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Intacto

Tuesday, January 11th, 2011

Intacto is a movie about a group of peo­ple, gam­blers actu­ally, that are all con­nected. What makes this story unique is that they all seem to have the abil­ity to take luck from peo­ple, not unlike a super power. Each of them, at least once in their lives whether acci­den­tally or on pur­pose, has sur­vived an acci­dent by drain­ing the luck out of peo­ple nearby so that they might sur­vive. Some of the fac­tors included in the luck they obtain are the like­li­hood of sur­vival and the amount of peo­ple that die in the accident.

All the actors were pretty good but the only one I rec­og­nized was Max von Sydow. He played the part of a Jew­ish sur­vivor of the Holo­caust and was the only char­ac­ter that spoke Eng­lish in the entire movie. Intacto is a Span­ish film. When I rented it I was pre­pared to sit down and read sub­ti­tles but I found the DVD does have a 2.1 Eng­lish track you can choose instead of the 5.1 sur­round sound Span­ish one. I opted to lis­ten in English.

One of the great things about this movie is the dis­cov­ery of this world of under­ground gam­blers, the games they play to test their luck, and the cur­rency they put up as col­lat­eral in order to compete. I would have liked for there to be a visual rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the luck of the gam­blers as it changed bod­ies and was used. The con­cept of how luck could be absorbed and given out by cer­tain peo­ple was inter­est­ing. This was one of those films where you just go along for the ride and enjoy it’s twists and turns. I rented this movie based solely on its premise and was pleased to find it was much more. I give this film a 3 and a half out of 5 marks. Here’s the trailer:

11.01.2011 Drama, Thriller No Comments

Stranger Than Fiction

Friday, October 29th, 2010

Stranger Than Fic­tion is the story of Harold Crick, an IRS audi­tor, played by Will Fer­rell. While this film is a bit of a com­edy, it’s not Will Ferrell’s stan­dard fare. In fact, he plays this role fairly straight. In the movie he’s liv­ing a pre­dictable life of his own choos­ing when sud­denly he hears a voice, one no one else can hear, that begins to annoy­ingly nar­rate his life. That being chal­leng­ing enough to bear, the always accu­rate nar­ra­tive voice one day pre­dicts his death which changes every­thing. The ‘voice’ is that of Karen Eif­fel, played by Emma Thomp­son, who is cur­rently writ­ing a novel that is indeed telling the story of Harold Crick and hav­ing trou­ble fig­ur­ing out how to kill him. A cer­tain amount of this movie is about her char­ac­ter. Dustin Hoff­man plays the role of lit­er­ary advi­sor to Harold and Mag­gie Gyl­len­haal plays the woman who makes him want some­thing more in life.

Thought it was a lit­tle slow at times, I found this movie intrigu­ing. Part of the time I was wait­ing for Will Fer­rell to do some outrageously, comedic, stupid bit which amaz­ingly didn’t hap­pen though much of his more sub­tle funny stuff made it through. The other part had me won­der­ing where it was all going as, over time, it seemed to become less and less of a com­edy and more of a roman­tic drama. I’ve never been much of a fan of Will Fer­rell and tend to pass on films he stars in but I’m moved to say I liked him in this. In fact it was such a sur­prise that I give it a 4 out of 5 marks. It’s one of very few films that I’ve sit through more than once.

29.10.2010 Comedy, Drama, Fantasy, Romance No Comments

Diary of a Tired Black Man

Thursday, October 14th, 2010

No this isn’t another Tyler Perry movie and it’s not just a movie about one of the gen­ders bitch­ing about the other…well mostly not. Here’s the press release: “A humor­ous and deep look into why rela­tion­ships fail to work from the point of view of a good black man. It is part scripted and a series of inter­views with real peo­ple from across the coun­try.” Basi­cally Diary of A Tired Black Man explores the Black Male side of rela­tion­ship in an intel­li­gent way and pro­vides dis­cus­sion via inter­view from both sexes. Sure stereo­types abound in these kind of movies and this one was no excep­tion but the movie was still enter­tain­ing and fun.

