Hangover follows three amnesiac groomsman the day after a debaucherous bachelor party as they track down the origins of a series of clues that they hope lead them to the lost groom, Doug (Justin Bartha). Phil (Bradley Cooper) is a schoolteacher who resents the family life that has stripped him of the wild antics he enjoyed as a youth. He needs this party bad, and forces the gang to go to excess, an act that only bites them in the ass later. Stu (Ed Helms), Phil’s cautious foil, is extremely pussy-whipped by a girlfriend that no self-respecting man would put up with for no longer than one roll in the hay. He’s the conscience in the film that only seems to get trampled on and distorted. Doug’s future brother-in-law, Alan (Zach Galifianakis), is the odd duck. Phil and Stu aren’t really his friends, but he’s so desperate for male camaraderie that he’d follow these guys anywhere, as long as he gets to carry his male-purse that he refers to as a satchel - like the one Indiana Jones carries…read more [Screen Junkies]
The Hangover falls victim to having it’s best laughs in the trailer, something most comedies walk right into. Todd Phillips’ new film also lets a few gags run on too long and it features subplots that are unnecessary. Yet with all of this, it’s hard not to laugh at it when it hits the right notes with jokes or be swept up in the command Bradley Cooper has as the lead. Unlike the recent What Happens in Vegas, The Hangover has the ingredients needed to make a good and often hilarious comedy and actually takes place in Vegas for longer than five minutes. Dare I say, The Hangover is the best Vegas comedy and certainly is the best comedy of the year…read more [atomic popcorn]
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus Reviews
Heath Ledger’s final performance in “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus” directed by Terry Gilliam has been presented at the 62nd Cannes Film Festival.
Ledger died after completing the real-world portions of the film. Gilliam finished the film with Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell taking Ledger’s role in three trips to make-believe realities. Gilliam’s first thought when Ledger died in New York was to ditch “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus,” which was only half finished.
“The choice I made was to close the film down,” Gilliam told reporters at the Cannes film festival, where the out-of-competition movie has its world premiere.
“I couldn’t see how we could finish it without Heath because we were in the middle of production. Fortunately, I was surrounded by really good people who insisted that I shouldn’t be such a lazy bastard and I’d better go out and find a way of finishing the film for Heath. That’s what we did.” I started calling friends, Johnny Depp, and he said ‘I’m there’. And I basically was just calling people who knew and loved Heath.
“Everyone in the cast and everyone in the crew was determined that this film would be finished and everybody worked longer, harder and somehow we got through. It was really … people’s love for Heath that propelled this thing forward.”
The movie closes with the dedication: “A film from Heath Ledger and friends.”
The fantasy adventure is orchestrated by the ageless Doctor Parnassus (Christopher Plummer), who has the power to project people into their own imagination. However, the fascinating journey always ends with a choice, which can lead to the best or the worst. And Parnassus, as an inveterate gambler, has his own problems. Having won a wager with the Devil, he has made two successive deals with Mr. Nick (Tom Waits) over the ages. Granted immortality first and eternal youth next, he once agreed to deliver his first-born to the Devil when he or she reached the age of 16. And now that Valentina (Lily Cole) is only days away from the fatal age, the Devil is already prowling in the vicinity.
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Cannes 2009: The White Ribbon By Michael Haneke
UPDATE May 24, 2009 - CANNES 2009 WINNERS
Michael Haneke’ “The White Ribbon” (”Das Weisse Band“) won Palme d’Or!
“The White Ribbon” (”Das Weisse Band“) directed and written by Michael Haneke is in competition for Palme d’Or at 62nd Cannes Film Festival.
The movie stars Susanne Lothar, Ulrich Tukur, Theo Trebs, Michael Schenk, Leonie Benesch, Josef Bierbichler, Rainer Bock, Christian Friedel, Burghart Klaussner, Steffi Kuhnert and Ursina Lardi.
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Cannes best director winner Michael Haneke’s (“Cache,” 2005) latest focuses on a rural German school in 1913, which seems to be the sight of ritual punishment.
The story of the children and teenagers of a choir run by the village schoolteacher, and their families: the baron, the steward, the pastor, the doctor, the midwife, the tenant farmers.
Strange accidents occur and gradually take on the character of a punishment ritual. Does the ritual punishment have an affect on the school system and is this a precursor to the rise of fascism?
Reviews sound fantastic so this could be easily Palme d’Or winner.
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Inglourious Basterds Reviews
“Inglourious Basterds ” has been finally premiered on Wednesday May 20, 2009 at Cannes Film Festival.
