The Descent

Release date: 11 March 2005 (Brussels International Festival of Fantasy Films)

Neil Marshall, who directed the excellent, cheeky horror, Dog Soldiers, takes a stab (pardon the pun) at a gaggle of gals who meet gruesome ghouls while spelunking ... and doesn't quite pull it off. Marshall kicks off the film with the death of lead character Sarah's husband that is supposed to have us identify with her loss (it doesn't) and provide the thread on which to construct the caving story that ensues (it does ... though poorly). It also provides Sarah's daughter, little Jessica, some reason to constantly appear (dreamlike) wearing a pretty dress and blowing out birthday cake candles (like huh?!). While you have to give prompts to Marshall for the filming here (there's some great scenes in very tight corners), the ghouls when then finally arrive are just Nosferatu knockoffs. What floored me was Marshall's decision to have Sarah turn vigilante at the end. (Spoiler alert) ... the scene where Sarah hobbles Juno on suspicion she purposely stabbed Beth (or whoever it was ... I was beyond caring) comes out of the blue and is, in a word, stupid. This film is an hour of tiresome plot building that ends with thirty minutes of thrills and is not worth The Descent.

My rating 4 out of 10.

The Believer

Release date: 23 August 2001 (Russia)

Written and directed by Henry Bean, The Believer spins a - frankly - utterly unbelievable story (purportedly inspired by a true story) of a young Jew, Danny Balint (played by the latest 'it' guy - Ryan Gosling) who's turned his back on his jewish heritage and spun headlong into neo-Nazism. While Gosling is brilliant in this film, the supporting crew, and more so, the rather pieced together story riddled with long philosophic ramblings about race and religion, a foiled assassination attempt on a Jewish politician, a (sort of) love story, neo-Nazi training camps and a synagogue desecration just don't add up. What's worse, despite the fine, fine performance by Gosling, Bean ends the film with a redemptive afterthought ... almost as if he got so far in, he suddenly realized, 'oh my, how am I going to get out of this?'. All that said, however, the film is worth a viewing to watch Gosling's excellent performance as an antihero you simultaneously hate to love, and love to hate.

My rating 6 out of 10.

Music Within

Release date: 6 November 2007 (Toronto)

Last Thursday I attended the Toronto premier of Director Stephen Sawalich's film, Music Within, starring Ron Livingston and Michael Sheen. Music Within tells the story of Richard Pimentel, who while not well known in North America, can be credited with bringing people with disabilities, their cause and their issues into the mainstream. His seminal training program, based on his 1981 book Tilting at Windmills, was mandatory training for all bureaucrats in the US government, and his efforts led to the creation of the Americans with Disabilities Act (something which shamefully, Canada has yet to legislate nationally). I wanted to like this movie and think it would have been better served had Sawalich focused less on Pimentel the man and more on what he accomplished. While I appreciated getting to know more about someone who's story rightly needs to be told, I think this film would have done better as a PBS documentary than the Sunday-Night-at-the-Movies plodding film (with plodding storyline and poor production values) it is. Worse, I felt I spent 90-odd minutes hammered by a public service announcement on an issue I already wholly support.

For raising awareness on this issue, my rating 3 out of 10.

Maria Full of Grace

Release date: 2 April 2004 (Columbia)

Directed by Joshua Marston, Maria Full of Grace shows us a sad side of the Columbia drug trafficking story - the use of young women as drug mules. Maria, a pregnant seventeen year-old, fed up with life in her small village supporting her mother and sister on a pittance of a wage de-thorning roses, ends up swallowed (pardon the pun) within the drug world. Soon, we see her and two friends ingesting large pellets of cocaine (in Maria's case sixty-two) then boarding a plane and heading to New York City. What was interesting about this film was how sorry you felt for Maria (played by Catalina Sandino Moreno, who garnered a rightful Oscar nomination for her role). The story get meaty as Maria and a surviving friend wander the streets of New York and become integrated into the world that is an illegal immigrant's lot. In the end, with the drugs returned to the dealers, Maria receives her epiphany... and perhaps her grace? Despite the topic and storyline, Maria Full of Grace is a very quiet movie that delivers on character development and plot and is well worth viewing for Moreno's performance and to understand the (warning: preachy moment) evil drugs continue to wreak on South America's poorest peoples.

My rating 7 out of 10.

