Come and See - The most haunting and painful anti-war film ever made. It makes Schindler's List look like a cartoon, and with none of the hope. A bleak and despairing film and one of the most painful cinematic experiences of my life. A masterpiece of realism and the terrifying surrealism that follows through the looking glass. Not for the weak-at-heart.
The House is Black - If there ever was a such thing as a cinematic poem or prayer, this life-affirming short film is it, which in its meager running length of 20 minutes was enough to move me more than almost every other film made in the past 100 years. This is not just a short Iranian documentary on leprosy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHd41wlOK80
Ace Ventura: Nature Calls - A piece of crap.
The Moments of Dominion
That happen on the Soul
And leave it with a Discontent
Too exquisite — to tell —
-Emily Dickinson
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVW8GCnr9-I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckGIvr6WVw4
Surrogate 7/10
"But do you really, seriously, Major Scobie," Dr. Sykes asked, "believe in hell?"
"In flames and torment?""Oh, yes, I do."
"That sort of hell wouldn't worry me," Fellowes said."Perhaps not quite that. They tell us it may be a permanent sense of loss."
"Perhaps you've never lost anything of importance," Scobie said.
Shiver. It is a spanish horror film.
7/10
It had some plot holes, which makes me think that they may try to fill them up in a sequel. As things stand though the ending was less than great, and the plot itself seemed a bit random compared to the beginning of the film.
Still, Spanish horror cinema improves all of the time.
Das Weisse Band (I think English translation would be The White Ribbon), by Michael Haneke - 9/10.
It elaborates the sociological structure in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century, and tries to track down the roots of evil which strucked the generation of children who are to become German soldiers in the WW II.
The ending is a little bit...hmm - unclarified? (I don't know if that is the right word); a bit like the X Files - all is clear, but still is not!
But it's interesting how little we know about the social life and upbringing of children in not so distant past.
Inception...20/10
Seriously, it was a great movie. Nolan really did a great job with this one.
The Exorcist - If there were two films to be marked as textbooks for the post-New Hollywood "blockbuster" era, they would be Star Wars and The Exorcist. And yet there is something old fashioned about The Exorcist, something which Star Wars lacks but Jaws doesn't. It possesses that old strange 70's-ish quality that its characters deserve just as much time, development and attention as its effects, if not more. Which is why The Exorcist cannot be remade and be as shockingly gruesome as it was in 1973; because time and measurement were given to the screen leading up to the horrors that await.
The very idea that this film was made in 1973 and got away with an R rating is just shocking. Imagine, only six years earlier, audiences and critics alike were stuplified by the display of violence in Bonnie and Clyde which would appear very tame by today's standards, and only three years earlier had the first use of the word '****' had been used in 1970's M*A*S*H.
The Exorcist has been so influential that its effect somewhat wears off. Before The Exorcist, horror was all about suggestion and suspense. 1963's The Haunting is one of the creepiest films I have ever seen and there is hardly anything onscreen shown. Hitchcock is known for being the all-time master of offscreen suggestion and horror. The same goes with the silent French silent The Fall of the House of Usher, which transports the viewer into such an atmosphere that the semi-apocolyptic ending is like a slow awakening from a long hypnotic dream. But The Exorcist set new standards. With the levels of sex, violence and obscene language being raised by masterpieces such as Bonnie and Clyde, M*A*S*H and Mean Streets, William Friedrikin saw the chance to re-invent the horror genre completely by adapting a novel claiming to be based on true events about the exorcism of a 12-year old girl possessed by the Devil.
After The Exorcist, audiences became impatient with the "old-fashionedness" of off-screen suggestion, and while this traditional technique lasted some years longer and flourished in Speilberg's Jaws, by the 80's all audiences wanted in horror films was more guts and more gore.
We cannot entirely blame The Exorcist for that, just as we cannot blame Star Wars for starting what it started; that is, a new revival of the Hollywood blockbuster based on franchises, bug-budgets and simple-minded stories with little regard for cinema as serious art.
