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The Prisoner

Tuesday, March 9th, 2010

I haven’t been watch­ing many movies lately because I’ve been stuck on anime and minis­eries. My favorite minis­eries lately is The Pris­oner. It’s about a guy who wakes up in ‘the vil­lage’ where every­one thinks there is no place in the world other than that place. The pro­tag­o­nist, played by Jim Caviezel, has pieces of mem­o­ries of another place but he doesn’t know any other name than the num­ber he has been given. The entire com­mu­nity, is run by one man, num­ber two, played by Ian McK­ellen. In the vil­lage every­one is a num­ber. What unfolds over the six-part series is the pris­oner try­ing to escape, insist­ing that he is from some­where else while the leader of the vil­lage makes no small effort to con­vince him and oth­ers that may be like him, otherwise.

This Pris­oner minis­eries is a remake of sorts of a 60’s British series that is quite famous but I have never seen it. The minis­eries was aired on AMC and will be aired again this month. It’s also avail­able on Net­flix. When the series starts, it was imme­di­ately clear that there was a lot more going on that was obvious. I thor­ough enjoyed this series and tried very hard to fig­ure it all out as I went through it but except for a few points was unable to. That’s the mark of a good story for me.  I watched the begin­ning of it with friends and they were quite taken with it right away. It’s too bad they didn’t make this an ongo­ing series. I def­i­nitely would have watched it. I give it a four out of five marks. I think you’ll enjoy it.


09.03.2010 Drama, Miniseries, Mystery No Comments

Blindness

Sunday, January 31st, 2010

Blind­ness is a kind of ‘end of the world’ movie. Here the demise of mankind is their loss of site. You never really find out what causes it but you see it start and spread like any other untreat­able dis­ease. What hap­pens next is the government’s reac­tion to some­thing they can nei­ther con­trol nor stop but that’s not all of the story. The movie really seems to find it’s stride when it explores what hap­pens to a spe­cific group of blind peo­ple over time once they’re rounded up. Things become very intense and the film paints a tragic and depress­ing pic­ture of what human­ity might become or per­haps already is.

There are a few famililar faces in this movie. Julianne Moore plays the wife of an Eye Doc­tor who is played by Mark Ruf­falo. Julianne’s char­ac­ter is some­how immune to the dis­ease and shares that secret with her sight­less hus­band. The dis­ease does not dis­crim­i­nate so peo­ple of all kinds includ­ing, doc­tors, pros­ti­tutes, thieves, would-be philoso­phers, and chil­dren find them­selves herded together and form­ing a forced com­mu­nity. It get’s really bad towards the end and parts seem to resem­ble ‘Lord of the Flies’.

I don’t think I liked any char­ac­ter in this film but that didn’t stop me from watch­ing it through to the end. Watch­ing human­ity devolve day by day until they are lit­tle more than filthy ani­mals held my atten­tion sur­pris­ingly well. I give this movie a 4 out of 5 marks.

31.01.2010 Drama, Mystery, Romance, Thriller No Comments

The Cat Piano

Monday, December 14th, 2009

This Ani­mated Short has been nom­i­nated for an Oscar this year but has already received numer­ous awards. The Cat Piano is a noir sort of film and is described as fol­lows, “A city of singing cats is preyed upon by a shad­owy fig­ure intent on per­form­ing a twisted feline sym­phony.” Want to find out more about it? Check out the offi­cial site. In the mean­time watch it now while it’s still on YouTube before they lock it in a vault some­where for posterity’s sake. Enjoy!

14.12.2009 Animation, Fantasy, Mystery, Short Film, Thriller No Comments

In The Electric Mist

Friday, December 4th, 2009

InTheElectricMistThis direct-to-video movie takes place some­where around New Orleans, Louisiana. In The Elec­tric Mist stars Tommy Lee Jones as Cajun Deputy Dave Robicheaux. He nar­rates and pretty much stars in every scene of this film. A series of grue­some mur­ders in a town plagued by the usual south­ern oppor­tunists, bad peo­ple, and south­ern racial issues starts the ball rolling and the Cajun detec­tive is there to make it right. There’s a lot going on the head of Tommy Lee’s char­ac­ter. He’s an alco­holic, a police offi­cer, a father, a hus­band, and a wit­ness to a mur­der when he was a kid. He’s also will­ing to bend the law to see that jus­tice is done. Tommy Lee plays this com­plex char­ac­ter well. Mary Steen­bur­gen plays his wife, Boot­sie, and does a great job but Tommy Lee is in so much of this movie that she only seems impor­tant in that she helps give his char­ac­ter depth. John Good­man plays Julie ‘Baby Feet’ Bal­boni, a bad guy/businessman that has a his­tory with Tommy Lee’s character.

This is an enjoy­able movie from begin­ning to end. Even the slow parts con­tribute to the mys­tery and the sur­real por­tions add an extra dimen­sion. There are moments where you can’t tell for sure whether Tommy Lee’s char­ac­ter is drunk, high, or truly being vis­ited by a South­ern spirit. This is a good movie, car­ried very well by Tommy Lee Jones and is worth see­ing. I’m more than a lit­tle sur­prised this film never made it to the big screen. I give it a 4 out of 5 marks.

04.12.2009 Drama, Mystery No Comments

Sleuth

Monday, November 30th, 2009

SleuthSleuth is the story of a rich man who invites his wife’s lover over to his home in order to match wits with him and humil­i­ate him or worse. It stars Michael Caine as the rich old guy and Jude Law as the younger man who is liv­ing with his wife. What fol­lows is a sur­pris­ingly cap­ti­vat­ing tale of two intel­lec­tual men going at it, each one try­ing to show that his mem­ber is big­ger than the other. There is some vio­lence but most of it is a test of will and wits. There’s not a lot of action here. The entire story takes place at one large and rather strange home. There are very few actors and a con­sid­er­able amount of dia­log. This is a remake that was sup­posed to have added some­thing to its predecessor.

I have to say this movie started out a bit bor­ing and I was expect­ing it to be the same through­out and in a way it was but I some­how got caught up in the dia­log, try­ing to see which of the two would end up on top. The fact is you don’t find out for sure until the end of the movie. Because of the lack of action and the rather sta­tic back­ground, (made more so because of the tiny cast), this movie isn’t for every­one. There’s no adven­ture, no romance, no sex, a small amount of mys­tery besides who will win the exchange and while there are tense moments in the film, I’d say it’s just barely a thriller. Again, there was a lot of dia­log and some­times it seemed to get a bit mixed together and con­fus­ing. That said, the film was good enough to see once and not a total waste of my time. I give this a 3 out of 4 marks. [star­review tpl=16]

30.11.2009 Drama, Mystery, Thriller No Comments

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