Beowulf

Release date: 16 November 2007 (USA)

The master of digitalized actors, Robert Zemeckis, directs this retelling of one of the Western world's greatest poems, the Song of Beowulf. Like all good stories of long ago, Beowulf has heroes, monsters, a dragon and curses. If you want a full telling of the tale, visit McMaster University's good site here. The story is a great romping ride of exhilarating excitement on its own. However, what makes this film over-the-top fun is Zemeckis use of performance capture technology where filmed sequences and digitalized animation are woven together to give the film a rich, if creepy, look. Add to this, seeing it in IMAX 3-D and OMG, hold on to your fur-lined caps. I thoroughly loved this film despite its liberties with the story and the bigger-than-Graceland acting by everyone involved: Ray Winstone, John Malkovich, Angelina Jolie and Anthony Hopkins, to name but a few. Special mention to Brendan Gleeson as Wiglaf however. Beowulf is two hours of mossy, thick and rich film adrenaline and should not be missed by anyone who likes a good quest/monster adventure.

My rating 8 out of 10.

Apocalypto

Release date: 8 December 2006 (USA)

Mel, Mel, Mel ... Mel Gibson's latest films all seem to use the same tactics, namely, sickening violence and the focus on one man destined in some manner (usually religious) for 'greatness' within his community. I cite Braveheart and The Passion of the Christ as recent examples. In Apocalypto, Mel takes these two themes to their usual extremes following Jaguar Paw, a young man taken from his forest village and trekked to the Mayan capital to become a human sacrifice to the Gods. Destiny intervenes in the form of an eclipse and thereafter the film becomes the story of Jaguar Paw's odyssey back to save his wife and child, all the while being pursued by his Mayan captures. As a reflection of Mayan history at the time of the conquest, this story is aesthetically accurate and utterly breathtaking in its cinematography. As virtual history, it is hogwash and is simply a setting for the grander story Mel is filming. The violence in the film is horrific on many, many levels and I wonder if the film could have been a 10 out of 10 had Mel reduced it? ... That all said, I would still highly recommend Apocalypto for those of strong stomach who want a glimpse at a world long since gone.

My rating 9 out of 10.

Half Nelson

Release date: 11 August 2006 (USA)

Though Ryan Gosling's performance as the strung out junior high school teacher, Dan Dunne, won him an Academy Award nomination this year, the real star of this film is Shareeka Epps, who plays Drey. When Drey catches Dan smoking crack in the washroom one day a secret bond is formed between them. A bond and story which then carries the movie. Half Nelson is a film about the crash between reality and hope as seen through Teacher Dan's eyes. Caught between his hope to make the world better for the black and hispanic kids in his class and the reality he can't, Dan takes to drugs to find a new reality in which to cope. It is classic stuff and in the hands of director Ryan Fleck is all done quite well. My only problem with the film was Gosling's performance, but perhaps I just don't get the subtlety of his acting? Surely the Academy can't be wrong, right?! Half Nelson also seemed to me one of those films that just goes on and on and on ... and not in a good way.

My rating 5 out of 10.

Blood Diamond

Release date: 8 December 2006 (USA)

Two interlaced love stories masquerade as a hunt for a very rare pink diamond in this great film from director Edward Zwick. The stories centre on Archer (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) who realizes all his wrongs as a Zimbadweian ex-mercenary and diamond smuggler when he meets and falls for the lovely American reporter Maddy Bowen (played by Jennifer Connelly), and Solomon Vandy (the always exceptional Djimon Hounsou), who, kidnapped from his family and forced to work in the Sierra Leone diamond mines, uses the love of family to make his way home. Leonardo's laughable Zimbadweian accent and stiff acting aside, Blood Diamond spins a great story that will keep your interest throughout. Watching it made me realize how much I don't want to go to Africa any time soon, mind you.

My rating 8 out of 10.

Address Unknown

Release date: 2 June 2001 (South Korea)

Director Ki-duk Kim's Address Unknown essentially tells is all about the post-Korean War realities of the American presence. Taking place in 1970, it follows the story of three young misfits - the mixed race son of a Korean mother and black American GI, Chang-guk; Jihum, a frail, abused teenager who is fixated on Eunok, a teenage girl with a wonky eye. The lives of these three individuals intertwine as only Korean dramas can. In the end, the violence and discrimination each faces takes its toll, the result: tragedy for each. The problem with this film is its relentless despair ... there are no happy moments, not a one unless you count Eunok's implied masturbation scene with her puppy (which is something else altogether). The other problem is you see it all coming, Ki-duk Kim exercises no subtlety. Dog lovers will also recoil at the brutal scenes of dog cruelty (the film does note no dogs were harmed in the filming). What you're left with is an overwhelming malaise and a clear understanding that the American involvement in Korea has left deep societal scars.

My rating 6 out of 10.

