It will tear your soul apart... again.
Time to play.
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After having her father and perverse stepmother killed by the cenobites, Kirsty Cotton (Ashley Lawrence) is sent to a psychiatric hospital. Even after trying to convince the authorities of what really happened with her family, nobody believes in her version of the history and they decide to place her in the institute, so that she rests and relaxes a little bit. The hospital is commanded by a brilliant and strange psychiatrist, Dr. Channard (Kenneth Cranham), who has been looking for the key for another dimension for a long time. The only person who believes in Kirsty is a young and kind assistant of Dr. Channard, called Kyle MacRae (William Hope). Following Kirsty's version of the story, Channard put his hands on the bloodstained mattress where her stepmother Júlia (Clare Higgins, from the first Hellraiser) died, Channard decides to resurrect her, killing his patients and offering them as food for Júlia. She returns without skin, and she decides to help Channard to bring the forces of the evil, but the plans of the two will be disturbed by Kirsty, who wants to end at once with the cenobites, and for Kyle, who doesn't want to see Kirsty being hurt...
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Generally speaking, there are two kinds of nightmares: the kind that you actually have, and the kind they make into movies. Real nightmares usually involve frustration or public embarrassment. In the frustrating ones, a loved one is trying to tell you something and you can't understand them, or they're in danger and you can't help them. In the embarrassing ones, it's the day of the final exam and you forgot to attend the classes, or you're in front of a crowd and can't think of anything to say, or you wandered into the hotel lobby without any clothes on and nobody has noticed you yet - but they're about to.Those are scary nightmares, all right, and sometimes they turn up in the movies. But "Hellbound: Hellraiser II" contains the kinds of nightmares that occur only in movies, because our real dreams have low budgets and we can't afford expensive special effects. The movie begins a few hours after the original "Hellbound" ended. A young girl named Kirsty has been placed in a hospital after a night in which she was tortured by the flayed corpses of her parents, who were under the supervision of the demons of hell. What this girl needs is a lot of rest and a set of those positive-thinking cassettes they advertise late at night on cable TV.But no such luck. The hospital is simply another manifestation of the underworld, hell is all around us, we are powerless in its grip, and before long Kristy and a newfound friend named Tiffany are hurtling down the corridors of the damned. Give or take a detail or two, that's the story. "Hellbound: Hellraiser II" is like some kind of avant-garde film strip in which there is no beginning, no middle, no end, but simply a series of gruesome images that can be watched in any order.The images have been constructed with a certain amount of care and craftsmanship; the technical credits on this movie run to four single-spaced pages. We see lots of bodies that have been skinned alive, so that the blood still glistens on the exposed muscles. We see creatures who have been burned and mutilated and twisted into grotesque shapes and condemned for eternity to unspeakable and hopeless tortures.We hear deep, rasping laughter as the denizens of hell chortle over the plight of the terrified girls. And we hear their desperate voices calling to each other."Kirsty!" we hear. And "Tiffany!" And "Kirsty!!!" and "Tiffany!!!" And "Kirstiyyyyyyy!!!!!" And "Tiffanyyyyyyy!!!!!" I'm afraid this is another one of those movies that violates the First Rule of Repetition of Names, which states that when the same names are repeated in a movie more than four times a minute for more than three minutes in a row, the audience breaks out into sarcastic laughter, and some of the ruder members are likely to start shouting "Kirsty!" and "Tiffany!" at the screen.But this movie violates more rules than the First Rule of Repetition. It also violates a basic convention of story construction, which suggests that we should get at least a vague idea of where the story began and where it might be headed. This movie has no plot in a conventional sense. It is simply a series of ugly and bloody episodes strung together one after another like a demo tape by a perverted special-effects man. There is nothing the heroines can do to understand or change their plight and no way we can get involved in their story.That makes "Hellbound: Hellraiser II" an ideal movie for audiences with little taste and atrophied attention spans who want to glance at the screen occasionally and ascertain that something is still happening up there. If you fit that description, you have probably not read this far, but what the heck, we believe in full-service reviews around here.You're welcome.Download here
Hellbound: Hellraiser II (Fantasy,Horror,Thriller)
Reindeer Games (Action,Crime,Drama,Thriller)
The trap is set. The game is on.
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After being imprisoned for six years on a grand theft auto charge, Rudy Duncan (Ben Affleck) and his cellmate Nick (James Frain) are finally going to be paroled. After hearing endless stories during his incarceration of Nick's romantic correspondence to a woman named Ashley he has never met (Charlize Theron), Rudy is looking forward to returning to his family and having a fresh cup of hot chocolate. When Nick is killed during a prison riot, Rudy decides to assume Nick's identity upon release from prison and meet up with the unknown woman. Burdened with a base knowledge of Nick's Indian casino employment past, Rudy finds himself in too deep with Ashley's brother Gabriel (Gary Sinise) and is violently forced to cooperate with a casino robbery that Gabriel and his gang have been planning with Nick in mind.
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"Reindeer Games" is the first All Talking Killer picture. After the setup, it consists mostly of characters explaining their actions to one another. I wish I'd had a stopwatch, to clock how many minutes are spent while one character holds a gun to another character's head and gabs. Charlize Theron and Gary Sinise between them explain so much they reminded me of Gertrude Stein's line about Ezra Pound: "He was a village explainer, excellent if you were a village, but if you were not, not." Just a nudge, and the movie would fall over into self-parody, and maybe work better. But I fear it is essentially serious, or as serious as such goofiness can be. It opens in prison, with cell mates Rudy (Ben Affleck) and Nick (James Frain). Both are about to be set free. Nick has engaged in a steamy correspondence with Ashley (Theron), one of those women who have long-distance romances with convicts. His cell wall is plastered with photos that make her look like a model for cosmetics ads.But then (I am not giving away as much as it seems, or perhaps even what it seems), Nick is knifed in a prison brawl, and when Rudy walks out of prison and lays eyes on Ashley--well, what would you do? That's what he does. "I'm Nick," Rudy tells her. Soon they make wild and passionate love, which inevitably involves knocking things over and falling out of bed and continuing on the floor. You'd think if people were that much into sex, they'd pay more attention to what they were doing.Then there's a major reality shift, and perhaps you'd better stop reading if you don't want to know that . . . Ashley's brother Gabriel (Sinise) heads a gang of scummy gunrunners who think Rudy used to work in an Indian casino in upstate Michigan--because, of course, they think Rudy is Nick, and that's what Nick told Ashley about himself. Gabriel and his gang try to squeeze info about the casino's security setup out of Rudy, who says he isn't Nick, and then says he is Nick after all, and then says he isn't, and has so many reasons for each of his answers that Gabriel gets very confused, and keeps deciding to kill him, and deciding not to kill him, and deciding to kill him after all, until both characters seem stuck in a time loop.There are other surprises, too, a lot of them, each with its explanation, usually accompanied by an explanation of the previous explanation, which now has to be re-explained in light of the new explanation. They all got a lot of 'splainin' to do.The movie's weakness is mostly in its ludicrous screenplay by Ehren Kruger. The director, John Frankenheimer, is expert at moving the action along and doing what can be done with scenes with which hardly anything can be done. Affleck and Theron soldier through changes of pace so absurd it takes superb control to keep straight faces. Theron's character looks soft and sweet sometimes, then hard and cruel other times, switching back and forth so often I commend her for not just passing a hand up and down in front of her face: smile, frown, smile, frown.Perhaps the movie was originally intended to open at Christmas. That would explain the title, and the sequence where the casino, which looks like a former Target store, is stuck up by five Santas. But nothing can explain the upbeat final scene, in which, after blood seeps into the Michigan snow, we get a fit of Robin Hood sentimentality. The moment to improve "Reindeer Games" was at the screenplay stage, by choosing another one.Download here
Iron Giant, The (Animation,Drama,Family,Sci-Fi)
It came from outer space!
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"Iron Giant" is based upon the 1968 story,'Iron Man,' by the British poet laureate Ted Hughes. The film is about a giant metal machine that drops from the sky and frightens a small town in Maine in 1958, only to find a friend named, Hogarth, that ultimately finds its humanity and saving the towns people of their fears and prejudices.
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Big Lebowski, The (Comedy,Crime,Mystery)
(Israel, translated from Hebrew): Lebowski: Not a man, a way of life
Her life was in their hands. Now her toe is in the mail.
It takes guys as simple as the Dude and Walter to make a story this complicated... and they'd really rather be bowling.
They figured he was a lazy time wasting slacker. They were right.
Times like these call for a Big Lebowski.
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When "The Dude" Lebowski is mistaken for a millionaire Lebowski, two thugs urinate on his rug to coerce him into paying a debt he knows nothing about. While attempting to gain recompense for the ruined rug from his wealthy counterpart, he accepts a one-time job with high pay-off. He enlists the help of his bowling buddy, Walter, a gun-toting Jewish-convert with anger issues. Deception leads to more trouble, and it soon seems that everyone from porn empire tycoons to nihilists want something from The Dude.
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Freedomland (Crime,Drama,Mystery,Thriller)
His Streets. His Rules.
The Truth Is Hiding Where No One Dares To Look.
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When her son disappears and is believed to be dead, a single mother blames an African-American man from the projects for the kidnapping, creating a racial controversy. An African-American detective (Jackson) and a white missing child researcher team up to investigate the case, which they discover may be more complicated than they expected.
