Drive (2011)

My Rating : 4/5 STARS
MovieStudio Quote >> “Ryan started off a little spooky, but the movie rocked entirely. It’s different and it was smooth as a criminal!”

Ryan Gosling stars as a Los Angeles wheelman for hire, stunt driving for movie productions by day and steering getaway vehicles for armed heists by night. Though a loner by nature, Driver can’t help falling in love with his beautiful neighbor Irene (Carey Mulligan), a vulnerable young mother dragged into a dangerous underworld by the return of her ex-convict husband Standard (Oscar Isaac).

After a heist intended to pay off Standard’s protection money spins unpredictably out of control, Driver finds himself driving defense for the girl he loves, tailgated by a syndicate of deadly serious criminals.

But when he realizes that the gangsters are after more than the bag of cash in his trunk-that they’re coming straight for Irene and her son-Driver is forced to shift gears and go on offense.

Incendies (2011)

My Rating : 5/5 STAR
MovieStudio Quote >> “A RIPPING performance by Lubna Azabal with a story which will haunt you all night. I loved the cinematography, screenplay and the emotionally devastating climax – splendid!”

“Incendies,” the powerful, and powerfully uneven, French-Canadian Oscar nominee for last year’s best foreign film, is an intimate epic. Set largely in a fictionalized Middle Eastern country, it’s about momentous issues – retribution and reconciliation in the wake of war – but plays out as a detective story framed through the eyes of a single family. It begins in present-day Montreal as twin adult siblings Jeanne (Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin) and Simon (Maxim Gaudette) are notified by a notary of two unusual requests in their mother’s will.

A sealed envelope is presented to Jeanne with instructions to deliver it to the children’s father, even though they were raised by their mother, Nawal Marwan (Lubna Azabal), to believe he had died a heroic death many years before. Simon is also presented with a sealed envelope, to be delivered to a brother they never knew existed. Simon at first angrily rejects the whole thing, but Jeanne, a mathematician with a meticulous curiosity, travels to her mother’s Middle Eastern homeland and attempts to unravel the mystery. The real mystery, as Jeanne soon discovers, is her mother’s past life before she immigrated to Canada, about which the children knew nothing. The director, Denis Villeneuve, has based “Incendies” on the play “Scorched,” by Wajdi Mouawad, that was constructed as a series of long, lyrical monologues.

For the most part he’s done a strong job of paring away the poeticisms; the film rarely betrays its theatrical roots. Alternating between the present and flashbacks to Nawal’s harrowing past, Villeneuve sets up a deliberately disorienting structure that mimics the children’s confusions (and ours). Nawal’s homeland is clearly meant to be Lebanon, and her time there parallels the 15-year civil war between Christians and Muslims that began in the 1970s.

As a Christian, she fought in that conflict, and the scenes of her torture and imprisonment are chilling and also, in some ways, eerily transcendent. Nicknamed by her guards “the woman who sings,” Nawal seals herself off from madness by crooning soothingly to herself. Azabal, a Belgian actress, has a feral, mesmerizing power. On her sullen, aghast face can be read war’s true transcript. Without her performance, “Incendies,” overlong at 130 minutes, might most often resemble a pastiche of allegorical overreaching and high-caliber melodrama, although Villeneuve stages an attack on a Muslim bus by a Christian militia that brings home the terror of warfare in a way few films ever have.

Such outbursts of power undercut the film’s too neat resolutions. By the end, it’s as if a Greek tragedy had degenerated into a neater, tidier universe. The film’s moral lesson – that violence begets violence – isn’t exactly a showstopper, and the balm that is laid on Nawal and her riven family can’t quite compensate for the poison that preceded it.

 

 

Rabbit Hole (2010)

My Rating : 3/5 STAR
MovieStudio Quote >> “Nicole sports a fabulous performance after so long, but the flick is slow!”

RABBIT HOLE is a vivid, hopeful, honest and unexpectedly witty portrait of a family searching for what remains possible in the most impossible of all situations. Becca and Howie Corbett (NICOLE KIDMAN and AARON ECKHART) are returning to their everyday existence in the wake of a shocking, sudden loss.

Just eight months ago, they were a happy suburban family with everything they wanted. Now, they are caught in a maze of memory, longing, guilt, recrimination, sarcasm and tightly controlled rage from which they cannot escape. While Becca finds pain in the familiar, Howie finds comfort.

The shifts come in abrupt, unforeseen moments. Becca hesitantly opens up to her opinionated, loving mother (DIANNE WIEST) and secretly reaches out to the teenager involved in the accident that changed everything (MILES TELLER); while Howie lashes out and imagines solace with another woman (SANDRA OH).

Yet, as off track as they are, the couple keeps trying to find their way back to a life that still holds the potential for beauty, laughter and happiness. The resulting journey is an intimate glimpse into two people learning to re-engage with each other and a world that has been tilted off its axis.

