Last Seen Movie - The Latest Movie You Have Seen; ratings

[gunnar]

The Boat is Full (1981) - 8/10 - During WWII, a small group of refugees plus a deserter slip over the border into Switzerland seeking asylum. However, Switzerland's policy was to return most refugees to Germany. Their 'lifeboat' was full and they did not want any more mouths to feed. The owner of a small inn tries to help the group so that they can stay in Switzerland. I thought that the movie was pretty well acted. There is an interesting mix of characters. The movie does have its faults and could have flowed a bit better, but it was still pretty effective.

The Crime of Padre Amaro (2002) - 7/10 - Padre Amaro is newly ordained as a priest and is a favorite of the bishop. He is sent to a small town in Mexico where he soon learns of the corruption and various sins of the church and other priests in the area. A young woman in the town makes advances on him, but will he be able to resist? The movie was very much like a soap opera in some ways, but it was a decent enough film. It was entertaining enough, but somewhat predictable as well.

[Big Magilla]

The Prom (Ryan Murphy, 2020) 3/10

Joyless adaptation of a rather corny Broadway musical is just as cheesy as "Mamma Mia!", except that at least had familiar songs for many of us of a certain age to relate to. Here the production numbers have neither a razzle nor a dazzle despite the big name cast giving it a brave twirl. Meryl Streep has always been known to have a musical bent which unfortunately throughout her long career Hollywood never saw fit to properly utilize. A song here and a few there in films led to her delightfully belting out the ABBA songs in Mamma Mia! although her character, as written, was not that much. Here she shows some pizzaz â la Shirley MacLaine - donning a short red wig plus a pair of legs that kick high - playing a bitchy, narcissistic, aging Broadway diva, who along with an equally bitchy and narcissistic James Corden receive news at the story's outset that their musical based on Eleanor Roosevelt has just bombed big time with critics laying the entire blame on both the egocentric stars. Wanting to quickly correct their public image both decide to back any cause out there for the sake of publicity. Joining them in this quest is a lifelong chorus girl and wannabee star (Nicole Kidman) and an actor-bartender (Andrew Rannells). The cause they pursue is of a lesbian girl in Indiana whose High School has cancelled the annual Prom because she wanted to take her girlfriend as her date. All hell breaks loose as the crazy actors from New York descend on small-town America to battle it out with a puritan teacher (Kerry Washington) who is dead-set against anybody who is gay. Notwithstanding the preachy liberal message, which here satirizes such films, the film keeps getting worse as it goes along. The "lets-put-on-a-show" plot was already a cliché when Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland tread that route back in the 1940s. Here it becomes a loud bloated mess. Streep goes into forced overdrive with her campy mannerisms, Corden's flaming gay character relies on boring stereotypes while Kidman badly fumbles up her Fosse-style solo number. Although the story champions the rights of LGBTQ teens the story kind of squanders that by having the young cast play second fiddle to the over bearing grown-ups. Skip this film.

I wouldn't say it was joyless and I wouldn't say skip it, but otherwise I pretty much agree with your assessment, although I'd give it a solid three stars which on a scale of 1-10 would probably be between 6 and 7. The first hour sails by fairly well, but the second hour drags. I see it capturing a number of Golden Globe - Comedy or Musical nods but nothing from Oscar except maybe hair and makeup and costume design.

[Reza]

Ava (Tate Taylor, 2020) 4/10

A-list talent stuck in B-movie zone done much better with Charlize Theron as the "Atomic Blonde". Although Jessica Chastain also makes a kick-ass assassin and one-woman army in this thriller which appears to be a chip off the "Jason Bourne" franchise. It's all boringly predictable, as Ava (Jessica Chastain), a former teenage delinquent and reformed alcoholic, takes orders from her mentor (John Malkovich) and trots the globe assassinating assorted undesirables for a fancy fee. At home she has a troubled relationship with a sarcastic mother (Geena Davis), an angry sister (Jess Weixler) and the latter's boyfriend (Common, who badly needs acting lessons) with whom she has a past connection and who is upto his eyeballs in debt to a woman (Joan Chen) who owns a gambling den. When a hit which was a set-up goes wrong, another assassin (Colin Farrell) who was trained by her mentor decides she is now a liability and must be terminated. There are sporadic fight sequences as she in turn battles the assassin sent to doff her, goons at the gambling den and lastly with the man who has put a hit on her. There is nothing new here and I left this film wondering where on earth was Joan Chen all these years and why would someone be stupid enough to go around with a name like Common. I mean wtf!!

La tempesta / Tempest (Alberto Lattuada, 1958) 8/10

Epic film covers Russian history by way of Alexander Pushkin's novel "The Captain's Daughter which was a romanticized account of the Rebellion against the rule of Catherine the Great (Viveca Lindfors) by Pugachev (Van Heflin), a disaffected ex-lieutenant of the Imperial Russian Army. At the center of the story is a young soldier (Geoffrey Horne), banished by the Empress to a remote outpost, who inadvertently befriends the rebel leader and falls in love with the local commander's daughter (Silvana Mangano). Superb widescreen De Laurentiis production has epic battle scenes (shot by Aldo Tonti) and outstanding costumes and set design. Horne and Mangano make a very good looking pair of lovers although the young actor is the weak link in what otherwise is a superb cast - Heflin, cast against type, is memorable as the rebel leader of the Cossacks, Lindfors is delightfully campy, Mangano with her stunning beauty and Agnes Moorehead as her tart tongued mother. A worthy film with strong direction by Lattuada.

Honest Thief (Mark Williams, 2020) 2/10

Ever since Natasha Richardson died Liam Neeson's face has an underlying sadness in all his movies. And all his movies - he churns out quite a few - seem to resemble each other with very little variation. After meeting a young woman a serial bank robber (Liam Neeson) decides to turn himself into the FBI. The two agents assigned to interview him turn crooked, steal the money and frame him for a murder. On the run with his girlfriend (Kate Walsh) he tries to prove his innocence. Neeson seems to be on auto mode making movie after movie strictly for the money and probably to keep busy. If not, then he is obviously rather stupid for failing to recognise that almost every film script he accepts have plots with ridiculous potholes and all his characters seem to have been wrung from the same cloth. Gunplay, car chases and a death or two are the order of the day which can be fun if not always so repetitious in Neeson's case. This one is pretty much the pits lacking even a feeble attempt to create any plot twist. Boring rubbish.

Helmut Newton: The Bad and the Beautiful (Gero von Boehm, 2020) 7/10

A look at the bad boy of the world of photography - the scandalous, transgressive provocateur Helmut Newton. An original who crossed all boundaries presenting women in every outrageous avatar. Many of his muses - Charlotte Rampling, Grace Jones, Hanna Schygulla, Isabella Rossellini, Claudia Schiffer - have very fond words to say about him recalling their provocative sessions in front of the camera which in today's politically correct climate would never be allowed. Critics said he demeaned women in his photographs while his subjects all say he empowered them to be dominant. An exploration of the naked female body, certainly fetishistic, as Newton creates "porno chic" out of tall amazonian figures. A fascinating look at a man who played strictly by his own rules and left behind thousands of erotic and iconic images.