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"Freedomland" assembles the elements for a superior thriller, but were the instructions lost when the box was opened? It begins with a compelling story about a woman whose car is hijacked with her 4-year-old son inside. It adds racial tension, and the bulldog detective work of a veteran police detective. And then it flies to pieces with unmotivated scenes, inexplicable dialogue, and sudden conclusions which may be correct but arrive from nowhere. The film seems edited none too wisely from a longer version that made more sense.
Julianne Moore appears in the opening scene, sobbing, her hands bleeding, staggering into a hospital with a story of her car being hijacked in a wooded area near a low-income housing development. Samuel L. Jackson plays Lorenzo, the detective assigned to the case. He can't understand why her character, named Brenda, was driving through the isolated area at the time. She explains: She's a volunteer at a community children's center, and took the wrong shortcut home. Lorenzo thinks she's hiding something, and she is: Her son was in the back seat of the car when it was taken.
When this story becomes public, it creates a furor. Cops from a nearby white district blanket the area, a black preacher complains that blacks are killed all the time in the district without this kind of police attention, and the woman's brother Danny (Ron Eldard) is a white cop who seems angry all the time -- at his sister, at the black community, at Lorenzo.
Racial demonstrations are on the simmer, but the movie turns them on and off at will. Brenda, after all, is well known and beloved in the area because of her volunteer work. Yet at one point a black woman tells her, "You stay away from my child!" Why would she say that? And why, for that matter, does Lorenzo announce a sudden about-face on the case when we haven't seen the evidence to support his conclusion? Why are untold resources used to search for the missing boy on the grounds and buildings of Freedomland, an abandoned orphanage, when there is every reason to believe he is not there?
And why, oh why, is Brenda apparently left in the personal custody of Lorenzo, who removes her from the hospital without formalities, drives her around, leaves her alone, has heart-to-heart talks with her, and ignores all police procedures for dealing with victims and/or witnesses? And what about that passionate discussion between Lorenzo and Brenda in which their body language and the close framing of the shots lead us to anticipate a development that never comes? The scene ends weirdly with the two of them staring fiercely at each other, as if they were told to freeze while the writers came up with more dialogue.
This movie is filled with behavior that seems to exist only to provide things for the actors to do. There's an asthma attack early in the film that should pay off somehow, but doesn't. Danny, the brother who is a cop, seems constantly poised to do something radical, but never quite does. And why does his concern for his sister express himself in his decision to essentially ignore her and operate elsewhere in the plot? And does the angry preacher in the black neighborhood have a legitimate grievance, or is he just venting on command, to provide filler for the plot?
One scene works. It's a conversation between Brenda and Karen (Edie Falco), who is the leader of a group of mothers whose children have been kidnapped, molested or killed. She gets Brenda alone for a fraught and crucial conversation (which is against all standard procedures, but never mind), and for the length of that conversation the movie is about something, and it works.
"Freedomland" is based on a novel by Richard Price, whose Clockers made a better film. He adapts his story for director Joe Roth as if they know a lot of places in the neighborhood but don't remember how to get from one place to another. Individual scenes feel authentic, but the story tries to build bridges between loose ends.Download here
Mona Lisa Smile (Comedy,Drama,Romance)
In a world that told them how to think, she showed them how to live.
In einer Welt, die ihnen vorschrieb, wie man lebt, lehrte sie sie, wie man denkt. (In a world that told them how to live, she taught them how to think.)
They had everything. She showed them more.
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Set in 1953, Katherine Watson (Roberts) is a free-spirited graduate of UCLA who accepts a teaching post at Wellesley College, a women-only school where the students are torn between the repressive mores of the time and their longing for intellectual freedom.
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I find it hard to believe that Wellesley College was as reactionary in the autumn of 1953 as "Mona Lisa Smile" says it is -- but then I wasn't there. Neither were the screenwriters, who reportedly based their screenplay on Hillary Clinton's experience at Wellesley in the early 1960s. The film shows a school which teaches, above all, that a woman's duty is to stand by her man, and if Clinton learned that, she also learned a good deal more. No doubt she had a teacher as inspiring as Katherine Watson (Julia Roberts), who trades in the bohemian freedom of Berkeley for a crack at Wellesley's future corporate wives.This is the kind of school which actually offers classes in deportment, grooming and table setting, and the teacher of those classes, Nancy Abbey (Marcia Gay Harden) takes them so seriously that we begin to understand the system that produced Cathy Whitaker, Julianne Moore's showpiece wife in last year's "Far From Heaven." Watson finds her students scornful of her California background (every students makes it a point to be able to identify every slide of every painting in her first lecture), but she counterattacks with a blast of modern art, and there is a scene where she takes them to watch the uncrating of a new work by Jackson Pollock.Of course the board of trustees is suspicious of Katherine Watson, modern art and everything else that is potentially "subversive," and resistance among the undergraduates is led by Betty (Kirsten Dunst), whose mother is a trustee, whose plans include marrying an upward-bound but morally shifty Harvard man, and whose editorials in the school paper suggest Watson is leading her girls in the direction of communism and, worse, promiscuity. (A school nurse who gives advice on contraception has to leave her job.)We are pretty sure what the story parabola of "Mona Lisa Smile" will be (the inspiring teacher will overcome adversity to enlighten and guide), but the movie is more observant and thoughtful than we expect. It doesn't just grind out the formula, but seems more like the record of an actual school year than about the needs of the plot. In the delicate dance of audience identification, we get to be both the teacher and her students -- to imagine ourselves as a free spirit in a closed system, and as a student whose life is forever changed by her.But, you're wondering, how can I identify with a 30ish teacher and her 20ish female students? Don't you find yourself identifying with just about anybody on the screen, if the movie is really working? Katherine Watson is smart and brave and stands by her beliefs, and so of course she reminds us of ourselves.Julia Roberts is above all an actress with a winning way; we like her, feel protective toward her, want her to prevail. In "Mona Lisa Smile," she is the conduit for the plot, which flows through her character. The major supporting roles are played by luminaries of the first post-Julia generation, including not only Dunst, but Julia Stiles as Joan Brandwyn, a girl smart enough to be accepted by Yale Law but perhaps not smart enough to choose it over marriage; Maggie Gyllenhaal as Giselle Levy, who is sexually advanced and has even, it is said, slept with the studly young Italian professor, and Ginnifer Goodwin as Constance Baker, who is too concerned about her looks."A few years from now," the Wellesley students are solemnly informed, "your sole responsibility will be taking care of your husband and children." This is not a priority Watson can agree with. She tells the competent but conservative school president (Marian Seldes), "I thought I was headed to a place that would turn out tomorrow's leaders -- not their wives." Unlike the typical heroes of movies about inspiring teachers, however, she doesn't think the answer lies in exuberance, freedom and letting it all hang out, but in actually studying and doing the work, and she despairs when competent students throw away their futures (as she sees it) for marriage to men who have already started to cheat before their wedding days.Watson herself has a fairly lively love life, with a boyfriend in California (John Slattery) and now a warmth for the abovementioned studly Italian teacher (Dominic West), although it is probably not true, as a student rumor has it, that she had to come east because of a torrid affair with William Holden. The movie is not really about her romances at all, but about her function as a teacher and her determination to install feminism on the campus before that noun was widely in use. The movie, directed by Mike Newell, may be a little too aware of its sexual politics and might have been more absorbing if Katherine and her students were fighting their way together out of the chains of gender slavery. But the characters involve us, we sympathize with their dreams and despair of their matrimonial tunnel vision, and at the end we are relieved that we listened to Miss Watson and became the wonderful people who we are today.Download here
Venom (Horror,Thriller)
He Never Hurt A Soul Until The Day He Died.
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After the town freak Ray Sawyer is killed in a freak accident involving voodoo related material, local teens' bodies soon start piling up. A few of the teens decide to visit a friends house in the swamps of Louisiana to find out if she knows what's going on, but they soon realize that Ray is possessed by evil spirits of murderers and evil souls and worser...Ray has found the teens and is armed with a crowbar. With only voodoo protecting them, the teens must survive his clutches or become his next victims...
