“Call the florist” The 2007 film lineup has finally begun for me. Sure I have seen many movies thus far, but they have all been holdovers from last year. Joe Carnahan’s Smokin’ Aces is definitely a fantastic opener and a hopeful sign of things to come. A mixture of high octane action with some very surprising, emotional moments and true dramatic worth, this all-star cast has some fun and allows the audience to just ride the wave with them. Something like this has a big tendency to taper off, yet…
Read MoreMonth: January 2007
REVIEW: 满城尽带黄金甲 [Curse of the Golden Flower] [2006]
“Family dysfunction” My introduction to writer/director Yimou Zhang was his first foray into epic territory Hero. The film took the beauty of Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and infused it with inventive and powerful storytelling a la Kurosawa’s Rashômon. As a result, the film was an amazing feat of technical and emotional brilliance. I still haven’t seen his follow-up, House of Flying Daggers, as it seemed a more cartoony look into the genre, with visual style pushed to the forefront while story is pushed back. With his newest film,…
Read MoreTop 25 Films of 2006
(short and sweet and to the point; culled from watching 88 releases. constantly updated as i catch up to those i missed. click poster for review if applicable) #25: Déjà Vu directed by Tony Scott. #24: Lady in the Water directed byM. Night Shyamalan #23: Casino Royale directed by Martin Campbell. #22: Stranger Than Fiction directed by Marc Forster #21: The Science of Sleep directed by Michel Gondry #20: Half Nelson directed by Ryan Fleck #19: Clerks 2 directed by Kevin Smith #18: The Last King of Scotland directed by…
Read MoreREVIEW: The Quiet [2005]
“Can you ever forgive me?” The premise for The Quiet always had me intrigued—a deaf mute girl living with a family hiding some dark secrets. Seeing an opportunity to tell this secret, to someone that can’t speak it to anyone if she even read her lips enough to comprehend it, the daughter relays that she will be killing her sexually abusive father. Just by watching the trailers you can see that there is something hidden within the mute girl herself, and you want to find out how the events play…
Read MoreREVIEW: El laberinto del fauno [Pan’s Labyrinth] [2006]
“My mother told me to be wary of fauns” Finally Buffalo is able to see the phenomenon El laberinto del fauno [Pan’s Labyrinth] for itself. All the hype and the acclaim have definitely raised expectations for this film by visionary Guillermo del Toro. For myself, I really just wanted to see a del Toro film outside of the Hollywood realm. Sure I liked both Blade II and Hellboy, but it’s the other Spanish language films, Cronos and The Devil’s Backbone, that have been intriguing me for years. After watching his…
Read MoreREVIEW: The Last King of Scotland [2006]
“Do you have monkeys in Scotland?” What happens when a precocious young doctor gets a feeling of claustrophobia at home and decides to travel the world to bring help while having fun in the process? Kevin Macdonald’s The Last King of Scotland tries to show us the answers in the midst of Idi Amin’s rise to power in Uganda. While not a biopic, the film is also not a narrative fiction of any real weight. Instead this is a tale of a monster through the eyes of someone whose innocence…
Read MoreREVIEW: El Aura [2005]
“Fantasies becoming reality” Argentinean director Fabián Bielinsky tragically passed away last June. Upon his death, he had completed only two films, 2000’s Nueve Reinas and this year’s El Aura. I have not yet seen his first film, however, everything I have heard has been rave reviews—it even got the American remake treatment in 2004’s Criminal. It is a horrible shame that he was not given the chance to evolve as a filmmaker because his second and final film is fantastic. El Aura is an expertly written crime thriller, well acted…
Read MoreREVIEW: Volver [2006]
“A vision of forgiveness beyond the grave” I now can say I have seen a Pedro Almodóvar film in the theatre. Sure I saw five of the eight films included in ¡Viva Pedro!, but those were dvd projections, while Volver was the real thing (as evidenced by it catching fire causing the six or so of us watching to wait a bit before seeing the final twenty minutes). I will admit, while enjoying Pedro’s lighter, earlier fare, it is the dramatic and dark films I really have an affinity for.…
Read MoreREVIEW: Alpha Dog [2007]
“No more music videos, that’s what I think” Alpha Dog is based on the real life incident perpetrated by Jesse James Hollywood, (surprisingly his actual given name), and his band of 20-something friends getting over their heads when their drug business hits a snag. Hollywood had a debt owed by another young adult and when a riff begins between them, he took the debtor’s brother hostage until the money was paid in full. Hollywood stands trial right now for the planning the murder of Nick Markowitz, a kid who was…
Read MoreREVIEW: The Pursuit of Happyness [2006]
“He must have had on some really nice pants” The genre of uplifting, against all odds type stories is probably the second most common behind the against all odds sports tale. Every once in awhile one will come out that just blows the other away, however, they are mostly all just carbon copies of each other. These types of films have a built in formula of acts to keep the audience emotionally attached. You see the happiness taken away, you see the trials and tribulations and failures along the way,…
Read MoreTop Ten Films of 2006
The day has come where all that movie watching during the year, all that money given to Hollywood players who need none of it, and all those buttered popcorn induced coronaries boil down to one person’s ego-trip of compiling a list of the best of the best. I now join the list of film-snobs everywhere with my top ten films of 2006. If you have been reading my reviews you will know that I don’t care too much about how the film was made, but instead how much I enjoyed…
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