The Lives of Others

Release date: 15 March 2006 (Berlin, Germany)

Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck - a mouthful of a name for sure - directs this perfectly paced thriller that won the Academy Award for Best Foreign picture in 2007. Set in East Berlin when the Stasi ruled supreme and whole arms of the East Germany government spent their time monitoring the lives of others. Into this world arrives Stasi secret agent Capt. Gerd Wiesler (a fabulous Ulrich Mühe), a man of monotonous routine and precision, who is charged with spying on the lives of author Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch) - believed to be sympathetic to the West - and his lover, a actor named Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck). Problem is the real motive for the spying is not western sympathies - though are these discovered? - but the fact the Minister of Culture has a love-on for Christa. The film works brilliantly on many levels - the suspense building subtlety throughout - as Wiesler's own fascination with the couple slowly creates holes in his Stasi armour. The Lives of Others gives us an example of the tragedy that results when a man's allegiance - to a ideology, to his country - is tested.

My rating 9 out of 10.

Sunshine Cleaning

Release date: 18 January 2008 (Sundance Film Festival)

Directed by Christine Jeffs Sunshine Cleaning gives us the story of two Albuquerque sisters who venture into the business of bio-hazard and post-crime scene clean-up. Bright and cheery, it is not. Rose (Amy Adams) is eking out a living working as a house cleaner, dealing with a son, Oscar (Jason Spevack) with challenges of his own, and continuing an affair with her (married) high school sweetheart - now sheriff - Mac (Steve Zahn). When he suggests she raise the money she needs to send odd Oscar to private school by cleaning up murder scenes she recruits her gadabout sister Norah (Emily Blunt) and is off to the hardware store to bulk buy Lysol. And thereupon Sunshine Cleaning is born, and pardon the pun, dies. With a decidedly 'indie' feel to the adventure - and despite the appearance of Alan Arkin as their very eccentric father, Joe - Sunshine Cleaning feels wrong from the get-go. As though we are watching not a film but a version of Twin Peaks swept into Little Miss Sunshine. Where's the magic eraser when you need it?

My rating 3 out of 10.

Watlz with Bashir

Release date: 15 May 2008 (Cannes Film Festival)

If you haven't yet danced with Bashir; get moving. Waltz with Bashir is director Ari Folman's exploration of his time serving with the Israeli military during the invasion of Lebanon in 1982. More than that however, the film cuts new territory on the art of documentary film-making by marrying one man's journey to discover - and reconcile - his wartime actions using animation as the vehicle. Portraying the horror of the war and subsequent massacre of civilians in animation dulls the visceral nature of the violence so Folman can examine more clearly his part in it. Waltz with Bashir is a fascinating achievement that rockets the viewer through the history of the middle east and the wounded dreams of those who've fought its battles and ends with a live action segment that is brutally effective. This is powerful stuff and a must see.

My rating 9 out of 10.  

Swept Away

Release date: 8 October 2002 (Los Angeles, California)

There's really only three reasons to watch this film. The opening credits are beautifully realized; the last ten minutes are achingly beautiful on an emotional level with - finally! - emotive acting by Madonna (as Amber, the uber rich, bitchy socialite); and, most intriguingly, to sift through the dreadful other bits to ponder the deeper themes at play. Themes of class warfare; sex; and the roles of men and women. Directed by Guy Ritchie, Swept Away is a remake of Lina Wertmuller's 1974 film Travolti da un insolito destino nell'azzurro mare d'agosto (Swept Away by an Unusual Destiny in the Blue Sea of August). Madonna essentially plays herself and is forced to look at things a little differently when she is stranded on a Mediterranean island with a fisherman named Giuseppe (Adriano Giannini). Here she evolves we're led to believe and the film ventures into territory that is deeply misogynistic (to the point of being uncomfortable) but perhaps that's the film's salient point? 

For making me uncomfortable and forcing me to think, my rating 4 out of 10.

The Counterfeiters

Release date: 10 February 2007 (Berlin International Film Festival)

The Counterfeiters won the Academy for Best Foreign Film in 2008, and deservedly so. Directed by Stefan Ruzowitzky, it recounts the true story of Operation Bernhard - the Nazi's plan to destabilize the British and American governments by flooding their economies with forged pounds and dollars designed and printed by Jews interned at Sachsenhausen. Central to the story is Salomon "Sally" Sorowitsch (a superb Karl Markovics), a master counterfeiter who is captured in Berlin at the start of the war by Friedrich Herzog (Devid Striesow), who later becomes his jailer at Sachsenhauser. The Counterfeits is a fine film full of fine acting - kudos to both August Diehl (as Adolf Burger) and the young Sebastian Urzendowsky (as Kolya) - that drags us into the dirty moral quicksand associated with Nazi complicity and lets us struggle with the question: what would you have done?

