Archive for March, 2008

The Other Boleyn Girl

Published
by
Lij
on March 28, 2008
in Based on a true story, British, Drama, England, History, Romance and Royalty
. 0 Comments

Ask people what they know about Henry VIII, and you’ll hear one thing: he killed his wives.

People more interested in history will also tell you about his divorce of his first wife, his splitting with the Catholic church, and his major impact on world history because of those two splits, but most people at least know that Henry VIII killed his wives.

In The Other Boleyn Girl, starring Scarlett Johansson as Mary Boleyn and Natalie Portman as Anne Boleyn, director Justin Chadwick attempts to explore the earlier parts of Henry’s reign. This is before Jane Seymour, before his second and third Catherines, and before he’d begun beheading people because things weren’t going his way.

Eric Bana plays the king, and he does well. Johansson plays the kindhearted Mary Boleyn well, while Portman is at once endearing and conniving. You want to like her because she is strong and unwilling to be trampled, but she’s also self-centered and self-serving. Her fate, though, is still tragic, and her final monologue is excellent.

The story follows Mary and Anne as they are ordered through their lives by the men around them — their father, their uncle, their husbands, and more. It’s upsetting to see them traded as commodities, which is basically how the men in their lives see them. Even Henry VIII, who is either in love with or infatuated by each of them from time to time, is shown as loving them only because they are what he can or cannot have.

Mary is the first sister to become the mistress of the king, who is being driven to desperation by his wife’s inability to give him a male heir. Anne only becomes the mistress of the king later, after she manipulates her way into a better place. This works for and against her.

I liked that the film didn’t try to hard to make you love or hate any of the characters. It did well to show them as human enough that you care for them, but it also showed that they were flawed. Some more than others.

Rating: ★★★½☆

Paranoid Park

Published
by
Chalupa
on March 27, 2008
in Adolescence, Based on a novel, High School and Trains
. 2 Comments

Gus Van Sant is known for making unique and interesting films. I can’t say I’ve seen many of them. Good Will Hunting might have been one of his biggest money making films, but the most recent I’ve seen, and own, would be Elephant, a fictional story based heavily on the Columbine school shootings. Van Sant likes to go for realism. Elephant is the first movie I’ve seen about high school students that were actually played by people of that age and were believable. I feel like some the same methods were used in Paranoid Park.

This film, involving teenagers, is all about a skateboarder named Alex, played by Gabe Nevins. Alex and a friend of his just started going to a park known as Paranoid Park. This is where all the “real” skate boarders come to hang out and skate around. One night, a security guard is found dead on some train tracks next to the park so Detective Richard Lu, played by Daniel Liu, starts canvassing the local schools in an effort to glean any information about the case.

Alex is trying to deal with the knowledge he has about the security guard, his parents getting divorced, and girl friend problems on top of everything else a teenager has to deal with these days. To cope, he pulls out his pencil and paper and tries to release his burdens through writing.

I mentioned Elephant earlier and I found a lot of similarities between the two. There are times when a particular scene is shot multiple times from different angles and following different characters. Classical-sounding music, including Beethoven, is in the soundtrack for both films. Very real-life actors were used to portray characters. Both films also take place in high schools and include teenagers. I’m sure there are some other similarities you’ll notice if you’ve seen both films.

Even though this is another one of those films one might describe as depressing and dark, there is still a lot of beauty to be found in it. I know some people laugh and make fun of the scene in American Beauty when Ricky Fitts shows Jane the most beauty thing he’s ever filmed, but it’s true, you can find beauty and truth in just about any place you look. Sometimes these places are even those weird, independent movies the masses aren’t clamoring to see.

Rating: ★★★★☆

Paranoid Park

Eastern Promises

Published
by
Chalupa
on March 27, 2008
in Crime, Drama, England, Graphic Violence, Investigation, Mob, Mystery, Russian, Thriller and Twist
. 0 Comments

Eastern Promises is a follow-up of sorts to A History of Violence. Both are directed by David Cronenberg, Viggo Mortensen stars in both, and they are both stories about somebody involved in the mob. While Cronenberg’s first mob film takes place in the US, Eastern Promises involves Russian mobsters and takes place in London.