[gunnar]

Sundays and Cybéle (1962) - 8/10 - Pierre was a pilot whose plane was shot down in the Indochina War. He suffers from amnesia, vertigo, and other ailments from his experiences. He spends a number of evenings in the local train station and happens to see a young girl whose father is taking her to a boarding school where he plans to abandon her. Thinking that she might be able to help him with his problems, he goes to the school and is mistaken for her father which the lonely girl does nothing to dispel. While others might look at Pierre thinking he has sinister motives, his motives are nothing of the sort. I thought that this was a good film and you get to know the two main characters fairly well. Their relationship is convincing and both actors do a nice job.

Papa's Delicate Condition - 6.5/10 - Jackie Gleason and Glynis Johns star in this adaptation of silent film star Corinne Griffith's memoir about her childhood in early 1900s Texas. Jack Griffith is a good man, but somewhat eccentric and extravagant when he has been drinking. When he spends the family saving to buy a circus, his wife leaves him to return to her father's home with the children. This isn't a bad movie and is decent enough to watch, but there isn't a lot of substance there either. The best acting job in the film was Linda Bruhl as the 6 year old Corrie Griffith.

Mahogany (1975) - 5.5/10 - Diana Ross stars as Tracy Chambers, a woman from the south side of Chicago who works as a secretary, but dreams of starting her own fashion line. She catches the eye of a fashion photographer and becomes a world famous model, though she finds that life has its drawbacks. Billy Dee Williams is a political activist in Chicago who becomes involved with Tracy, but is very focused on his political activities. I didn't really buy the relationships or the transformation into supermodel/fashion designer. A lot of things seemed kind of sketched out, but didn't seem real to me.

The Burmese Harp (1956) - 9/10 - A group of Japanese soldiers in Burma discover that the war ended several days earlier. They are taken to a camp by the Allies for processing, but one of their members goes missing after being recruited to try and convince another group of soldiers in a mountain bunker to surrender. The soldiers in the camp worry for their friend who has taken up the guise of a Buddhist monk and has been changed by his experiences. The music, cinematography and acting are all excellent and I think that it is an excellent movie as well. Apparently the director remade the film in color the 1980s, but it didn't achieve the same acclaim. I don't see any reason why the movie would have needed a remake. It works well in black and white.

Scent of a Woman (1974) - 8/10 - An army cadet is assigned to travel with and watch over a blind captain as he travels from Turin to Naples. The actors playing the captain and the cadet each did a very nice job. The film seemed to be a bit coarser than the remake, but I haven't seen that film since it was released in 1992 so it is hard to make comparisons. The original is also a very good film which I enjoyed quite a bit. After watching the film, I discovered that the actor who portrayed the cadet died in an accident about a month before the movie was released and was only 17 at the time of his death. He probably would have had a long and successful career otherwise.

[Reza]

The Prom (Ryan Murphy, 2020) 3/10

Joyless adaptation of a rather corny Broadway musical is just as cheesy as "Mamma Mia!", except that at least had familiar songs for many of us of a certain age to relate to. Here the production numbers have neither a razzle nor a dazzle despite the big name cast giving it a brave twirl. Meryl Streep has always been known to have a musical bent which unfortunately throughout her long career Hollywood never saw fit to properly utilize. A song here and a few there in films led to her delightfully belting out the ABBA songs in Mamma Mia! although her character, as written, was not that much. Here she shows some pizzaz â la Shirley MacLaine - donning a short red wig plus a pair of legs that kick high - playing a bitchy, narcissistic, aging Broadway diva, who along with an equally bitchy and narcissistic James Corden receive news at the story's outset that their musical based on Eleanor Roosevelt has just bombed big time with critics laying the entire blame on both the egocentric stars. Wanting to quickly correct their public image both decide to back any cause out there for the sake of publicity. Joining them in this quest is a lifelong chorus girl and wannabee star (Nicole Kidman) and an actor-bartender (Andrew Rannells). The cause they pursue is of a lesbian girl in Indiana whose High School has cancelled the annual Prom because she wanted to take her girlfriend as her date. All hell breaks loose as the crazy actors from New York descend on small-town America to battle it out with a puritan teacher (Kerry Washington) who is dead-set against anybody who is gay. Notwithstanding the preachy liberal message, which here satirizes such films, the film keeps getting worse as it goes along. The "lets-put-on-a-show" plot was already a cliché when Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland tread that route back in the 1940s. Here it becomes a loud bloated mess. Streep goes into forced overdrive with her campy mannerisms, Corden's flaming gay character relies on boring stereotypes while Kidman badly fumbles up her Fosse-style solo number. Although the story champions the rights of LGBTQ teens the story kind of squanders that by having the young cast play second fiddle to the over bearing grown-ups. Skip this film.

Ammonite (Francis Lee, 2020) 8/10

The cold and dramatic seaside setting of Lyme Regis was first brought memorably to the screen in the adaptation of John Fowles "The French Lieutenant's Woman". This film is also about a scandalous love affair set in another century and like Lee's previous film, "God's Only Country", it is an elegantly paced poetic mood piece which creates quiet sparks. The story of Mary Anning (Kate Winslet), a brusque and guarded 19th-Century fossil collector, who lives with her old mother (Gemma Jones) making important discoveries on the Devon coast but for which men take all the credit. To make ends meet she sells fossils to rich tourists. A paleontologist arrives wishing to learn from her and she makes an acquaintance with his sad and timid wife Charlotte (Saoirse Ronan) who is later left in her care. Their friendship deepens after the woman's husband leaves as they spend time together on the beach hunting for fossils. In reality the two formed a deep platonic friendship but here Lee gives their relationship an artistic tweak having the two gradually fall into each other's arms which leads to a couple of fairly graphic sex scenes brimming with passion. In the midst of their story we get to glimpse other characters - a local doctor (Fiona Shaw), with whom Mary appears to have shared a history which may have ended badly, and Mary's mother who has her own sad crosses to bear. A lot of the film moves without dialogue with just the sound of the wind and the crashing waves as a backdrop. This slow-burn love story avoids romantic gloss and concentrates instead on how quiet passion transforms both women. Mary becomes less guarded and opens up while Charlotte becomes more confident. Stark somber film is shot with an exquisite attention to detail and is brought to life by the wonderful performances of both Winslet and Ronan who share great chemistry on screen.

