Review: Red Road [2006] - dir. Andrea Arnold

Jackie works a job that many would find dull; she is a CCTV operator but one that gets a perverse kick out of watching others going about their everyday business; that is until a day in which a man appears on her monitor: A man from her past and one that she never wanted to see again. Now she has no alternative but to confront both the man, and the demons inside herself.

So this is going to be a hard review to write, I am sure a million people or more will disagree with me on many aspects of my opinions of this film, and judging by the reviews on Amazon, I am probably very, very wrong... but here goes...

Review: Career Girls [ 1997] - dir. Mike Leigh

Director Mike Leigh follows up his Oscar-nominated SECRETS AND LIES with CAREER GIRLS, a bittersweet drama that deals with the passage of time between two friends. Annie (Lynda Steadman) and Hannah (Katrin Cartlidge) were college roommates in London. Six years later, Annie is taking the train back into London to reunite with her friend. The resulting connection sparks flashbacks from the past, where we learn that Annie was even more shy and defensive than she is currently.

The British writer-director Mike Leigh is a strong-willed auteur of the grubby (David Thewlis in Naked), the misfit (High Hopes), and the economically impoverished (Life Is Sweet). Indeed, the accessible, emotional Secrets & Lies still remains almost the exception in Leigh's bleak, twisty universe of hard to love characters. Career Girls is more like the rule: It isn't easy to even begin to understand these two women. But the effort rewards the viewer with a satisfying cinematic take on the resiliency and therapeutic importance of friendship.

Editorial: Coming Soon...

OK so here's the list of upcoming reviews and editorials...

Reviews
Die Hard 2: Die Harder (Competition Winner review)
Creep
Career Girls
Bloodlines
 The Usual Suspects
Big Trouble in Little China
South Pacific

Review: Along Came a Spider [2001] - dir. Lee Tamahori

Based on the first James Paterson novel to feature criminal profiler Alex Cross, the film opens with a police trap that goes catastrophically wrong and forces Cross into early retirement. He spends his days mulling over what might have been and making model boats. At a local school for kids of the rich and famous, a teacher has kidnapped one of the prodigious pupils and begins sending Dr. Cross evidence of the abduction in the post. Not only does the kidnapper want to commit the crime of the century but he also wants to play mindgames with the successfully published psychologist.
After the worldwide success of the grisly yet superb Seven in 1995, Morgan Freeman obviously decided that he hadn't had enough of chasing serial killers and promptly made the much less satisfactory Kiss The Girls. Based on a James Paterson book, it somehow captured the public imagination and became a modest success. Now Freeman returns in another adaptation of a Paterson novel, playing the same character and chasing another psychokiller. Co-produced by Freeman and directed by Lee Tamahori (Once Were Warriors), this is a much more successful venture than Kiss The Girls should have led to a respectable franchise for one of the world’s greatest living actors, sadly this doesn't seemed to have come to fruition.

Review: Die Hard [1988] - dir. John McTeirnan

It's Christmas Eve and New York City cop John McClane (Bruce Willis) is flying into Los Angeles. He's a nervous flyer, and as the plane lands the passenger sitting next to him suggests a tip: after the flight, he should take off his shoes and socks and make fists with his toes on the rug. A limousine has been sent to take John from the airport to the high rise offices of his wife, Holly (Bonnie Bedelia), who he is separated from. The chauffeur, Argyle (De'voreaux White), offers to wait in the building's car park while John decides whether he will be spending Christmas with his family or not, but as John gets ready to join the office party, there's a disturbance outside... some uninvited guests with guns...

It's safe to say that Die Hard was a crucial development in the action movie genre. Written by Jeb Stuart and Steven de Souza, it led to many lesser imitators (including its own sequels), which would become known by the reviewing shorthand as Die Hard on a ship (Under Seige), Die Hard on a plane (Air Force One), Die Hard on a train (Under Siege 2), and so on. Despite looking well-worn now in terms of its plot, the original still stands up as reliable entertainment through its spectacular set pieces and excellent characters, ideal for watching again and again. It also turned Bruce Willis from a television star into a movie star, so how you feel about that depends on how you feel about Bruce Willis (of course).

