Film Reviews -- January 2004 Reviews by members of the AWC Film Group of films slated to open
in Hamburg in January 2004
(Becky T) Opening January 1, 2004 “You never loved any man enough to have his child. You just loved yourself so much to have your own child.” These angry words come from a teenager rebelling against parental authority. Thirteen-year-old Siri learns that she is a clone of her mother Iris, made in her mother’s image so that the world would not be deprived of this person, a famous pianist, after her foreseeable early death from multiple sclerosis. Supposedly, MS is not an inherited disease, and Siri would be spared. Franka Potente, currently Germany’s only international star, plays both roles excellently. She is Siri, who flees her mother’s influence to live alone in a fishing village on Vancouver Island. She is also Iris, the haughty musical genius who manipulates the gene scientist, saying, “If it is possible to do it, then do it.” Based on the book Blueprint-Blaupause by Charlotte Kerner, the story is more interested in the inner turmoil of the world’s first cloned person than in her physical characteristics, which would have put her on par with Dolly, the cloned sheep. It’s always fun to see films which have received grants from the Film Förderung Hamburg because the gift requires that some part must be made here. In this case we see the Hamburg Musikhalle where Iris gives an enthusiastically applauded concert. Hilmir Snaer Gudnason, Iceland’s shooting star, is Greg, who loves Siri for herself; Dane Ulrich Thomsen plays the scientist. Katja Studt is the young housekeeper who forswears her own life for this family, something I haven’t seen since there was a Negro mammy in Gone with the Wind. The director is Rolf Schübel who gave us Gloomy Sunday.
(Becky T) Opening January 1, 2004 The Women’s Institute meets regularly to hear speakers drone on about broccoli and rugs. It competes in baking goods for the fair. It produces a yearly calendar, which is always boring until one year a renegade member decides to produce a pin-up-girl calendar and the “girls” are members of the club. The AWC Hambug is there in every frame: the husband who feels neglected; the members who wish to block the project; the woman to gains self-confidence and leaves her husband; the member with the drive and the unique idea; another member who reassess her values, etc. Actress Julie Walters came to Hamburg for the opening of this British film, accompanied by two of the original calendar girls (this being a true story). They said that so far they have earned 600,000 British pounds on this project. I highly recommend this. Second Opinion by Jenny M This movie is based on a true story which is given the Hollywood treatment for box office appeal. Funny as it is, a home-grown, made for TV movie might have stayed nearer to the original story and retained its integrity. The Women’s Institute is a British organisation which allows its members to enjoy a night out while listening to hopefully informative lectures and doing good deeds for the community. Our branch of the WI is in the Yorkshire Dales, which is a very pretty part of the country. For this year’s fundraiser a small group of strong-minded women decide that instead of making the usual calendar with the usual rural scenes and ancient churches, they’d prefer one in which they are seen doing such typical WI chores as making jam and baking cakes. The difference is that they’ll pose nude for it in the hopes of selling more cookies. And, being well-brought up ladies, they all a) want to raise a lot of money for a cause dear to their hearts and b) make sure that all their vital statistics are hidden behind such props as pieces of knitting and iced buns with cherries on top. Now where would you find a photographer willing to take on a group of middle-aged nudies for such an undertaking? Director Cole has made a very funny film which is a little sentimental but none the worse for that. You’ll know the two leading ladies: Helen Mirren, who plays Chris and Julie Walters, who plays her lifelong friend Annie. Ms. Walters and two of the original calendar girls came to the film’s premiere at this year’s Hamburg Filmfest. Frühling im Herbst
(Autumn Spring) (Becky T) Opening January 1, 2004 People really never change, especially not with age, according to Vladimír Michálek’s Czech film. Fanda and Eda are two elderly actors who love life. For fun they pretend to be rich opera singers looking for a castle-like residence or train conductors letting girls ride for a kiss. While they are out on their larks, Fanda’s wife Emilie keeps a stern ship and countenance, counting the money for their daily needs and future funerals and encouraging their worthless son in his effort to move them into a senior home so that he will no longer have to live in his own apartment with his former and present wives and various children. Differences reach a peak when Fanda changes his life to suit Emilie. He gives up smoking, arguing, clowning, and visiting old friends with Eda (now seriously ill in the hospital). He is as dead on his feet as the comatose neighbor downstairs. Emilie realizes that she has killed that which she most loved about him – his sparkling optimism and personality – and resolves, instead, to change herself. This is your last chance to see Vlastimil Brodský who plays Fanda as he committed suicide at age 81, right after the film, but he lived long enough to experience the success with recognition from the Czech Republic, as well as festivals in Cleveland, St. Louis, and Aspen, etc.