My rating 8 out of 10. 

Invictus

Release date: 3 December 2009 (Hollywood, California)

Despite the considerable talent of none other than Clint Eastwood directing, Invictus is a formulaic - verging on trite - recap of the South African rugby team's victory at the 1995 World Rugby Cup. Based on John Carlin's book, Eastwood positions the story as President Mandela's (Morgan Freeman) mission to win the cup as one tool to help unite the apartheid-torn nation. He recruits into the effort none other than the team's captain Francois Pienaar (Matt Damon). And while a true story indeed - and an important one - sorry, it doesn't make for very good film-making. Worse, Damon's seemed to forgot how to act (unless you count woodenness as acting) and Freeman's portrayal of Mandela cum Gandhi with a dreadful accent just plain hurts. All in all, a film decidedly lacking in heart. To paraphrase William Ernest Henley, whose poem the movie draws its title from: in the fell clutch of circumstance, I have both winced and cried aloud. 

My rating 4 out of 10.  

Death at a Funeral

Release date: 10 February 2007 (European Film Market)

Directed by Frank Oz, this black comedy has two brothers - Daniel (Matthew Macfadyen) and Robert (Rupert Graves) - maneuvering about their father's home trying to deal with a disabled and acerbic uncle Alfie (Peter Vaughan), a blackmailing dwarf (Peter Dinklage) and their cousin Martha's (Daisy Donovan) fiance Simon (Allan Tudyk) who has surreptitiously taken hallucinogenic drugs. What makes this all so entertaining is the fact it happens on the day of their father's funeral. Turns out the dwarf is actually their father's gay lover; Martha's dad Victor (Peter Egan) can't abide Simon; and, best of all Daniel's been harbouring a grudge against his older, more successful brother for ages. Death at a Funeral is a twisted dark comedy in a style so decided fawlty (emphasis and spelling intended) it's a wicked joy to watch.

My rating 7 out of 10.

127 Hours

Release date: 4 September 2010 (Telluride Film Festival)

Bully on James Franco for tackling a film where he is the center of attention from the get-go and responsible for carrying all the action. Bully on director Danny Boyle for detouring off the beaten path of Slumdog Millionaire to tackle the harrowing true-life story of Aron Ralston, who when trapped in a crevice in the Utah badlands opted to amputate his right arm rather than perish. A bold story coupled with bold acting in the hand(s)? of a bold director can produce a fine movie and 127 Hours is that and more.

My rating 8 out of 10.

It's Kind of a Funny Story

Release date: September 2010 (Toronto International Film Festival)

It's kind of an odd story, what with a suicidal 16-yer-old checking himself into an adult psychiatric ward, but It's Kind of a Funny Story is a good story too. Got that? Directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, the film follows Craig (Keir Gilchrist), a not untypical teenager as he wanders the ward of the unit meeting and befriending the patients in his search to fully understand he's just like most teenagers confused by he feelings for a girl and unable to relate what he wants to be (artsy and creative) with his parents expectations. Central to the film is a great performance by  Zach Falifianakis as Bobby and Emma Roberts as Noelle, Craig's soon-to-be girlfriend. While the film tackles the subject of mental health with a tongue-in-cheek humour that may lessen the severity of those individuals working their way through the maze that is brain health illness, It's Kind of a Funny Story (dumb title aside) is both quaint and odd enough - in an indie film sort of style - to make you forgive this.

My rating 7 out of 10.

Inception

Release date: 8 July 2010 (London, UK)

Easily the best film of this or any year, Christopher Nolan's masterpiece is a Jungian's wet dream of symbolism and one of the most deep films in the past half century. A marriage of past and present layered with a premise so interesting it ought to warrant its own research grant - that we can invade the subconscious and lay seeds that will eventually blossom into real-life actions. Inception stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Cobb (and who else does tortured soul better?) the leader of a group of professionals who parachute into the dreams of their targets. With him are sidekicks Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), Ariadne (Ellen Page) and paying client Saito (Ken Watanabe). When Cobb is hired by Saito to change the mind of the CEO of the world's key energy company Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy), he comes face-to-face with his own past and the wife, Mal (Marion Cotillard), he abandoned within a dream.  With a rich storyline that goes deeper and deeper as it evolves and special effects that brilliantly complement its brazen premise, Inception is the most refreshingly original movie you'll see in long time.

My rating 10 out of 10.  