The Undoing (Susanne Bier, 2020) 6/10

Old fashioned whodunnit, once the staple of the big screen during the 1980s often starring two major stars embroiled in a murder-mystery ("Jagged Edge", "Suspect", "Against All Odds", "The Big Easy", "The Morning After"), now goes the limited series route on tv. At six hours this is quite a stretch but manages to sustain suspense throughout. The lives of a wealthy and happily married couple in Manhattan - a clinical therapist (Nicole Kidman) and an oncologist (Hugh Grant) - goes for a twirl when the battered dead body of a woman is discovered in an art studio. She had briefly been on a committee at a prestigious school and showed an odd interest in the therapist, who was also attending the meeting - both women's sons are students at the school. When the oncologist suddenly vanishes the police discover that the doctor had been fired from his job at a hospital three months before and he had also been having an affair with the murdered woman. Baffled by all these revelations about her husband, she and her son (Noah Jupe) escape the intense publicity of the high profile murder case and retreat to their beach front home where she runs into her husband who has been hiding there. Although he claims his innocence she calls the cops on him and he is arrested. At the sensational trial that ensues certain other suspects pop up as well - the dead woman's husband who has a feeble alibi, the therapist herself as she was captured by a camera walking near the place where the murder took place, her son who had witnessed his father with his mistress and suspected their affair, and her father (Donald Sutherland) who never liked his son-in-law. Notwithstanding the superb cast - Grant, Jupe and Sutherland are especially memorable - the top production values and each episode ending with a cliffhanger, the film tends to bog down during the trial scenes. Pity this wasn't made as a two-hour film instead.

[gunnar]

Tunes of Glory (1960) - 8/10 - Alec Guinness stars as Major Jock Sinclair, the temporary commander of a Scottish Highland Regiment. He is a coarse sort of officer and finds himself in conflict when Colonel Barrow (John Mills) takes over and tries to reinstill discipline. Guinness and Mills are both in top form and the other actors do a nice job in this battle of wills. Susannah York made her film debut as Sinclair's daughter who is having a relationship with one of the pipers.

Obsession (1976) - 6/10 - Cliff Robertson stars as a businessman whose wife and daughter are killed after they are kidnapped and the rescue attempt goes wrong. While in Italy 16 years later, he sees a young woman who looks amazingly like his late wife and he gets to know her and then courts her. The movie moved at way too slow a pace much of the time with the music enhancing it. I guessed a number of the plot twists early on as well. Genevieve Bujold stars as the wife and lookalike.

The Power and the Prize (1956) - 7.5/10 - Robert Taylor plays a business executive named Cliff Barton who is sent to England to negotiate with a company about mining rights and his boss tells him to use shady practices to get a much better deal. While there, he falls in love with a refugee (Elizabeth Müller) working to get jobs for other refugees from central Europe. He falls in love even though he is engaged to the niece of his boss (Burl Ives). Charles Coburn also has a small, but important role as the owner of the company. Cedric Hardwicke and Mary Astor also have small roles. The movie doesn't have a great rating on IMDB, but I thought it was a good drama/romance and I enjoyed it.

The Policeman (1971) - 8.5/10 - Azulai is a patrolman in Jaffa who is so inept that he has been on the job for 20 years and hasn't received a promotion. He is very kindly, but naive, and his superiors are trying to see that his contract isn't renewed, but the criminals want to keep him on the job. I thought it was a very funny movie. Azulai is a likable guy, but definitely exasperates some of the other officers. Shaike Ophir does a great job as Azulai.

[Reza]

Mank (David Fincher, 2020) 9/10

This has to be one of the best looking films of the year. In fact any year. Shot in impeccable black and white the film has outstanding production values evoking the golden age of Hollywood in all it's decadent glory - the stars, their homes, the vicious politics behind the scenes. The film delves into the machinations that went into creating the screenplay for Orson Welles' classic "Citizen Kane". Credit for the screenplay eventually went to both Herman J. Mankiewicz (Gary Oldman) and to Welles (Tom Burke), who both shared the only Oscar the film received for Original Screenplay. However behind the scenes Welles offered Mank $10,000 in return for sole credit which the screenwriter refused. And this was after an initial contract between them where Mank was to be simply a writer "for hire" and was not to get credit for writing the screenplay. The story he wrote was a thinly disguised biography of newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst (Charles Dance) which grew from the writer's close association with the tycoon and his mistress, the Hollywood star Marion Davies (Amanda Seyfried), and of his time spent with them at the Hearst castle San Simeon. Mank, famous for "fixing" screenplays of other writers, was a great wit but a voracious alcoholic. Oldman superbly captures this flawed character. Often labeled "the court jester" due to his pathetic but witty drunken rants while disrupting Hollywood parties he still manages to maintain relationships, some loving but many exasperating, with people close to and around him - his wife (Tuppence Middleton), his secretary (Lily Collins), with MGM studio head Louis B. Mayer (Arliss Howard), the wunderkind MGM producer Irving Thalberg (Ferdinand Kingsley) and especially Marion Davies with whom he formed a special bond. While Oldman gives a solid and sympathetic performance, the film's surprise package is Seyfried. Not unlike Marion Davies herself - a sweet young starlet - she shows remarkable depth in her brief scenes portraying the oft-ridiculed comedienne and star, bringing out her soft yet steely reserve and genuine love for Hearst. Sharply written story is not for everyone - you need a crash course in Hollywood lore to truly enjoy this film. It also helps if you have actually seen "Citizen Kane", a film almost everyone has heard of yet not many have seen. However, you cannot deny this film's outstanding look and style - the editing, the expressionistic cinematography, the costumes and the production design, all of which seem to be from a film of that era. Fincher captures it all perfectly - the glamour, the sleaze, the corruption and glory - and also pays a fitting posthumous tribute to the genius of Herman J. Mankiewicz.

Le placard / The Closet (Francis Veber, 2001) 4/10

Silly film about a man (Daniel Auteuil) who comes out of the closet even though he was never in one. Sad and lonely - his wife has left him, his son ignores him and everyone at his work place finds him a bore and uptight and hates him. His neighbour comes up with an idea to save his job. He is told to pretend he is gay which he does after fake photos of him in a gay bar are circulated at the office. Fearing bad publicity the Company President (Jean Rochefort) decides to keep him on. Soon his life changes - the office brute (Gerard Depardieu) befriends him causing complications for him with his wife, his son finds him cool, his immediate boss (Michele Laroqe) ends up shagging him and his nasty wife gets her comeuppance. Auteuil breezes through the film with a stricken look across his face while Depardieu gets sidelined. Despite challenging sterotypes the jokes are all pretty lame and the film is instantly forgettable.