Now The Exorcist, despite its imperfections (loose plot ends, occasional indulgence and lack of significant extra screen-time to the legendary Max von Syndow), is a grand achievement in the true terror which can be brought about by the manipulation of the film camera. While probably less shocking today than it was forty years ago, the film baffles the viewer in its violent and strange perversities. Some of the obscenities (while there are relatively few) used in this film would not make even into a rated-R film today, nor would some of the scenes (particularly one involving violent masturbation and a cross) find themselves in modern movies without an overwhelming surge of protests. I would have loved to have seen the meeting when Friedkin pitched this film to its studio's producers. They truly must've thought, "Is this man safe to be around?" Of course Polanski's supernatural horror film Rosemary's Baby had come out some years earlier, but The Exorcist reached beyond it into truly radical territory.
If ever there was a film for the religious to be offended by, it is The Exorcist. It so explicitly perverts Christian iconography as well as the innocence of childhood. But that is if we ignore the human story in it, which concerns a young Italian priest who is beginning to have his doubts. "I want out", he tells one of his superiors. He joined the priesthood with a degree in psychiatry, expecting psychiatrics, instead he is bombarded with people suffering from religious and philosophical pondering and doubts. The young priest learns what he was ignorant of while joining the priesthood; that the human psyche and soul are two different things (Cartesian dualism).
In discovering this he learns to accept his faith and preform the task that is asked of him; the exorcism. Father Damien's transformation is at the heart of the film, but not at the center-stage. There, is the grotesque and demonic transformation of the young Regan MacNeil which is what the film is remembered for. And boy is it terrifying.
But in the end, The Exorcist is a less effective film than say Psycho or Jaws, because contrary to the two, it shocks and terrifies you throughout its two-hour duration, maybe stays in your mind for some time, but it doesn't come to haunt you. Not many people today believe in demons or demonic possession, but I'm sure we all believe in the existence of sharks and serial killers. It is the while lies that rest at the center of the other two films is what makes them among the scariest ever. Logically, we all know that every time you check into a run-down motel a insane lunatic is not going to stab you to death in the shower, just as we know that every time you go into the water a shark is going to bite your leg off. But it is possible, and that sends a message to our most primitive instincts and leaves us with a superstition of enviroments, such as swimming in the ocean, or taking a shower. Jaws and Psycho are films that haunt you in the daytime, The Exorcist is one that haunts you in your dreams. The former is more effective, for one can always wake up. 8/10
The Moments of Dominion
That happen on the Soul
And leave it with a Discontent
Too exquisite — to tell —
-Emily Dickinson
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVW8GCnr9-I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckGIvr6WVw4
toy story 3. I took my son to the movies for the first time and he loved it, the 3d part was unnecessary though, he took them off about half way through. I did see it in Icelandic and I think it hurt it a bit but it was funny and I do enjoy how they brought in toys I knew from my childhood like the carebear and the fisher price phone.
I always like toy story and this one was really good too, he of course loved it and I bought him a pez buzz lightyear and he has been playing with it and sleeping with it, he loves it. funny thing is he always says 'to infinity and beyond' even though he saw it in icelandic.
we checked out the tv show too yesterday and it wasn't as good, he kinda missed woody...
I hope death is joyful, and I hope I'll never return -Frida Khalo
If I seem insensitive to what you are going through, understand it's the way I am- Mr. Spock
Personally, I think that the unique and supreme delight lies in the certainty of doing 'evil'–and men and women know from birth that all pleasure lies in evil. - Baudelaire
Inception was simply amazing. It really stood out to me during a summer of such mediocre movies.
Ecce quam bonum et jocundum, habitares libros in unum!
~Robert Greene, Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay
Whoaaa, apparently I need to go see Inception.
The Moments of Dominion
That happen on the Soul
And leave it with a Discontent
Too exquisite — to tell —
-Emily Dickinson
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVW8GCnr9-I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckGIvr6WVw4
Definitely.
I know that a lot of people will disagree with me, but I really thought that it was on par with The Godfather in terms of overall cinematic quality.