The Secret in Their Eyes

Release date: 13 August 2009 (Argentina)

The Secret in Their Eyes won Best Foreign Film for Argentina in 2010. Skillfully directed by Juan Jose Campenella, there is nary  a misplaced scene. In fact what works best about this film is its quietness. A skill that continues to elude the majority of American directors. The film is a crime thriller with a retired legal counselor in 1999 choosing to write a book about an unsolved rape/murder case from 1974. Ricardo Darin stars as Benjamin Esposito, the counselor in question; Guillermo Francella is Pablo Sandoval his perpetually drunk colleague and Soledad Villamil is their boss, Irene Hastings.  When a recently married Lilana is raped and murdered Esposito is assigned to the case. From that assignment he builds a lifelong fascination with the case and its players, including Lilana's husband Ricardo Morales (Pablo Rago). The Secret in Their Eyes is a bold film despite its quietness and the twists and turns you encounter viewing it are fabulously fodder for a psychiatrist. See it.

My rating 9 out of 10.

Iron Man 2

Release date: 26 April 2010 (Los Angeles, California)

Robert Downey Jr returns - some six months later in time - as mega entrepreneur Tony Stark aka Iron Man. Now that he's a successful deterrent to war, the US Army begins its work to militarize the Iron Man technology, much to Stark's chargin. Sadly, Stark's ticker continues to wane and new bad guy Whiplash (Mickey Rourke) proves the US military right when he shows up at the Monaco Grand Prix in a Iron Man-like suit and nearly does Stark in. Gwyneth Paltrow returns as Pepper - now Stark CEO - Potts and Lt. Col. James Rhodes (Don Cheadle) pulls double duty again tiptoeing between his military bosses and Stark. Stark's new assistant Natalie (Scarlett Johansson) we discover is actually working for Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and when Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell) hires Whiplash to work on a Hammer version of Ironman, all heck breaks loose. Directed by Jon Favreau, Ironman 2 continues all the great stuff discovered in the first movie and gives us a reason to like Ironman all over again.

My rating 8 out of 10.

 

The Town

Release date: 8 September 2010 (Venice Film Festival)

Charlestown on the outskirts of Boston births some of America's most successful thieves. The Town is director  Ben Affleck's story of one such group of armed robbers and, in particular, the attempt by one of this gang - Doug MacRay (Affleck) - to quit the neighbourhood's business.  When Affleck and his crew rob a bank and end up taking the bank manager Claire (Rebecca Hull) hostage, it sets in motion a collision between him, his best friend James (an outstanding Jeremy Renner) and the law. Anxious to escape Charlestown and with FBI agent Frawley (John Hamm) in pursuit, Doug is forced to take one last job for the neighbourhood godfather, Fergie Colm (Pete Postlewaite).  The Town is an action filled tale woven tightly around the story's four key characters and while it can be criticized for being unrealistic on a whole host of levels, the acting is fine enough, the action sharp enough to warrant a sojourn.

My rating 7 out of 10. 

Score: A Hockey Musical

Release date: 9 September 2010 (Toronto International Film Festival)

A film only a Canadian could love, Score: A Hockey Musical stars Noah Reid as Farley Gordon, a home-schooled lad with the hockey skills of The Great One. Recruited to the Brampton Blades for a tryout he soon makes the team much to the chagrin of Coach Donker (John Pyper-Ferguson). But when Farley is faced to fight, the pacifist  sentiment his parents - Hope and Edgar (Olivia Newton John and Marc Jordan respectively) - built into him has him at a crossroad. Directed by Michael McGowan and co-starring Alle MacDonald as Farley's 'I've-not-yet-discovered-I-love-her' best friend Eve, Score is ramp with over-the-top silliness and some pretty awful singing too boot. But hey, it's about hockey and features a few cameos by the likes of Walter Gretzky, Nelly Furtado, Evan Soloman, Theo Fleury and George Stroumboulopoulos, so it can't be all bad, eh!

My rating 4 out of 10. 

The Road

Release date: 3 September 2009 (Venice Film Festival)

The Road is a post-apocalyptic story based on Cormac McCarthy's novel that has a grungy looking Viggo Mortensen traipsing around an even grungier America. Viggo is looking for a safe place for he and his son, "Boy" (Kodi Smit-McPhee) as a new ice age settles on the continent and consumes the compassion that once knit  communities and people together.  Directed by John Hillcoat in hues of gray that match the relentless malaise and sadness of the story this is not a film to watch if you're feeling out of sorts or depressed. While ultimately The Road is a story of hope and love, you are forced to suffer through lots of violence to get there.  Viggo is as good as ever but we've been down this road before.

My rating  6 out of 10.