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The new version of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" is a contemptible film: Vile, ugly and brutal. There is not a shred of a reason to see it. Those who defend it will have to dance through mental hoops of their own devising, defining its meanness and despair as "style" or "vision" or "a commentary on our world." It is not a commentary on anything, except the marriage of slick technology with the materials of a geek show.The movie is a remake of, or was inspired by, the 1974 horror film by Tobe Hooper. That film at least had the raw power of its originality. It proceeded from Hooper's fascination with the story and his need to tell it. This new version, made by a man who has previously directed music videos, proceeds from nothing more than a desire to feed on the corpse of a once-living film. There is no worthy or defensible purpose in sight here: The filmmakers want to cause disgust and hopelessness in the audience. Ugly emotions are easier to evoke and often more commercial than those that contribute to the ongoing lives of the beholders.The movie begins with grainy "newsreel" footage of a 1974 massacre (the same one as in the original film; there are some changes but this is not a sequel). Then we plunge directly into the formula of a Dead Teenager Movie, which begins with living teenagers and kills them one by one. The formula can produce movies that are good, bad, funny, depressing, whatever. This movie, strewn with blood, bones, rats, fetishes and severed limbs, photographed in murky darkness, scored with screams, wants to be a test: Can you sit through it? There were times when I intensely wanted to walk out of the theater and into the fresh air and look at the sky and buy an apple and sigh for our civilization, but I stuck it out. The ending, which is cynical and truncated, confirmed my suspicion that the movie was made by and for those with no attention span.The movie doesn't tell a story in any useful sense, but is simply a series of gruesome events which finally are over. It probably helps to have seen the original film in order to understand what's going on, since there's so little exposition. Only from the earlier film do we have a vague idea of who the people are in this godforsaken house, and what their relationship is to one another. The movie is eager to start the gore and unwilling to pause for exposition.I like good horror movies. They can exorcise our demons. "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" doesn't want to exorcise anything. It wants to tramp crap through our imaginations and wipe its feet on our dreams. I think of filmgoers on a date, seeing this movie and then -- what? I guess they'll have to laugh at it, irony being a fashionable response to the experience of being had.Certainly they will not be frightened by it. It recycles the same old tired thriller tools that have been worn out in countless better movies. There is the scary noise that is only a cat. The device of loud sudden noises to underline the movements of half-seen shadows. The van that won't start. The truck that won't start. The car that won't start. The character who turns around and sees the slasher standing right behind her. One critic writes, "Best of all, there was not a single case of 'She's only doing that (falling, going into a scary space, not picking up the gun) because she's in a thriller.' " Huh? Nobody does anything in this movie for any other reason. There is no reality here. It's all a thriller.There is a controversy involving Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill: Volume 1," which some people feel is "too violent." I gave it four stars, found it kind of brilliant, felt it was an exhilarating exercise in nonstop action direction. The material was redeemed, justified, illustrated and explained by the style. It was a meditation on the martial arts genre, done with intelligence and wit. "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" is a meditation on the geek-show movie. Tarantino's film is made with grace and joy. This movie is made with venom and cynicism. I doubt that anybody involved in it will be surprised or disappointed if audience members vomit or flee.Do yourself a favor. There are a lot of good movies playing right now that can make you feel a little happier, smarter, sexier, funnier, more excited -- or more scared, if that's what you want. This is not one of them. Don't let it kill 98 minutes of your life.Download here
Police Academy 5: Assignment: Miami Beach (Comedy,Crime)
Hold everything! The cadets are dropping in on Miami Beach for an all new adventure.
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Commandant Eric Lassard, the head of the police academy, has reached mandatory retirement age, much to the delight of Captain Thaddeus Harris, who is planning to take over Lassard's job. Lassard and a handful of the Academy's former students travel to Miami for a special ceremony where Lassard is to be honored as the Policeman of the Year at a convention. Along for the trip to Miami are Moses Hightower, Eugene Tackleberry, Larvell Jones, Debbie Callahan, Laverne Hooks, Tommy "House" Conklin, and Commissioner Henry Hurst, along with Harris and his right hand man Proctor. A jewel thief named Manny has smuggled stolen diamonds in a camcorder. Manny's suitcase is accidentally switched with Lassard's identical suitcase at the airport in Miami. This gets Lassard and Harris kidnapped by Manny and his two henchmen Julio and Pete, with everyone, including Lassard's nephew, Sergeant Nick Lassard, in pursuit.
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BloodRayne (Action,Fantasy,Horror)
Driven by revenge...
Revenge never tasted so sweet.
She's one Hell of a heroine...literally!
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In eighteenth century Romania, Rayne, a dhampir (half-human, half-vampire), prone to fits of blind blood rage but saddled with a compunction for humans, strives to avenge her mother's rape by her father, Kagan, King of Vampires. Two vampire hunters, Sebastian and Vladimir, from the Brimstone Society persuade her to join their cause.
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Secret Passage ()
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Isabel and Clara are growing up in a time of terror. It is 1492, and Spain has decreed that all Jews must either convert to Catholicism, go into exile or face trial and execution. Although forcibly baptized, the sisters are chased through Christendom until they arrive in Venice. It is in this great maritime empire, where opulence rhymes with tolerance, that Isabel organizes secret passages for refugees fleeing the Inquisition while Clara falls in love with a Venetian noble, Paolo Zane. Isabel intends for her family to go to Istanbul, the only place where Jews can live freely, but Clara is reluctant to leave. She challenges Isabel's authority and is prepared to break her family ties and sacrifice her faith for love. Caught in this battle of wills is Clara's daughter, Victoria, who finds she is about to be married into the same faith that murdered her father.
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"The Secret War of Harry Frigg" must have been made against its own will. I've seen lousy movies before, but never one that seemed ashamed of itself. At times the actors seem to be in pain, and the movie itself is down-at-the-mouth and desperately boring. It is doing great business.There was a capacity crowd Saturday night, when I saw it, and there was even laughter at some of the worst stuff. I wondered whether the audience had seen a really funny movie recently; perhaps it didn't know what it was missing. But in a year that has already given us "The President's Analyst," "Bedazzled" and even "The Party," it is a terrible irony that "Harry Frigg" is considered a comedy.I know nothing of the film's history, but from the evidence on the screen I would guess that Paul Newman and director Jack Smight got trapped in it against their better judgment. Smight is a bright young director, capable of making very good movies. The new Rod Steiger comedy, "No Way to Treat a Lady," is his, and he also did Paul Newman's "Harper." Newman has been in a series of exceptionally good moviesrecently, notably "Hombre" and "Cool Hand Luke." For both Newman and Smight, "Harry Frigg" is a disaster, a step off the deep end, a departure from their recent level of work.Newman plays a troublemaking buck private who gets one of those typical movie missions: Break into a plush prison camp and persuade five high-living generals to escape. He does, more or less. But first he discovers one of those typical movie hidden passages, connecting his bedroom with the bedroom of the beautiful Contessa (Sylva Koscina).A little reflection will show that the passage was needed to allow sex appeal into the picture, since your average prison camp provides relatively little of it. I can almost hear the story conference, withsomebody asking how you're going to wring sex appeal out of five middle-aged generals, and the author saying, what the heck, why not have this secret passage, see, which leads to the beautiful Contessa's bedroom. Personally, I would have found the passage more excusable if it had led to Claudia Cardinale or Sophia Loren or anybody but Miss Koscina, whose personality has the effervescence of distilled water.The generals are generally passive; an opportunity to fill the roles with offbeat character actors was missed. And Newman plays his part with an almost insolent indifference, as if the movie were something to have a go at during lunch hour.Download here
Passion of the Christ, The (Drama)
By his wounds, we were healed.
One man changed the world forever.
The movie, behind the greatest event in the history of the world.
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The Passion of The Christ focusses on the last twelve hours of Jesus of Nazareth's life. The film begins in the Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus has gone to pray after sitting the Last Supper. Jesus must resist the temptations of Satan. Betrayed by Judas Iscariot, Jesus is then arrested and taken within the city walls of Jerusalem where leaders of the Pharisees confront him with accusations of blasphemy and his trial results in a condemnation to death.
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This version of "The Passion of the Christ" has not been given a star rating.Mel Gibson takes another cut at "The Passion" with this toned-down, unrated version of his bigger, longer, and uncut R-rated 2004 smash hit, "The Passion of the Christ." The recut eliminates five or six minutes of gore and violence in an attempt, according to Gibson, to make it more palatable for "Aunt Martha or Uncle Harry." Of the original version, which opened on Ash Wednesday 2004, Roger Ebert wrote:"If ever there was a film with the correct title, that film is Mel Gibson's 'The Passion of the Christ.' Although the word passion has become mixed up with romance, its Latin origins refer to suffering and pain; later Christian theology broadened that to include Christ's love for mankind, which made him willing to suffer and die for us."The movie is 126 minutes long, and I would guess that at least 100 of those minutes, maybe more, are concerned specifically and graphically with the details of the torture and death of Jesus. This is the most violent film I have ever seen."(Read Ebert's full, four-star review of the R-rated version here.)Download here
Four Weddings and a Funeral (Comedy,Drama,Romance)
An Outrageously Funny Affair
Five good reasons to stay single
He's quite engaging. She's otherwise engaged.
love is on the air, run for cover
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The film follows the fortunes of Charles and his friends as they wonder if they will every find true love and marry. Charles thinks he's found "Miss Right" in Carrie, an American. This British subtle comedy revolves around Charlie, his friends and the four weddings and one funeral which they attend.