RABBIT HOLE is directed by John Cameron Mitchell (HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH) from a script by acclaimed playwright David Lindsay-Abaire, adapted from his Pulitzer Prize-winning play. The cast, led by Academy Award winner Nicole Kidman (THE HOURS, Actress in a Leading Role, 2002) and Golden Globe nominee Aaron Eckhart, includes two-time Oscar winner Dianne Wiest (HANNAH AND HER SISTERS, Actress in a Supporting Role, 1986; BULLETS OVER BROADWAY, Actress in a Supporting Role, 1994), Tammy Blanchard, Miles Teller, Giancarlo Esposito, Jon Tenney and Sandra Oh.

The Killer Inside Me (2010)

My Rating : 4/5 STAR
MovieStudio Quote >> “A very rare country style violence flick which involves class performances and a foolproof plot!”

Based on the legendary novel by pulp writer Jim Thompson, Michael Winterbottom’s THE KILLER INSIDE ME tells the story of a handsome, charming, unassuming small town sheriff’s deputy named Lou Ford (Casey Affleck).

The film takes place in an idyllic West Texas town in the early 1950’s. As a lifelong resident, Ford has difficulty juggling his long-term girlfriend Amy (Kate Hudson), the prostitute named Joyce (Jessica Alba) that he mistakenly falls for,

and the sociopathic tendencies inside him. In Thompson’s savage, bleak, blacker than noir universe nothing is ever what it seems.

Somewhere I have Never Travelled (2009)

My Rating: 4/5 STARS
MovieStudio Quote >> “A quiet typical tale of a young girl with color blindness and big dreams. Worth a watch!!”

In a small secluded town by the sea, there live two lonely youths filled with angst and uncertainty. To the 15-year-old Ah-Guei, her world has always been different from others. Her eyes tell her that there are no greens or reds in the world. The only person she looks up to is her cousin, Ah-Xian. Ah-Xian has a big world-map and a whole bookshelf of traveling guides. He takes Ah-Guei on imaginary journeys out of their little town, into a world full of wonders.

Yet, the 20-year-old Ah-Xian harbors a secret, as he has come to realize that the only objects of his desires have always been people of his own sex. Ah-Guei and Ah-Xian dream and plan about that one day when they can fly away to a place where there will be no more loneliness or angst.The boy dreams about going off to the Great New York with his beloved. And the girl she dreams about sailing to a little island in the Pacific. And on that island, no ones world would be shaded with green or red. Every one of them would be color-blinded, just like her.

Creation (2010)

My Rating: 3.5/5 STARS
MovieStudio Quote >> “Started as a great story, but lacked audience attention after a while!”

CREATION is the powerful and true-life tale of Charles Darwin and the most explosive idea in history. A world-renowned scientist, and a dedicated family man struggling to accept his daughter’s… CREATION is the powerful and true-life tale of Charles Darwin and the most explosive idea in history. A world-renowned scientist, and a dedicated family man struggling to accept his daughter’s death, Darwin is torn between his love for his deeply religious wife and his own growing belief in a world where God has no place.

He finds himself caught in a battle between faith and reason, love and truth. This is the extraordinary story of Charles Darwin and how his master-work “The Origin of Species” came to light. It tells of a global revolution played out in the confines of a small English village; a passionate marriage torn apart by the most provocative idea in history – evolution; and a theory saved from extinction by the logic of a child.

Charles Darwin is played by acclaimed British actor Paul Bettany (The Da Vinci Code, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, A Beautiful Mind, Inkheart), and his wife Emma Darwin is played by his real-life wife, Academy Award winner Jennifer Connelly (Blood Diamond, A Beautiful Mind, Requiem For a Dream, The Day the Earth Stood Still). Directed by Jon Amiel (Entrapment, Copycat, Sommersby, The Core,) from a screenplay by John Collee (Master and the Commander: The Far Side of the World, Happy Feet), CREATION is based upon Randal Keynes’ book, ‘Annie’s Box’, about the life of his great great grandfather, Charles Darwin.

Disgrace (2009)

My Rating: 5/5 STARS
MovieStudio Quote >> “A provocative, painful and literature filled drama!”

In this stunning adaptation of the acclaimed novel by Nobel Laureate J.M. Coetzee, John Malkovich stars as David Lurie, a 52-year-old professor of Romantic Literature who takes a beautiful young… In this stunning adaptation of the acclaimed novel by Nobel Laureate J.M. Coetzee, John Malkovich stars as David Lurie, a 52-year-old professor of Romantic Literature who takes a beautiful young student under his wing and into his bed. To David, the affair is just a harmless fling, but because this is post-Apartheid South Africa, and because the student in question is of mixed race, a scandal erupts that forces David to abandon his lifelong profession and a lifetime’s worth of assumptions about himself and the world he lives in.

