Film Guide

I have always loved the stories of Roald Dahl. He had a wonderful way of taking everyday objects and characters, combining them together in ways that create beautiful rollercoaster styled tales.

So for those of you who have not read “The Fantastic Mr. Fox” or have forgotten it, here’s the rundown of the plot.

It is the story of one Mr. Fox and his wild-ways of hen heckling, turkey taking and cider sipping, nocturnal, instinctive adventures. He has to put his wild days behind him and do what fathers do best: be responsible. Of course deep down he is too rebellious and wild to keep out of trouble in the long term and hence plans “just one more raid” on Boggis, Bunce and Bean (the three nastiest and mean farmers).  Read the rest of this entry »

“I wouldn’t recommend going to jail, I wouldn’t recommend my life to anybody. It’s a bloody dog’s life, a shit life, a terrible life.”
That’s how Fat Belly starts off, with Mark ‘Chopper’ Read apparently being remorseful about his life. The problem is he’s only remorseful one other time in the 80-minute run-time, and for only a brief few seconds. The rest of this so called documentary is more of an ego trip, with Mark Read talking about everything he’s done in his life, the people he’s messed up or killed, his moral view of the world, all done in the same happy manner as people usual use for reminiscing about their first love.
Mark warbs us that his life was shit, but then tells us just how much fun it was.
And never is there any other side to the story than his own. Sure he’s being asked questions by an off camera interviewer, who doesn’t really seem to know the art of interviewing and never gets Mark to go any deeper than his rampant ego trip. It may just be that Mark shuts down and refuses to understand any questions he doesn’t want to answer, but any decent interviewer worth their salt would keep probing until their subject at least contradicted himself.  Read the rest of this entry »

FBI agent Olivia Dunham and Peter Bishop are faced with a rapidly spreading unexplained deadly phenomenon. In an attempt to stop the spread, they enlist the assistance of Bishop’s estranged father, the institutionalised scientist Dr. Walter Bishop. Through the mind of a rambling insane old scientist, they will discover that there is more to life than meets the eye.

J.J. Abrams once again delivers a compelling, original television drama that blurs the edges of reality, this time focussing on the fringes of science; Teleportation. Mind control. Invisibility. Astral projection. Mutation. Reanimation. Throw in a larger than life conspiracy, big multinational corporations, and double agents and you have a show that you need to buckle in for.

It’s a wild ride that at times has subtle overtones of Lost, and certainly puts a fresh dose of adrenaline laced with LSD into the whole police drama genre. The only worrying part of the show for me, was the inclusion of Dawson’s Creek’s Joshua Jackson, I just couldn’t see him pulling off a serious role. How wrong I was!  Read the rest of this entry »

This is a biographical movie on the life of Seraphine Louis Maillaird a little known artist who was discovered by the “discoverer” of Henri Rousseau, Wilhelm Uhde.

Seraphine was born in 1864 in a small French village where she attended school and when not at school she was a shepherdess. At the age of 13 she was sent to Paris to work as a maid. Her work sees her hired by an institute for young women where she is introduced to art by observing the drawing teacher’s classes. Following this she is a servant in a convent for 20 years.

The movie starts in 1912 when Seraphine is 48 years old living in the town of Senlis. She has a humble life working very hard as a maid, doing laundry & other menial tasks, attending Mass and painting.

She had had a visitation some years earlier from her Guardian Angel who suggested that she paint. Since this experience she is very devout to the Virgin Mary and continues to have visions and “voices” in her head that plague her for the rest of her life. Read the rest of this entry »

This is the debut film of novelist Philippe Claudel which gained enormous success upon its release in France and was acclaimed at the 2008 Berlin Film Festival.

Juliette (Kristin Scott Thomas) and Lea (Elsa Zylberstein) are sisters who have been estranged for 15 years. They are reunited when Juliette comes to stay with Lea and her family.

Whilst Lea is more than happy to have Juliette in her home, her husband Luc is wary about having this stranger joining his family. Their close friends also ask questions as to why they never knew Lea had such a beautiful sister hidden from them for all these years and what could she possibly have been doing?

The many layers of this movie are exposed with the introduction of each character and their untold stories.

This is a beautiful film. It is subtle and simplistic. As the characters and the scenes unfold before you it has you wanting to know more, wanting to be there. The music picks up on the feelings and moods and enhances the emotions portrayed by the actors. Read the rest of this entry »

FilmGuide will be taking a couple of days off over Christmas, but We’ll be back with a load of DVD reviews and some more great giveaways shortly. Happy Christmas to one and all.

Have you ever been fired? Or been the one who has to fire someone? It’s not a pleasant task to have to perform, but for Ryan Bingham (Clooney) it is his job. Bingham works for a company that is contracted by other large companies to handle their downsizing and restructuring needs. In other words they provide the office and the list and Ryan Bingham breaks the news to those whose services are no longer required. This job takes him all over America and therefore leads to his life “Up in the Air”. Ryan lives out of a small suitcase, in hotels, airports and of course on airplanes all over the US.  Read the rest of this entry »

Robert Downey Jr has re-invented his acting career with a wonderful series of roles as the flawed man who overcomes his own character in order to save the day. In Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes this winning formula continues with great gusto as for the first time we see a deeply flawed Holmes struggling to balance on the fine line between genius and madness.  Read the rest of this entry »

Essentially a remake of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, Ghosts Of Girlfriends Past replaces the festive season with another reason to celebrate; Love. More specifically a wedding. The love of money is replaced with the love of singleness, or loving a new woman every night, of not being tied down.

As predictable and cheesy as a rom-com based on Dickens’s famous Christmas tale can be, this Matthew McConaughey and Jennifer Garner vehicle hits all the right notes, delivering, as with the traditional Scrooge version, a timely tale, one based on the merits of love and commitment.

It’s an enjoyable, often funny night in, even though nothing about it will blow you away, if you relax and let the syrupy sweetness of it envelope you, It’ll fill you with enough warm fuzzies to keep you smiling for a couple of days.  Read the rest of this entry »

Ok, so it’s that time of year when just about everyone is making their best of lists, and we’re no exception. Being that we’re a film website, we’ll just be doing the top ten films of 2009. If you want baby names or dog breeds, head over to google where you’ll probably find a bajillion blogs with the information you want.

For our top ten films, I decided to do things a little differently. Rather that asking our reviewers what they though, in hindsight, were the best ten films of the year, I complied a list of the ten highest rated films on FilmGuide this year, then asked our reviewers to vote on what order they should appear on our list.

The result is a list that you probably won’t find on any other film website, and will probably make our reviewers think twice before rating movies for the duration of 2010!  Read the rest of this entry »