UPDATE: We’re playing around with a new look, please bear with us as we iron out the kinks 
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We’re currently experiencing a few issues with filmguide with some things not displaying properly or updating. We are working on solutions, but it’s a long weekend and we’ve been hit with a rather nasty cold/flu so things might be slow for a while.
Morgan Spurlock, the man who taught us that Fast Food was bad for us, is on a mission to make the world safe by finding Osama Bin Laden. Of course, his motivations are pure and the US$25 Million reward, or the financial windfall of a successful documentary are only secondary concerns.
It should be pretty much a no brainer (and therefore not a spoiler) to say that Spurlock doesn’t actually find Osama. Rather he finds out what most educated people around the world already know; that Osama (aka al-Qaeda terrorist network) is more a global brand than a singular, powerful individual. And it’s a brand that has grown exponentially since Bush launched the War on Terror.
The other no brainer that Spurlock discovers is that most Muslims don’t support Osama, or the killing of innocent people. In fact a lot of people Spurlock interviews hate Osama just as much as they hate America. It’s not just the Muslims either that have their radical sects, as Spurlock discovers to some amusement as he tries to talk to some orthodox Jews, who in turn heckle and just about try and lynch Spurlock. Read the rest of this entry »
Set in post-apocalyptic 2018, John Connor is the man fated to lead the human resistance against Skynet and its army of Terminators. But the future Connor was raised to believe in is altered in part by the appearance of Marcus Wright, a stranger whose last memory is of being on death row. Connor must decide whether Marcus has been sent from the future, or rescued from the past. As Skynet prepares its final onslaught, Connor and Marcus both embark on an odyssey that takes them into the heart of Skynet’s operations, where they uncover the terrible secret behind the possible annihilation of mankind.
The Review
So here’s the honest truth. Based on the general media commentary that’s out there and terminator 3, I have been preparing myself for Terminator Salvation to be one of 2009’s biggest let down. Of course if the trailers and the special 4 minute clip that have been posted were anything to go by then perhaps there was a little bit of hope. Read the rest of this entry »
Gran Torino begins with a sobering scene of Korean War veteran Walt Kowalski (Clint Eastwood) standing behind his wife’s coffin as mourners arrive at her funeral. He’s not a happy man, not merely because his wife has passed, but because he sees the indifference, the lack of old fashioned respect in his grandchildren. He sees his own sons who he doesn’t really know, and possibly most of all; he’s uncomfortable in church.
Church was the crutch that his wife used and has no place in his life.
Walt sees the world through a very racist, un-PC, but definitely black and white point of view. He puts his faith in only what he knows to be true.
Being a veteran of the Korean War, Walk has some very big ghosts in his past, and one thing that really irks him is to see the neighbourhood being taken over by gooks. But then one night the local Asian gang is beating up on his neighbours kid, the struggle moves onto Walt’s front lawn, which annoys Walt so much that he grabs his rifle and forces the gang to flea, in the process becoming an unintentional hero to the neighbourhood. Read the rest of this entry »
The twist at the end of Marley & Me came as no surprise to me, as during the movies theatrical release in the States, I read a news story about the film’s billboard being defaced with a three-word spoiler. Not that a spoiler like that would matter, as Marley & Me was being promoted as a feel-good rom-com, that would mean the twist would be a good sad ending.
And it was quite a good, light hearted rom-com, with Owen Wilson being Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston being Jennifer Aniston. The inclusion of Marley the boisterous dog and a few other clichés made for an enjoyable first hour or so.
The problem comes – especially if you know the spoiler – when the penny drops, sometime after the one-hour mark, and you realise just what is going to happen. Then the film becomes a depressing, drawn out, agonising waste of time. It probably didn’t help that I watched this during my second day off work with a hideous flu/cold and I’m writing this with a thumping headache. Read the rest of this entry »
Clarkson, Hammond and May are up to their old tricks again, and along they way, they’ve produced another rip-roaring DVD. This time their destination is Vietnam, and in true Brit humour they say they are going to attempt to do what the American military couldn’t do in tens years; travel from the South to the North – but for them, it will only take eight days.
Of course the first thing our boys have to do in any Top Gear special is buy some suitable wheels with the money they are allotted. With everything in Vietnam being dirt cheap, the producers seem to have given Clarkson and co a break this time round, issuing them with fifteen million Dong, in cash, in individual shoe boxes. With more excitement than you can find in a little boy on Christmas morning, this trio of aging men set off to buy some suitable four-wheeled transport.
Of course, when they find out that the price of an entry-level new car is 350 Million Dong, and that their fifteen million won’t even buy them a second hand car, Hammond has a brain wave; they could each buy a bike, to which Clarkson is aghast. Read the rest of this entry »
Rupert Wyatt’s prison break thriller The Escapist manages to get your head spinning, though this has more to do with the tightly framed shots of Wyatt and cinematographer Philipp Blaubach than a wildly spiralling plot structure. Utilising many close ups and emphasising the confined spaces of the prison environs, these two do an excellent job of giving the prison setting a very claustrophobic feel which helps to maintain a level of tension that would be admired in much better films. The narrative structure of film compounds this feeling, switching between the escape in progress and the lead up to it, and lends a nice sense of pace and urgency to the picture.