(Osanna V) Opening January 1, 2004 20th Century Fox brings us a comedy directed by the Farrelly brothers, Peter and Bobby, starring Matt Damon, Greg Kinnear, Eva Mendes, Seymour Cassel and Cher, and with a delightful appearance by Meryl Streep. Bob (Damon) and Walt (Kinnear) Tenor are conjoined twins living at Martha’s Vineyard. They share a liver, which makes separation a tricky matter – while Bob stands to be fine, Walt’s chances are fifty/fifty. As a result, they have chosen to stay together, and the creative manners in which they have organised their life are both entertaining and efficient. They own a popular and lively restaurant where they take great pride in the speed with which they can put together a burger; they’ve worked out all kinds of tricks to use their physical condition to their advantage in a hockey match or a fight; they’ve even worked it out so that romantic liaisons are not out of the question. All in all, they seem to do very well together, despite their quite individual characters and approaches to life. Even Walt’s stage performances, which always bring on panic attacks for Bob, represent a challenge that they overcome successfully. However, while Bob is quite content to stay in the east and dream of the charming internet relationship he has built up over the years with a young lady in California, Walt is having dreams of his own. He wants the two brothers to go to Hollywood where he hopes to get into some serious acting! The idea of a
comedy about conjoined twins might seem a bit questionable, and yet
the humour is primarily based on the ingenuous ways that the brothers
find to deal with the challenges they face. Both Matt Damon and Greg
Kinnear give great performances, and the solid feeling of mutual support
between the two overrides any difficulties that arise. The Farrelly
brothers have managed to make an unusual but inspiring, feel-good
film. Wolfzeit (Le
Temps du Loup, Time of the Wolf) (Adele R) Opening January 1, 2004 The film opens with a French family arriving at their vacation house in a modern car and clothes, so we can assume it is happening in the present. In fact I spent the next hour and a quarter making assumptions because nothing was ever explained. Apparently, for no reason at all, there appears to be a total breakdown of society at least in the countryside. There are hints that things are better in the cities. But here, in any case, there is no food, no water and people, as you would expect, have been reduced to behaving cruelly to one another. Isabelle Huppert, as Anne, manages to be teary and suitably distraught for most of her appearance on the screen, which is thankfully not a lot. The film is directed by Michael Haneke who brought us that really weird exposé of perversity called The Piano Teacher, also starring Mme. Huppert. Your intrepid film reviewer sat through all 113 minutes of this very, very slow and boring film so that you won’t have to. Second Opinion by Becky T I agree with Adele that this film will have limited fans and each will favor something different. I decided that this is a Diary of Anne Frank recap. A group of people are huddled in close quarters (an abandoned train station), united by a mutual tragedy, unable to rise above petty selfishness, and hoping for the best. A young girl has tender feelings about a boy. For lack of even one sensible person to talk to, including her mother, she begins to write about her situation in letters to her dead father. In the end there is a spark of human kindness as a young man saves the girl’s brother and the awaited train thunders down the track. The outcome is open to your imagination. Will the train stop and if so will it bring relief or new horrors? Zwei Kleine
Helden (Two Little Heroes) (Pat R) Opening January 1, 2004 Ten year old Marcello (Ariel Petsonk) lives in a small Swedish village with his parents, Guiseppe and Gunilla. Guiseppe, like many Italian fathers, dreams that his son will be a famous soccer player. Gunilla, who was an au pair as a young girl in Italy and is now a real Italophile, longs that her son will be a priest. But poor Marcello is terrible in soccer and can't even sing in tune in the church choir. He prays to Jesus for help, who personally gives Marcello the following advice: think about what you want from life, independently from what your parents want. Marcello then dreams of becoming a pilot – only he is afraid of heights. The next day in school, a new girl Fatima (Zamand Hägg) arrives, a gift from heaven. However, Fatima has her own problems; her Muslim family will not allow her to play soccer or be friendly with boys, i.e., Marcello. Through the strength of their friendship they both learn to confront their problems and fears and reach out for their dreams. This is a very simple but inspiring story for all
young children. Well acted and very believable, except for the tongue-in-cheek
personal appearance of Jesus, who had way too much makeup to look
real. This film won the children's film award in Lubeck in 2002, the
CIIFEJ award at the International Children's Festival in Montreal,
and the CHARLY award for children's films in Stuttgart in 2003. (Kirsten G) Opening January 8, 2004 The ancient and
modern worlds clash spectacularly in The Last Samurai, the
latest film from writer/director Edward Zwick (Shakespeare
in Love, Glory). Tom Cruise plays Captain Nathan
Algren, a conflicted Civil War veteran who drowns his sorrows in whiskey.