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Four Weddings and a Funeral," delightful and sly, is a comedy about people who seem to live out their lives in public, attending weddings. No doubt they have everyday lives as well, but the film doesn't supply them. Even in the case of the central character, a likable, shy, perennial best man named Charles (Hugh Grant), we're never told what he does for a living. Of course the film is British, and in Britain it is considered bad form to ask anyone what they do, so perhaps the film simply doesn't know.The movie is about an extended group of friends. Some of them probably met at school, and others have married into their various families, and they all know each other, more or less.Occasionally a new face pops up: Carrie, for example, the sparkling American girl who is a guest at the first wedding, turns up again at the second, and is scheduled to be married at the third.Carrie, played by Andie MacDowell, is one of those women who is not quite as confident as she seems. She's smart and beautiful, but she is engaged to marry an older man named Hamish (Corin Redgrave) who is so thick, confident and overbearing that you figure no one would marry him who didn't need to. Sure, she says she loves him. But she is clearly falling for Charles, and he for her.Their flirtation begins at the first ceremony, and their romance is consummated during the celebration following the second.She does most of the aggressing, because Charles is too reticent to ever come right out and say what he really feels - not even if the happiness of a lifetime depends on it.While Charles and Carrie fall in love, the movie introduces us in a haphazard way to a lot of the other members ofthe crowd. It's like being at a wedding. We glimpse people across a room, we meet them, we forget their names, we are reminded, and then we make a connection and figure outwho they're with - or not with, as the case may be. Among the regulars at all of the weddings, we grow especially fond of Gareth (Simon Callow), who eats too much and drinks too much, whose vest is too tight and manner too jolly, but who is, we can see, true blue. Eventually we catch on that he is gay, although in this as in most other personal matters the movie is subtle enough that we have to read social clues, just as we would at a wedding.Other regulars at the ceremonies include Fiona (Kristin Scott Thomas), who used to date Charles and now would plainly like to start dating him again. Charles is doubly afflicted: He cannot tell a woman he likes her, and he also cannot tell her he dislikes her. He ends up back in Fiona's arms through a combination of loneliness, absent-mindedess and alcohol, and is engaged to her basically because he lacks the strength to make up his mind."Four Weddings and a Funeral" has been directed by Mike Newell, with the same kind of light-hearted enchantment that made his "Enchanted April" (1991) and last year's "Into the West" so seductive. Here, with his large cast, he moves nimbly through the crowd, making introductions with his camera. Luckily many of the scenes are set in large houses with room for the characters to creep away and engage in private drama.Hugh Grant, the star of the film, has been in a lot of movies, but this may be the one that makes him finally familiar to American audiences. He has a self-deprecating manner, a kind of endearing awkwardness, that makes you understand why a woman might like him - and why he might drive her mad while tap-dancing around his real feelings. MacDowell is much more open and direct ("more American," the movie must feel), and so it's intriguing to realize that while she is in love with a man she can say anything to, she's engaged to a man she basically has to lie to all the time.Like Kenneth Branagh's "Peter's Friends," this film forms a community that eventually envelops us. Also like that film, it's about how a homosexual character becomes a focus for much of what is best among the other characters, who are mostly straight; the gay man in both films is a center of good feeling, and helps create a sense of family. By the end of the movie, you find yourself reacting to the weddings, and the funeral, almost as you do at real events involving people you didn't know very well, but liked, and wanted to know better.Download here
New Rose Hotel (Drama,Mystery,Sci-Fi)
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Maas and Hosaka are two large Corporations in the future world. They are fighting to get control over the best minds of the world. The best is Hiroshi and at the moment he is working for the Maas Corporation. Fox has accepted an offer to persuade Hiroshi to go over to the Hosaka Corporation. Sandii is a little Italian girl from Japan and she should be the way to get to Hiroshi. X is the man who should train Sandii to break Hiroshi's Heart. But if X falls in love with Sandii? And if the Hosaka Corporation breaks the agreement? And if Sandii is not a little Italian girl?
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Threat of Exposure (Thriller)
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Dr. Daryl Sheleigh (Sean Young), is smart, beautiful, sophisticated, and in trouble... she's a psychotherapist / hypnotherapist whose clients have begun to mysteriously disappear. Badger (Will Schaub) Welldon is working undercover with the police, he poses as her patient looking for clues about four missing men(which also includes his younger brother). He's confident when he first enters her office, with no intention of revealing anything about himself... as the therapy progresses, boundaries are broken. Disturbing secrets from Badger's past emerge, and a compelling bond develops between Daryl and Badger. As Badger's feelings deepen, so does the chilling evidence against her... will she be the one to remove his loneliness or will she be his executioner?
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Tears of the Sun (Action,Drama,Thriller)
He was trained to follow orders. He became a hero by defying them.
The lives of many rest in the courage of a few.
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Navy SEAL Lieutenant A.K. Waters and his elite squadron of tactical specialists are forced to choose between their duty and their humanity, between following orders by ignoring the conflict that surrounds them, or finding the courage to follow their conscience and protect a group of innocent refugees. When the democratic government of Nigeria collapses and the country is taken over by a ruthless military dictator, Waters, a fiercely loyal and hardened veteran is dispatched on a routine mission to retrieve a Doctors Without Borders physician, Dr. Lena Kendricks. Dr. Kendricks, an American citizen by marriage, is tending to the victims of the ongoing civil war at a Catholic mission in a remote village. When Waters arrives, however, Dr. Kendricks refuses to leave unless he promises to help deliver the villagers to political asylum at the nearby border. If they are left behind, they will be at the mercy of the enormous rebel army. Waters is under strict orders from his commanding officer Captain Bill Rhodes to remain disengaged from the conflict. But as he and his men witness the brutality of the rebels first-hand, they are won over to Dr. Kendricks' cause and place their lives at risk by agreeing to escort the villagers on a perilous trek through the dense jungle. As they move through the countryside on foot, Waters' team, experts at evasion and concealment, are inexplicably and ferociously pursued by an army of rebels. They are confounded until they discover that, among the refugees, is the sole survivor of the country's previous ruling family, whom the rebels have been ordered to eliminate at all costs. Waters and his small band of soldiers must weigh the life of one man against their own and the refugees they feel obliged to protect.
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"Tears of the Sun" is a film constructed out of rain, cinematography and the face of bruce willis. These materials are sufficient to build a film almost as good as if there had been a better screenplay. In a case like this, the editor often deserves the credit, for concealing what is not there with the power of what remains.The movie tells the story of a Navy Seals unit that is dropped into a Nigerian civil war zone to airlift four U.S. nationals to safety. They all work at the same mission hospital. The priest and two nuns refuse to leave. The doctor, widow of an American, is also hostile at first ("Get those guns out of my operating room!"), but then she agrees to be saved if she can also bring her patients. She cannot. There is no room on the helicopters for them and finally Lieut. Waters (Bruce Willis) wrestles her aboard.But then he surprises himself. As the chopper circles back over the scene, they see areas already set afire by arriving rebel troops. He cannot quite meet the eyes of the woman, Dr. Lena Hendricks (Monica Bellucci). "Let's turn it around," Willis says. They land, gather about 20 patients who are well enough to walk, and call for the helicopters to return.But he has disobeyed direct orders, his superior will not risk the choppers, and they will all have to walk through the jungle to Cameroon to be rescued. Later, when it is clear Willis' decision has placed his men and mission in jeopardy, one of his men asks, "Why'd you turn it around?" He replies: "When I figure that out, I'll let you know." And later: "It's been so long since I've done a good thing--the right thing." There are some actors who couldn't say that dialogue without risking laughter from the audience. Willis is not one of them. His face smeared with camouflage and glistening with rain, his features as shadowed as Marlon Brando's in "Apocalypse Now," he seems like a dark violent spirit sent to rescue them from one hell, only to lead them into another. If we could fully understand how he does what he does, we would know a great deal about why some actors can carry a role that would destroy others. Casting directors must spend a lot of time thinking about this.The story is very simple, really. Willis and his men must lead the doctor and her patients through the jungle to safety. Rebel troops pursue them. It's a question of who can walk faster or hide better; that's why it's annoying that Dr. Hendricks is constantly telling Waters, "My people have to rest!" Presumably (a) her African patients from this district have some experience at walking long distances through the jungle, and (b) she knows they are being chased by certain death, and can do the math.Until it descends into mindless routine action in the climactic scenes, "Tears of the Sun" is essentially an impressionistic nightmare, directed by Antoine Fuqua, the director who emerged with the Denzel Washington cop picture "Training Day." His cinematographers, Mauro Fiore and Keith Solomon, create a visual world of black-green saturated wetness, often at night, in which characters swim in and out of view as the face of Willis remains their implacable focus point. There are few words; Willis scarcely has 100 in the first hour. It's all about the conflict between a trained professional soldier and his feelings. There is a subtext of attraction between the soldier and the woman doctor (who goes through the entire film without thinking to button the top of her blouse), but it is wisely left as a subtext.This film, in this way, from beginning to end, might have really amounted to something. I intuit "input" from producers, studio executives, story consultants and the like, who found it their duty to dumb it down by cobbling together a conventional action climax. The last half hour of "Tears of the Sun," with its routine gun battles, explosions, machine-gun bursts, is made from off-the-shelf elements. If we can see this sort of close combat done well in a film that is really about it, like Mel Gibson's "We Were Soldiers," why do we have to see it done merely competently, in a movie that is not really about it? Where the screenplay originally intended to go, I cannot say, but it's my guess that at an earlier stage it was more thoughtful and sad, more accepting of the hopelessness of the situation in Africa, where "civil war" has become the polite term for genocide. The movie knows a lot about Africa, lets us see that, then has to pretend it doesn't.Willis, for example, has a scene in the movie where, as a woman approaches a river, he emerges suddenly from beneath the water to grab her, silence her, and tell her he will not hurt her. This scene is laughable, but effective, Laughable, because (a) hiding under the water and breathing through a reed, how can the character know the woman will approach the river at precisely that point? and (b) since he will have to spend the entire mission in the same clothes, is it wise to soak all of his gear when staying dry is an alternative? Yet his face, so fearsome in camouflage, provides him with a sensational entrance and the movie with a sharp shudder of surprise. There is a way in which movies like "Tears of the Sun" can be enjoyed for their very texture. For the few words Willis uses, and the way he uses them. For the intelligence of the woman doctor, whose agenda is not the same as his. For the camaraderie of the Navy Seal unit, which follows its leader even when he follows his conscience instead of orders. For the way the editor, Conrad Buff, creates a minimalist mood in setup scenes of terse understatement; he doesn't hurry, he doesn't linger. If only the filmmakers had been allowed to follow the movie where it wanted to go--into some existential heart of darkness, I suspect--instead of detouring into the suburbs of safe Hollywood convention.Download here
Se7en (Crime,Drama,Mystery,Thriller)
Earnest Hemingway once wrote, "The world is a fine place and worth fighting for." I believe the second part.
