Vargtimmen (Hour of the Wolf)

I have only recently started watching the brilliant works of Ingmar Bergman. Hour of the Wolf is only his third film I have watched, the others being The Seventh Seal and Through a Glass Darkly.

All three feature the wonderful Max von Sydow, who has worked with Bergman many times. In Hour of the Wolf he portrays the painter Johan Borg. Together with his pregnant wife Alma (played by Liv Ullmann) he spends the summer on a remote island. Over the course of the story he encounters several strange people that either contribute to his descent into madness or are a side effect of it. I assume it is the first, as Alma meets several of them at a dinner party.

This is defined as being drama and horror, the horror stemming from the feeling of claustrophobia the film conveys and Johan's nightmarish vision. The (English) title refers to the time just before dawn, during which many births and deaths occur (according to Johan).

The film is excellent, although for me it does not quite reach the brilliance of The Seventh Seal. My discovery of Ingmar Bergman will definitely not stop here.

7/10

Game Change

Game Change had a good night at yesterday's Emmys. I watched it the day before, only very marginally aware of the nominations it received (well deserved every one).

A lot has been said and written about Julianne Moores impeccable portrayal of Sarah Palin. From what we have all seen of the on-screen persona of Mrs. Palin it seems pretty obvious that she was nothing short of brilliant.

Woody Harrelson, as the male lead, is equally great, as is - in true HBO manner - the entire cast of this play-by-play of John McCain's presidential campaign. Ed Harris is the unsung hero as a merely supporting John McCain, whose makeup is just as great as Julianne Moore's. 

The really disturbing part - if true - is the staff's decision to have Palin 'act' in her interviews and the debate, because it is easier to have her learn a couple of pages of script than make her understand the basics of the political issues. It is truely scary to think that someone this incapable got within a few electoral votes of the White House.

8/10

The Lorax

I love Dr. Seuss' books. Wholeheartedly. Most of the film versions, animated or not, I enjoyed a lot (Horton Hears a Who FTW).

Unfortunately, this one falls flat.

Considering this is intended for a very young audience, the story of big business and its exploitation of nature may not go beyond a simplistic human (in the film version) = bad, Lorax (and the trees he represents) = good.

Also, too many musical numbers for my taste.

4/10

Coraline

Coraline Jones is annoyed with her parents and their lack of attention. The both just hover over their computers writing about gardening rather than do some. So when one night she discovers a door into another world where her parents appear to be just what one would wish for, she has no quarrels about going back the next night.

Everything is different there - her mother cooks (imagine!), her father plays the piano and tends to a wonderous garden and her annoying neighbor boy can't talk. Fun!

Of course, something about all this is not right. For starters, everyone has buttons instead of eyes. Soon enough. Caroline realizes that they want her eyes as well and replace them with buttons.

Eventually, Caroline gets lost between her two worlds and must find her real parents again and escape. Interestingly weird.

Fun fact: when the false mother turns into her real self she looks just like Terri Hatcher, who voices the mothers.

4/10

The Visitor

The Visitor is the story of widowed university professor Walter, who has essentially been doing next to nothing in the past few years and just stalling. He has to appear at a conference to speak, an engagement he tries to wiggle his way out of but can't.

He travels from his Connecticut house to an apartment he has in New York just to find a couple, Tarek and Zainab, living in his place. They found it via one mysterious Ivan and had no idea they had been living there illegally.

As they are in dire need of housing, walter let's them stay and eventually befriends Tarek, who starts teaching Walter how to play the African drum. While out and about one day they have some trouble getting their drums through the subway turnstiles, Tarek gets falsely accused of dodging the fare and gets taken into custody.

It is only then that Walter realizes that the young couple are illegals and he tries to help as best he can to get Tarek legal representation and possibly getting him a staying permit. While Tarek is incarcerated and living in constant fear of deportation, Walter becomes very close with Tarek's mother Mouna.

The film shows the harshness of the system, but manages to do so without blaming the people working in it - like the prison guards really only doing their jobs, however frustrating it may be for Walter or anyone else that is desperate for some information on the whereabouts of their loved ones.

Despite the moments of hope and happiness, the story is a sad and desperate one. Richard Jenkins is brilliant and rightly earned the acclaim he received, including a nomination for Best Actor at the Academy Awards (losing to a wonderful Sean Penn in Milk). Another plus - nice shots of New York.

Recommendation.

9/10

Chernobyl Diaries

This film is crap. So much of it does not make sense.

I get why one would get a kick out of going to the site of the Chernobyl disaster. I wouldn't but I do get it. There is probably some excitement to going there illegally with a freelance tour guide called Yuri.