STOP PRESS... AVATAR ... $500M dollar travesty?

OK... Ready?... Sit down... trust me, you will need to when you read this... Avatar (the big Crimble Release from James 'I wasted 6 years of my life for this?' Cameron) is estimated to have cost... $500 Million!!!! That's HALF A BILLION DOLLARS!!!!

How much health care, housing solutions and welfare does that equate to I wonder?

Read more here if you dare... http://www.manolith.com/2009/11/10/avatar-will-be-the-most-expensive-movie-ever-made/

Article: The Billion$ God Trilogy - Part 1

In The Beginning [2011] - dir. Michael Bay

Cast
Adam - Zac Efron / Eve - Megan Fox / Voice of the Serpent - Nicolas Cage / Cane - Ben Affleck / Abel - Matt Damon / David - Liev Schreiber / Saul - Alan Rickman / Soloman - George Clooney / Noah - Sam Neill / Samson - Arnold Schwarzenegger / Ahab - Gabriel Byrne / Jezebel - Sharon Stone / Job - Tim Robbins / Moses - Russell Crowe / Abraham - Anthony Hopkins / Voice of God - Morgan Freeman

Synopsis
Picture this, a RED EPIC 5K digital print presented in next generation RealD, who better to capture the creation story than Michael Bay,

Review: Thunderbirds [2004] - dir. Jonathan Frakes

Based on the cult British television show from the 1960s, Thunderbirds explodes into the 21st Century with this thrilling live-action version of the franchise. The International Rescue organization a team of highly organized law enforcers is the focal point for the movie. International Rescue is based on a remote desert island location, and is called into action whenever the world's sinister masterminds threaten to disturb the balance of society.

Jeff Tracy (Bill Paxton) heads up the team, and employs his sons to help him out. Teenager Alan Tracy (Brady Corbet) is a little too young to join, and is constantly frustrated by his lack of opportunity to join the brothers on their missions.

Lost in La Mancha 2: Try Harder...

Terry Gilliam Re-Starts THE MAN WHO KILLED DON QUIXOTE!!! -- Ain't It Cool News: The best in movie, TV, DVD, and comic book news.

Let's hope the weather is better this time around :)

Review: Redacted [2007] - dir. Brian DePalma

Director Brian De Palma, whose CASUALTIES OF WAR addressed a horrific tragedy that occurred during the Vietnam war, turns his attention to Iraq with an unfortunately similar tale. Inspired by true events, REDACTED follows a group of soldiers who are stationed at a checkpoint in Iraq. Angel Salazar (Izzy Diaz) is an aspiring filmmaker who is intent on capturing his experience on videotape.

His fellow soldiers Reno Flake (Patrick Carroll), Lawyer McCoy (Rob Devaney), and Gabe Blix (Kel O’Neill)--seem to be surprisingly well-adjusted at first, but it isn't long before their true colours come through. When Reno decides to get drunk and harass an Iraqi family, the situation devolves into rape and murder, putting an incredible strain on Lawyer, who wants to expose Reno but doesn’t want to rat out a fellow soldier.

Article: The Billion$ God Trilogy - THE PITCH!

Elevator Pitch
Picture this... "3 movies, 3 holiday release dates, imagine Moses meets Transformers, Jesus is Mr. White and The Devils Rejects on a global scale. A cast of thousands, 3 of the hottest directors on the planet, the greatest story never told (like this before)."

The Reasoning
With the imminent release of Roland Emmerich's latest disaster spectacular 2012, and all the conspiracy theories floating around the web about Planet X, 2012 and the Mayan prophecies, doesn't now seem the perfect time to make THE definitive film trilogy based on the single biggest selling book in the world... OK I may be facetiously proposing this, but seriously it makes sense... doesn't it?