[gunnar]

Banjo on My Knee (1936) - 6.5/10 - Ernie and Pearl are getting married in a small Mississippi River community. Ernie has a temper and runs away on his wedding night when he thinks he's killed a man. Pearl waits a long time, but when Ernie finally returns, he plans to leave again almost right away so Pearl runs off to New Orleans to get away from him. I thought that Barbara Stanwyck did a decent job as Pearl and Walter Brennan was good as Ernie's eccentric father, Newt. Ernie (Joel McCrea) was pretty unlikeable though and that detracted from the story. I couldn't really see why Pearl would stay with him. There was enough in here so that it wasn't a horrible movie, but it wasn't that great either.

It Happens Every Spring (1949) - 7/10 - Ray Milland stars as a college professor who discovers that an accident has caused chemicals to mix in such a way that the resulting liquid causes objects to avoid wood. He decides to use this to become a star baseball pitcher, leaving behind his old job and girlfriend (Jean Peters) for an 'emergency leave of absence'. The movie is enjoyable enough, though pretty formulaic and not really anything special.

Johnny Come Lately (1943) - 8/10 - James Cagney stars as a drifter named Tom Richards who visits the town of Plattsville in 1906. The town is run by the crooked W.M.Dougherty (Edward McNamara), though a small newspaper run by elderly resident Vinnie McLeod (Grace George) stands up to the corruption as best they can, though they are in financial difficulty. Richards takes over running the paper and the fight with Daugherty. I thought that this movie was very entertaining with plenty of humor. It's a fairly simple story and runs along familiar lines, but is done well and the performances are pretty good. Marjorie Main has a nice turn as saloon owner, 'Gashouse' Mary, and Hattie McDaniel is pretty funny as Aida, Vinnie's live-in maid.

[Reza]

The Fabulous Lives of Bollywood Wives (Uttam Domale, 2020) 6/10

Cringy, bitchy, vulgar, superficial but very funny look into the lives of four Bollywood wannabee divas married to four has-been actors. The only one of the four to have had a fairly thriving Bollywood career as an actress is Neelam Kothari (wife of Samir Soni) which ended over 20 years ago. The other three are Bhavna Panday (wife of Chunkey Panday), Seema Khan (wife of Sohail Khan) and Maheep Kapoor (wife of Sanjay Kapoor). All four women are not only nurturing mothers but have independant and fairly thriving business careers so they are not total write-offs. Their friendship, lasting 25 years, is brought to the tv screen on this reality show courtesy of producer Karan Johar who ensures he not only gets ample screentime himself but tries to out vamp all four divas - all close friends of his. The glue that silently holds these four screeching women together is the biggest Bollywood diva, Gauri Khan, wife of superstar Shah Rukh Khan. The star couple make an appearance during the last episode which revolves around a Bollywood bash thrown by Gauri for her four friends to celebrate their long friendship. All these women seemed to have modeled their lives off the pages of a Jackie Collins potboiler. It has to be one of the worst shows on the telly but like a bad habit very hard to resist. Campy fun.

His House (Remi Weekes, 2020) 8/10

A Sudanese couple escape their war-torn country, reach England and take asylum. Assigned a house to live in they discover the place is haunted by a demon who wants retribution for the death of their daughter who drowned in the sea when their boat capsized during their escape. Is the couple going mad? Do they actually see and hear the strange being living inside the walls of the house? Harrowing story delves deep into the psyche of refugees who have witnessed unbearable horrors enroute to a life of safety. The ones who make it out alive carry horrific memories and scars with them for the rest of their lives. An eerie ghost story - haunted house mystery is used as a springboard to look into the tortured souls of surviving refugees who leave behind a traumatic past full of blood and death. The film's superb sound design helps to create the nightmares buried deep inside the brain of a person who has gone through hell to reach salvation and safety.

Paris By Night (David Hare, 1988) 7/10

Playwright David Hare's work has often been concerned with modern Britain and with society's apparent failure to live up to the idealism of the post-war period. Here he launches an acid assault on the morals of Thatcherism. His central character, in this dark twisted tale, is a Conservative Member of the European Parliament (Charlotte Rampling), a cold and ambitious woman who is disgusted by her weak alcoholic husband (Michael Gambon), also a senior politician, and is neglectful of her young son. For some time she has been receiving annonymous phone calls with a man's voice hinting at some past indiscretion. She is also being blackmailed by a former business partner who was swindled in a business deal by her husband. While on a trip to Paris to attend a conference she has an affair with a young man (Iain Glen) and has a chance encounter with the blackmailer who begs her for money. She tips him over into the Seine and he drowns. Since there are no witnesses she carries on without remourse until she is told by the dead man's daughter that he was penniless and only needed money to help her. Rampling is riveting as she moves through the film with the stealth of a deadly panther as Roger Pratt's evocative cinematography and camera angles bathe her in shadows and sudden light. The eerie noir-like atmosphere of the plot conjures up a nighmarish world of deception, sexual manipulation and extortion.

[gunnar]

Red Dwarf: The Promised Land (2020) - 7/10 - The crew of the Red Dwarf encounters a fleet of ships filled with the cat people descended from Lister's cat. While this wasn't the best of Red Dwarf, it was comfortable and fun. I prefer the episodic format of the tv series, but this worked. It's good to see the crew back in action and I definitely hope that they keep creating more Red Dwarf for many years to come.

Wild in the Streets (1968) - 5/10 - A popular rock star starts a movement to lower the vote to 14 and get the power in the hands of the youth. He seems to have tons of followers who cause problems for the establishment through protest and violence. Liberal use of LSD helps bring about changes that he wants and gains him power in Washington, D.C.. The movie is kind of ridiculous and I didn't really enjoy it very much, except for the soundtrack, which I thought was good. The movie fits in okay with the counterculture in the 1960s I guess. A young Richard Pryor is the drummer in the band.

[Reza]

Tenet (Christopher Nolan, 2020) 2/10

A CIA agent (John David Washington), his sidekick (Robert Pattinson), an arms dealer (Dimple Kapadia), a Russian oligarch (Kenneth Nranagh) and his estranged wife (Elizabeth Debecki) all come together in a convoluted plot that allows them all to move backwards in time. In fact the plot is so dense - nonsense about plutonium bombs that will be detonated by the crazed heavy causing WWIII - that it comes in the way of all the spectacularly staged action set-pieces which all fall flat. This science fiction action thriller is totally devoid of actual thrills as one's brain is trying desperately to understand what is happening on screen so each scene sort of whizzes by with one's brain in a fog. Also not helping matters is the terribly deadpan Washington who is in almost every scene of the film but has zero star charisma. Pattinson, Debecki and Kapadia have great presence playing interesting characters while Branagh is saddled with a role that requires the obligatory "foreign" accent to differentiate him from the good guys. Nolan's regular mascot, Sir Michael Caine, appears in a brief cameo with a witty quip about the demerits of a Brooks Brothers suit. As if the whole enterprise was not boring enough Nolan stretches it to an excessively hideous 2.5 hours with bad sound to boot - all the actors' dialogue sounds strangely muffled causing one to strain one's ears to hear what they are saying. Thanks to the Pandemic the film bombed big time and should be a lesson to film makers to go on thinking big if they want but at least make sense of what they present on the screen. The film's only saving grace is the spectacular cinematography by Hoyte van Hoytema.

Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (Jason Woliner, 2020) 1/10

Stupid beyond belief. Every joke in this sequel falls flat. A classic case of trying to wring laughs out of a premise that was never funny in the first place. Sacha Boren Cohen should from here henceforth stick strictly to dramas only. His Borat shtick is a pathetic bore.

The Pledge (Sean Penn, 2001) 7/10

Penn's film is a remake of the classic 1958 German film "Es geschah am hellichten Tag", and based on the book by Friedrich Dürrenmatt. A lonely retired cop (Jack Nicholson) becomes obsessed with a murder case after making a pledge to the battered young girl's mother (Patricia Clarkson) that he would find the killer. The police - the Chief (Sam Shepard) and another cop (Aaron Eckhart) - close the case after a mentally challenged supect (Benicio Del Toro) is coerced into a confession after which he shoots himself. Discovering a pattern of similar murders he purchases a gas station on the route of the suspected serial killer's beat and befriends a chip-toothed waitress (Robin Wright) and her daughter who eventually move in with him after she is attacked by her ex-husband. He uses the young child as bait to trap the killer. An extraordinary cast work together to bring this chilling story to life with many of the actors agreeing to appear in small roles as a favour to both Penn and Nicholson. Each gets a vivid moment or two - Harry Dean Stanton as the owner of a gas station, Mickey Rourke as a grieving father whose child has been missing for 3 years, Helen Mirren as a psychiatrist, Vanessa Redgrave as the grandmother of the most recent victim and Lois Smith as an invalid who makes little wooden porcupines. Dark, and disturbing film is brightly lit by cinematographer Chris Menges capturing the icy wilderness of Nevada (although the film was shot in Canada) and the poverty-stricken small towns the cop moves through. Penn carefully weaves in themes of mental impairment and fundamentalist religion into the plot with a deeply felt performance at the center by Nicholson.

Agatha and the Midnight Murders (Joe Stephenson, 2020) 5/10

Fed up to death over her creation of Hercule Poirot and how the character has taken over her life, Agatha Christie (Helen Baxendale) has written a manuscript for a new book in which she kills off the Belgian detective. With bombs falling over London she finds shelter in the basement of a posh hotel with her friend and chauffeur and an assortment of other people including a Japanese fan who wishes to buy the book's rights, his shrewd partner, their bodyguard, a PC, a rich Lord, his glamorous companion, an Italian gangster and two mysterious women. As in all of Christie's books there is soon a murder, and another and then followed by yet one more. Trapped in the basement the killer is one of them and before the story ends there are five dead bodies, a twist ending and Christie not only figuring out the killer but also coming to an appreciation of Poirot. Now that all of Christie's books have been filmed, some many times over, this latest series of tv films has created a spinoff with the author herself front and center of the murder mysteries.

[Reza]

Let Him Go (Thomas Bezucha, 2020) 3/10

What starts out suspiciously like a Hallmark tv-movie weepie suddenly turns into a Western thriller with gothic overtones. Bringing gravitas to the proceedings, but barely raising it above a notch or two from being a mere revenge potboiler, is the lackadaisical charm of both the leads. A retired sheriff (Kevin Costner) and his plucky wife (Diane Lane) deal with tragedy when their son dies in a freak accident. Some years later his widow remarries a stranger and disappears with their grandson. Having witnessed the man mistreating his wife and her son - their grandson - they end up on a road trip to see what became of them. The plot shifts totally into bizzare mode from here onwards as they discover their former daughter-in-law and grandson are living on a ranch in the back of beyond ruled by a Ma Barker-like matriarch (Lesley Manville) who controls the lives of her brood of nitwit sons. Trying to persuade the young woman to come with them backfires and the old lady and her sons invade their motel, assault them and chop off the sheriff's hand. The plot then further shifts into a ridiculously implausable revenge saga which results in more mayhem, a number of dead bodies and a burning ranch. Absolutely hard to believe that a former sheriff could be so inept with a gun or his fists. Both Costner and Lane should have avoided this genre movie like the plague. Manville is not only completely over-the-top but also seems to be having a great time playing with an American accent and brandishing a hatchet and a shotgun. Extremely disappointing film.

The Charge of the Light Brigade (Tony Richardson, 1968) 7/10

Richardson's film is a clear exercise in how NOT to wage war. In fact it's a clear warning against military interventions in other lands - true of most wars but very relevant in 1968 with the Vietnam War then raging and the great folly it turned out to be for the United States. This particular failed military action - hardly resembling the poem written by the then Poet Laureate, Lord Alfred Tennyson - involved the British light cavalry led by the overbearing Lord Cardigan (Trevor Howard) against Russian forces during the Battle of Balaclava in 1854 during the Crimean War. The Commander of the British Forces, Lord Raglan (Sir John Gielgud), had intended to use the Light Brigade in preventing the Russians from capturing Turkish guns but due to miscommunication in the chain of command the Light Brigade was instead sent on a frontal assault against a different artillery battery, one well-prepared with excellent defensive fire. The assault charge ended with very high British casualties and no decisive gains. This was the first major Battle that Britain was involved in since the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 and in the interim the Army was riddled with an inept chain of command, the arrogance of aristocratic officers bound by bureaucracy, interpersonal wars within the unit, including unfaithful wives and an intense bitter rivalry between Lord Cardigan and Captain Nolan (David Hemmings), who led the charge. Making matters worse was the spread of cholera and the intense heat and flies which started killing off soldiers even before the battle began. Fascinating, if flawed film, was cut by the studio without Richardson's permission. There are still some wonderful moments scattered throughout along with an exemplary cast, including Vanessa Redgrave as an adulterous wife and Jill Bennett as a soldier's wife, infatuated with Lord Cardigan, who accompanies the Army and wrote a journal of her experiences during the Crimean War. The film includes jingoistic animated images by Richard Williams, based on the 19th century graphic style of Punch magazine, to explain the political events surrounding the battle. The film has a memorable score by Richard Addison and superb widescreen cinematography by David Watkin.

[gunnar]

Movies watched from the last 10 days

Pathfinder (1987) - 8/10 - The movie takes place around the year 1000 AD in the northern part of what is now Norway. Aigin is a teenage boy of the Sami people who returns home to find that a group of foreign soldiers/raiders have killed his family. He escapes to another Sami village, but is pursued, thus endangering them as well. I thought that it was a pretty good film. The enemies are pretty one dimensional, but the movie was entertaining.