Gluttony * Greed * Sloth * Envy * Wrath * Pride * Lust
Let he who is without sin try to survive
Long is the way, and hard, that out of hell leads up to light.
Seven deadly sins. Seven ways to die.
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A film about two homicide detectives' desperate hunt for a serial killer who justifies his crimes as absolution for the world's ignorance of the Seven Deadly Sins. The movie takes us from the tortured remains of one victim to the next as the sociopathic "John Doe" sermonizes to Detectives Sommerset and Mills -- one sin at a time. The sin of Gluttony comes first and the murderer's terrible capacity is graphically demonstrated in the dark and subdued tones characteristic of film noir. The seasoned and cultured Sommerset researches the Seven Deadly Sins in an effort to understand the killer's modus operandi while green Detective Mills scoffs at his efforts to get inside the mind of a killer...
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`Seven," a dark, grisly, horrifying and intelligent thriller, may be too disturbing for many people, I imagine, although if you can bear to watch, it you will see filmmaking of a high order. It tells the story of two detectives - one ready to retire, the other at the start of his career - and their attempts to capture a perverted serial killer who is using the Seven Deadly Sins as his scenario.As the movie opens, we meet Somerset (Morgan Freeman), a meticulous veteran cop who lives a lonely bachelor's life in what looks like a furnished room. Then he meets Mills (Brad Pitt), an impulsive young cop who actually asked to be transferred into Somerset's district. The two men investigate a particularly gruesome murder, in which a fat man was tied hand and feet and forced to eat himself to death.His crime was the crime of Gluttony. Soon Somerset and Mills are investigating equally inventive murders involving Greed, Sloth, Lust and the other deadly sins. In each case, the murder method is appropriate, and disgusting (one victim is forced to cut off a pound of his own flesh; another is tied to a bed for a year; a third, too proud of her beauty, is disfigured and then offered the choice of a call for help or sleeping pills). Somerset concludes that the killer, "John Doe," is using his crimes to preach a sermon.The look of "Seven" is crucial to its effect. This is a very dark film, the gloom often penetrated only by the flashlights of the detectives. Even when all the lights are turned on in the apartments of the victims, they cast only wan, hopeless pools of light.Although the time of the story is the present, the set design suggests the 1940s; Gary Wissner, the art director, goes for dark blacks and browns, deep shadows, lights of deep yellow, and a lot of dark wood furniture. It rains almost all the time.In this jungle of gloom, Somerset and Mills tread with growing alarm. Somerset intuits that the killer is using books as the inspiration for his crimes, and studies Dante, Milton and Chaucer for hints. Mills settles for the Cliff Notes versions. A break in the case comes with Somerset's sudden hunch that the killer might have a library card. But the corpses pile up, in cold fleshy detail, as disturbingly graphic as I've seen in a commercial film. The only glimmers of life and hope come from Tracy (Gwyneth Paltrow), Mills' wife.A movie like this is all style. The material by itself could have been handled in many ways, but the director, David Fincher ("Alien 3"), goes for evocative atmosphere, and the writer, Andrew Kevin Walker, writes dialogue that for Morgan Freeman, in particular, is wise, informed and poetic. ("Anyone who spends a significant amount of time with me," he says, "finds me disagreeable.") Eventually, it becomes clear that the killer's sermon is being preached directly to the two policemen, and that in order to understand it, they may have to risk their lives and souls."Seven" is unique in one detail of its construction; it brings the killer onscreen with half an hour to go, and gives him a speaking role. Instead of being simply the quarry in a chase, he is revealed as a twisted but articulate antagonist, who has devised a horrible plan for concluding his sermon. (The actor playing the killer is not identified by name in the ads or opening credits, and so I will leave his identity as another of his surprises.) "Seven" is well-made in its details, and uncompromising in the way it presents the disturbing details of the crimes. It is certainly not for the young or the sensitive. Good as it is, it misses greatness by not quite finding the right way to end. All of the pieces are in place, all of the characters are in position, and then - I think the way the story ends is too easy. Satisfying, perhaps. But not worthy of what has gone before.Download here
Mummy, The (Action,Adventure,Comedy,Fantasy,Horror)
Adventure Is Reborn.
Death is only the beginning.
Prepare. Beware. Behold.
The legend you know. The adventure you have yet to imagine.
The sands will rise. The heavens will part. The power will be unleashed.
Uncover the secret. Unlock the legend. Unleash the power.
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In ancient Egypt, high priest Imhotep started a forbidden relationship with Anck Su Namun, Pharaoh Seti's Mistress. When Seti finds out about what's going on, Imhotep and his loved one stab him, but can't escape the trustworthy guards: Anck Su Namnun chooses to commit suicide while Imhotep is bestowed with the Hom-Dai, the most feared curse of all: He is mummified alive in Hamunaptra, the city of the Dead. More than thirty-six centuries later, in 1923, to be exact, adventurer Rick leads Egyptologist Evelyn and her brother Johnathan to mysterious Hamunaptra. While Johnathan is keen on finding the legendary Egyptian treasures, Evelyn wants to search for the Book of the Living, which would clarify a lot in historical knowledge about the ancient Egyptians. Unfortunately, they and a rivaling group of careless American adventurers free Imhotep's mummy from his eternal prison. Now, with the ancient and quite agile high priest on the loose, the adventurers and scientists face not only a dangerous enemy, but also a massive threat to today's world: Imhotep wants to bring Ankh-su-namun back to life by using Evelyn's body, but he also wants to rid the world of the disbelieving crowd of democracy-supporters to be able to enforce his tyrannic dictatorship.
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Edge, The (Action,Adventure,Drama,Thriller)
They were fighting over a woman when the plane went down. Now, their only chance for survival is each other.
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Billionaire Charles Morse accompanies his supermodel wife Mickey to photo shoot at Alaska. The shoot is to be made by fashion photographer Robert Green. To find specific Indian for the shoot, they fly to even more distant location, where their small plane crashes into a lake. To survive in the woods full of man-killing bears they need each other, but the smarter of the men - Charles is suspicious that Robert is having an affair with his wife.
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Making Waves (Documentary)
If the public took back the airwaves, what would they sound like?
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What do a public access TV personality, an electronics engineer, a Vietnam vet, a libertarian congressional candidate and a retired millionaire have in common? They're all operating unlicensed, 'pirate' radio stations in Tucson, Arizona. Making Waves follows their uphill struggle to be heard on our publicly-owned but corporate-controlled airwaves. Armed with low-cost micro-radio equipment, the First Amendment, even a how-to video by a Michigan pastor, the Tucson pirates use unlicensed radio as a form of civil disobedience. For their stations, this means everything from providing the real alternative to alternative music to educating the public about its Constitutional rights. Making Waves reveals the pirates' personal and political passions that compel them to defy the U.S. Government,'
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Hot Shots! Part Deux (Action,Comedy,War)
Grab your guns! It's Hot Shots Part Deux!
Just Deux it.
The mother of all sequels!
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Topper Harley has retired again, now living in a budhist monastery, and again he's asked to lead a special operation into Iraq, to rescue the guys who were sent to rescue the guys who were sent to rescue some prisoners left behind after the Persian Gulf War, where he will meet again with his beloved Ramada while he tries to uncover who the traitor is and kill as many Iraqis as he can.
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There is a love scene in "Hot Shots, Part Deux" in which the hero, a dashing Navy commando played by Charlie Sheen, is dining with a beautiful espionage expert played by Valeria Golino. They are having spaghetti in an Italian restaurant, and somehow they each get one end of a log strand of pasta into their mouths, and suck it in until their faces come closer, and closer . . . and they kiss.This is, of course, a famous shot stolen from "Lady and the Tramp." So is the next shot, in which Sheen lovingly uses his nose to push a meatball in the direction of his lady love. One of the pleasures of watching a spoof like this is to spot the references; it's like a quiz on pop art.The Golina character is named Ramada Rodham Hayman. The other principal female character in the movie, played by Brenda Bakke, is named Michelle Rodham Hudleston. So it goes. The movie is directed by Jim Abrahams, who was one of the perpetrators of "Airplane!" (1980), the satirical parody that spawned this and many other films, including "Top Secret!" "The Naked Gun" and the original "Hot Shots!" The current film takes "Rambo III" as its starting place, with lots of loving little touches. The Sheen character, patterned on the Stallone original, is a pumped-up man of few words, who at the beginning of the film has left his life of action and violence to live a life of contemplation with monks in a remote Eastern land. He is tracked down there by his old commanding officer, played by Richard Crenna in a repeat of his own role in "Rambo III." Sheen wants to stay where he is, until Crenna tells him a story that makes him realize he is needed for a dangerous mission in the Middle East.The story is "Goldilocks and the Three Bears." Sheen, named Topper Harley in the movie, is needed to rescue Americans who were sent in to rescue other Americans who were sent in to rescue other Americans. Why is his participation essential? "You are the best of what we have left!" In the unnamed Arab country, we see a Saddam Hussein look-alike living a life of blissful domesticity, interrupted by moments of mayhem and torture. And we join Sheen on the mission, which is constructed out of countless jokes based on the "Rambo" movies and other commando epics.There are also the usual in-jokes. Proceeding down an Asian river in a gunboat, Sheen passes another boat headed in the opposite direction. On it is his father, Martin Sheen, who starred, of course, in "Apocalypse Now," and is apparently still inside that movie as we see him. "Loved you in `Wall Street'," the father shouts, as the boats pass.Movies like this are more or less impervious to the depredations of movie critics. Either you laugh, or you don't. I laughed. Will this genre ever run out of steam? "Hot Shots Part Deux" doesn't have the high-voltage nonstop comedy of "Airplane!" and "Top Secret!," still the best of their kind, and it isn't as hard on Stallone as it could have been. But as long as the Hollywood assembly lines keep groaning, there will probably be a function for these corrective measures.Download here
Interstate 60 (Adventure,Comedy,Drama,Fantasy)
All your answers will be questioned.
