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Much like the Quizzes section, this is just a little something I felt like doing. I tend to watch movies that are well off the beaten path. There's some real gems hidden away from the mainstream, and maybe some of you folks will take a peek at them the next time you're out looking for something to rent. I'm going to generally avoid listing big films, as they've got enough press already. Terminator and Alien were both great indie films, but they don't need any help, so things like that won't appear either. I refuse to purchase a movie I won't watch at least once a year, and I've put my money where my mouth is: everything here I've either spent money on a copy, or would buy if I could track it down in a format that actually worked in my DVD players *grumble* damned regional coding *grumble*. I haven't decided if I'm simply going to buy a Region 2 player while I'm in Europe (Western Europe, Japan, Middle East, and South Africa are Region 2, while Eastern Europe and the rest of Africa are Region 5 ...), or just snag a disabled player and hope that the RCE crap doesn't overtake it. The categories aren't quite as arbitrary as "normal" ratings; I've lumped "Thriller" with "Horror" and "Mystery" to keep from revealing plot twists. For a quick scan, just hit the Page Down button until you see a bright green film title, as those are among my all time favorites. R is the MPAA's rating of the movie. MR is just my opinion of how good the movie is, rated 1-10. WJR is my own device and stands for Whack Job Rating. Also 1-10, it's a combined measure of the ease of predicting the plot outcome and how much of a headache you'll have trying to keep the story line straight. I'm rating from my perspective, so they might be higher or lower for you. For example, The Matrix would have been rated a 3 (The world you know is just VR is a pretty nice twist, but the rest is fairly straightforward once you get that), but to my Dad was a 7 or 8 (Ummm ... what?). Last, but not least, is a quick plot blurb and comments from me to help you decide if you want to bother. Special notes, like foreign language, animated, etc. will end up here as well.
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Action |
Documentary |
Drama |
Fantasy |
Historical Fiction |
Horror |
Mystery |
Science Fiction |
Thriller |
| Action and Drama: | R | MR | WJR | Summary |
| American History X | R | 7 | 2 | A rather dark view into the world of Neo-Nazis in Southern California. Derek goes to prison for manslaughter, and, when released, tries to get his little brother out of the scene. Edward Norton and Edward Furlong. |
| Heathers | R | 8 | 5 | A black comedy about life in high school. Ever want to see the in-crowd "get theirs?" Phear the ichluge bullets. Winona Ryder and Christian Slater. |
| Layer Cake | R | 9 | 10 | Mr. X is a drug dealer about to retire from the business with his comfortable earnings. Things become complicated when his boss requests that Mr. X handle a shipment of stolen Ecstasy and track down a missing girl, the daughter of an associate. The editing on the film is great. In most films, changing from one scene to another is simply the new scene spliced onto the last one. That still happens in this, but in a number of instances the flow from one scene to the next is such a smooth transition that it takes you a moment to realize that you're in an entirely different part of the movie. Every time I thought I had a handle on what was going on, the plot developed a new twist, but this isn't one that's going to boggle your mind as much of it becomes explanatory along the way. Daniel Craig. |
| Lola Rennt | R | 9 | 8 | Your boyfriend loses the 100,000 he's supposed to be delivering to a mobster in 20 minutes. What do you do? It's chaos theory in action as you follow Lola around the city trying to save Manni. The editing was flawless. Check your watch when she hangs up the phone; it takes exactly 20 minutes for her to get to Manni. In German, and also known as Run Lola Run. Moritz Bleibtrau and Frank Potente. |
| Lolita | Unrated | 7 | 5 | Originally a novel about a man falling in love with his landlady's 12 year old daughter, the Censors went ballistic and it was altered in the screenplay to a 14 year old and played by an actress who was 21 when it was filmed. I prefer Kubrick's 1962 film to the 1997 film, as Kubrick really captures the feel of the novel and, let's face it, it's a Kubrick film. James Mason and Shelly Winters. |
| No Man's Land | R | 8 | 5 | Caught in a trench between Bosnian and Serb lines, a Bosnian and Serb try to make it back to their own lines with the other as prisoner, while the world media descends on the scene like locusts. Complicating matters is a wounded soldier laying on a mine in the trench with them. I've seen comparisons made to Catch-22 and I'll agree except that I think the plot here moves along more rapidly. Branco Djuric and Rene Bitorajac. |
| Π (Pi) | R | 6 | 8 | The Bible was originally written in Hebrew and Greek, both of which use their characters to represent letters and numbers. A mathematician is attempting to crack the code hidden in the Bible while being pressured by rival brokerage houses (trying to get a leg up on the stock market) and a group of Kabbalists trying to get him to give them the answer. All the while, Max appears to be going insane as he gets closer to the answer. The plot can seem quite slow-moving at times, but you can use that time to try to decrompress your brain from trying to comprehend the math. Sean Gullette. |