Son of Rambow

Release date: 14 September 2007 (Toronto International Film Festival)

Son of Rambow is the name of the home movie two misfit British school lads start filming after they run into each other in the hallway of their school. There is Will, the only son of a family of strict religious folk who will not permit him to watch TV or associate with anyone outside their sect. And there is Lee Carter, the son of rich absentee parents who spends his time idolizing his older brother, raising hell in his school and trying to prepare a film for ScreenTest, a contest for up and coming film-makers. Directed by Garth Jennings, this film is a wonderful coming of age tale filled with lessons on friendship and family. It is fun, funny, eclectic, heartwarming and a little off centre and is certainly one of the finest films I've seen this year.

My rating 9 out of 10.

Superman Returns

Release date: 21 June 2006 (Los Angeles, USA)

Brandon Routh stars as Superman, who after an absence of five years on the remains of his home planet Krypton, returns to mother earth to rescue babies and show us poor human folk how good we could be if greed and lust didn't get in our way. Routh is perfectly cast as Superman mimicking Christopher Reeve's sad acting style. Lois is now married with a son, whom we're led to believe is the caped man's own. Kevin Spacey steals the movie as Lex Luthor, who is up to no good stealing Superman's home crystals with a mind to creating a new land mass in the mid-Atlantic to call his own. It's all done very well with lots of action and Superman and Lois Lane looking sadly and longingly at each other. In the end of this too-long-by-30-minutes film, Superman waxes philosophically like Jesus sprouting some Christian parable about sons and fathers. Gugh! This would have been a great movie had director Bryan Singer done the right thing and ended it as Superman hurtles back to earth, after tossing the offending crystal land mass into space, and crashes like a meteor in the heart of Metropolis' version of Central Park.

My rating 7 out of 10.

Elizabeth: The Golden Age

Release date: 9 September 2007 (Toronto International Film Festival)

Part two of the Elizabeth saga stars, once again, Cate Blanchett. And 'stars' is the perfect term for Cate. You could take Cate Blanchett, dress her up as a guy, give her an awful script with nothing to work with and she'd still shine through ... oh, wait, they've already done that; remember: I'm Not There. The latest Elizabeth - the many historical inaccuracies aside - revolves around Elizabeth's struggle with the pirate, Sir Walter Raleigh, her nemesis Mary, Queen of Scots and the Spanish Armada, which, had the weather cooperated, would have had us all speaking Spanish not English at the present moment. That aside, this film is lavish and luscious and Cate steals most every scene ... though the CGI created Armada is a close second. Clive Owen stars (in an altogether different sense) as Sir Walter Raleigh and does his usual stiff and flat acting routine. Not half as good as the original, Elizabeth: The Golden Age, however, sets the standard high for period dramas in the absence of Ivory & Merchant films. The sheer sweep of the film is breathtaking.

My rating 7 out of 10.

The Bourne Supremacy

Release date: 15 July 2004 (USA)

Despite the plethora of raves on rottentomatoes.com, this second version of Matt doing his Bourne thing flounders on a (yawn) done-it-before story of amnesia and Russian spies and just doesn't live up to the original. Matt Damon does his best to seem interested in what's going on but just can't quite pull it off (perhaps that's the amnesia at work?). The directing, by Paul Greengrass, is all MTV with jumpy shots, flashbacks and lots of shaky camera work. It's all way too much and left me distracted and disinterested.

My rating 6 out of 10.

For Your Consideration

Release date: 10 September 2006 (Toronto International Film Festival)

A spoof on all things Hollywood and, in particular, those who vie for Oscar. The story centers on a the filming of a disaster of a movie called Home for Purim, and the rumour mill that starts up about actors getting Oscar nominations. The has-been actors - a plastic-looking, over-botoxed Catharine O'Hara, former hot-dog adman Victor Allen Miller (played brilliantly by Harry Shearer) and young Callie Webb (the wonderful Parker Posey) all get caught up in the hope of this only to have their hopes dashed, dashed, dashed. There are plenty of laugh-out-loud moments in this film and plenty of socially and ethnically incorrect references that are hilarious. A harmless, fun film that will brighten a snowy evening.

My rating 8 out of 10.

Hannibal Rising

Release date: 9 February 2007 (Canada)

Unwatchable and interminably dull and boring. The best I can say about this horror of a horror is that Gong Li's English is improving. The meaningless abhorrent violence aside, this is a good antidote for insomnia. Embarrassing for all involved. Proves that not all film franchises need to go back to give us the origins of the species. Sometimes it's best to leave enough alone.

My rating 0 out of 10.

