The Chase

A small town in Texas is in upheaval because Bubber Reeves escaped from jail. He was sitting in for one of a string of felonies. On the run, the prisoner he broke out of jail with kills someone and takes of with their car. So now the authorities also want Bubber for a murder he did not commit.

A handful of people in his hometown want to help him. There are Anna, his wife, and Jake Rogers, son of the rich man that practically owns the town. The two have been lovers for a long time (and everyone except old man Rogers knows) and now want to help Bubber by providing him money and a means to make a run for it.

The local Sheriff, who doesn't quite believe that Bubber had anything to do with the murder does his best to try and return him safely to jail because quite a few of the town's inhabitants have been drinking through most of the night and are out for blood. Sheriff Calder takes a beating from an especially anxious trio.

Eventually, a lot of the town folk make it out to Lester Johnson's junk yard by the wharf, where Bubber is said to be hiding out. Various drunken parties have relocated there and the people start throwing Molotov cocktails into the yard and singing songs asking Bubber to come out. It all gets out of hand and an explosion severely injures Jake. He dies some time later.

Bubber finally surrenders to the Sheriff, who takes him calmly to jail but on the steps, the idiotic trio cause one last ruckus and one of them guns Bubber down.

Good film with a fiery finale and a great cast.

7/10

World War Z

Let me sum this up:
(1) We do not know what happened.
(2) We do not know how it started.
(3) We do not know where it started.
(4) This is not over.

Gerry Lane, formerly of the UN, is called back to duty when a zombie outbreak overruns the earth. He is sent off to assist one young, bright doctor to learn more about the new threat where they first heard of it - in South Korea. Unfortunately, the young, bright doctor panics, trips, and shoots himself falling down before he even got off the plane. So Gerry gathers all information he can get and moves on to Israel, who finished its big wall surrounding Jerusalem a week before it all began.

Unfortunately, in Jerusalem the inhabitants and newly arrived refugees are so happy about having found safe haven that they celebrate by singing and changing into microphones. We know that zombies react to and run towards sounds. This jubilation now is so loud that the creatures outside the city walls find a way of getting inside. It looks pretty impressive, too.

So Gerry has to move on. He boards a plane from Belarus that was destined for Jerusalem, as well, but immediately takes off again when they realize what is going on outside. On the plane, hidden away in a closet is one single zombie (of course), but one zombie is all it takes to start and epidemic. Gerry causes the plane to crash before he and his new found friend, an Israeli female soldier, get infected.

Luckily, they crash within walking distance of where they wanted to go anyway - a WHO research facility in Cardiff. It is there that Gerry realizes (through flashbacks) that the zombies avoid terminally ill people like the pest (pardon the pun). To test the theory he injects himself with some deadly disease or other. It works. The word spreads. The day is saved.

Yes, it has plot holes and relies on coincidences more often than it should. But it is very entertaining and the zombies in close-up really look pretty awesome. And the sound they make individually is great - in a very creepy way.

The 3D was yet again totally unnecessary, though.

7/10

Village of the Damned

A blackout hits the people of one small town. They all pass out for a while. When they come to, all the women of child bearing age are pregnant. They all deliver the babies on the same day.

The children are intelligent beyond their ages and have 'special powers', meaning they can make the adults do what they collectively want them to. The ultimate plan is to form a colony and multiply. Presumably to take over the world, eventually.

Similar events have happened in different remote parts of the world. But, wherever they children survived, the communities have been wiped out by their respective governments in surprise bombings...nobody in those towns was informed because the children can read minds (unless you block them out effectively by thinking of unrelated things rather intensely say, an ocean, for example).

Creepy kids. Creepy, creepy kids.

6/10

The Russia House

I'm confused. But this is a John le Carré story, so that was to be expected.

What I gather is this: Barley, a British publisher, is recruited by the Secret Service to spy on the Russians, as he has been contacted by a Russian publisher, Katya, regarding a scientific book by one Dante (not his real name).

From then on, he wears wires seemingly everywhere he goes in Moscow and Leningrad. He meets with Katya, later with Dante and some sort of deal is struck, that would have him hand over what everyone refers to as 'the shopping list' (written in invisible ink, no less).

By now, the Brits have teamed up with the US Secret Service as well and people from both sides wearing more or less appealing suits sit in a room together listening in with headphones. Then the British liaison to Barley, Ned, gets suspicious and wants to call the final handover off. But the Americans push on (of course). Words are exchanged, the go ahead as planned and of course Ned was right all along.

Dante apparently is already dead at the time he was supposed to meet with Barley, who has worked out that something is wrong thanks to Katya. He then makes his own plan to double cross his home country. All for the love of Katya.

Or something like that.

6/10

Il portiere di notte (The Night Porter)

Max works the night shift on the front desk of a hotel in Vienna (my beautiful city!) where he one day recognizes one of the guests. Lucia is in the city with her conductor husband.

Lucia and Max met in a concentration camp, where she was an inmate while was in the SS. Some kinky stuff went on in the camp. Not only were the two having a sado-masochistic relationship, but some of the inmates entertained the staff, sometimes half naked.

Now, 13 years later, the pair picks up right where they left off, much to the chagrin of Max' friends from back then, one of which recognizes 'a female witness' to the entertainment evenings they all participated in. Lucia and Max hole up in his small apartment while Lucia's husband is looking for her and Max' friends try to get their hands on Lucia to do away with her (one presumes).

The pair is played by the always wonderful Dirk Bogarde and a young and pretty Charlotte Rampling (where did the time go?).

Disturbing.

7/10

The Awakening

Florence Cathcart exposes hoaxes dealing with ghosts and writes books about it. One day she is asked to come to a school for boys haunted by one little boy, that appears to some of the children there with twisted face, scaring the boys. So much so that one died from an asthma attack.

She sets up all sorts of machines and means of proving that the 'ghost' is only boys playing pranks. When the school closes down for a week, only a few personnel and one boy, Thomas, stay behind with Florence. That is when things get really creepy. Florence starts seeing the ghost and at the same time remember all sorts of things, like a broken statue or a single shoe.

Turns out she is the most traumatized of them all, having grown up in the house the school is in, where - as a young girl - witnessed her father shooting her mother, who couldn't give him a son, and then coming after the little girl but in the end killing his bastard son, instead. That son turns out to be Thomas.

Florence's visit had been orchestrated by Tom's mother who worked for Florence's family back in the day and stayed in the house to work for the school, as well. Her idea was for Florence and Thomas to be together again, so the boy won't be so lonely.

Creepy with a gothic look to it. Too bad I don't like Rebecca Hall, which made the viewing experience less enjoyable. Luckily, this features also Dominic West, Imelda Staunton and the wonderful but underrated Shaun Dooley. Thomas is played by Isaac Hempstead Wright (of Game of Thrones fame).

5/10

That Evening Sun

Old Mr Meecham bails from the old folks' home to return to his farm. When he gets there he finds the Choat family has rented the place off of his son. What's worse, it is a family Meecham considers to be white trash, and he tells the father so frequently.

Refusing to leave he decides to stay in the tenant's house and wait for them to leave because he believes that it still is his place and he wants to live out his days there. Lonzo Choat drinks to much and is trying to make ends meet and scrape together the money for their payments to buy the farm.

The two men come to blows more than once. One night, his teenage daughter Pamela goes on a date with a young man her father does not approve of. When he drops her off at the farm, Lonzo starts going at them with a gardening hose before Meecham interferes. And in the middle of it all is Meecham's son Paul, who tries to convince his father to return to the home. There does not appear to be a solution that any of them can live with.

Hal Holbrook is wonderful as old Meecham.

8/10