He agrees to travel to Japan to train the Emperor’s army in
a fight against the last of the country’s Samurai warriors,
led by Katsumoto (Ken Watanabe). After being forced
to lead the troops into battle before they are ready, Algren is captured
and nearly killed by the Samurai. He is taken back to their village
as a prisoner and, as the Samurai wait out the winter and prepare
for a final assault, Algren begins to better understand his enemy
– and himself.
(Becky T) Opening January 8, 2004 Bill Murray pulls out all the comedy stops as middle-aged Bob Harris who is making a Japanese whiskey ad. His long absences from home have estranged him from his wife and children. Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson) is a young, newly married woman whose photographer husband has no time for her. They all live in the luxurious Park Hyatt Hotel, which could be anywhere in the world, where the same people run into each other as if they were on board a ship. Director Sofia Coppola (The Virgin Suicides) says that in her experience “a personal crisis can be exacerbated by being in a foreign place…try to figure out your life in the midst of that.” Coppola, who also wrote the script, filmed on location and “wanted to convey what I love about Tokyo.” Perhaps I’m over sensitive to racial slurs, but what is loving about mocking showers that are too short, the Japanese language which says in 30 words what English says in three, permanently smiling “handlers", a shrill and kitschy talk show master, and short stubby legs in a swimming pool. In spite of this personal negative impression, the film is worth seeing mostly for new-face-on-the block Scarlett Johansson in a main role after The Horse Whisperer and The Man Who Wasn’t There.
(Adele R) Opening January 8, 2004 Written and directed by Douglas McGrath based on the novel by Charles Dickens, who fashioned novels of impeccable social concerns and allowed purity of heart and shining innocence to triumph over evil every time. But however certain you are of the outcome, the complicated machinations of the plot, the last-minute saves, and the boisterous, fast-paced script deliver an engrossing experience. As does the splendid cast, many of whom are Shakespearean actors who have no problem speaking the somewhat stilted Elizabethan English as if it were perfectly natural, and in all respects are superbly suited to their parts. Nathan Lane, droll, witty and as flamboyant as one could wish, plays the narrator and theatrical producer Vincent Crummles (with Dame Edna Everage as his wife). Romola Garai is Kate, Nicholas’s beautiful sister, the embodiment of innocence, and Anne Hathaway is Madeline Bray, Nicholas’s one true love, who has been through hell and is longing to be saved. But it is the leading players who make the film sparkle and the eternal conflict of good and evil come alive. Christopher Plummer, as Ralph Nickleby, the wealthy uncle, exudes a quiet, rational aura of evil which is chilling, and Jim Broadbent (Wackford Squeers) is jovial and hearty one minute and choleric the next, brutal to the poor boys in his charge. Jamie Bell as Smike, the crippled boy, inexplicably deserted by the benefactor who placed him in the school, leaving him to be exploited as a slave by Squeers, is desperate and suffering. Only Charlie Hunnam as blond, handsome Nicholas Nickleby is disappointing. His mastery of the challenging language is mediocre at best, and he is unable to bring any charisma to the somewhat thankless role of protector and avenger of the unfortunate boys, his sister, and Smike. Nicholas, his mother and sister have been left penniless after the death of the father, who lost his wealth in speculative ventures inspired by the success of his unscrupulous brother, Ralph. When the family journey to London to seek refuge with Uncle Ralph, they are treated with disdain and quickly dealt with. The women are to live and work at a dressmaker’s establishment in London, and Nicholas is sent to be a teacher at a boys’ boarding school run by Mr. Squeers and his sadistic wife (Juliet Stevenson) in Devonshire. Eventually Nicholas, horrified by the cruelty visited on the helpless boys, escapes with Smike, after administering a beating to Squeers. The adventures of Nicholas and Smike include a stint in the theater with Mr. Crummles and last-minute escapes from numerous attempts by the evil uncle to eliminate one or both of them. Nicholas’ adventures are compounded by a nefarious lecher who, encouraged by Uncle Ralph, tries to seduce Kate, and then marry Anne. Complicating the plot are the intricate web of family and other relationships