Disgraced, he leaves the city for the remote farm where his free-spirit daughter, Lucy, lives a seemingly uncomplicated rustic life. However, neither David nor Lucy can escape the realities of contemporary society. When they fall prey to a particularly brutal attack by three black men, the very fabric of their lives unravels and they find that the definitions of victim and victimizer, of oppressed and oppressor, have forever changed. Winner of Britain’s distinguished Booker Prize in 1999 (making Coetzee its first-ever two-time recipient), “Disgrace” was voted “the greatest novel of the last 25 years” in a 2006 poll of literary luminaries conducted by The Observer.

Directed by Steve Jacobs and written and produced by Anna-Maria Monticelli, the film has already garnered extraordinary praise in its native Australia, where it has been hailed as “a model of narrative distillation married to vivid images…that unerringly preserves the tension of the book” and a work that “should be seen by anyone who cares about film or literature” (The Australian.) Boasting brilliant performances by Malkovich and newcomer Jessica Haines, and a striking visual style that perfectly matches the beauty and precision of the novel’s prose, DISGRACE brings Coetzee’s universe to thrilling cinematic life.

New York, I Love You (2009)

My Rating: 3.5/5 STARS
MovieStudio Quote >> “A collage of inspirational, creative ideas. Worth  watching!”

In the city that never sleeps, love is always on the mind. Those passions come to life in NEW YORK, I LOVE YOU – a collaboration of storytelling from some of today’s most imaginative filmmakers… In the city that never sleeps, love is always on the mind.

Those passions come to life in NEW YORK, I LOVE YOU – a collaboration of storytelling from some of today’s most imaginative filmmakers and featuring an all-star cast. Together they create a kaleidoscope of the spontaneous, surprising, electrifying human connections that pump the city’s heartbeat.

Sexy, funny, haunting and revealing encounters unfold beneath the Manhattan skyline. From Tribeca to Central Park to Brooklyn the story weaves a tale of love as diverse as the very fabric of New York itself.

The Limits of Control (2009)

My Rating: 2.5/5 STARS
MovieStudio Quote >> “Its utter silence!”

In spite of the title, THE LIMITS OF CONTROL constantly reveals the controlling hand of its creator, the indie icon Jim Jarmusch. The film follows Jarmusch regular Isaach de Bankole as he ambles… In spite of the title, THE LIMITS OF CONTROL constantly reveals the controlling hand of its creator, the indie icon Jim Jarmusch. The film follows Jarmusch regular Isaach de Bankole as he ambles through various parts of Spain on an ambiguous criminal mission. Credited as the “Lone Man,” de Bankole encounters a series of oddly disguised accomplices and absorbs their one-sided philosophical musings, all the while piecing together the nature of his assignment. This narrative sounds more compelling in summary than it is on screen, but if you are seeing a Jarmusch picture in hopes of a scintillating story, then you are as confused as the characters from his more memorable films.

The sole disappointment of this film is that, despite the overwhelming strangeness of the action (or lack thereof), none of the characters display any confusion or uncertainty, as they assuredly assess the events and still find time to practice tai chi and pontificate about music, film, science, and painting. The film is rigorously structured: each encounter invokes a definitive theme that clicks firmly into place by the conclusion. The individual scenes are entirely enjoyable, as a white-blond Tilda Swinton discusses Welles and Hitchcock, and John Hurt rasps about the depiction of Spanish bohemians in art and literature. Despite Jarmusch’s domineering presence, it is the brilliant work of his collaborators, particularly cinematographer Christopher Doyle and editor Jay Rabinowitz, that shimmers in the memory of the viewer after the final shot.

Doyle makes every line, curve, and diagonal in his frames vibrate with hints of radiant significance, and his ethereal images of the Almerian landscape often draw our attention from the artificial metaphysical dialogue. Jarmusch fans will be delighted by this perplexing metaphor of a film, which aims to symbolize and summarize the whole of existence through its myriad parts.

Puffball (2007)

My Rating: 2.5/5 STARS
MovieStudio Quote >> “An erotic fear factor!”

Directed by Nicolas Roeg (Don’t Look Now) and adapted from a novel by Fay Weldon, Puffball stars Kelly Reilly as gorgeous ginger architect Liffey Lambert, who moves to rural Ireland with the intention of restoring a ruined cottage. On her first day, she meets her neighbour Mab (Miranda Richardson), a 40-something woman with three daughters, who tells her that she’s trying for a son with her husband, farmer Tucker (William Houston).
When Liffey accidentally gets pregnant by her visiting fiance Richard (Oscar Pearce), word quickly gets back to Mab’s mother Molly (Rita Tushingham), who declares that Liffey has stolen the baby meant for Mab and sets some bizarre voodoo in motion to rectify matters. However, things don’t quite go according to plan, leading Mab and Molly to resort to desperate measures.

Puffball is a 2007 supernatural drama film directed by Nicolas Roeg. It is based on the novel by Fay Weldon adapted by her son Dan Weldon. The film was partially funded through the UK Film Council’s New Cinema Fund.