Blue Skies (1946) - 6.5/10 - Fred Astaire is the narrator and a dancer. Bing Crosby is a man who opens and then sells nightclubs. Each of them falls in love with a showgirl (Joan Caulfield). The movie features a lot of Irving Berlin songs. I found it to be pretty slow through the first half, but I thought it got a little better after that. Overall, it's not a great film, but is watchable.

Birth of the Blues (1941) - 7.5/10 - Bing Crosby plays a talented clarinet player with a flare for Dixieland music. He puts together a band, but they initially have trouble gaining acceptance for their music in New Orleans around the turn of the century. I thought it was a fun movie, certainly moreso than Blue Skies, and the music was good, too.

To the Shores of Tripoli (1942) - 7/10 - A wealthy playboy joins the Marines, but is definitely lacking in discipline. His sergeant is an old friend of his father. He also tries to start a romance with a navy nurse who outranks him. The movie came out a few months after Pearl Harbor, though it was in postproduction when the attack happened. Despite the movie's flaws, I enjoyed it. John Payne, Maureen O'Hara and Randolph Scott star. This was also Harry Morgan's film debut.

The Thief (1952) - 8/10 - Ray Milland stars in this noir film as a nuclear physicist who works for the Atomic Energy Commission, but has also been selling secrets to a foreign power. A traffic accident with one of the couriers leads to his being investigated by FBI agents, leading to a climactic scene at the Empire State Building. I thought that this film was very good. There is no dialog in the film, but it does contain ambient sounds as well as a nice soundtrack.

The Well (1951) - 7.5/10 - A five year old black girl falls down a well and goes missing. People are searching for her and a white man is suspected of having kidnapped her, leading to escalating racial tension and violence as rumors spread. Richard Rober did a nice job as the sheriff who tries to keep things under control. Harry Morgan plays the stranger who is accused of taking the girl. I thought it was a solid film.

The Dark Mirror (1946) - 8/10 - A doctor is found murdered in his apartment and there are several eyewitnesses who identify the young woman that he is with. However, it turns out that she has an identical twin and one of them has a perfect alibi, but they won't tell which one. A psychiatrist becomes involving in analyzing the two women in part to see if he can determine which one could be the killer. I thought that this was a very entertaining film. Olivia de Havilland does a nice job as the twins and we get good performances from Lew Ayres as the psychiatrist and Thomas Mitchell as the police lieutenant in charge of the case.

I Love You Rosa (1972) - 7/10 - Late in the 18th Century, a young Jewish woman is widowed. An old Jewish law dictated that her husband's brother should marry the widow, but Nessim is a young boy of 11 or 12. Nissim is in love with Rosa, but she sees him as a son and helps raise him as such. I thought that it started pretty slow, but got better as it went along. It wasn't great, but there was enough in there to like.

[Reza]

Hillbilly Elegy (Ron Howard, 2020) 4/10

A true story about overcoming poverty and a relentless cycle of domestic violence and still managing to achieve the American Dream. Based on the bestselling memoir by J. D. Vance which not only charts the life of an Appalachian family as seen through the eyes of the youngest family member but is also an intricate reflection on white working-class Americans. A young boy manages to rise above the issues holding him back and through sheer hard work and determination becomes a Yale Law School graduate. He grows up with a mother (Amy Adams) who is literally batshit crazy, who alternates by being a loving parent and bouts of manic physical and verbal abuse while under the influence of drugs. His nurturing feisty grandmother (Glenn Close) offers tough love and encouragement despite her own pathetic life with an abusive husband (Bo Hopkins). Everyone around him has had a seemingly nasty life - kids in the neighborhood are messed up, on drugs with no positive role models around. His traumatic childhood is viewed via flashbacks as he, during the present, is on the verge of getting an important internship when he is called back home due to his mother overdosing on heroin. Living now with an emotionally supportive girlfriend (Frieda Pinto) his trip to sort out his mother's life back home is a nightmare as her condition makes him recall his traumatic childhood spent with her and his older sister. All the scenes with Adams and Close are full of shrill high drama and boringly repetitive. Close tries to disappear into the role of the old grandmother - large eye glasses on a face devoid of makeup, under a crop of short curly hair and a shuffling gait - and while she's good it's really not that great a performance being touted in some circles as one that could finally net the actress her long awaited Oscar. There is just too much acting going on by both Adams and Close. The film's best moments all belong to the adult J. D. with Gabriel Basso superb in the part. Contrived, self conscious film doesn't dig deep enough to explain why these characters had such lousy lives and because of it one fails to find any of them sympathetic.

Conduct Unbecoming (Michael Anderson, 1975) 8/10

"Conduct Unbecoming" was a phrase used as a charge in courts martial of the British Armed Forces in the 18th and early 19th centuries "for behaving in a scandalous, infamous manner, such as is unbecoming the character of an officer and a gentleman". A courtroom drama presented as a whodunnit and set in a British officer's outpost mess in the North West Frontier Province of India during the Victorian era. The plot revolves around a scandalous mystery which is exposed in a kangaroo court presided over by the senior officers in order to preserve the honour of the regiment. A newly arrived junior officer (James Faulkner) is accused of assaulting the pretty, flirtatious widow (Susannah York) of the regiment's revered hero. A court is quickly set up by the senior officers and they select another junior officer (Michael York) to ‘'defend'' the accused. When the investigation reveals certain nasty truths there is strong pressure to quickly cover up and convict the accused in order to uphold the honour of the regiment at all costs even if it means condemning the wrong person. The riveting plot is a harsh indictment of the British army, circa the 1890s. The film is mostly set bound with a few outdoor shots filmed on location in Pakistan (the opening parade sequence is shot in what is now the F11 sector in Islamabad, with the Margalla Hills in the background, and some scenes are shot near Kohat in the NWFP). However, due to sharp editing the story moves at a quick pace and belies it's stage origins. An extraordinary cast was selected to play the various characters - Trevor Howard as the Colonel of the Regiment, Helen Cherry as his wife, Richard Attenborough and Christopher Plummer as Majors and close friends of the deceased hero, Stacy Keach as a Captain and Persis Khambatta as an important witness - and each is given a memorably dramatic scene to perform in the confines of the melodramatic and very suspenseful plot. The film is exquisitely designed with superb sets and costumes. Susannah York is memorable as the woman who holds the key to the mystery.

Trauma (Marc Evans, 2004) 1/10

Visually stylish but hokey and confusing psychological thriller. A former art student (Colin Firth), who suffered a childhood trauma, survives a deadly car crash that kills his wife (Naomie Harris). The guilt-ridden man starts life afresh after moving into a creepy remodelled house which was a mental institution, finds a job and befriends a neighbour (Mena Suvari). When he starts seeing visions of his dead wife, a spiritualist (Brenda Fricker) informs him that his wife may still be alive. He also becomes a suspect in the murder of a pop star which the police are investigating. During the questioning he starts to lose track of reality and goes mad. The director goes overboard using distorted camera angles, fractured editing and overlapping flasbacks to show the man's confused state which soon becomes tiresome as the plot keeps getting more and far fetched. Overwrought nonsense has to be the lowest point in Firth's career.