which often left my head spinning. Of course, Good triumphs over Evil in the end, but it’s the suspense of getting there that is the fun. (Adele R) Opening January 15, 2004 Directed by James Ivory, starring Kate Hudson, Naomi Watts, and adapted from the book by Diane Johnson. This Merchant-Ivory film based on the clever, funny book by the same name, is a delightful, amusing exploration of the “misadventures” of Americans in France. It is particularly interesting for many of us with its portrait of the pitfalls inherent in marriages which bridge two cultures. Isabel (Kate Hudson, charming and funny) arrives for a Paris sojourn just in time to experience the breakup of her sister’s marriage to a sullen French painter, the son of a snotty bourgeois family. Roxie, extremely pregnant with her second child and completely devastated by her husband’s sudden departure to another woman, has become somewhat Frenchified over the years of her marriage. Isabel, on the other hand, is very American, but she does undergo a ravishing, if superficial, transformation into ultra French chic. In this film, clothes and accessories, especially an Hermes handbag, play a starring role. She is seduced by Uncle Edgar (Thierry Lhermitte) an irresistible, superbly suave, French lover; a vain, talk-show headliner whose character is rescued by Lhermitte’s self-depreciatingly wry grin. Glenn Close as Olivia Pace, an aging ex-pat who hires Isabel as a temporary assistant, also understands how to wrest laughs while being insufferably self-aware. The story is light, as it must be, but the undercurrents of the French vs. American cultural references and mores hit home for someone who once had very bourgeois German in-laws. In the film, the formidable French mother-in-law is perfectly embodied by Leslie Caron, and Sam Waterson and Stockard Channing are wonderfully American in their brief appearances as Isabel’s and Roxie’s parents. I was not alone
in my enjoyment of this movie, still playing to packed houses in New
York after two months this fall, despite critical reviews. The
New York Times, for instance, described it as “weak tea”
saying that “the sparkle and speed of the book” is missing
in the film. I don’t agree. Don's Plum (Becky T) Opening January 15, 2004 People might rush to see a film with Leonardo DiCaprio and Tobey McGuire which was filmed in 1995, finished in 2000, and finally released in 2004 under the condition that it “not be distributed in the U.S. and Canada.” That certainly smells of scandal. Save your strength. It is easy to understand why di Caprio and McGuire took producers Polo Pictures Entertainment to court to prevent the film’s release. Perhaps the Europeans picked it up because of its similarity to Danish Dogma films: handheld camera, black and white, improvisations, etc. Don’s Plum is a diner in the U.S. where four young men meet every Saturday night, each bringing a more or less enthusiastic date. They smoke, eat, drink, and talk about sex: straight, gay, masturbated, their parents’, with vegetables, with drugs, with each other, and as the means to an end. They say “bro” a lot and agree that life is fine as long as, “I have my dope and my dildo.” The one star is dedicated to collectors of Tobey or Leonardo movies. Osama (Mary W) Opening January 15, 2004 When the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan, they decreed that females were forbidden to leave their homes unless accompanied by a male relative. So what happens to a widow, her mother and daughter when their husbands and sons are killed in combat? Siddiq Barmak (director, screenwriter), who was born in Afghanistan in 1962, read about such women in the newspaper while exiled in Pakistan during the Taliban regime. Based on the article, Barmak wrote a script and with the help of Iranian Mohsen Makhmalbaf, who directed Kandahar, they found local residents of Kabul to play the parts. Marina Golbahari, who plays the twelve-year-old daughter, was begging on the streets of Kabul when Barmak saw her and was impressed with her tragic eyes. She did not even know what film was and had only seen a television once when begging in a cafe, but she played her part instinctively well. She was paid cash, but also given tea, oil, sugar and a house for her family of thirteen. None of the actors had any previous experience, but Barmak explained they drew upon their own past experiences under the Taliban. The script depicted situations and almost all of the dialogue was improvised by the players. The result of Barmak's vision is a truly heartrending
drama. Under the Taliban, a widow loses her job in the local hospital.