| Romper Stomper | R | 7 | 2 | Neo-Nazis in Melbourne try to keep their neighborhood "clean." Despite my distaste for people of this ilk, I did like the movie, particularly for its even-handed portrayal of them, and how they got to be that way. One of the best movie lines ever: "We've come to smash everything and make your life miserable. God sent us." Russel Crowe and Daniel Pollock |
| Shopping | R | 9 | 3 | Fresh out of juvie, Billy finds out that the street gangs have changed somewhat while he was in stir. Tommy, a former rival, is trying to make it big and keeps finding Billy is getting in the way. One of my running jokes is that, "everyone has their cross to bear. Mine is that I'm a Jude Law fan." This is the film that casued that. Jo playing a hand held car chase game, while they are being chased by police is one of the funnier scenes I've watched. Jude Law and Sadie Frost. |
| SLC Punk | R | 8 | 2 | Not quite as true to the essence of the punk/hardcore scene as Suburbia (below) I found this one more entertaining. Also taking place in the mid-80s, Lillard's voice overs flesh out the cameo characters more than those that appear in Suburbia. As such it's easier, for those of us who were on the scene, to have flashbacks throughout the movie. I'm probably taking away more from the movie than I should, since I spent a good chunk of my first watch going, "I know him, I know him, I know her, I know ..." but I still like this one a lot. I've chatted with some friends from the old scene about this and apparently there's a consensus as to which character in the movie I am ... guess which  Matt Lillard and Michael Goorjian. |
| Snatch | R | 8 | 9 | Just keeping the names of the characters connected with faces can be difficult. The primary plot is that Turkish is an underground boxing promoter and has promised Brick Top that he would supply a boxer for an upcoming match. I lost count of the sub-plots, and if you think of it as a whirlwind you're not far wrong. Despite that, the movie flows quite well as bizarre characters are woven in (and out) of the storyline, so sit back and enjoy the ride. Jason Statham. |
| Suburbia | R | 5 | 2 | The plot and story line are kind of meek, but I still like this film for its accurate portayal of what the punk/harcore scene was like in the 80s. What people think of as punk these days isn't even close to what it was then. As for the acting, it's a bit amateurish, but it's hard to hold it against the players since it IS done primarily by amateurs. The director gave up on the first casting attempts, figuring that it would be easier to turn punks into actors than actors into punks. Also know as The Wild Side. Chris Pedersen and Bill Coyne. |
| Swimming With Sharks | R | 8 | 7 | Fresh out of film school, Guy starts working as an aide for an abusive tyrant of a studio exec. The recurring question throughout is, "What do you really want," and Guy finds his goals, and morals, changing. Frank Whaley and Kevin Spacey. |
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| Documentary and Historical Fiction | R | MR | WJR | Summary |
| Cidade de Deus | R | 8 | 4 | Seen through the eyes of a friend who became a reporter, two others rise from the slums of Rio (Cidade de Deus is essentially "the projects" of most urban centers) to head the gangs running the area. Ronaldo and Pele, they ain't. In Portuguese, and also known as City of God. Alexandre Rodrigues, Leandro Firmino, Phellipe Haagensen. |
| Hotel Rwanda | PG-13 | 6 | 2 | During the Hutu slaughter of Tutsis in Rwanda, a Hutu hotel manager opens the doors to a thousand Tutsis and pulls every string and favor to keep them alive and get them out of the country. Nick Nolte and Jack Daglish have damning, and unfortunately honest, assessments of the West's opinion of what was happening. Don Cheadle. |
| Luther | PG-13 | 7 | 2 | Oddly enough, I prefer the 2003 remake to the original. Sorry, but Stacey Keach just isn't convincing to me as Martin Luther. Probably the most influential Christian thoelogian since St. Augustine, the movie puts a human face, features, and foibles, to the history texts we've all read. "That day when you sent me out so boldly to change the world, did you really think there wouldn't be a cost?" Joseph Fiennes. |
| Stalingrad | R | 8 | 3 | Having been transferred to Italy from North Africa for some R&R, a platoon of German soldiers is sent off to the Eastern Front. Things are happy happy joy joy right up until they get off the train. The difference in the battle scenes of The Longest Day and Saving Private Ryan is the differnece between Ryan and Stalingrad. Brutal and horrific gives you an idea of what the battle scenes are like, but it's also about as close as you can get to putting a real war on film without blowing up the actors. As with Ryan, the focus is not on the battle(s), but on the people involved in them and their attempts to simply survive the mayhem around them, the winter, and being surrounded by the Soviets. German. Thomas Kretschmann, Jochen Nickel, Dominique Horwitz, and Sebastian Rudolph. |