Get off on...Interstate 60.
It began as a wish, became an adventure, and ended as the ultimate road trip.
No rules, no boundaries.
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Neal Oliver is a young artist, but his father doesn't like his choice and wants him to go to Oxford. Everything changes after Neal's meeting with O.W.Grant, who grants exactly one wish per person, as his name suggests. Neal wishes for answers, and so he must travel to the nonexistent Danver by the nonexistent Interstate 60. In this trip he hopes to find the girl of his dreams, following the trail of her photos on the advertising stands along the route. Many encounters await him ahead. Will he receive what he asked for?
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King of Marvin Gardens, The (Crime,Drama)
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'It's Monopoly out there'. Jason Staebler, The King of Marvin Gardens, has gone directly to jail, lives on the Boardwalk and fronts for the local mob in Atlantic City. He is also a dreamer who asks his brother, David, a radio personality from Philadelphia to help him build a paradise on a Pacific Island - asking him to believe in yet another of his dreams, yet another of his get-rich-quick schemes. But luck is against them both and the game ends badly - real life reduced to radio drama.
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Gladiator (Action,Adventure,Drama)
A general who became a slave. A slave who became a gladiator. A gladiator who defied an emperor.
A Hero Will Rise.
On my command - unleash hell
Summer 2000 A.D.
The Gladiator Who Defied An Empire
What We Do In Life Echoes In Eternity.
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Maximus is a powerful Roman general, loved by the people and the aging Emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Before his death, the Emperor chooses Maximus to be his heir over his own son, Commodus, and a power struggle leaves Maximus and his family condemned to death. The powerful general is unable to save his family, and his loss of will allows him to get captured and put into the Gladiator games until he dies. The only desire that fuels him now is the chance to rise to the top so that he will be able to look into the eyes of the man who will feel his revenge.
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M aximus: I'm required to kill--so I kill. That's enough.Proximo: That's enough for the provinces, but not for Rome.A foolish choice in art direction casts a pall over Ridley Scott's "Gladiator" that no swordplay can cut through. The film looks muddy, fuzzy and indistinct. Its colors are mud tones at the drab end of the palette, and it seems to have been filmed on grim and overcast days. This darkness and a lack of detail in the long shots helps obscure shabby special effects (the Colosseum in Rome looks like a model from a computer game), and the characters bring no cheer: They're bitter, vengeful, depressed. By the end of this long film, I would have traded any given gladiatorial victory for just one shot of blue skies. (There are blue skies in the hero's dreams of long-ago happiness, but that proves the point.) The story line is "Rocky" on downers. The hero, a general from Spain named Maximus (Russell Crowe), is a favorite of the dying emperor Marcus Aurelius (Richard Harris). After Maximus defeats the barbarians, Marcus names him protector of Rome. But he is left for dead by Marcus' son, a bitter rival named Commodus (the name comes from the Latin for "convenient" and not what you're thinking).After escaping and finding that his wife and son have been murdered, Maximus finds his way to the deserts of North Africa, where he is sold as a slave to Proximo (the late Oliver Reed), a manager of gladiators. When Commodus lifts his late father's ban on gladiators in Rome, in an attempt to distract the people from hunger and plagues, Maximus slashes his way to the top, and the movie ends, of course, with the Big Fight.This same story could have been rousing entertainment; I have just revisited the wonderful "Raiders of the Lost Ark," which is just as dimwitted but 12 times more fun. But "Gladiator" lacks joy. It employs depression as a substitute for personality, and believes that if the characters are bitter and morose enough, we won't notice how dull they are.Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix) is one of those spoiled, self-indulgent, petulant Roman emperors made famous in the age of great Roman epics, which ended with "Spartacus" (1960). Watching him in his snits, I recalled Peter Ustinov's great Nero in "Quo Vadis" (1951), collecting his tears for posterity in tiny crystal vials. Commodus has unusual vices even for a Caesar; he wants to become the lover of his older sister Lucilla (Connie Nielsen), whose son he is bringing up as his heir.The moral backbone of the story is easily mastered. Commodus wants to be a dictator, but is opposed by the senate, led by Gracchus (Derek Jacobi). The senators want him to provide sewers for the city's Greek district, where the plague is raging, but Commodus decides instead on a season of games. Proximo arrives with his seasoned gladiators from Africa, who prove nearly invincible and threaten the emperor's popularity. The moral lesson: It is good when gladiators slaughter everyone in sight, and then turn over power to the politicians.The Colosseum productions play like professional wrestling. Events are staged to re-create famous battles, and after the visitors wipe out the home team, a puzzled Commodus tells his aide, "My history's a little hazy--but shouldn't the barbarians lose the battle of Carthage?" Later, an announcer literally addresses the crowd in these words: "Caesar is pleased to bring you the only undefeated champion in Roman history--the legendary Titus!" The battle sequences are a pale shadow of the lucidly choreographed swordplay in "Rob Roy" (1995); instead of moves we can follow and strategy we can appreciate, Scott goes for muddled closeups of fearsome but indistinct events. The crowd cheers, although those in the cheaper seats are impossible to see because of the murky special effects.When Maximus wins his first big fight, it's up to Commodus to decide whether he will live or die. "Live! Live!" the fans chant, and Commodus, bowing to their will, signals with a "thumbs up." This demonstrates that Commodus was not paying attention in Caesar School, since the practice at the Colosseum at that time was to close the thumb in the fist to signal life; an extended thumb meant death. Luckily, no one else in the Colosseum knows this, either.Crowe is efficient as Maximus: bearded, taciturn, brooding. His closest friend among the gladiators is played by Djimon Hounsou, who played the passionate slave in "Amistad." Since protocol requires him to speak less than Maximus, he mostly looks ferocious, effectively.Nielsen shows the film's most depth, as the sister. Phoenix is passable as Commodus, but a quirkier actor could have had more fun in the role. Old pros Harris, Jacobi and Reed are reliable; Scott does some fancy editing and a little digital work to fill the gaps left when Reed died during the production."Gladiator" is being hailed by those with short memories as the equal of "Spartacus" and "Ben-Hur." This is more like "Spartacus Lite." Or dark. It's only necessary to think back a few months, to Julie Taymor's "Titus," for a film set in ancient Rome that's immeasurably better to look at. The visual accomplishment of "Titus" shames "Gladiator," and its story is a whole heck of a lot better than the "Gladiator" screenplay, even if Shakespeare didn't make his Titus the only undefeated champion in Roman history.Download here
Wild Things (Crime,Drama,Thriller)
Be wild. Be wicked. Beware.
They can turn you on or turn on you.
They're dying to play with you.
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When High School Guidance counselor Sam Lombardo is accused of raping the popular student Kelly Van Ryan, his carefully structured life is ruined. But as the case heads to trial, an outcast school girl Suzie, may have information to free Sam. But the investigating Detective Ray, thinks that a more devious plan is at work that involves Sam, Kelly, and Suzie. As Ray digs deeper into the case, he uncovers a scheme that has very high stakes and where nothing is as it seems.