She can no longer find a man to walk her to patients in their homes,
so based on the advice of her own mother she cuts her daughter's hair
and dresses her as a boy so that "he" can now accompany
her on the streets. When her last patient dies, she can no longer
find work. She sends her daughter to work as an assistant to a friend
of her deceased husband who sells watery milk. While working one day,
a Taliban man who has been frequenting the shop takes her away. She
is placed in a Koran school with all the other village boys and when
her femininity is challenged after the mullah calls her a nymph, another
village boy who knows her secret names her Osama and declares that
she is indeed a boy. A fight ensues and Osama is punished by being
hung suspended in a well. Her high-pitched wails ring throughout the
school. After constant harassments, her secret is finally revealed
and she is arrested and brought before a Sharia court. She watches
fearfully as a foreign reporter is put to death for videotaping women
fully veiled during a protest march. Then a western female doctor
is executed for treating the ill in a hospital. What will become of
her for merely trying to feed her family? Is there no end to Osama's
misery? (Shelly S) Opening January 22, 2004 Here a film is being made about the Armenian massacre in 1915 in Turkey. An art historian named is brought on as a consultant and her family story is woven into the plot. This is a very educational movie by Atom Egoyan about the Armenian genocide. There are wonderfully portrayed stories within stories and how life can be so interconnected. Second Opinion by Nancy T What is interesting is the exploration of what is truth, i.e., depending on whom you ask. Also, when information is presented next to a known act, it can also become accepted as truth. I learned some history and the film is visually beautiful and entertaining? The Dreamers (Die Träumer) (Adele R) Opening January 22, 2004 Directed by Bernardo Bertolucci, starring Michael Pitt, Eva Green, and Louis Garrel, and adapted from the book by Gilbert Adair. Let’s get something out of the way immediately: this film contains full frontal nudity, male and female, and lots of it. And sex; explicit sex. It’s also about 20 minutes too long. If all that doesn’t put you off, there’s a lot to recommend about The Dreamers. First of all, it is French to the core and takes place in the Quartier Latin of Paris, mostly in a large, bourgeois intellectual’s apartment, looking as if it has been in the family for generations (the father, played by Robin Renucci, is a poet and philosopher). Two of the stars are astonishingly beautiful -- Eva Green as Isabelle and Louis Garrel as Theo. (The third, Michael Pitt, who plays Matthew looks to me like a Leonardo di Caprio with extra pounds and pouting lips). Add to the mix: Paris in the summer of 1968 during the riots -- a fascinating, pivotal moment in history. At the same time, the three young people are caught up in the French passion for cinema, fanned in the mid-60’s by Henri Langlois at his Cinémathèque Francais where, night after night, Parisians lost themselves in great films -- oldies, silent films and the Nouvelle Vague. The sophisticated French twins, Isabelle and Theo, pick up the shy American, Matthew, at the Cinémathèque as the first of the ‘68 student riots explodes, ignited when the Minister of Culture, André Malraux (to drop the name of a towering French intellectual), fires M. Langlois. None of the three under-20’s are caught up in the passion of the revolution taking place; rather they’re deeply and dangerously submerged in the unreal world of films. When the parents of the twins take off for a few weeks at the seaside, the three young people take over the apartment, substituting the world outside for a reality of their own. Movie quizzes lead to games of sex and fantasy, pushing the barriers of bourgeois morality, playing with love and death, and all the while they act oblivious to the riots bursting beneath their windows. Bertolucci, who gave us the startlingly sexual masterpiece Last Tango in Paris, directs his young, unself-conscious actors with a fine hand and underscores the dangers inherent in teenage fantasies fired with sexual experimentation. The photography is lush and the young people gorgeous to look at. But, despite the sometimes shocking sex scenes, the film is not particularly erotic, nor is it, in the end, deeply moving. Nonetheless, it held me a willing captive throughout. Second