Unhinged (Derrick Borte, 2020) 6/10

Are you having a bad day? Well it's not nice to behave like "Angry Joe" (Russell Crowe) who started his day by bludgeoning to death his ex-wife and her husband and setting their home on fire. And he continues after a run-in with a single Mom (Caren Pistorius), with various problems of her own (running late while dropping her son at school and losing her job), on a freeway and starts relentlessly chasing her because she refused to apologise after angrily honking at him while he remained parked at a green light. This B-film holds the distinction of being the first film to get a wide cinematic release during the pandemic and which tries to speak to the masses about anger, fear and helplessness felt by everyone while confined by the deadly Covid-19 virus. The screenplay goes for the jugular as the man goes on a savage rampage stalking, terrorizing and killing everyone dear to her. An obese Crowe, with a straggly beard, makes one hell of a psycho maybe representing the kind of disenfranchised population that ushered in the Trump Administration. Unsettling, heavy-handed film leaves a bitter taste in the mouth yet keeps you on the edge of your seat watching the screen as the mayhem on the freeway gets more and more outrageous leading to the expected catharsis involving a pair of scissors imbedded deep inside an eye socket.

No Reservations (Scott Hicks, 2007) 6/10

Overworked control-freak chef (Catherine Zeta-Jones), single by choice, works her kitchen staff like a warden in a concentration camp hating any and all criticism from restaurant patrons. Into her ordered life arrives her deceased sister's young daughter (Abigail Breslin), who has to move in with her, and a brashly dramatic co-chef (Aaron Eckhart) hired by the owner (Patricia Clarkson) of the restaurant to work alongside her. Chaos ensues in both her home and work life. This is a remake of the German/Italian film "Mostly Martha" and sticks mostly to the original's premise with mouth-watering shots of exotic food creations. It also pushes all the predictable sentimental buttons - you just know the child is going to thaw out her aunt which will ease her into a relationship with Eckhart. It's nice to see lovely Zeta-Jones in the era before she chose to carve up her face like one of her lobster concoctions in the kitchen here and her brittle character is a good antidote to the more mauldin situations in the screenplay. Formulaic film gets by on oodles of charm and the underplayed chemistry between the two stars.

Then She Found Me (Helen Hunt, 2007) 5/10

A Rom-Com chick flick low on romance or drama or comedy yet is a pleasant enough watch thanks to a good cast. A school teacher (Helen Hunt) is going through a low period in her life. She is 39, the clock is ticking and she is desperate to get pregnant but her best friend and husband (Matthew Broderick) decides to dump her and walks out on their one-year old marriage. Then her mother dies, a divorced englishman (Colin Firth), with two kids, shows interest in her and out of the blue she is confronted by an eccentric self obsessed talk show host (Bette Midler) who claims she is her biological mother. Making matters further worse is the return of her husband who decides he made a mistake and wants her back. Hunt, making her directorial debut (she also co-wrote the screenplay adapted from a novel), looks harried throughout - it's her character arc of course, but also seems she has taken on too many roles on a film that is really not worthy of her. Firth does a "Hugh Grant" shtick while Broderick is absolutely wasted in an underwritten role. Only Midler manages to override the bumps in the script, is funny and comes through as a real person.

[Reza]

The Crown - Season 4 (2020) 9/10

As expected this season's main thrust is the two important women who made a mark during the era depicted here. Princess Diana (Emma Corrin in a lovely performance) is perfectly captured in all her initial gauche frustration which gradually changes to the woman and mother who became known as the "Peoples' Princess", and the steely Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (Gillian Anderson) who is presented here as grating opportunistic, phoney, unpleasant, bullying, arrogant and the ruthless "Iron Lady" which she eventually became known as. They both get special focus although the episodes are all built around the Queen (Olivia Colman) who stands front and center as we get a closer look at her sympathetic relationships with her family with a special emphasis on her four children who are revealed to be flawed human beings just like everyone. The series is best during the quiet reflective moments between the Queen and the quizzical Prince Phillip (Tobias Menzies) as they sit and talk about personal family issues with her genuinely worried and he allowing her to be that way although showing a strong sense of quiet support for her. The screenplay has an interesting way of connecting the life dots of a character and letting it flow into that of another character. The dots connect showing everyone basically has the same issues more or less but each reacts differently. There are moments new to me - a pre-wedding lunch meeting between Diana and Camilla (Emerald Fennell) and the sad from-the-heart reaction of Princess Margaret who implores the Royal family not to let Charles marry Diana since he is still in love with another woman and it would ruin the young woman's life. Conflicted, needy and sad Charles (Josh O'Connor), desperately in need of validation, vascilates between wife and mistress, while his feisty sister Anne (Erin Doherty) has personal issues of her own and has to contend with unflattering comparisons to sunny Diana. The most flamboyant member of the family, Princess Margaret (Helena Bonham Carter), gets a whole episode to herself as shocking secrets about the family are discovered involving the nieces of the Queen Mother (Marion Bailey). The last episode, "War", concludes with battles lost - a royal marriage in jeopardy and the ouster of the Prime Minister. Olivia Colman is a marvelous presence throughout - showing cool reserve and compassion (the last scene with Thatcher is memorable) along with bouts of flashing anger (a classic moment where she gives a lashing to her ineffectual son) and carries the entire show on her slender shoulders. The series is rightly conceived as a soap opera perfectly in tune with the many dramas going on in the lives of the Royal family. Both Colman and Anderson deserve to win Emmy awards next year.

Greenland (Ric Roman Waugh, 2020) 6/10

Doomsday disaster scenario, like so many films before it, manages to maintain suspense from start to finish. Sure its hokey but you quickly buy into the plot and go on the rollercoaster ride with the (stock) characters. An engineer (Gerard Butler), his estranged wife (Morena Baccarin) and their diabetic young son find themselves listed for a special flight to safety when all hell breaks loose. Parts of a comet are crashing down on earth with the first decimating Central Florida followed soon by more comets crashing onto other continents. You know from the get-go the family is not going to get onto that plane. In fact they get separated - first husband from his wife and kid and then the kid is kidnapped from the wife by a weird couple in a car who first offer to help. There is also the elderly character - the grandfather (Scott Glenn who looks like he hasn't bathed in three years) who will decide to stay on and refuse to accompany his family while they try to make a mad dash to Canada from where the last few planes are flying off to Greenland. The government has created bunkers there to survive the final onslaught of the big comet that threatens extinction greater than the one that took out the dinosaurs. The prepostrous plot - hey it COULD happen for real - is like one of those brain slamming amusement park rides. You just got to believe the nonsense and go with the flow. If Gerard Butler can, so can we, as we ride along on his massive shoulders. Butler has now taken on the mantle of Jean Claude Van Damme and Steven Seagal, stars of numerous B-films of the past, and keeps churning out similar junk which have a certain guilty pleasure about them. He is appropriately wooden throughout while everyone around him manages to scream with a certain degree of conviction as the screenplay puts in front of them one pothole of danger after another. Sometimes its fun to wade through such escapist films - especially during this era of Covid - as it clears one's brain for more serious shit at the movies.

