To be honest, you know what I thought RATATOUILLE is?

Its the movie version of a Tom & Jerry cartoon.

That said, its amazing how the original director jumped ship, and Brad Bird was hauled in by PIXAR to salvage it.

The reason why I rate THE INCREDIBLES so highly because you can enjoy it on 3 levels:

(1) An adventure story inspired by Bond and adventure pulp tales.
(2) Jokes about, but not at the expense of, superhero-dom.
(3) One hell of a mid-life crisis.

A BRIDGE TOO FAR
(First Viewing)

It is near the end of WWII. The Germans have lost most of France, and the Allied forces decide to give them the final hit. They plan to drop thousands of paratroopers in Holland and keep a few key positions there, until reenforcements arrive. The most important spot is the bridge of Arnhem; once it's captured, it can block everything west of Germany.

For whatever reason, I didn't find this film as nostalgic as the others that I've viewed recently (maybe it's due to the face that this movie was made later in 1977, and not the 1960s). I thought it was interesting to include the American, German and British soldiers point of view from this period of the war, however I felt they were trying to cram in too much. Even with a 2 hour 55 minute running time, by the time the credits roll, I'm spent. However, what I did love the most and what I'll applaud the film for the most was the fact that the German troops actually spoke German and not just English. I always enjoy hearing the original dialect as I feel it adds more authenticity to the movie (such as THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST, APOCALYPTO just to name a few). As great as it was, I wonder how I would enjoy SCHINDLER'S LIST if it was spoken entirely in German and Hebrew?

If Schindler's List was entirely in German and Hebrew, that would be bad-ass.

Hey Irish, while you're on such a trip, why not review TORA TORA TORA as well?

Sense and Sensibility has a more complex story than that of Pride and Prejudice which could be more enjoyable on the first viewing considering its turn of events and twist in the end. Since I had read the book already, this movie didn't have much to offer. This while a decent movie is not the kind that makes me want to re-watch it many times as Pride & Prejudice (2005) does. I certainly enjoyed PP2005 more than this, and found its casting, script, cinematography, score, sets and acting superior to SS1995.

HARRY POTTER AND THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX 1/2
(First Viewing)

After returning to Hogwarts to begin his fifth year at Hogwarts, Harry Potter discovers that much of the wizarding world, including the Ministry of Magic, is in denial about Lord Voldemort's return. The Order of the Phoenix, a group sworn against Voldemort, is using its vast array of wizards and witches magical abilities to combat Voldemort. Cornelius Fudge, Minister for Magic, suspects that Dumbledore is using these claims of The Dark Lord's return as a means to over-throw Fudge as Minister. In retaliation, a new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher is appointed by the Ministry in order to keep an eye on Hogwarts. This new teacher, Professor Umbridge, implies strict new teachings and rules, forcing a group of students, under the tutelage of Harry, to form a club, by the name of Dumbledore's Army.

A better adaptation of the book than GOBLET OF FIRE. Unfortunately, it seems Warner Bros. is going to continue to handcuff the franchise but putting a ceiling on how long the films can be. I'd settle for extended versions a la THE LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy, but haven't heard anything about that. The darkest film of the series thus far and I'm glad. Harry's growing up and things are becoming more serious. I think the first 2 films could get away with being warm, fuzzy and family friendly, but as the ratings for GOBLET and now PHOENIX show, things are getting more intense with a bump in the ratings from PG to PG-13. Hopefully THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE can continue the momentum, not to mention it's my favorite book of the series thus far.

How so? Honestly, other than the chase aspect, I don't see it. That cartoon and this movie are worlds apart.

24fps, why don't you write a review of the movie (for that matter, I don't remember reading any of your reviews)? I haven't seen the movie and I am interested in reading your opinion on it, especially since you think so highly of it.

THE LONGEST DAY 1/2
(First Viewing)

England in June 1944. Unseasonal storms. Allied troops are massed ready for the invasion of France, some already on the boats. The Normandy beaches will be their destination while paratroopers are dropped inland to take key towns and bridges. On the other side of the Channel the Germans still expect the invasion at Calais, and anyway the weather makes them think nothing is likely to be imminent. Eisenhower decides to go. Hitler sleeps on.

Like A BRIDGE TOO FAR, I enjoyed the Nazi's speaking in their native German. However, I also thought this film made the same mistake BRIDGE made, which was trying to cram too much into the film. New characters were constantly introduced throughout the film, regardless of how far into the picture we were and how little camera time they received. After watching these movies, I just appreciate SAVING PRIVATE RYAN even more because Spielberg decided to not jump into this pitfall some have, but rather focused on a select group of soldiers during this battle and made a movie about it. Finally, the battle scenes on the beach were what I was afraid was going to happen while watching these classic war films, glamorized. I know I shouldn't compare the two because RYAN was made 36 years later, but during RYAN, I felt (for however brief a time) how difficult and costly capturing that beach was. While watching THE LONGEST DAY, I didn't get a sense of that at all. All of the characters kept saying there were heavy casualties but very little of that was shown on screen. From the film, it seemed the soldiers captured the beach with minimal effort and there were hardly any Nazi's to fend off.