opinion by Jenny M You’ll be tempted to see this movie if you saw The Last Emperor and remember that its director Bernardo Bertolucci received nine Oscars for it. I’m sorry to tell you that you’ll be disappointed if you do because The Dreamers is more like Bertolucci’s other best known movie, the controversial Last Tango in Paris. This could so easily have been a good movie because it’s set in interesting times: in Paris, against the backdrop of the student riots of 1968; but instead it’s cliché-ridden and over-long. Matthew (Michael Pitt) is an American student spending a year in France. He spends most of his time in the cinema and is befriended by Isabelle (Eva Green) and Theo (Louis Garrel, who was born to play JFK Jr. in a made-for-TV movie). You know immediately that Isabelle and Theo are a dangerous couple who will lure the innocent American abroad into their sexually depraved ways. And they do. Anna Chancellor and Robin Renucci play the parents who conveniently leave their apartment for a month so that the ménage à trois can commence their antics. Yawn yawn, you’ve seen it all before, though probably not in such sexually explicit detail. The flat, by the way, is a simile for the young people’s decline. It’s glamorous and wealthy and soon reduced to a neglected, stinking mess, just as its occupants, with all the advantages in the world, choose to decline into a state of depravity. Bertolucci must hate the bourgeoisie. The dialogue in this movie is pretentious, which it should be when spoiled, well-to-do students discuss world affairs, but pretentiousness can often be silly and you cannot warm to these three airing their views, which is usually when they’re all in the bath together. Isabelle and Theo are dangerous in another way too, but what they do is predictable and, beautifully made as it is, this movie cannot be redeemed by its thrilling ending.
The Last Train (El Ùltimo Tren) (Shelly S) Opening January 22, 2004 A beautiful nineteenth century locomotive from Uruguay is purchased by a Hollywood studio. This news sets off a group of veteran members of the Friends of the Rail Association who come together to devise a plan to save their train from being sold to the U.S. On the night before the train is to leave the country, three men, the Professor (Hector Alterio), Pepe (Federico Luppi), and the Secretary (Pepe Soriano), and a small boy, Jimmy (Balaram Dinard), steal it. The relationship between these three old men is quite extraordinary since you have the feeling they have known each other forever. As the Secretary sinks further into Alzheimer's, the two other men realize that they have nothing to lose and that this would be their last great adventure. As this national heritage train travels through this beautiful and vast landscape, it attracts the attention of the media and the support of people wishing to save it. This movie gives you the feeling: risk all for what you believe in, up to a point.
(Jenny M) Opening January 22, 2004 You’ll wish you had a euro for every pane of glass smashed in this movie. Director John Woo cut his teeth on Bruce Lee movies in Hong Kong, but his reputation for action-packed movies has developed considerably since those early days. His car chases and gun battles are often described as “operatic,” though tedious and overdone are more apt adjectives. The script is based on a short story written in 1953 by Philip K. Dick, a science fiction writer interested in the way that the misuse of technology can create havoc. Plenty of havoc is certainly created in this movie. Our hero is Michael Jennings (Ben Affleck) a brilliant “reverse engineer” who can disassemble and reassemble high tech equipment at will. Such a talent is both well paid and well sought after, as you’d imagine, but it comes at a price. Michael must have his memory removed after each job so that he can’t pass on his knowledge to rival companies. He’s a greedy person too and accepts a job offered by his old school-friend-made-good, Jimmy Rethrick (Aaron Eckhart), whereby he’ll lose three years of his life in return for an enormous sum of money. During these three years he falls in love with Rachel (Uma Thurman), a biologist working for the same corporation. Miss Thurman should be ashamed of herself for (a) playing such a stereotyped role and (b) allowing herself to be filmed with such a dreadful haircut. When the job is over and Michael has had a “memory wipe,” he doesn’t remember his love affair with Rachel. Nevertheless she remains loyal, helping him escape from Rethrick’s evil company and right his evil deeds. She also survives a long, noisy and presumably operatic motor bike chase and more gun battles than you could shake a stick at. Fellow reviewer Kirsten said that this movie could
have been funny if it had been tongue in cheek, but it isn’t;
it’s slick and silly instead.