Viggo’s character, Nikolai, works for a very notorious crime family. He’s the driver and he does more than just drive the car from point A to point B. One night he encounters Anna, played by Naomi Watts, as she is looking for somebody at the restaurant owned by the Nikolai’s employers. Anna works at a hospital and a girl died recently giving birth to her daughter. The young girl had a diary which contained a business card for said restaurant. Even though Anna speaks little Russian herself, it is part of her heritage and her uncle, who claims to be ex-KGB, warns her to stay away from the situation. Anna soon finds herself in the midst of a complicated situation as I’m sure you can guess.

One very interesting aspect of this movie is tattoos. In this crime society, tattoos are given as badges and marks of honor. They essentially tell the story of your life. The tattoos are also standardized so anybody can recognize your past glories and exploits merely by noticing the tattoos you have. In the same respect, having tattoos you did not earn can be quite detrimental to ones wellbeing.

Viggo Mortensen is AMAZING in this film. He’s a bit of a method actor in that he heavily researches roles he has and becomes the characters he plays. I know that most people only know him from his exploits in a little trilogy called Lord of the Rings, but seriously guys, Mortensen is a great actor that has been around for a while. I think the first film I remember seeing him in was Crimson Tide. I’ve since seen him in Witness, Carlito’s Way, The Prophecy, Young Guns II, G.I. Jane, and Psycho. The only movie I’ve seen him in that I wasn’t a big fan of was Hidalgo. If you’ve seen any of these and enjoyed Mortensen’s acting skills you should definitely check out some of his other films.

Other noteworthy performances came from Armin Mueller-Stahl, Seymon, who plays the head of the crime family. You’ll probably also recognize Vincent Cassel from Ocean’s 12 and Ocean’s 13. I always remember him as the creepy brother from Brotherhood of the Wolf and the one movie I always throw out there for “wow factor”, Irreversible.

I really enjoyed this film and hope you do too. Let me know if you have any thoughts or comments.

Rating: ★★★★☆

Eastern Promises

Appleseed: Ex Machina

Published
by
Chalupa
on March 11, 2008
in Action, Animation, Anime, Based on a comic, Based on a graphic novel, Conspiracy, End of the world, Foreign, Future, Japan, Martial Arts, Sequel and War
. 1 Comment

This is my first-ever sponsored review. I haven’t done anything like this before. If you’ve never heard of Appleseed: Ex Machina before, you should know it’s an Anime sequel to Appleseed. This film does come from Japan, but the Region 1 DVD release has been dubbed into English. Directing this film is the legendary Shinji Aramaki. I say legendary because this man has been very influential in the world of animation and the drawing of cartoon machines. This guy worked on the drawings and designs of the first Transformers toys, MASK, the Genesis series, and Fullmetal Alchemist. Producing this film is John Woo of action and martial arts fame.

If you know anything about Anime, you know it’s a style of animation from Japan. John Woo happens to be from China. The two of them working together, in a creative manner, is nothing short of amazing due to the long history of being at odds that their two countries have. The fact Woo is involved leads a lot of credibility to the project and puts the film on the radars of many potential fans. Even though Woo is known for his fight scenes, there’s the element of emotion that many miss. The emotion and depth to the characters and story turns a film like this from being just eye-candy into a truly wonderful work of art. You’ll definitely see his influence in scenes where slow motion, creative fighting styles and lots of bullets are used.

The word Anime is really just an abbreviation of the English word animation and has its roots in Japanese Manga. Anime is traditionally hand drawn, but computer animation is becoming more and more common. Having majored in computer science as an undergrad, I know a tiny bit about the work and processing power it takes to make cartoons and animated films. The 3-D animation is this film is nothing short of amazing. Everything looks so realistic from the body movements, facial expressions, fully animated jaws, backgrounds, sceneries and landscapes. The visual aspects of this film are breathtaking.