The whole phe­nom­e­non started out with an orig­i­nal clip cir­cu­lated around the Inter­net via YouTube. That got the dis­cus­sion going and in the movie you see addi­tional skits after which there are inter­views from peo­ple who have just seen it. The only reco­gize­able actor is Jimmy Jean-Louis who plays the main male role in all the skits. You can find out more about the film and the phe­nom­e­non at the offi­cial web­site.

The movie is avail­able for imme­di­ate stream­ing on Net­flix so if you’re look­ing for some­thing to watch with a group of mixed friends that will spark dis­cus­sion, this could be it. It def­i­nitely worked out that way at my house. I give this film a 3 and a half out of 4 marks. Here’s the video that started it all:

14.10.2010 Comedy, Drama No Comments

Boondock Saints

Thursday, July 29th, 2010

The Boon­dock Saints is the story of two Irish fra­ter­nal twins that set out to kill evil men in Boston. It styl­ish, funny, and action packed. The twins are played by Sean Patrick Flan­ery and Nor­man Reedus. There’s also a flam­ing gay FBI agent hot on their trail played by Willem Dafoe. The twins are bad-ass, and while they may not be the most intel­li­gent of vig­i­lantes, they make up for it in atti­tude, dar­ing, and style. Though they are killers, they believe them­selves to be doing the lord’s work by destroy­ing evil. There is a prayer they say just before they kill their last vic­tim that is quite inter­est­ing and mem­o­rable. This movie is fun to watch all the way through and the music is pretty good too.

I was look­ing back try­ing to fig­ure out why I hadn’t seen this movie in the the­ater and found out the movie was released in the U.S. on only a few screens due to the actual columbine inci­dent. It was later re-released seven years later. There is already a sequel which I have seen and also rec­om­mend called The Boon­dock Saints II: All Saints Day. It’s nearly, if not just as good, as the orig­i­nal. I ended up screen­ing both movies back-to-back with friends and a good time was had by all. I con­sider them both clas­sics and eas­ily give the orig­i­nal 5 out of 5 marks. Check out the trailer for the orig­i­nal:

29.07.2010 Action, Crime, Drama, Thriller No Comments

Mirageman

Monday, July 5th, 2010

MiragemanMirage­man is the story of a young man in Chile who decides to be a Super­hero. He has no pow­ers, just some mar­tial arts skills or as the byline says, “just his fists and guts”. The film starts with the hero prac­tic­ing his mar­tial arts while his his­tory is told from news­pa­per clip­pings and pho­tos on his wall. He’s a hum­ble guy and appar­ently liv­ing on just enough money to get by. Later he runs across a chance to use his skills to help some­one and dons a mask to do so. His story makes it to the news and his sick brother who imme­di­ately starts to improve. It is at this point that the main pro­tag­o­nist of the story decides to be a Superhero.

There’s a lot to like about this movie. It’s clearly low bud­get but some­how con­tains all the ele­ments of a great Super­hero movie. There’s plenty of com­edy as Mirage­man learns about the super­hero busi­ness through trial and error; from who he should trust, what cloth­ing he should wear, to how to get around trans­porta­tion issues. What really stands out here is the mar­tial arts. This was some of the best fight­ing chore­og­ra­phy I have ever seen out­side of a Chi­nese or Japan­ese film. There’s no slow motion, just awe­some, real-looking fight scenes.

As I said before, this film was made in Chile so it is Eng­lish dubbed but if you’ve ever watched old mar­tial arts movies of the past then get­ting through this will be easy. The Super­hero move­ment and action is some­what sim­i­lar to the old Spider-Man live action tele­vi­sion show. It’s a lit­tle cheesy but def­i­nitely enter­tain­ing and fun to watch. The music is good too. I give this movie a 4 out of 5 marks. Check out the trailer:

05.07.2010 Action, Adventure, Drama No Comments

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