Quentin Tarantino who has already won a Palme d’Or at Cannes for “Pulp Fiction” in 1994, and his new movie is in contention for the top prize at Cannes, has said: “I’m expecting this to be one of the high moments of my career. There is nothing like it in cinema… Directors in my situation don’t normally go this direction, especially when they’re doing something really big.”
“It’s like a Quentin Tarantino movie on steroids and speed. It’s a movie that takes place in World War Two, but this is not a World War Two movie,” Eli Roth said of the film.
We are not in Cannes, unfortunately, so we haven’t seen Quentin Tarantino’s “Ingluorious Basterds” but you can read the reviews from other sites - both the positive and the negative ones. You can read the two contrasting opinions just from Totalfilm, Screendaily is very mixed too, but Variety gives positive review. However, we must wait “Inglourious Basterds ” August US release.
“Given what the world expects from Quentin Tarantino - the man, the myth, the pastiche-driven movie machine - his latest feature, “Inglourious Basterds,” stands out for its seemingly low ambition. Talked about for years by the filmmaker as his epic “guys-on-a-mission” movie, the final product, unveiled this morning in Cannes, certainly meets those standards.
The story of Nazi-hunting Jewish soldiers delivers on the colorful brand of unserious entertainment implied by the plot, but no matter how much extreme contextualization and heavily stylized techniques Tarantino introduced to the production, “Inglorious Basterds” feels like a bubblegum sidedish to the heavy dinner plate of his career.” IndieWire
“An intermittently-inspired World War II epic which illustrates both Quentin Tarantino’s brilliance and his tendency towards indulgence, Inglourious Basterds is composed of a series of long-running vignettes strung together by a slender story thread. The problem is that no one character or set of characters runs through the entire two-and-a-half hour running time, and, with some of the scenes running up to half an hour each, the thread of the drama is left disjointed and the focus ever-changing.
Above-the-title star Brad Pitt plays the captain of a troupe of Jewish American renegades dubbed the Inglorious Bastards, but Pitt is far from the centre of attention and both French actress Melanie Laurent and German actor Christoph Waltz both have more screen time and juicier roles…” ScreenDaily
“…It’s an audacious, and, when it comes to timing, indulgent work - some sequences (the prologue, a lengthy interlude in a cellar) run to more than 20 minutes; this comes after what must have been drastic cutting, as Maggie Cheung does not appear at all in the finished product shown in Cannes today, Mike Myers only has one scene and even Michael Fassbender comes and goes with alarming alacrity…” ScreenDaily Blog - Fionnuala Halligan
Cannes 2009: Broken Embraces Trailer, Photos, Poster And Reviews
Pedro Almodovar’s latest film “Broken Embraces” (”Los Abrazos Rotos“) shown at Cannes Film Festival in competition, drops his distinctive comic melodrama for the best tradition of “film noir,” the dark and stylish film genre used in many crime dramas.
Oscar-winning director Almodovar (for foreign-language film with “All About My Mother” and original screenplay for “Talk to Her.”) described his 17th film and with the highest budget yet of 11 million euros ($14.16 million), as “the story of my love for the cinema.”
“The film noir genre is one of my favorites. The fact this film was really “black” was what was very satisfying.”
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The film stars recent Oscar winner Penelope Cruz in the role of a tragedy-dogged aspiring actress.
“Broken Embraces” centers on a quartet of characters in the movie business whose lives are interwoven in a torrid tale of love, power, secrecy, betrayal and vengeance. There is the actress Lena (Cruz), script writer and director Mateo (Lluis Homar), film producer Judith (Blanca Portillo) and unscrupulous financier Ernesto (José Luis Gómez).
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Cannes 2009: Agora World Premiere - Reviews
Alejandro Amenabar’s historical epic “Agora” premiered Sunday at the Cannes Film Festival, introducing audiences to the little-known scholar Hypatia, a brilliant astronomer and mathematician working in a man’s world in 4th century A.D. Egypt.
Rachel Weisz and director Alejandro Amenabar traveled back to ancient times to tell a modern story about a progressive woman standing against religious dogma and persecution. Hypatia struggles to preserve scientific knowledge amid the clash of zealots in Alexandria, whose rising Christian population grows increasingly militant toward Jews and worshippers of the Egyptian gods.
Amenabar dove into astronomy research but said he did not want to make a movie about a figure such as Galileo because everyone already knew his story. Amenabar’s studies eventually led him to Hypatia, a woman dealing with current issues in ancient times.
“We realized that this particular time in the world had a lot of connections with our contemporary reality,” Amenabar said. “Then the project became really, really intriguing, because we realized that we could make a movie about the past while actually making a movie about the present.”
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