The Escapist follows prison lifer Frank Perry (a rare lead role for perennial supporting actor Brian Cox – Rob Roy, The Bourne Identity/Supremacy) who has not heard from his wife and child for at least the last 12 years. Quietly existing in this semi-life, one day he unexpectedly gets a reply (his first) to one of the letters he regularly sends to his estranged family informing him that his (now) 21 year old daughter (he hasn’t seen her since she was 7) is a drug addict who’s on a sure path to an early death Read the rest of this entry »
After Buffy The Vampire Slayer went off the air in 2003, there was a lot of talk of continuing the story on the big screen. Unfortunately, that never came to pass, possibly because Sarah Michelle Gellar wasn’t interested and Joss Whedon was busy with other projects, but the show’s eighth season has since been continued in comic book form. This week, however, it was announced that Buffy may return to the big screen in another form entirely.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Fran Rubel Kuzui, director of the original Buffy The Vampire Slayer movie, is looking to put together a relaunch of the movie franchise that would be unrelated to the TV series. Whedon, who also wrote the script for the original movie, probably will not be involved in this reboot, although they have yet to rule him out entirely. The idea is to introduce a brand new cast of characters under the grounds that each generation has its own vampire slayer to protect it. In a way it’s unfortunate because Sarah Michelle Gellar’s career could probably use a franchise or two right about now.
Kuzui had this to say: “Everything has its moment. Every movie takes on a life at some point, and this seems like the moment to do this.” Yeah, vampires are in… we get it. [filmjunk]
The story of an ever-changing world, Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis is her collected memoirs creatively presented as an animated feature. Based on the writer-director’s graphic novel series of the same name, Persepolis the film outlines her colourful life experiences utilising a plain but oddly compelling visual style. As Persepolis traverses a broad geographic expanse we journey with Marjane through a highly personal search for identity in these politically and relationally unstable contexts.
Marjane comes from a socially and politically liberal family; members of which are variously hailed as heroes of the people and enemies of the state. During the course of her tale a number of her family end up imprisoned and even executed. As political power is changing hands Iran is thrown into the long and horrific war with Iraq seeing a highly conservative faction gain ascendance. Marjane’s parents decide it would be better for their daughter to flee to the relative sanity of Europe to continue her education and get free of the repression and violence that has come to roost in their homeland. Unfortunately for Marjane there is no escaping her ethnicity and all of her relationships in her new home Vienna are filtered, for better or worse (mostly worse), through this cultural lens. Majane soon realises that she will never quite blend in with her European classmates the way she so desperately desires. She is caught between trying to hide her origins to avoid racist attitudes and guilt from pretending to be other than she is. Finding herself ill and living on the streets she ironically ‘escapes’ back to her family in Iran.
Upon her return she tries to fit into modern life in Tehran, but eventually admits that she no longer truly belongs there either and the film ends where it begins with her in an airport in flux between between two places thereby physically mirroring her confused identity.
The animation style employed in Persepolis is an antidote to the oversaturated motion capture madness of productions like Robert Zemeckis’ recent adaptation of Beowulf (2007). In a very flat 2-D style, with minimal use of colour, animators Damien Barrau, Pascal Chevet and their team have created a picture that ably captures the tone of the story without distracting from its narrative power. Even though the filmmakers took no pains to create any visual realism I was surprised at how quickly I was drawn in, forgetting that I was watching an animated feature. At the same time it would be fair to say that the animators do manage to present a strong visual style utilising the contrast of black and white with odd dashes of red or blue reminiscent of the colour choices in Steven Spielberg’s early 90s holocaust film Schindler’s List.
For a Western audience Persepolis uncovers some of the mystery surrounding life in a country like Iran; internal socio-political complexities are evidenced as are the impact of Western political decisions (eg: United States support of the Iraqi army during the Iran-Iraq war) on contemporary middle-eastern perceptions of ‘the west’. Ultimately though, Satrapi’s film is not a hard hitting political statement but a highly intimate account an individual’s attempts to find a place in the world. Hopefully her attempts to express her struggle through her art have produced not only a very worthwhile film but also some much deserved peace of mind.
Reviewed by: Jacob Powell
Rating: M – Suitable for mature audiences 16 years and over. Contains offensive language.
Director: Marjane Satrapi
Voice Actors: Chiara Mastroianni, Catherine Deneuve, Danielle Darrieux, Simon Abkarian, Gabrielle Lopes Benites, and François Jerosme.
Country: France | USA
Language: French | English | Persian | German (with English subtitles)
Year: 2007
Dur: 96 min
There is something about me..