However, why this Yuri character would run off in the dark because people are bothered by a sound that may or may not be a baby is not as cut and dried to me. Especially, why he would speed off in some random direction is beyond me.

Even more baffling is one of the Americans going after him for no apparent reason, and unarmed.

What follows is a lot of running to and fro and getting hunted by wild dogs, that turn out to not be the actual menace hiding at the site.

No, when radioactivity comes into play, cue the mutants. Human mutants, that is. There are also the experiment-happy doctors to 'treat' them. And they wonder why the survivors of the Chernobyl disaster would be upset by the film. Seriously? You portray them as fucking mutants. Of course they are upset.

Then we never even get a good look at the mutants because everything is all dark and quickly cut and obscure.

But the most irritating thing is the ending. The military comes in and shoots one of the two survivors but takes the other one to their hospital to - wait for it - feed her to the mutants. What? You couldn't just have shot her, as well? Or offer both up as food?

Makes. No. Sense.

On the plus side, this features the cute guy from $#*! My Dad Says.

1/10 (and I'm being generous here)

Srpski film (A Serbian Film)

This is as sick as you have heard it is.

An aging porn star gets offered some serious cash to participate in an 'art film' without knowing any details beforehand. It features hardcore sex, initially, and gets worse as the filming progresses - torture, real murder, necrophelia, 'Newborn Porn' (which is as horrifying as it sounds) etc.

The reason I think this film is so hard to handle is that we all suspect than none of it is as far fetched as we would like it to be.

7/10

Salinui chueok (Memories of Murder)

This is based on an actual series of murders that took place in rural South Korea between 1986 and 1991. I don't know how much of the film corresponds with actual events. The number of victims is never mentioned (there were 10 attributed to the same killer). However, some of the details and modes of the murders were taken from the real crimes.

The film is elegantly bleak and beautifully shot with a very tense atmosphere that keeps you watching even though (if you checked, as I did) you do know that the killer was never caught (in film and in reality).

It is said to feature some political commentary on the military rule of the late 1980s that you probably only get if you are from South Korea. I don't know enough about the history of, well, most of Asia, to get it. However, this doesn't make the film any less interesting.

I really enjoyed this.

7/10

À L'Intérieur (Inside)

This is among the most out-of-proportion bloodbaths I have ever seen on film.

A very pregnant Sarah loses her husband in a head-on collission. The day before she is to deliver her baby, a strange woman (Béatrice Dalle playing a totally insane bitch) attacks her because she wants the baby.

What follows is an orgasmic outburst of violence and gallons of blood.

It's not like it is just Sarah vs. the crazy bitch. No, Sarah has alerted the cops of an intruder and they make sure "she is gone" before driving off and promising to have a patrol swing by later to check on things.

Jean-Pierre, who is scheduled to drive Sarah to the hospital next morning, comes by to check on her - he gets stabbed, chocked with a pillow and stabbed some more.

Sarah's mother comes by and gets killed by her own daughter, who simply hacks away at the first moving thing outside the bathroom she is hiding in. By this time her water has broken, but she stays rather active for some time after.

The night patrol comes by - two of the cops get suspicious and investigate further. One gets stabbed in the neck, the other has his face shot off. Cop no. 3 hears the shots, chains the prisoner in the backseat to himself, takes him with him into the house and does. Not. Call. For. Backup. Cop gets shot, prisoner takes a pair of scissors in the skull.

By this time, Sarah has a gun lying beside her on the bed and when crazy bitch comes to make out with her (just because) she does. Not. Shoot. Her. Also, she choses not to leave the house when she has the chance.

Crazy bitch gets her face burned badly thanks to the ever-helpful can of some cleaner or other and her smoking habit. It is at this point that Sarah gives herself a tracheotomy (yes, yes she does). Then cop no. 3 - who is not dead after all - starts hitting Sarah, or rather her belly for no reason. Crazy bitch - who lost her own baby in the car accident that killed Sarah's husband (and here is where it all suddenly makes perfect sense!) - kills off the cop and cuts the baby out of Sarah.

Seriously? WHAT. THE. FUCK?

2/10

The Midnight Meat Train

Photographer Leon (Bradley Cooper) is out one night to take more significant photos, because gallery owner Susan Huff (Brooke Shields) didn't like his initial batch. He encounters a threatening situation and takes pictures of a street gang, rather than helping the woman they are about to assault. But he gets some awesome pics out of it and she gets away because he does eventually alert the bad guys of the surveilance cameras. The woman is a successful model (obivously) and is never heard from again.

The police is not interested in Leon's photos (luckily, Susan Hoff is) or the fact that he saw her right before she disappeared. The model becomes one of many victims by a big ass butcher (Vinnie Jones). Leon gets obsessed with disappearing stories and starts following the butcher. We all know how that is bound to end.

