Toronto - What would 3 hitmen do in Bruges, Belgium? Why, they hit - on each other; literally. There’s a lot of (Roman) manly love going on in this fine drama. You get to see the sympathetic sides of each and every tough street personalities. Granted, I think the heroics near the end were a little bit unrealistic, but dammit we need some love in this world and I don’t protest soft spots.

You start out with 2 mob muscles running away after a hit had gone wrong. Of all places, they went to Flemish Bruges. At many early points the film is part BBC, part drama, and 99% Tourism-Bruges sponsored. It IS a UNESCO World Heritage Site, after all. Beneath all the churches, beautiful canals, the famous Belfry, our pair of lackluster goons are swimming in their own guilt. » Read the rest of the entry..

Toronto - Honestly, I don’t know why thrillers aren’t made logically anymore. I just finished watching Funny Games and Butterfly on a Wheel. Let me just say this up front before you start to think I’m recommending something - maybe Butterfly, but not Funny Games.

In case you don’t want to imdb these films, they both deal with hostage situations, where the protagonists (family) is held at gun point to the whim of some lunatics. In Funny Games, a family in a Martha Vineyard type summer house gets oppressed by a pair of polite psychopaths. They are forced to play torturous “games” which are designed to break them down to mindless puppets. In Butterfly, a couple is blackmailed into following instructions from their daughter’s kidnapper. Btw, Funny Games is a remake of the 90s German film by the same name. Very original.
» Read the rest of the entry..

Toronto - So I have been watching a lot of movies lately. I don’t know why, maybe, just maybe it’s because the theatres are air conditioned. Here is what I think of them

You Don’t Mess With The Zohan - Light hearted film featuring Sandler and his gang (Turturro, Schneider). The film has some hilarious over the top action sequences and Emmanauelle Chriqui is ridiculously hot. Who would have thought that watching YTV a few years ago? The formula is similar to a lot of Sandler movies, but the jokes are alright and I enjoyed it. It’s definitely better then most of the crap Sandlers put out in the past few years but him and his buddies are falling further and further behind the Apatow and Frat Pack groups in terms of putting out quality flicks.
2.5/5

Speed Racer - Holy ADD overload. This movie is great for two groups of people - seven years old hopped up on sugar, or adults who just dropped acid. The visuals in this movie are stunning, and the world created by the Wachowski brothers is ever so colorful. However, the story and acting in this movie is rubbish and the subplot with a kid and a chimp are just downright painful. However, the racing sequences are great, made me want to turn on my 360. The only problem with CGI movies is that there is a total disconnect from reality, so you never really worry about the characters being in harms way or anything. Shame for Emile Hirsch though, he followed up a stunner of a movie (Into the Wild) with a crappy ass action movie. I am also surprise Susan Sarandon has been relegated to minor support mother characters now.
2/5

Forgetting Sarah Marshall - surprisingly good movie. I don’t really know whether it’s a comedy or not. However, everyone here does a pretty job playing their roles and the story was pretty good. Mila Kunis is unbelievably hot in this movie as well. What makes this movie good is that the characters are pretty well rounded and you get to see the story from everyones point of view. I would say this and Knocked Up are my favorite Apatow flicks. Also, one of the few films were Jonah Hill did not manage to annoy me.
3.5/5

Be Kind Rewind - I rented this one on DVD, and it’s a very cute, heart warming movie about a neighborhood coming together. I am sure by now you know it’s about Jack Black getting magnetized, erasing all the films in the video store and remaking them with his buddy Mos Def and a few folks from the neighborhood. Really, it’s about the ability for a community to pull together in a time of crisis and the hippy spirit stuff that goes along with that. A creative, enjoyable film.
3.5/5

Here’s a song by Portland’s The Blow called ‘The Love I That I Crave’. Ten Points to the person who can find the connection between the Blow and one of these movies.

 

 The Blow - The Love That I Crave: Play Now

Toronto - Jennifer Connelly really shouldn’t do this to herself (and consequently her fans) anymore. Look at the imdb listing of recent offerings from her. Requiem for a Dream, House of Sand and Fog, Little Children, and now Reservation Road. Seriously. Just reading that list made me manically depressed. What, A Beautiful Mind broke that line, but it’s also not entirely happy. Blood Diamond? She was barely a figment of imagination under Archer’s skin. Granted, she was good in each of those films, even discounting nudity and other insane stunts. But there wasn’t one movie where her characters and their cohort aren’t suffering 2hr-long accelerated downward-spirals-with-occasional-derailment to hell. So. Reservation Road certainly wasn’t going to break that tradition.

As soon as the movie starts you can see it’s not going to end well. Two families are portrayed in their prime, and of course the screenplay wouldn’t work in the traditional sense if their paths do not cross. Little Josh gets to play road kill and the lawyer who will handle this exact case decides to perform a hit-and-run. The rest of the film has the father of the boy seek revenge on the lawyer. I thought the most powerful part about the movie was the obsession a wrongful death can grip normal, even excellent characters. Even as calm as the college professor can be in a debate over policies and morality, Ethan still cannot out-run vengeance. But then contrast his reaction to Grace, who came across for me at least to be very cold and unforgiving, you see the other extreme.

I’m still not totally convinced that denial was a solution and I think the screenplay could have been more lenient on Grace to express her grief other than those small bursts of utter devastation. Which is also what I didn’t like about this film. Yes. A sense of total sadness is a powerful thing. But when you require the audience to take that too frequently, they get uncomfortable and really, denial sets in so that we mentally remove the association and even sympathy with the characters. In this case, I prefer the slow creepy demise of House of Sand and Fog and Requiem over the overnight transformation of Reservation Road. Of course, there’s also guilt from the lawyer Dwight. But I felt that was like background decoration to the grief. Sure you want to feel sorry for him, but you also want to see a bullet through his head.

Verdict? JC wasn’t baring twins. But this is still something you want to see if you need to come down from a sugar high.

(Toronto) For a while now, the Oscar nominated short I Met The Walrus has been appearing on YouTube. It’s the animated audio recording of a 1969 interview done in Toronto by then teenager, Jerry Levitan, with John Lennon. This kid skips school, tracks down Lennon in his hotel and asks him for an interview. Lennon then invites him back later that day to do the interview. Jerry Levitan told the story on The Hour of how after his first initial meeting with Lennon, he had to go and buy or borrow some sort of recording device to actually do the interview. The animation is slick and the interview is honest. Have a watch and listen and then review for yourself.

If this version of the movie gets taken down, head over to YouTube and find another one.

Toronto - This movie was fucking awesome. Seriously. It deserves all the hype around it. The acting was solid (no Katie Holmes = good), the story was great, the tone was good, the twists were nice and the action scenes were spectacular. Once the movie starts, it grips your attention and doesn’t let go. I thought I’d have to pee sometime during the movie, but man the movie was so good i think the pee just evaporated in my system. I may be dead tomorrow.

Considering you are going to see this movie regardless of what I write (I hope), it’s fair to say the face of the super hero action movie just got changed with this movie’s blend of realism and fantasy and every bad guy from now on will be compared to Heath Ledger’s Joker. Extremely highly recommended.

5/5