So, films then
I’ve seen a lot of them lately…
Kontroll
A tale of friends, enemies, competition, love, demons, food, suicide, murder, and a girl in a bear costume — all set in Budapest’s underground system. Absolutely brilliant.
Hotel Rwanda
Not quite the heart-wrenching tale I expected it to be, and probably all the more watchable for it. It’s one of those films that makes you think long and hard about just how fickle western governments can be, and just how nasty the human race can be. Oh, and Owen — you’ve seen Sophie Okonedo in ‘Spooks’, ‘This Years Love’, ‘Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls’ and ‘The Bill’ (I know you’re a big fan) amongst other things.
Corpse Bride
Nobody told me it was a musical! I enjoyed it despite that and the singing didn’t make me cringe once. I must be ill or something.
Amélie
I finally managed to see it on Saturday night. Its a feel-good film of the highest order — I defy you to watch this and not feel happy afterwards. You can tell it’s a Jean-Pierre Jeunet film a mile away, and not just because Dominique Pinon is in there. He has a certain style that really stands out.
City of God
It’s about boys growing up in Brazil’s slums. Despite the dark subject matter (life in the slums, drugs and gang warfare), it remains upbeat, good humoured and very enjoyable.
Æon Flux
This is complete tosh, but in a good way. There’s some fantastic fight sequences, special effects and stunts in there, not to mention Charlize Theron in very tight clothing (hummmna!). It’s just a pity that the cast appears to be made almost enitely of wood.
Right, I’m off to watch Magnolia. Wish me luck… [and then a little over three hours later]
Magnolia
Wow. I know several people who really didn’t like that, but they’re clearly all wrong :-) It’s an amazing film. I think I’d struggle to sum it up, simply because there’s so much to it. So I won’t, I’ll just recommend it, lots.
I watched Oldboy on Sunday. Been wanting to see it for ages.
I was left a little disturbed by it. :-$
I have put Kontroll and Magnolia on our DVD rental thingy. If they are crap you can answer to Bec ;0)
Good movie run down there chap. I watched W&G: Curse of the Were-Rabbit this weekend. Pure genius. All the little touches (a book on evil monsters being written by Claudia Savagely) make it worth watching more than once.
Can’t believe you hadn’t seen Amélie before — an all-time great of a movie.
They’ll never be as good as Lost Boys…
Tom — I absolve all responsibility. After all, there is no accounting for taste ;-)
I thought Magnolia was a load of self indulgent drivel which took away three hours of my life that I’ll never get back.
I am currently watching American Pie The Wedding. It’s mainly awful so far.
The first half is pretty bad although there seems to be less swearing by Stiffler on the tele. They must have dubbed it out. Although the chocolate truffle eating was pretty good.
I started to watch Magnolia last night. I’ve been trying to find a three-hour slot to watch it when I’m not tired. I watched just over the first hour, when they’ve been introducing lots and lots of characters (I quite dislike films with loads of characters and names and locations to remember). Hopefully the film is about to “kickoff” with a shit-load of coincidences, but I hope it is good.
That’s a lot of fillms, I’ve not to time to watch them at the moment, I saw half of Full Metal Jacket last night, though.
Watched Magnolia… where I can see peoples point of view about it being amazing, I just thought it was too long, too slow and not as amazing as I was lead to believe… many will disagree and that’s fine, but meh.
Hi! :) I managed to catch ‘Beowulf and Grendel’ the other day on a DVD i got off ebay. It doesn’t look like the film is having a UK release date so i checked ebay and too my suprise it had already been released on DVD in Iceland.
My thoughts on the film.
At 100 minutes in length this is not like many of the recent fantasy epics such as LotR and Narnia which both stretched near 3 hours, however the film has no need to be any longer as they story of Beowulf is not a long story anyway.
If you don’t know of the story of ‘Beowuf and Grendel’ its basically about a ‘troll’ who keeps killing men in a Danish village as an act of revenge for the muder of it’s father. Beowulf is then called in to banish the troll from the lands to stop the bloodshed.
I enjoyed the film. It has breathtaking visuals and good performances from it’s actors. Gerard Butler was suprisingly good as Beowulf, pumping emotion and testosterone into the character. I’ve never really took to Gerard in films before, especially after the crapfest of Tomb Raider 2. Stellan Skarsgard takes on the role of a king again in ‘Beowulf and Grendel’, but unlike the Saxon king he played in King Arthur, his character King Hrothgar is an emotionally crippled character with little hope.
Ingvar Eggert Sigur?sson steals the film though as Grendel the ‘troll’. The misunderstood character is bought to life well by Ingvar.
‘Beowulf and Grendel’ stays true to the old Norse tale and delivers well as a film. I think this film deserves a theatrical release, I feel i would have enjoyed it more so on the big screen.
It’s no Lord of the Rings but i knew that before i saw the film anyway.
I love the movie “City of God” I believe they have a sequel, City of Men, but I am not sure. Subtitles rule.
Aye, it’s a spin-off series apparently :)
These are pretty much the films that inspired me to go and not go to places; Amelie convinced me to visit Paris, City of God made me want to avoid Rio at all costs.
I personally thought Hotel Rwanda was very moving, but dragged a little too much to maintain such engagement.
Paris is wonderful!