| What tHê ΒLЄЄP Ďθ wΣ (k)Πow!? | R | 7 | 2 | How this got a G in Canada and an R in the US eludes me. With a loose story line following Amanda, everything from cellular bonding to relativistic theory works its way into the "plot." Scientific purists are going to really dislike the handling of their fields, as it's more on the order of 4 minute blurbs than real knowledge being explained. For those not into the sciences, understand that at the higher levels of math and physics there's a LOT of debate about "little things" ... like how, and which way, time flows, are there more than 17 dimensions and do dimensions 8-17 even exist, etc. This film presents only one side of the arguments, so keep in mind that it's not truth, it's an opinion. With those nestled in the back of your head, it's an entertaining walk through the sciences that, with luck, may spawn an interest in someone to delve further on a topic. Marlee Matlin. |
| Wilson | G | 7 | 1 | Done in 1944, a fairly accurate portrayal of the career of Woodrow Wilson. Overshadowed by Teddy, he tends to be forgotten when thinking of early 20th century Presidents, but should rank up near the top of all of them. As this was done near the end of WWII, the light shines a bit more flatteringly on him than something like the more recent Nixon. We're a bit more jaded these days, so expect to see a historical figure portrayed, warts and all, but that wasn't the case then. With that in mind, it's a good treatment and fairly entertaining. Alexander Knox |
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| Fantasy and Science Fiction | R | MR | WJR | Summary |
| La Cité des enfants perdus | R | 6 | 9 | An evil scientist who can't dream believes he can solve his problems by stealing the dreams of children in the city. Trying to find his kidnapped little brother, One stumbles into the situation. Absolutely bizarre visuals, with characters and a plot to match. In French and also known as The City of Lost Children. Ron Perlman, Judith Vitette, and Daniel Emilfork. |
| Code 46 | R | 6 | 4 | In a future where the world has been decimated by disease, the cities are the safe harbors and access to a city, and between them, is strictly controlled. Investigating forged accesses, a government agent falls for the woman making them. Among other things, the government also controls breeding ,to ensure that people who are too genetically close do not mate (Code 46), and you can guess who's too close in make-up. Tim Robbins and Samantha Morton. |
| Equilibrium | R | 7 | 4 | Set in a future where, after mankind nearly destroyed itself, the solution to survival was to restrain all emotions by chemical treatment. Banned are all items that can elicit an emotionally response (literature to art to a child's Fisher-Price record player) and failure to take "The Dose" is a capital offense. When the chief enforcer stops taking the drug, things get a bit hinky. The gun kata (martial arts revolving around using guns) is a great invention for the film. Christian Bale, Taye Diggs, and Dominic Purcell. |
| Existenz | R | 7 | 10 | A group of beta-testers get together to try out the latest gaming sensation with the designer. If you ever read the cyberpunk genre you've got a leg up on everyone else ... but not by much. At least you'll get the wetware and bodyports without too much trouble. Things go a little haywire when an anti-tech assassin shows up at the demo, and that's about the last thing that makes sense in the film. From there on, you're left guessing as to what is part of the VR game construct and what is reality. Released a month later, this was far overshadowed by the success of The Matrix, but is worth the watch. Both for the plot twists and the real/game quandry, it well deserves a WJR of 10. Jennifer Jason Leign and Jude Law. |
| The Jacket | R | 8 | 6 | A war hero turned vagrant, suffering bouts of amnesia, is convicted of murder and sentenced to a hospital for the criminally insane. As part of his treatments, he is confined to "the box," and discovers that he can travel into the future while he's in it. In the process he discovers that he died at the hospital and the rest of the movie revolves around his trying to find out who killed him and how. I'm including it here because I don't think it had enough play at the box office and it's a pretty good story. Adrian Brody and Keira Knightley. |
| Naked Lunch | R | 8 | 10 | An exterminator starts using the extermination powder as a hallucinagen. During one of his stupors he murders his wife and flees the country to a city in the Middle East called "Interzone," where he becomes involved in a plot and counterplot to take over the world launched by, ready for this, giant bugs disguised as typewriters. Bill has become a secret agent and now writes reports on this typewriter by, essentially, tickling the bug. Everyone in Interzone is a player at some level, at least in Bill's tentative grip on reality. Great line: "You know how Americans are, Kiki. They all love to travel, and then they only want to meet other Americans and talk about how hard it is to get a decent hamburger." Peter Weller. |