EARLY SUMMER 1/2
(Second Viewing)

In postwar Tokyo, this household is loving and serene: older parents, their 28-year-old daughter Noriko, their married son, his devoted wife, and two rascally sons. Their only discontent is Noriko's lack of a husband. Society is changing: she works, she has women friends who tease and argue, her brother sees her independence as impudence, she sees it as normal. When her boss suggests that she marry a 40-year-old bachelor who is his friend, all the members of her family press her to accept. Without seeking their advice, and to their chagrin, Noriko determines her own course of action.

Again, Setsuko Hara really did a great job as the main star, Noriko in this film, LATE SPRING and TOKYO STORY. I love the fact that Ozu was able to keep the same cast for the "Noriko Trilogy."

I don't know how I would live with myslef if I saw a Harry Potter movie.

I'd have to kill you BDuff.

And you'd understand, too.

In all fairness, the movies aren't horrible. The first 3 are very close to the books because the books aren't that long and the movies are, so they can incorporate so much. However, GOBLET and PHOENIX both should have either A) split the film into 2 volumes B) allowed each movie to have a runtime of at least 3 hours or C) release extended DVD versions. So far, none of these have come to pass and as such, the last 2 movies have been butchered. However, I thought PHOENIX was a better adaptation than GOBLET. If you enjoy the books, stick with them! However, view the movies at least once and try to enjoy them as much as possible. I favor the books as well but the movies are something special too

You're a good kid, Irish.

Thanks. Some of it rubs off from you

Okay, that just sounded gay.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

No, something gay would be: "thanks pizzaboy. It's from all the pizza you share with me"

I don't like writing reviews mainly because I don't think I'm good at it. However, I will say that Ratatouille is more a movie for grown-ups that kids can enjoy rather than vice versa.

Any foodie, casual or hardcore, would like it. There's content like prejudice, etcetera, that the audience can take and apply to life.

Any live-action filmmaker would be jealous at the camera moves that this movie has. The level of animation in the actions and textures is nothing short of first-rate.

Quite a fine piece of artistry.

Mate, your reviews are good. I mean, look at Irish.

Point is, I think you should try. Make me look like a dumbass.

Stalker ***
I am not sure if I really understood the film, but here is my view upon first viewing. This movie has a tangential (perhaps more than that) connection with Solyaris, another of Tarkovsky's movies. The main theme and the common point with the other film is the central character's approach to understanding life. Rather unwillingness to analyze the beauty of life and nature. Solyaris starts with an astronaut arguing that everything can be understood by scientific method. Later in that movie he gives up questioning it and embraces happiness even when he knows it is not real. In Stalker, two of the main characters are a scientist and a writer. In a way Tarkovsky takes the side of Stalker, the central character and attacks the pointlessness in analyzing life either through scientific means or by philosophy. In a great scene, his wife talks to the audience explaining beautifully that being in sorrow is not something awful. Perhaps the message is: Experience life as a miracle and do not deal with it in terms of academic knowledge. I have focussed a lot on the theme, some comments are necessary regarding the visual aspects of it. I don't know where he shot the scenes, but each frame is beautifully and thoughtfully constructed. One can again find the constant switching between BW, color and sepia. The sepia scenes have temporal significance, the BW ones again seem arbitrary or perhaps just to highlight the "Zone", a mysterious place within which most of the plot revolves.

Two big screen viewings....

On Cassavetes's Opening Night (1977):

Infinitely ambiguous work all to do with notions of acting. It opens with Rowlands and Cassavetes acting in a play, our view obscured by a theatre audience (it's fascinating to see how the inclusion of a fictional audience affects the otherwise harmonious reality of a film), and it unfolds in a continually episodic manner thereafter; it seems overlong, and the spiritualist turn of events midway through seems a bit naff, a mere plot device for Rowlands to have a breakdown (fighting with herself and throwing furniture at her imaginary friend), but it's easily forgivable in light of its overall lingering qualities. For one, it's a convincing, fantastic exploration of various relationships found in the cinema - actor-character, reality-metareality, actor-audience, audience-reality, author-audience, etc. The story, comprising the production of a stageplay and the interrelations of the cast and crew involved, is treated in a most elusive and liberating fashion, so that it becomes almost secondary to the performances (there's no exposition of who's who, no clarity given to how they know each other, and the play itself could be about anything, so sparingly are we given its scenes and details). If it loses its way somewhat in the final third, the final thirty minutes or so are unforgettable in their mystery and intensity: Rowlands and Cassavetes act on stage as in the opening scene, apparently ad-libbing outside the bounds of the script (or are they?), with the audience laughing at them (or with them?), and the writer, producer and director coming in and out of the theatre in either giddy excitement or helpless distress; there's something incredibly profound about this scene in particular, riveting as both a reality in itself and as a self-conscious deconstruction of all that has gone before it.