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``Wild Things'' is lurid trash, with a plot so twisted they're still explaining it during the closing titles. It's like a three-way collision between a softcore sex film, a soap opera and a B-grade noir. I liked it. This being the latest example of Florida Noir (hot on the high heels of ``Palmetto''), it has a little of everything, including ominous shots of alligators looking as if they know more than they're telling.The movie solidifies Neve Campbell's position as the queen of slick exploitation, gives Matt Dillon and Kevin Bacon lots of chances to squint ominously, and has a sex scene with Denise Richards (of ``Starship Troopers'') that is either gratuitous or indispensable, depending on your point of view.Plus, it has Bill Murray as a storefront lawyer who delivers 20 minutes of hilarity, which at the time is the last thing we're expecting.Movies such as this either entertain or offend audiences; there's no neutral ground. Either you're a connoisseur of melodramatic comic vulgarity, or you're not. You know who you are. I don't want to get any postcards telling me this movie is in bad taste. I'm warning you: It is in bad taste. Bad taste elevated to the level of demented sleaze.The plot: Matt Dillon plays Lombardo, a high school teacher who was ``educator of the year'' and has an engraved crystal goblet to prove it. As the movie opens, he writes ``SEX CRIMES'' on the board at a school assembly, and introduces speakers on the subject, including police officers Duquette (Bacon) and Perez (Daphne Rubin-Vega). In the back of the room, a student named Suzie (Neve Campbell) stalks out, suggesting which part of her anatomy one of the speakers can kiss. I wasn't sure if she was referring to Bacon or Dillon, but this is the kind of plot where it works either way.Then we meet Kelly Van Ryan (Denise Richards), the richest kid in the upscale Florida enclave of Blue Bay. She's got the hots for Mr. Lombardo. She follows him home, asks for rides, washes his Jeep and turns up in his living room so thoroughly wetted-down, she reminds us of the classic Hollywood line about Esther Williams: ``Dry, she ain't much. Wet, she's a star!'' Later, we see her leaving the teacher's humble bungalow, looking mad.Why is she mad? I will tread carefully; a publicist was stationed at the door of the screening, handing out letters begging the press not to give away the ending. The problem is, the ending of this film begins at the 45-minute mark, and is so complicated, I doubt if it can be given away. What sets up everything, in any event, is Kelly's testimony that she was raped by Mr. Lombardo--and the surprise testimony of Suzie that she was, too.Suzie lives in a trashy trailer out behind an alligator farm run by Carrie Snodgress. But Kelly lives on the right side of town, in manorial splendor, with her bikini-wearing, martini-drinking mom (Theresa Russell), who has had an affair with Lombardo. Hearing her daughter has been raped by him, Mom is enraged, and snarls, ``That SOB must be insane to think he can do this to me!'' That's the kind of dialogue that elevates ordinary trash into the kind that glows in the dark. Here's another line, after a murder: ``My mother would kill me if she knew I took the Rover!'' Bill Murray lands in the middle of this pie like a plum from heaven. Wearing a neck brace as part of an insurance scam, Murray runs his shabby storefront law office like a big downtown spread; when he asks his secretary to ``show Mr. Duquette his way out,'' all she needs to do is look up and say, ``goodbye,'' since the door is in arm's reach of everything else in the office.Without giving away the ending, that's about all I can tell you. See the movie, and you'll understand how very much I must leave unsaid.The director is John McNaughton, whose work includes two inspired films, ``Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer'' and ``Normal Life.'' He likes to show audiences how wrong their expectations are, by upsetting them. That worked in ``Henry'' as grim tragedy, and it works here as satire.Don't leave when the end titles start to roll. Credit cookies (those little bonus scenes they stick in between ``Key Grip'' and ``Location Catering'') are usually used for outtakes showing Matthau and Lemmon blowing their lines, or Jackie Chan breaking his legs. In ``Wild Things,'' McNaughton does something new: flashbacks, showing us stuff that was offscreen the first time around. The movie is still explaining itself as the curtains close, and then the audience explains it some more, on their way out of the theater.Download here
Interstate 60 (Adventure,Comedy,Drama,Fantasy)
All your answers will be questioned.
Get off on...Interstate 60.
It began as a wish, became an adventure, and ended as the ultimate road trip.
No rules, no boundaries.
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Neal Oliver is a young artist, but his father doesn't like his choice and wants him to go to Oxford. Everything changes after Neal's meeting with O.W.Grant, who grants exactly one wish per person, as his name suggests. Neal wishes for answers, and so he must travel to the nonexistent Danver by the nonexistent Interstate 60. In this trip he hopes to find the girl of his dreams, following the trail of her photos on the advertising stands along the route. Many encounters await him ahead. Will he receive what he asked for?
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One Point O (Mystery,Sci-Fi,Thriller)
Are you infected?
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After receiving mysterious empty packages inside his apartment, a young computer-programmer (named Simon) begins a personal investigation into their origins. This leads him to discover his odd and eccentric neighbors; an artificially intelligent robot-head, named Adam; a virtual-reality sex game; and a possible corporate conspiracy. As the story progresses, Simon's grip on reality becomes more and more tenuous, while his craving for Nature Fresh milk becomes almost unbearable. Is it all just in his mind, or is something more sinister happening here?
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Godsend (Drama,Horror,Thriller)
Adam Duncan. Born: December 11, 1987. Died: December 12, 1995. Born September 23, 1996.
Evil is here.
If someone you love was taken from you, how far would you go to bring him back from the dead?
On April 30th, evil is born.
Scare as Hell!
Their dreams came true...their nightmares will too.
When a miracle becomes a nightmare, evil is born.
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After their young son, Adam (Bright), is killed in an accident, a couple (Kinnear, Romijn-Stamos) approach an expert (De Niro) in stem cell research about bringing him back to life through an experimental and illegal cloning and regeneration process. When Adam comes back to them, however, he's.. different...
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In the middle of the night on a back road of the Czech Republic, two truck drivers unload a group of illegal immigrants from India. Then they drive away, unaware that they still have a passenger -- a baby, left behind in the confusion. Should they try to return the infant to its mother? No, because they don't know how to find her without risking arrest. Should they dump the baby by the roadside? One thinks that would be a good idea, but the other doesn't, and they end up selling the baby to the owners of a shady pawnshop.
This opening sets up one of the story lines in "Up and Down," a Czech film about working-class and middle-class characters, former and present wives, infant and grown children, current and retired soccer fans, professors and hooligans, criminals and the police. Director Jan Hrebejk and his co-writer, Petr Jarchovsky, are interested not so much in making a statement about their society as seeing it reflected in specific lives; in this, their film resembles the early work of the Czech director Milos Forman ("The Fireman's Ball"), whose son Petr plays one of the film's leads.
The first couple we meet after the pawnshop are the Fikes, Mila and Franta (Natasa Burger and Jiri Machacek). They're not very bright, but not bad people. He's a night watchman, sensitive about his cleft palate, grateful to his wife for having dinner with him, even though "I eat ugly." He's a member of a soccer team's fanatic group of supporters, who meet to watch the games on TV, get drunk, sing, chant slogans and go through the emotional yo-yo of victory and defeat.
Mila desperately wants a baby. She can't conceive. They can't adopt, because Franta has a police record (he blames the soccer club for leading him into hooliganism). After almost stealing a baby in its carriage, she's afraid: "I'll do something and they'll arrest me." The baby at the pawn shop is a godsend. They buy it, bring it home and love it. When Franta's booster club buddy makes racist remarks about the baby's dark skin, Franta boots him out, resigns from the club and joins his wife in loving the baby.
Then we meet another family, the Horeckas. Martin (Petr Forman) has spent the last 20 years in Australia -- a useful explanation for his English-accented Czech, no doubt. He returns home to visit his father Otto (Jan Triska) and mother Vera (Emilia Vasaryova), who have divorced. He is also confronted with the fact that his former girlfriend, Hana (Ingrid Timkova) is now living with his father, and they have an 18-year-old daughter, Lenka (Kristyna Liska-Bokova). No doubt the romance between Otto and Hana was one of the reasons Martin left for Australia.
Czech movies seem to have some of their finest moments around the dining table, and a Horecka family dinner is a funny, sad and harrowing all at once. So is the uncertain relationship between Martin and half-sister Lenka. We learn that Vera is an alcoholic with the kinds of resentments, including racist ones, that drunks often use to deflect anger and attention away from themselves.
These two stories do not so much interact as reflect on each other with notions about families, parents, children and class. For me, the most affecting character was Frantz, the watchman, who is tattooed, muscular and ferocious, yet so gentle with his wife and baby. He has been under the thumb of the "Colonel" (Jaroslav Dusek), a leader of the booster club, but for a brief moment breaks free into happiness and a content family life. The story of his history with the club is the story of the ups and downs of his life, and his final scene in the movie is heartbreaking in the way it shows the club becoming a substitute family.
There is, of course, the question of the baby's real parents. Can they go to the police without revealing their status as illegal immigrants? Another of the movie's ups and downs is about the way we're simultaneously required to sympathize with the baby's birth mother while witnessing how the baby transforms the marriage of Mila and Franta.
Jan Hrebejk was also the director of "Divided We Fall" (2000), a film about a couple in Prague whose Jewish employers are victims of the Nazis. When the son of the employers appears at their door, they give him shelter in a hidden space within their house. Meanwhile, a local Nazi, makes it clear he is attracted to the wife of the couple providing the shelter. He also begins to suspect their secret.
What should happen next? Should the wife have sex with the Nazi to protect the man they are hiding? Such moral puzzles are at the heart of Hrebejk's work, and he has no easy answers. "Up and Down" also lacks any formulas or solutions, and is content to show us its complicated characters, their tangled lives, and the way that our need to love and be loved can lead us in opposite directions.Download here
Frankenstein (Horror,Mystery,Sci-Fi)
Someone new is playing God.
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Two hundred years after Mary Shelley's novel the brilliant but mad Doctor (Thomas Kretschmann) has sustained his creature and himself over two centuries through genetic experimentation. In present-day America Detective O'Connor (Parker Posey) is investigating a series of horrific murders which leads her to the doctor and his creature. What she uncovers reveals the strange evolution the doctor and his creation undergo over the course of two centuries and the divergent paths creator and monster take in pursuing good or evil.
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Se7en (Crime,Drama,Mystery,Thriller)
Earnest Hemingway once wrote, "The world is a fine place and worth fighting for." I believe the second part.
Gluttony * Greed * Sloth * Envy * Wrath * Pride * Lust
Let he who is without sin try to survive
Long is the way, and hard, that out of hell leads up to light.
Seven deadly sins. Seven ways to die.
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A film about two homicide detectives' desperate hunt for a serial killer who justifies his crimes as absolution for the world's ignorance of the Seven Deadly Sins. The movie takes us from the tortured remains of one victim to the next as the sociopathic "John Doe" sermonizes to Detectives Sommerset and Mills -- one sin at a time. The sin of Gluttony comes first and the murderer's terrible capacity is graphically demonstrated in the dark and subdued tones characteristic of film noir. The seasoned and cultured Sommerset researches the Seven Deadly Sins in an effort to understand the killer's modus operandi while green Detective Mills scoffs at his efforts to get inside the mind of a killer...
