Browsing: Film Reviews

When it’s raining in Prague on a Sunday afternoon, then best you could do is going to see a movie. That is how I decided to see Milos Forman’s Goya‘s Ghosts, and I also invited myself for a coffee ina cosy coffee shop near the theater, where it is easy to sit and talk about the movie. But I had no idea what was waiting for me. I spent the next two hours in a whirlwind of beautiful images and horrible scenes that made me run home and right in bed… but the sleep didn‘t come. I saw many of…

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Adapted from Lewis Padgett’s, “All Mimsy Were the Borogroves” – the title originating from Lewis Carroll’s, “The Jabberwocky”, Director Bob Shaye weaves a tale of youth and the last hope of a future civilization. We begin with a brother and sister in Seattle where the wee ones discover an unusual item washed up on the shoreline…a black box. Being kids with of course an inquisitive nature, they discover the contents of this mysterious black box. Within it holds several items- an old bunny rabbit with a cyclic design on its belly, a bluish snail in glass and a sea shell.…

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Offside is a humorous and socially aware film that exposes what many female football aficionados do in Iran in order to attend the sport events of which they are not permitted into. The film is directed by Jafar Panahi and it tells the story of a group of six women who are caught sneaking into the Tehran’s Azadi Stadium to see the football match that will either qualify or eliminate Iran from participating in the Germany 2006 World Cup. Although there are women who are well familiarized with the process of deceiving security and entering these sport events without being…

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In “Volver” director and writer Pedro Almodóvar that makes us wonder what is real and what is fiction. “Volver” means return. But return to what? Does Someone returns? Do we return in time and remember something? Do We travel to a place and we come back? “Volver” shows the story of a mother and her daughter who is also a mother herself. These women and the other characters are caught in a web of circumstances that could only happen inside the intrigues of a small town’s real life. Set in a town outside of Madrid, “Volver” shows us a surreal…

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Two kindred spirits in a reality where they can’t seem to fit in. Growing up becomes an everyday ordeal for both Jesse Aarons (Josh Hutcherson) and Leslie Burke (Anna Sophia Robb). Ten year old Jess must contend with his harsh and martinet father (Robert Patrick), the Riga moral of daily chores, and a chatterbox little sister- May Belle (plus two older ones). Leslie, who is the daughter of novelist parents, and can pretty much beat any boy in a running race- must find escapism to a realm of sheer imagination when parents are just too busy. Based on the best…

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“Earth and water”, for submission to the Persian Empire, King Xerxes I demanded this. However, both the Athenians and the Spartans did not take to this seemingly humble request as they both tossed the Persian messengers into pits in defiance. As part of the Greco-Persian War (incidently begun by Xerxes’ father Darius), The Battle of Thermopylae took place in 480 B.C. where 300 valiant Spartans led by King Leonidas, along with 700 Thespians and other allies, stood strong to protect a mountain pass vital to Greece’s survival. With morale very high to defend their lands, the Spartans battled forces numbering…

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Zodiac is written by James Vanderbilt and directed by David Fincher. This film is based on the true life story of a serial killer who terrorized a nation in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. The killer was never convicted and to this day it is still an open case. One man was strongly suspected but there was never enough evidence to convict him in a court of law. The killings took place in California and were highly publicized in newspapers and on television. The film starts out with the first two victims of the Zodiac parked in a car…

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Danièle Thompson’s “Avenue Montaigne” is her third directorial outing (preceded by La Bûche and Jet Lag/Décolage horaire) and is a breath of fresh air in a market of CGI studded films and empty romantic sex comedies. It tells the tale of a charming young woman, Jessica, who leaves her small province to come to Paris to experience life’s adventures. She gets hired for a waiting job at the old-fashioned Café des Arts on the fabled Avenue Montaigne, which is Paris’ nexus for art, music, theater and fashion. There, she meets a variety of characters which include a depressed Classical Pianist…

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Showered in a multitude of praise, acclaim, and a whole list of awards from The European Film Award to recently an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film, Director/Writer Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck delves into the past just prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Taking place in 1984 however, in “The Lives of Others”, East Germany’s “shield and sword”, the Secret Police/Stasi used surveillance mercilessly on the populace, leaving no stone unturned-ascertaining the most minute and personal information during a time where it was stated, “glasnost is nowhere in sight”. We open the film with…

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It is almost impossible to ignore that the movie’s title exemplifies its plot in a profound and eloquent manner. Water, is a film that encapsulates the isolation and seclusion that many Indian widows were forced to undergo in the 1930’s. Chuyia (Sarala) is a young girl who at the age of eight becomes a widow and is consequently forced to live the rest of her life in a widow shelter. The director Deepa Mehta, uses Chuyia as an instigator who questions why she should live this way. At an age where nothing is remotely complicated, where the sky is either…

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