Sukiyaki Western Django

Release date: 31 August 2007 (Japan)

If you want to talk about a director who knows how to work extremes, you should go no further than Japan's Takashi Miike, who one year after giving us the strange, stark, quiet murder mystery Big Bang Love, Juvenile A returns with this loud, funny, over-the-top take on the American cowboy western. The film centres on the fight for a town, rumored to have a buried treasure, and pits the "whites" and "reds" against each other in true War of the Roses' fashion (the association here to Henry VI will be apparent when you see this movie). A drifter in true Clint Eastwood style arrives in town to save the poor townsfolk from these two marauding groups of samurai and set to right the various injustices meted out during their battle for the town. This is all done in a style I can only best describe as Moulin Rouge crossed with Kill Bill crossed with Couching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. It is highly stylized complete with great costumes, much silliness in a Japanese game show way, nods to some of the classic cliches of westerns young and old, and even has Quentin Tarantino playing a key character. What else could you ask for?! If you're after a western of a much different ilk with a marvelous blend of east meets west, saddle on up to this fabled tale.

My rating 9 out of 10.

I'm Not There

Release date: 3 September 2007 (Venice International Film Festival)

Todd Hayes had a great movie in Far From Heaven, and I wanted to say that before reviewing his latest effort, I'm Not There. This film is apparently a biography on the life and times of Bob Dylan and it contains gobs of his music. Piers Handling, Director & CEO of the Toronto International Film Fest Group, gushed at the premier I attended about how it will "revolutionize how biopics are made". Well, if the future of biopics is about dullness, tedious boredom and utter confusion, he truly has hit the nail on the head as this film has this in spades. Utterly forgettable save the performance of Cate Blanchett as one of the Dylan incarnations (Oscar worth perhaps?). And what the hell was Richard Gere doing with his version of Dylan in this mess? A film for strung out artsy-fartsy folk and the film critics who chill with them.

To give Cate her due, my rating 3 out of 10.

Sad Vacation

Release date: 2007 (Japan)

Directed by Shinji Aoyama, Sad Vacation centres on Kenji, who, abandoned by his mother, Chiyoko, when a wee lad, gets by in the employ of the yakuza until he decides to care for an orphaned Chinese boy he comes across when smuggling illegal immigrants. That move leads to the death of his partner in the business and his need to hide. He ends up a driver chauffeuring bar hostesses to and from their homes. And then fate intercedes; later summed up by one character in that 'we are all fated to meet the people we meet'. On one drive, he happens to come across his mother, now remarried with a son and the proprietor of a successful transport company. It is the relationship of mother and son, and brother to half-brother which then consumes the remainder of the film, with startling effect at the end. Despite his attempts to have his mother feel the abandonment he felt as a young boy, Chiyoko opts not to abandon Kenji again despite the cruelness he brought to her. And perhaps that's what this movie is ultimately about: the depth of a mother's love and forgiveness. I enjoyed this film despite its sad ending.

My rating 7 out of 10.

Silk

Release date: 11 September 2007 (Toronto International Film Festival)

Directed by Canadian Francois Girard, Silk is based on a novel by Alessandro Baricco and is essentially a love triangle
between a 19th century silkworm smuggler (played by Michael Pitt), his wife (the ever-pretty Keira Knightley) and the concubine of a baron (Sei Ashina). While the story is, frankly, terribly predictable, Alain Dostie's cinematography makes it all worthwhile. The film, picture-wise, is gushingly gorgeous in a Memoirs of a Geisha fashion, even though the film is more The Last Samurai but with silkworms ... and just as dull.

For the teary love story, however, and more so the simply beauty of what Girard and Dostie set to film, my rating 6 out of 10.

Death Defying Acts

Release date: 13 September 2007 (Toronto International Film Festival)

Directed by Aussie Gillian Armstrong, who was on hand to give us a chat about the film before the screening, Death Defying Acts gives us the fictional story of a run-in Harry Houdini (played by Guy Pearce) had with a Scottish con artist, Mary Macgregor (played by Catherine Zeta-Jones) and her daughter, Benji. Harry has come to Edinburgh to perform his tricks and has set a challenge to all seers and clairvoyants, worth $10,000, if they can confirm the last words spoke by his mother on her death bed. Mary sees dollars signs and is confident she can con Harry out of the money. What follows is pretty standard fare but it is done very refreshingly, I thought, and I was captured by what is at heart a love story masquerading as a drama-thriller. Pearce and Zeta-Jones are bang-on, which certainly helps. The cinematography by Harris Zambarloukos is rich and velvety and gorgeous, perfect for the film. While Harry Houdini can't defy death in the end (which had some in the audience crying even!), the story of his amazing skills as a magician continue to feed us to this day, even when fictionalized.

My rating 8 out of 10.