| Primer | PG-13 | 8 | 10 | A bunch of guys working in their garage build computer equipment as a sideline to their 9-5 jobs. Two of them start working on a separate project and inadvertently discover that they've created a way to time travel. The time machines they build look like little more than refrigerator boxes with chicken wire, so don't expect some slick, visually stimulating, Hollywood production with more CG than story. Between the laws of causality and the grandfather paradox, you'll be banging your head against the wall trying to make sense of this ... and which time version of Aaron and Abe are interacting (and when), plus the plot twists, don't help much either. I had to watch it three times to get a grip, so this isn't some light popcorn fare for your night off. Shane Carruth and David Sullivan. |
| Versus | R | 6 | 5 | The short version is: sword-wielding, gun-toting, ninja zombies versus sword-wielding, gun-toting, resurrected samurai. Having escaped from prison, two men get to their meet in the forest and wait for the head mobster to show up. Some of his cronies make it first with a girl they've kidnapped. Things quickly spiral out of control until one of the mobsters is shot, only to get back up again a minute later. As if that's not bad enough, this particular neck of the woods has been being used as a dumping ground for the mobsters who got out of line and were, inexplicably, buried with their guns. You guessed it, they start waking up now, too. The fight scenes are well done, the gore isn't overly much (*cough*Kill Bill*cough*) and there's no random love scene that occurs for no better reason than to show some skin. Japanese. Tak Sagauchi, Chieko Misaka, and Hideo Sakaki. |
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| Horror, Mystery, and Thriller | R | MR | WJR | Summary |
| Anatomie | R | 7 | 4 | Not your everyday slasher flick, although it IS a med school, so there's quite a bit of work with scalpels that goes on, but more of a mind game on the order of Scream. Paula meets a man on the train on her way to Heidelburg University where she finds that the first cadaver on which she's to work is that of the man she met on the train. Trying to find out how he died and ended up on her table she uncovers evidence of the Anti-Hippocratic Society, a medical boogeyman much like the Illuminati is to politics. As other students begin dropping like flies, she discovers that the truth may be closer to home than she thinks. German. Franke Potente and Benno Fürmann. |
| April Fool's Day | R | 9 | 8 | Released in 1986, during the heighths (depths?) of the slasher movie genre, this one got lost in the morass of really crappy films. As is typical, a group of teenagers (college students this time) go off and find themselves stranded with little to no contact with the outside world as their friends start disappearing. Muffy St. John, an orphan, is hosting a party at her island home that she's about to inherit on her 18th birthday. Bad April Fool's pranks abound, so the obvious presumption as people start to disappear is that it's yet another joke. Graphic enough the appease the slasher fan, but not overly done. The twists along the way are exquisite and is worth the watch, even for those who really dislike the gore of things like Nightmare and Friday the 13th. Deborah Foreman. |
| The Curve | R | 8 | 9 | If your roommate in college kills themselves, the college offers you a 4.0 for the semester. Were you ever tempted to try and take advantage of that? If your morals don't keep you in check, this might. One twist after another, until the light bulb goes on at the end and you mutter, "Now I get it." Matt Lillard and Chris Vartan. |
| Jian Gui 2 | R | 7 | 7 | I haven't managed to track down Jian Gui, but this is supposed to be quite different from it. Joey Cheng attempts to commit suicide and, having had a near death experience, can now occasionally perceive the spirit world. Now that that premise from Jian Gui has been met, that's where the two stories diverge. Joey finds out she's pregnant, the other way to gain a perception of the spirit world, and sees malevolent spirits all around her, threatening not only her child, but those of others. Interspersed throughout are references to urban legends and ghost stories with which many Chinese are familiar, but people like me (don't have to be white, just have not grown up in a Chinese community) aren't. If you'd never heard any of Grimm's Fairy Tales and went to watch the movie, you've got an idea what it's like watching this film. There's just so much in it that you don't "get," and the nagging feeling that there's something you're missing, but it's still a good watch. Cantonese and also known as The Eye 2. Qi Shu. |
| Ju-On | R | 8 | 6 | As is typical for me, I prefer the original to the remake. If you've seen The Grudge, you already know the storyline as this is the movie from which they swiped the plot. If not, here you go. A man kills his wife and son in a jealous fit of rage. The son's teacher comes looking to find the child, only to die himself; and it continues in an ever increasing web. Japanese and also known as The Curse and The Grudge. Been a while since I watched this, so not sure which are the main characters and which get whacked along the way. |