I haven’t seen the original film, Appleseed, so I may be a little clueless to the story. I think this is a good thing when it comes to a review because I have no pre-conceived notions of what’s happening. Ex Machina takes place in a futuristic, post-apocalyptic world. At some point in the past there was a global, non-nuclear war which took out pretty much everything. Olympus is a Utopian-like city where peace and order stand with the help of its elite fighting force, the ESWAT. This isn’t the only city in the world though. There are still other countries and governments. There are also three types of people: humans, cyborgs, and bioroids. I’m going to assume you already know what humans and cyborgs are. Bioroids are clones, genetic copies, of real people made with the best technology available. They also lack some of the bad qualities that seem to contribute to the not-so-great aspects of humanity.

The three main characters are Deunan, a human, Briareos, human turned cyborg, and Tereus, a bioroid that is a copy of Briareos when he was human. I’m sure you’re already imagining the drama between the main trio. Deunan and Briareos were partners back in the day and continued to be after he was severely injured and turned into a cyborg. As far as I can tell, they exist in the original film. In Ex Machina we find ourselves in another classic, Confuscist battle of good versus evil; there are organized terrorist attacks trying to bring down the peace and order of Olympus.

In the midst of peace talks between all the countries and governments of the world, humans and cyborgs are being turned into mindless zombies. These remotely controlled drones are being made to massively attack anything of strategic value in the city. At first it is thought the cyborgs are just susceptible to rogue, controlling frequencies, but humans are being affected too. Are Deunan, Briareos, and Tereus susceptible to this mind control? Will they be able to take down a terrorist mastermind that makes Dr. Octopus look like a distempered man-child? Well, I couldn’t really tell you or I’d be ruining the movie for you.

I highly recommend this film. I think it will be dearly loved by existing Appleseed fans. It is a great addition to the already wonderful Anime genre and there’s enough story, action and drama to keep everyone else wanting to find out what happens next. Rent it or buy it, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

Rating: ★★★★½

Upcoming Review - Appleseed: Ex Machina

Published
by
Chalupa
on March 3, 2008
in Action, Animation, Anime, Based on a comic and Sci-fi
. 1 Comment

I’ve recently been contacted about writing a review for a new Anime movie called Appleseed: Ex Machina. It’s a sequel to Appleseed which came out in 2003 and was released in the US in 2004. Here’s a trailer, a short synopsis and some high-quality pictures (Appleseed: Ex Machina - #25, Appleseed: Ex Machina - #17, Appleseed: Ex Machina - #2) if you’re interested. I should have a review up in the near future.

APPLESEED: EX MACHINA

In the year 2133, a war killed off half the population of Earth, plunging the world into chaos and despair. In OLYMPUS, a utopian city-state and the last true bastion of culture and civilization, the ESWAT police force holds the peace. The two star members of this Special Ops team are Deunan Knute and her cyborg partner Briareos. Their relationship is threatened when the government reveals a prototype combat clone, named Tereus, who is a clone of Briareos. However, a strange electronic virus begins turning citizens into violent zombies and the trio must team up to track down the terrorists behind this brutal attack before it tears the peaceful utopia apart.

This sequel to the 2003 smash hit, based on the best-selling manga by Masamune Shirow, uses mind-blowing, cutting edge CGI and was produced by action-king John Woo.

Appleseed Ex Machina arrives on DVD, HD-DVD, and Blu-Ray March 11th, 2008.

There Will Be Blood

Published
by
Lij
on March 1, 2008
in Audio Review, Drama, Dysfunctional, Family, History, Horror, Religion and Social Commentary
. 2 Comments

There Will Be Blood is Paul Thomas Anderson’s first movie in the five years since Punch-Drunk Love. He’s my favorite director, and a big part of the reason is because of how often he breaks the basic rules of filmmaking, all with great purpose.

Recently, some friends and I sat down to do an audio review of the film. We talked about all of the things we loved about the movie, the questions that arise while viewing it, and the greatness of everyone involved, from Daniel Day-Lewis to PT himself.

There Will Be Blood audio review

Rating: ★★★★★