Romeo and Juliet (Renato Castellani, 1954) 7/10

Extremely rare film version of Shakepeare's tragedy. It was partially shot on location in Italy and won the Golden Lion at the Venice film festival. This version has all but disappeared, overshadowed by the 1936 MGM version with Leslie Howard and Norma Shearer and the 1968 Franco Zeffirelli version with Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey. While the leads in the former were far too old, they were age-perfect in the latter. Here both Laurence Harvey and newcomer Susan Shentall are age-wise in between the actors in the other two films. The film has been shot in stunning colour by Robert Krasker but the screenplay takes liberties with the Bard reducing the roles of a number of the important supporting characters to mere cameos - Mercutio, Tyblat and Romeo's parents. Despite this the film makes an interesting addition to the various versions with strong Italian atmosphere courtesy of Castellano. Harvey plays Romeo as an aloof young man desperately in love but who finds his life crashing down after he kills Tybalt in revenge for the death of his friend Mercutio. All his scenes opposite Susan Shentall are superbly played although it is Shakepeare's romantic lines that help both actors to so easily achieve the passion they find themselves entwined within. It was Shentall's only film as she married soon after the film came out. Bill Travers (Benvolio), Flora Robson (the Nurse), Sebastian Cabot (Capulet) and Mervyn Johns (the Friar) are all very good, as is John Gielgud as the Chorus.

My Salinger Year (Philippe Falardeau, 2020) 4/10

A college graduate and aspiring writer (Margaret Qualley) gets a job with a literary agent (Sigourney Weaver) whose major client is J. D. Salinger. Rather derivative film spends too much time playing musical chairs with the two young men in her life. Just like her boring and stifling job the film also has the same stale whiff. Qualley is appealing in an antiquated way - her teeth reminded me of Anne Hathaway - and the film is like a pale shadow of "The Devil Wears Prada". It's a pity the story is about her instead of her brittle boss played with vinegary charm and elegance by the great Sigourney Weaver. After spending most of her time reading and responding to Salinger's fan mail he finally makes an appearance at the very end only we never get to see him. The film is based on Joanna Rakoff's 2014 memoir.

The Last Legion (Doug Lefler, 2007) 5/10

Old fashioned sword and sandal adventure film brought to the screen courtesy of Dino de Laurentiis and Harvey Weinstein. Roman Commander Aurelius (Colin Firth) comes to the aid of the last surviving blood relative of Julius Caesar - a 12-year old boy - and along with his band of men, a priest (Ben Kingsley) and a warrior (Aishwarya Rai) from Kerala go on the run to escape from the traitorous Romans who have joined the savage Goths. Their only hope for survival is to reach Brittania and persuade a Roman Legion stationed there to come to the aid of the Boy Emperor. Derivative action-packed film is not without interest as the hybrid cast make an all-out effort to provide entertainment. One of Bollywood star Rai's numerous forays into Hollywood, here playing a kick-ass warrior with most of the action sequences centered around her character.

Genova (Michael Winterbottom, 2008) 5/10

After his wife is killed in a tragic car crash, a University professor (Colin Firth) moves to Genova, Italy with his two daughters where he takes up a teaching position. The move is to bring about a change in their lives after the accident due to which his younger daughter carries the guilt of having caused the crash. Moody film has an underlying feeling of eerie dread. On the surface it is like a travelogue with the camera capturing the stunning vistas of the coastal Italian city but the camera movements provide a feeling of despair and the city does not provide a feeling of comfort. While the rebelious older daughter assimilates into a routine - boyfriend, sex and pot - the younger one has nightmares, wets her bed at night and talks to her mother (Hope Davis), who periodically visits her. Their dad keeps busy with his job and finds interest in two women - a student in his class and a former classmate (Catherine Keener) from America who now lives in Genova. A story about a family trying to figure out how to move on while handling grief. The film borders on the morose leading up to a second harrowing moment which seems to snap them all out of their sad reverie and on to a more positive phase of existence. Firth is good and provides a stark portrayal of a father who, while extremely congenial, lives in constant dread of something happening to his children. Genova and its narrow bewildering streets here almost takes on the menacing tone of Venice as in Nicolas Roeg's "Don't Look Now" with the appearance of a ghost which could be the little girl's imagination. Unfortunately there is no payoff to the strange supernatural feeling that has lingered throughout the film.

8 femmes / 8 Women (François Ozon, 2002) 9/10

A secluded mansion in the dead of winter with no way out. Phone lines cut and a corpse in the master bedroom with a knife in its back. Which of the 8 women inside the house murdered the family patriarch? Ozon's delightfully witty and wicked whodunnit is an hommage to the mysteries of Agatha Christie by way of Alfred Hitchcock, George Cukor, Douglas Sirk and Vincente Minnelli - a murder-mystery set during the 1950s with an all-female cast that is also a musical. The suspects, who all start off as innocence personified, gradually reveal themselves to have a motive to doff-off the victim. Ozon has assembled the crème de la crème of French cinema to play the suspects. Leading the roll call of stars is Catherine Deneuve as the widow of the victim. Did she kill him? Or was it either of her two daughters (Virginie Ledoyen, Ludvine Sagnier), her uptight spinster sister (Isabelle Huppert), her wheel-chair bound mother (Danielle Darrieux), the victim's despised sister (Fanny Ardant), the cook (Firmine Richard) or the newly appointed sexy chambermaid (Emmanuelle Béart) - there is a marvelous little hommage to the late actress Romy Schneider seen in a photograph as the maid's former employer. Each actress gets to perform unexpected musical numbers as secrets get revealed exposing adultery, child abuse, incest, lesbian-love, embezzelment, backmail, murder and suicide. Frothy over-the-top film is carefully designed to invoke the colour palette of Douglas Sirk's melodramas with lovely costumes that recall Dior and Edith Head, a score that has elements of Bernard Herrmann and Elmer Bernstein and the joy of singing found in the best of Minnelli's musicals. Gorgeous, campy film is great fun and was nominated for 12 César awards across the board with Huppert, Ardant, Darrieux and Sagnier singled out with nominations for their delightful performances.