| Kondom des Grauens | R | 6 | 2 | A gay detective in NYC is investigating a rash of ... umm, let's just call it "Bobbitting," at the Hotel Quickie. Hookers and scorned lovers are the obvious suspects, but while snooping about he attempts to hook up, only to discover that the condom he's about to put on has teeth. Not your typical Troma gorefest, this is played totally straight ... *cough*, well, you know what I mean, which just makes it all the more humourous. The penis jokes and double entendres get old after a while, but is worth the watch if you want to see some fluff that doesn't make you think and will have you giggling. German and also known as Killer Condoms. Udo Samel and Peter Lohmeyer. |
| The Name of the Rose | R | 9 | 8 | William, a former Inquisitor, and his aide Adso arrive early at an Abbey for a conference between the Benedictine and Franciscan Orders in the early 14th century, to find the abbey in an uproar. As the bodies start to pile up, and the time of the conference approaches, the monks begin to believe that the Apocalypse is near, since the deaths so readily correlate to Revelations. In an almost miraculous bid for resolution (see below), the Abbot turns to William to solve the deaths. A fine period piece, with a twisted mystery on top, it does justice to Eco's classic novel. "Did Jesus own his clothes?", a question from the conference in the movie, was a real one the Franciscans posed, and their answer to that and similar questions almost got the entire Order excommunicated on several occasions. It seems like a simple question, doesn't it? If he did, then by extension, it was OK for the Church to own land and property and whatnot as that was simply the "clothing" of the Church to protect itself from the elements. If not, then how can it be justified that the Pope live in a palace and Bishops like kings? Lengthy, but it gives you a needed understanding of the general mistrust the Benedictines had for William, Adso, and their brethren at the time. Sean Connery and Christian Slater. |
| Near Dark | R | 9 | 2 | For my money, this is the best vampire film ever made. Everyone has these visions planted in their heads of vast sums of money and power readily available to a vampire, but what would it really be like? Food would be a major problem as people don't just "disappear" these days. There's almost always someone who tries to find out what happened, police looking in on things, etc. The major stumbling point to this film was that they made the mistake of releasing it the same weekend as The Lost Boys and I, like most, didn't even know it had been made until it came out on HBO some time later. The denoument is more of a let down than "come down from the climax," but the film is still worth the watch. Too many great lines to list, although a stand out is: "We just need a couple minutes of your time; about as long as the rest of your life." If possible get/rent the anniversary 2-disc version, as the interviews on the "Bonus Materials" disc are worth a watch as well. Adrian Pasdar, Jenny Wright, Lance Henriksen, Bill Paxton. |
| The Reckoning | R | 7 | 2 | On the run for breaking his vows, Nicholas, a 14th century monk, hides out with a traveling band of actors. Along the way, one of the actors is killed and Nicholas takes his place. At the time, actors typically performed plays that explained bits of the Bible to the masses who couldn't read Latin, but in the next town they arrive in time to see a deaf-mute being tried for the murder of a boy found in the woods. The troupe decides, for various reasons you should just accept rather than question, to do a bit of detecting of their own. I've seen it equated to The Name of the Rose and, although it's got a 14th century monk as the lead, and the movie is a period piece and a mystery, you're not supposed to know the answer before the end. A bit too predictable for my tastes, but it's still a well done film. Paul Bettany and Willem Dafoe. |
| Ripley's Game | R | 7 | 7 | Technically, this is the sequel to The Talented Mr. Ripley, but IMO isn't anywhere near as bad a treatment of Highsmith's character. Tom Ripley is an American come European, living high on the hog and enjoying the finest things in life. He affords it by being a brutal and ruthless criminal, but not of the mafia don ilk. He gets his hands dirty, very dirty. When asked to commit a murder for hire, he recruits his neighbor, who is dying of cancer. He's got nothing to lose, right? Agree or not, that's the way Ripley's mind works; Amoral. IMO one of, if not the, best performances by Malkovich. Great quote: "If they come for anyone, they'll come for me. I think these Balkan types tend to take strangling quite personally." John Malkovich and Dugray Scott. |
| Yogen | R | 8 | 8 | Loosely based on a Japanese urban legend, the premise is that people become cursed with an ability to see future catastrophes. They are truly damned if and when they find "The Newspaper," which shows them the reporting of the event. A man finds the Newspaper immediately before his daughter is killed in a car crash, and having given up on trying to convince his (now ex-) wife that he had seen it, now (three years later) tries to forget that he had. Since she now believes in it, and he doesn't, they begin tracking down others who have had the misfortune of finding it. Japanese and also known as Premonition. Hiroshi Mikami and Noriko Sakai. |
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