Some random thoughts:

Leon lives with his girlfriend in a rather stylish, if smallish appartment. He appears to not really make any money and she is a waitress, no idea how they get by.

It is based on a Clive Barker short story (and those are mostly awesome), so it could only have ended with some creatures in the subway tunnels.

Vinnie Jones is awesome!

Bradley Cooper is not.

3/10

JCVD

I was never a Jean-Claude Van Damme fan. Actually, I was never much of an action film fan and my least favorite action film stars were always Steven Seagal and Jean-Claude Van Damme. Seagal because the couple of films I've seen sucked, Van Damme I always thought to be a guy that was beefed up because he suffered from short man syndrome.

But this, ladies and gentlemen, is genius.

Jean-Claude Van Damme stars as Jean-Claude Van Damme having a very bad day. He lost custody of his daughter, suffers from jet leg, all his bank and credit cards are maxed out, his career is stalling and the post office he walks into is being robbed. To everyone on the outside it looks like he is the robber barricading himself up with a group of hostages while the real bad guys use him as a deflection.

The film is drained of color and brilliantly hilarious with JCVD trying to save his own hide and keeping the hostages safe by building up a relationship with one of the robbers, who is a big fan (as is all of Belgium, apparently).

To add to all the weirdness, Van Damme holds a lengthy, tearful monologue about 1 hr into the film, for which he is lifted out of a scene.

Watch this!

8/10

The Cabin in the Woods

I love horror films. I very much like Richard Jenkins. I adore Bradley Whitford. I like the idea of a company pulling the strings behind the scenes to release different nightmarish scenarios on a group of unsuspecting young people. I love the poster.

The problem? I don't like this film.

Despite all the above mentioned ingredients it doesn't quite come together for me. The actual cabin-in-the-woods part of it is all very bland and I never cared for any of the people there. Not a one. I didn't care whether they lived or died and nothing that befell them was particularly scary to me.

The background part (the part with Jenkins and Whitford) was more interesting. The out-of-placeness of it was different and it is in the company environment that the film actually showed some humor. The deaths of pretty much everyone involved there was harder to take than that of any of the pretty young people.

Oh Josh Lyman Hadley! At least you went with a cocky remark on your lips. Good for you! *wipes-away-tear*

The fun part? All monsters imaginable getting unleashed and going into mayhem mode. Blood and gore and a murderous unicorn. But then there was the stupid, unimaginative, uninteresting, useless ending/explanation. The fucking Ancient Ones'?

Seriously?

3/10

Nazis at the Center of the Earth

Did you ever wonder whatever became of Dominique Swain, Lolita to Jeremy Iron's Humbert Humbert in 1997? I have an answer for you. She does films like Nazis at the Center of the Earth.

Sounds bad?

It is.

A group of very smart people (scientists!) working in Antarctica stumble upon a Nazi lair - you guessed it - under ground (not nearly at the center of the earth, but whatever). Down here, Josef Mengele is still alive (or, again) and the young scientists did not find him and his minions by accident. One of the group (played by Jake Busey) was secretly working for the Nazis all along, recruiting brilliant minds for their weird project, which requires them to skin people alive and possibly eat one or two (not sure, there was a confusing scene involving some of the works-in-progress and a young woman).

Given the involvement of Nazis old and new this would obviously be (a) a horror film and (b) in poor taste (incl. a scene in which the women scientists are going "to the showers").

Also, the film sees the return of the big bad wolf himself, Adolf Hitler (or parts of him, or whatever).

This was direct-to-video. I am not surprised.

1/10

Taken

If you want a plausible story and/or interesting dialogues, stay away from this. This is pure action.

Liam Neeson, former CIA agent, retired to spend more time with his estranged daughter. There are, of course, her jaded mother and the super-rich step father that can easily drop the dough to buy her a horse (yes, that's right, folks...a horse) for her 17th birthday. Makes it hard to compete if all you can offer is a karaoke machine.

Anyway, daughter goes to Paris (actually, all across Europe, but *ssshhhh*, don't tell daddy, because he worries too much as it is) and gets kidnapped by an Albanian group of girl trafficers on her first day there. Neeson - being former CIA - knows how to kick some serious ass and comes down on the gangsters with a vengeance - leaving a trail of dead bodies in his wake - to retrieve his darling girl.

Sadly, Neeson's immense acting talent is totally wasted here. Why he would do action film after brainless action film I do not know.

My biggest beef with the movie? Neeson goes to Paris and passes himself off as local police without speaking one single word of French. Not a one. And the best part? Nobody questions this...in a country where they eliminated all words of English origin from dictionaries and people will pretend not to speak English, even if they do.

Why anyone would need a sequel is beyond me.

1/10