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`Seven," a dark, grisly, horrifying and intelligent thriller, may be too disturbing for many people, I imagine, although if you can bear to watch, it you will see filmmaking of a high order. It tells the story of two detectives - one ready to retire, the other at the start of his career - and their attempts to capture a perverted serial killer who is using the Seven Deadly Sins as his scenario.As the movie opens, we meet Somerset (Morgan Freeman), a meticulous veteran cop who lives a lonely bachelor's life in what looks like a furnished room. Then he meets Mills (Brad Pitt), an impulsive young cop who actually asked to be transferred into Somerset's district. The two men investigate a particularly gruesome murder, in which a fat man was tied hand and feet and forced to eat himself to death.His crime was the crime of Gluttony. Soon Somerset and Mills are investigating equally inventive murders involving Greed, Sloth, Lust and the other deadly sins. In each case, the murder method is appropriate, and disgusting (one victim is forced to cut off a pound of his own flesh; another is tied to a bed for a year; a third, too proud of her beauty, is disfigured and then offered the choice of a call for help or sleeping pills). Somerset concludes that the killer, "John Doe," is using his crimes to preach a sermon.The look of "Seven" is crucial to its effect. This is a very dark film, the gloom often penetrated only by the flashlights of the detectives. Even when all the lights are turned on in the apartments of the victims, they cast only wan, hopeless pools of light.Although the time of the story is the present, the set design suggests the 1940s; Gary Wissner, the art director, goes for dark blacks and browns, deep shadows, lights of deep yellow, and a lot of dark wood furniture. It rains almost all the time.In this jungle of gloom, Somerset and Mills tread with growing alarm. Somerset intuits that the killer is using books as the inspiration for his crimes, and studies Dante, Milton and Chaucer for hints. Mills settles for the Cliff Notes versions. A break in the case comes with Somerset's sudden hunch that the killer might have a library card. But the corpses pile up, in cold fleshy detail, as disturbingly graphic as I've seen in a commercial film. The only glimmers of life and hope come from Tracy (Gwyneth Paltrow), Mills' wife.A movie like this is all style. The material by itself could have been handled in many ways, but the director, David Fincher ("Alien 3"), goes for evocative atmosphere, and the writer, Andrew Kevin Walker, writes dialogue that for Morgan Freeman, in particular, is wise, informed and poetic. ("Anyone who spends a significant amount of time with me," he says, "finds me disagreeable.") Eventually, it becomes clear that the killer's sermon is being preached directly to the two policemen, and that in order to understand it, they may have to risk their lives and souls."Seven" is unique in one detail of its construction; it brings the killer onscreen with half an hour to go, and gives him a speaking role. Instead of being simply the quarry in a chase, he is revealed as a twisted but articulate antagonist, who has devised a horrible plan for concluding his sermon. (The actor playing the killer is not identified by name in the ads or opening credits, and so I will leave his identity as another of his surprises.) "Seven" is well-made in its details, and uncompromising in the way it presents the disturbing details of the crimes. It is certainly not for the young or the sensitive. Good as it is, it misses greatness by not quite finding the right way to end. All of the pieces are in place, all of the characters are in position, and then - I think the way the story ends is too easy. Satisfying, perhaps. But not worthy of what has gone before.Download here
Shipping News, The (Drama,Romance)
Dive Beneath The Surface
You'll never guess what you'll find inside...
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An inksetter in New York, Quoyle returns to his family's longtime home, a small fishing town in Newfoundland, with his young daughter, after a traumatizing experience with her mother, Petal, who sold her to an illegal adoption agency. Though Quoyle has had little success thus far in life, his shipping news column in the newspaper "The Gammy Bird" finds an audience, and his experiences in the town change his life. Then he meets the widow Wavey...
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Next Best Thing, The (Comedy,Drama,Romance)
Best friends make the best mistakes.
He was smart, handsome and single. When her biological clock was running out, he was... the next best thing.
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A comedy-drama about best friends - one a straight woman, Abbie (Madonna), the other a gay man, Robert (Rupert Everett) - who decide to have a child together. Five years later, Abbie falls in love with a straight man and wants to move away with her and Robert's little boy Sam, and a nasty custody battle ensues.
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Smokin' Aces (Action,Crime,Thriller)
He just met ten hitmen after his own heart.
Let There Be Blood
May the best hitman win.
Nobody gets away clean.
The hit goes down 2007.
The hit goes down January 26.
The Only Way To Even The Score... Is To Take Buddy Israel Out Of The Game
When you're worth $1 million dead, you don't have long to live.
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An FBI agent (Reynolds) hunts for a Las Vegas stand up comedian (Piven) who has decided to squeal on the mob but, before he heads off for protective custody, decides to go to the casinos at Lake Tahoe for one last good time, drawing a crowd of assassins (including Affleck and Keys).
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Lost in Space (Action,Adventure,Sci-Fi)
An adventure like nothing on Earth
Danger Will Robinson!
Get Lost!
Get Ready. Get Set. Get Lost.
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In the near future, earth's fossil resources are about to be used up. In an attempt to save the human race, scientists have begun building a gate, through which faster than light travel will be possible - but only if there is a gate at the destination to receive the travelers. The Robinson Family has been chosen to travel to Alpha Prime - the only other inhabitable planet known - at normal speed, ten years, cryogenically frozen. But Dr. Smith, a sinister man, sabotages their spaceship, Jupiter 2, but is also betrayed by his people. So, he has to work together with the Robinsons in order to survive himself. When Jupiter 2 is falling into the sun, the only chance to survive is to activate the hyperdrive - without a gate at the other end. Soon, the Robinsons are someplace really unknown, where they meet unfriendly silicon-based space spiders, take in a little ape-like creature and name new star systems after Bugs Bunny and Porky Pig. They have to reach Alpha Prime in order to build the second gate, or earth's only hope is gone.
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``Lost in Space'' is a dim-witted shoot-'em-up based on the old (I hesitate to say ``classic'') TV series. It's got cheesy special effects, a muddy visual look, and characters who say obvious things in obvious ways. If it outgrosses the brilliant ``Dark City,'' the previous sci-fi film from the same studio, then audiences must have lost their will to be entertained.The TV series was loosely modeled on the novel The Swiss Family Robinson, about a family shipwrecked far from home and using wit and ingenuity to live off the land. I loved that book, and especially its detailed description of how the family made tools, machines, and a home for themselves, and trained the local animals.The movie doesn't bother with such details. After a space battle that is the predictable curtain-raiser, and a quick explanation of why and how the Robinson family is setting off for a planet called Alpha Prime, the film takes place mostly onboard their saucer-shaped ship, and involves many more space battles, showdowns, struggles, attacks, hyperspace journeys, and exploding planets. In between, the characters plow through creaky dialogue and exhausted relationship problems.Imagine the film that could be made about a family marooned on a distant planet, using what they could salvage from their ship or forage from the environment. That screenplay would take originality, intelligence and thought.``Lost in Space'' is one of those typing-speed jobs where the screenwriter is like a stenographer, rewriting what he's seen at the movies.The story: Earth will not survive another two decades. Alpha Prime is the only other habitable planet mankind has discovered. Prof. John Robinson (William Hurt) and his family have been chosen to go there and construct a hypergate, to match the gate at the earth end. Their journey will involve years of suspended animation, but once the other gate is functioning, humans can zip instantaneously to Alpha Prime.There needs to be a hypergate at both ends, of course, because otherwise there's no telling where a hyperdrive will land you--as the Robinsons soon find out. Also onboard are the professor's wife Maureen (Mimi Rogers), their scientist daughter Judy Robinson (Heather Graham), their younger daughter Penny (Lacey Chabert), and their son Will (Jack Johnson), who is the brains of the outfit. The ship is piloted by ace space cadet Don West (Matt LeBlanc), and includes an intelligent robot who will help with the tasks at the other hand.Oh, and lurking below deck is the evil Dr. Zachary Smith (Gary Oldman), who wants to sabotage the mission, but is trapped onboard when the ship lifts off. So he awakens the Robinsons, after which the ship is thrown off course and seems doomed to fall into the sun.Don West has a brainstorm: They'll use the hyperdrive to zap right through the sun! This strategy of course lands them in a galaxy far, far away, with a sky filled with unfamiliar stars. And then the movie ticks off a series of crises, of which I can enumerate a rebellious robot, an exploding planet, mechanical space spiders, a distracting romance, and family issues of trust and authority.The movie might at least have been more fun to look at if it had been filmed in brighter colors. Director Stephen Hopkins and his cinematographer, Peter Levy, for some reason choose a murky, muted palette. Everything looks like a drab brown suit, or a cheap rotogravure. You want to use some Windex on the screen. And Bruce Broughton's musical score saws away tirelessly with counterfeit excitement. When nothing of interest is happening on the screen, it just makes it worse when the music pretends it cares.Of the performances, what can be said except that William Hurt, Gary Oldman and Mimi Rogers deserve medals for remaining standing? The kids are standard-issue juveniles with straight teeth and good posture. And there is a monkeylike little alien pet who looks as if he comes from a world where all living beings are clones of Felix the Cat. This is the kind of movie that, if it fell into a black hole, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference.Download here
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