(Mary W) Opening January 29, 2004 Made as a documentary of
life in, around, and under the sea, this combination of music and
film is so much more than just a narrative scientific look at plants
and animals of the oceans. A mere ninety minutes taken from thousands
of hours highlight the triumphs and tragedies of sea life around the
world. Killer whales teach their young to hunt seals, and as the innocent
seals sun and take their first swim, hungry killer whales storm the
beach, tossing their unlucky prey far out into the ocean. Deep under
the sea, what appear to be colorful sea flowers reach out and swallow
dainty spotted fish. Back on the beach, hundreds of agile crabs calypso
in time with the gentle waves. During the film there is little explanation
as to where or what you are seeing, but with such beauty and drama
unfolding, less is more! Enjoy the vacation!
(Becky T) Opening January 29, 2004 Two couples stop at a lonely gas station the night before Halloween, 1977. One of the young men is researching Dr. Satan, a sadist whose corpse disappeared after his execution. They fail to notice that a senseless murder has just occurred; the corpse has been quickly shoved aside. Their next stop in the dark rain is the house of Captain Spaulding, a murderous clown and his family of misfits: Otis the killer machine, Mother Firefly the nymphomaniac, Baby, Grampa Hugo, and Tiny. There the trip ends and the horror begins with every kind of torture, thwarted escapes, obscenities, crude language, and sexism imaginable. The director/writer,
Rob Zombie, is the leader of the rock band White
Zombie. He has created music for The Crow, Mission Impossible:
2, and Howard Stern’s Private Parts, and designed
the horror attraction for Universal Studio’s amusement park.
Universal and MGM Studios originally agreed to this film and both
retracted support during its making. Some horror films appeal to the
mind, building up to a logical release of tension, for example The
Shining or The Ring. Others are humorous, even silly,
such as Scary Movie. House of 1000 Corpses is horrifying
for the sake of plain, mean pain, perhaps on par with a Chuckie
movie, and I left feeling sick at myself for watching it and also
afraid that any psychopath who saw it with me might now feel empowered
to do some copycat killing. On the other hand, perhaps these films
fulfill a sick person’s needs so that he will go home in peace,
much like pornography supposedly prevents the rape of innocents. That
said I’ll dutifully listen to any fans of fantasy films or hard
rock who wish to explain to me the merits of this film.
(Kirsten G) Opening January 29, 2004 In an interesting twist on thriller-horror films, Underworld reinvents the Romeo and Juliet story with vampires and lycans (werewolves) filling the roles of the Capulets and Montagues. Selene (Kate Beckinsale) is a top Death Dealer, a group of vampire warriors charged with hunting the lycans to extinction. But when she stumbles on a lycan plot to kidnap a human medical student (Scott Speedman) – and, in trying to protect him, fails to keep him from being bitten by lycan leader Lucian (Michael Sheen) – she is forced to rethink her allegiances. Underworld
is the directorial debut of Len Wiseman, a former
Art Director who worked on such films as Men in Black and
Independence Day, and it shows. While the visual style is
interesting, it is far from unique: in fact, it is about 75% The
Matrix and 25% Highlander. The pacing is erratic, and
while the story idea is good, the plot development is not. Beckinsale
and Speedman as the star-crossed lovers have decent chemistry but
hardly share any screen time, and some of the acting is quite bad
(such as Shane Brolly as regent vampire leader Kraven).
Overall, for director Wiseman, Underworld was an underachievement.
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Calendar
Girls 
Stuck
on You 
The
Last Samurai 
Lost
in Translation 
Nicholas
Nickleby 
Le
Divorce (Eine Affaire in Paris) 
Ararat
Paycheck
The
House of 1000 Corpses (Haus der 1000 Leichen)
Underworld