On Wiseman's Live Free or Die Hard (2007):

It's probably everything you expected it to be, and possibly more; if you thought it sounded naff, it is, and if you thought it sounded great, it is - naff because it's definitely a few stunts too far (there's a True Lies fighter jet scene near the end), great because Willis gives it his all. Patchy, yes, but certainly very good at times in a kickass sort of way, it's also quite clever in exploring where a franchise born in the 80s stands in today's technology based society, and how an old-fashioned, bad-mouthed cop might react when missplaced in his wrong kind of film. If action movies have moved on since the first film - one of the villain's henchman makes decorative use of the Parkour skills he showed off in French action film District 13, with McLane wondering whether he's up against a "fucking hamster" - then this effort readdresses that and the expectations which come with the genre (it's notably similar to 24, too). Incredibly silly, but all the better for it, and as a multi-stranded narrative of violent terrorist ass-kicking and exploration of the media and inadequacy of police procedure and the red tape that comes with such mumbo-jumbo, it might be the strongest since the first film.

On Hitchcock's Family Plot (1976):
Patchy - probably due to length - but still very interesting, a comic thriller (it seems too bloated and verbose to be lastingly funny or thrilling, though) all about doubling and facades, capped with a wink to camera at the end. Some scenes are great in and of themselves - the tampered-with car going down the hill reminds one of Duel - and some of the shots are cleverly composed to have symmetrical colour coordination and there are always mirrors present too. Good stuff, and it would be reductive and perhaps obvious to say "not his best".

On Buñuel's The Phantom of Liberty (1974):
His penultimate film, made on the back of The Discreet Charm's popularity, comprises a narrative deliberately more disparate and increasingly more surreal as it progresses, touching upon notions of true freedom of many kinds, the frustrating absurdities of social order and law and order. It looks amazing and is hilarious in its visual non-conformity and matter-of-fact timing: a man and wife invite four monks, a teenager and a damsel in distress to their hotel room, whence the couple take turns to visit the bathroom and change into S&M gear (it must be seen to be laughed at); a man we assume to be a pervert gives photographs to young children and tells them not to show their parents - later they are revealed to be shots of various European landmarks; and a missing girl helps the police to fill out the form describing her. A masterpiece.

Opening Night sounds fantastic.

You should see A Woman Under the Influence Capo.

You'd love Opening Night. That was my first Cassavetes, and a week after seeing it, its tone still lingers. I'd love to see more.

HIGH AND LOW
(First Viewing)

An executive mortgages all he owns to stage a coup and gain control of the National Shoe Company, with the intent of keeping the company out of the hands of incompetent and greedy executives. He needs the same money, though, to pay the ransom that will possibly save a child's life. His resolution of that dilemma -- the certain loss of the company vs. the probable loss of the child -- makes for one distinct drama, and an ensuing elaborate police procedure makes for a second.

Although Kurosawa's style in this film was rather bland, he didn't impress me this time around. However, the story, particularly the dilemma left with the main star, Toshirô Mifune, left for an interesting decision to be made. What's more important to a person: saving the money he's worked so hard to invest in a company (that if he gave it away, would bankrupt him and his family) or to save the life of an innocent child? I wish the film would have explored the process of coming to his decision in greater depth, reminiscent of a GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER. Unfortunately, I feel it's made too quickly in the film and the rest of the time they're trying to track down the kidnapper (still interesting BTW).

I was able to watch Pan's Labyrinth last night. Wow. It was nothing like I expected. I didn't even know what to expect, but what little I thought might happen wasn't even close. I feel very lucky to have watched this movie right after Apocalypto. Two great movies in a row! It's been a while since I have seen movies of this level of quality, especially back-to-back.

I thought the movie would have been mostly fantasy, but to see the struggles of the little girl and her mother against the Captain (Can't remember their names) in the middle of a war was great. (Question: Was this movie supposed to be taking place during World War II?) The actor who played the Captain was absolutely brutal.

In fact, there were so many shockingly brutal scenes that it kept me on edge. It is easy to get caught up in the childlike fantasy story, then suddenly something gruesome happens to remind you that it's not a kids movie. For example:



If you don't mind the subtitles I would recommend this movie to any adult with a dark sense of imagination. This is one I will have to buy.

I wasn't as much of a fan Blibble. I thought it was going to be a fantasy movie on the scale of a LORD OF THE RINGS, HARRY POTTER or CHRONICLES OF NARNIA. I'd watch it again but I wouldn't classify it as fantasy.

Yeah, I think that's why I was impressed. The movie consistently went in unpredictable directions. I thought it was going to be more Fantasy, like you said, but it wasn't. I like to watch a movie that I think I know what is generally going to happen next, and then nothing close to what I thought happens.

I also forgot to mention the camera work in the movie was great. I'd have to watch it again to bring up some specific examples, but there were several times where the camera movement reminded me of Sergio Leone's movies.

It belies right-out genre categorization, I think. It's a blend of horror, fantasy, perhaps even historical epic. It's a masterpiece of editing and cinematography. One of the most imaginative films of last year, rich in visual texture, camera movement, allegory and multi-stranded narrative.

I'm the complete opposite. I can't tell you how many times I've watched a movie thinking it was one thing and it wasn't even close. Many movies like that I haven't wind up liking, which is my own fault but that's just the way I am.

Do you think you could watch it a second time and enjoy it now that you know what it is?