Kwaidan

Release date: 29 December 1964 (Japan)

Even today this 1964 film by artist-turned-director Masaki Kobayaski remains a masterpiece. Whether viewed as a psychological horror, a histogram of creepy folktales or a fantasy, Kwaidan remains hugely influential in Japanese film even today and echos of Kobayaski's style appear in modern anime with his pioneering use of stark colours and subtle messaging that mixes fable and parable. The film is a compendium of four stories based on the stories of Lafcadio Hearn - Black Hair, The Woman in the Snow, Hoichi the Earless and In a Cup of Tea. Each has its eerie and supernatural aspects and of the four the first and third work the best. Hoichi the Earless is a profound segment that blurs the lines of history when a story teller's ability to recount the past has the ghosts of the past trying to recruit him.

Essential viewing for any Japanese film fan, Kwaidan gets my rating of 9 out of 10.

The King's Speech

Release date: 5 September 2010 (Telluride Film Festival)

Telling the little known story of King George VI's (an excellent Colin Firth) struggle with stuttering and the speech therapist, Lionel Logue (an even better Geoffrey Rush), who aided him, The King's Speech recounts a heady slice of European history from the death of George V (Michael Gambon), the ascention and abdication of Edward VIII (Guy Pearce) and the arrival of George VI on the throne at the start of World War II. Directed by Tom Hooper, the film gives us a peek into the Family Royal and the intrigue - real or imagined - of life at court. Everyone is good in this film and the production has a regal air about it fitting the subject matter. The film's best bits though are those with Bertie and Lionel alone working through his stammer and the psychological baggage that birthed it. A good film that marries a history lesson with a drama few of us - at the time - knew was taking place behind the velvet curtains of Buckingham Palace.

My rating 7 out of 10.

Fantastic Mr Fox

Release date: 14 October 2009 (London Film Festival)

After promising his pregnant wife, Mrs Fox (Meryl Streep) he'll refrain from his fox raiding ways to take up a job as a journalist, the erstwhile Mr Fox (George Clooney) moves his home from a den to an oak tree situated beside three of the biggest, baddest farmers in the county - Boggis and Bunce and Bean. There, with his very odd son Ash (Jason Schwartzman) grown-up and his nephew Kristofferson (Eric Chase Anderson) moved in, he resumes his chicken stealing ways. This inevitably leads to a war between the farmers and Mr Fox which draws in the entire animal community living beneath the ground. Directed by Wes Anderson and using stop-action animation - a decidedly brave move that works in a world of computer drawn animation films - Fantastic Mr. Fox takes Roald Dahl's much loved characters on a new adventure that is endearing, slightly odd, and wickedly funny.

My rating 7 out of 10.

Winter's Bone

Release date: January 2010 (Sundance Film Festival)

Daniel Woodrell's novel of the same name is adapted by director Debra Granik and becomes a movie critic's darling. When 17-year-old Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence) is told the home she and her family live in will be confiscated unless her drug-dealing father Jessup is found, she takes things into her own hands to search the underbelly of Missouri hillbilly country - and its vile web of secrets and mean inhabitants - to discover the truth. Sadly, she finds it in a swamp but does come out richer for it. Winter's Bone is beautifully filmed in an unflinching fashion and cuts very near the bone. And while Lawrence, John Hawkes (as her uncle Teardrop) and especially Dale Dickey (as the cruel-to-be-kind matriarch Merab) are all excellent, in the end you have no emotional attachment to these folks - real as they may be in portrayal - and worse, tire of the dreariness of the whole thing. A good example of style over substance, Winter's Bone leaves this critic cold indeed.

My rating 4 out of 10.

Exam

Release date: June 2009 (Edinburgh Film Festival)

Stuart Hazeldine wrote and directed this stylistic thriller that has a mysterious group of wannabes entering a room to take an exam which will land one of them a much coveted job with the world's greatest pharmaceutical. At the outset the exam's invigilator (Colin Salmon) lays down the rules the 8 candidates must adhere to. These include no spoiling the exam paper; no talking to either the invigilator or the armed guard stationed in the room; and no leaving the room. With that, the exam and intrigue commence. The central players end up being White (Luke Malby), Black (Chukwudi Iwuji), Blonde (Natalie Cox) and Deaf (John Lloyd Fillingham) who - once they realize they can talk to each other - try to sort out the mystery and answer the question that appears to elude them. Exam is a well thought-out thriller expertly directed within the confines of a single room. It captures you from the opening credits forward with enough cerebral and physical action to keep you pondering. You'll look at your next exam a little differently for sure.

My rating 8 out of 10.