In no particular order:
(The) Watchmen
Drag Me to Hell
Moon
Inglourious Bastards
Monsters versus Aliens
The Hangover
The Changeling
Clint Eastwood is possibly a better director than he is an actor. He usually plays the same roles in films, always some sort of renegade good guy, only he might be in a suit in one film or dawning cowboy gear in the next.
He certainly has quite a great list of directorial credits : Gran Torino, Million Dollar Baby and of course the Academy Award Nominated The Changeling starring Oscar winner and nomiated for this film, Angelina Jolie.
Based on a true story this film manages to portray an era & a fear that's still alive in this day and age in a emotional and breathtaking manner.
Jolie stars as mother Christine Collins who returns home one day to discover her nine-year-old son, Walter, is missing. She calls the police and, after enduring a grueling 24 hours, they search for her son. But the boy they return to her is not her son. After confronting corrupt city authorities, Collins is vilified as an unfit mother and sent to an asylum.
Angelina Jolie delivers another great performance. But unlike A Mighty Heart, this film actually deserves her presence, there is definitely reason for her acclaim as an actress. The situation her character goes through is so surreal and the film captures it perfectly.
This is a grueling film to watch. I have not felt this hideous since North Country, a film which also dealt with misogyny within the power structure. Women are treated as fragile, emotional, and not believable. This film tackles corruption to boot, as the LAPD is accused of being a gang of thugs that answer to no one. Eastwood is old school with the violence, understanding that the mind can fill in the very brutal gaps.
An odd praise goes out to Jason Butler Harner, who plays Gordon Northcott, a kidnapper and murderer of many children. He has played one of the monsters of everyone's nightmares to perfection. Also of note is Jeffrey Donovan for his portrayal of J. J. Jones, corruption personified. Jones is a man able to whisk people away to asylums with no need of warrants. Truly terrifying. As is any scene set in the asylum where Christine is wrongfully placed because she dared to question the corruption of the police force. Christine's motives are jstified in that she doesn't care at the start about bringing down the big bad law enforcers, she just wants them to tell her the truth and she wants her son. But when it becomes apparent that she needs to be firmer and that the police are not interested in her pleas, she decides to fight on. Thankfully some relief for Christine comes in the form of John Malkovich's character, Rev. Gustav A. Briegleb. Knowing that someone is there to help Christine and fight against the corruption is one of the few comforting moments in this film.
Cinematography and costume design are beautifully handled and the resetting of the era is managed well. It seems as though there is nothing more reliable than Eastwood behind the camera, with his assured touch his films are never boring or deliberately confusing, hiding technical devices or special effects that detract from the most important part of movie making: a good screenplay, a good story, good acting. The Academy may not have recognised the brillance and importance of this film, but it is truly one of the the best dramas that came out in 2008.
5/5
Battlestar Galactica Final Final: Brief Spoiler Recap
Spoilers
The Opera House Vision:
Well the visions of the Opera House shared by Roslin, Caprica, Gaius and Athena was brought back and answered in the finale.
We see them all chasing Hera as she runs throughout a battlefield Galactica, imitating the movements and seeing the decks and halls of the battlestar as what they saw of the Opera House. It was beautifully done and I'm glad it wasn't left behind. But at the same time what comes next isn't this big revelation and there's nothing spectacular when you see what's on the other side of the 'light'/CIC. The image of the white cloaked Final 5 peering down from the balcony of the Opera House is mirrored by the Final 5 peering down from a balcony in the CIC. It's tied up but just as a scene not as some revelation.
Laura Roslin:
Laura Roslin fulfilled her prophecy even though they'd given up on all that after finding the nuclear torn Earth from this Season. She arrived on the new Earth (our earth) and there she died while in the raptor cockpit with Bill Adama looking at the wonderful life the earth had to offer. It had me in tears. I kinda wished she would of lived long enough to see the log cabin Bill is going to build for her.
Roslin was my favourite character and in my eyes the President, the leader until the end. It was particularly sad that they all just parted ways when they landed on earth.
Kara Thrace:
Kara Thrace died in the episode Maelstrom and the person we've seen since her ressurection/return in Crossroads was...an angel. She imputed FDL co-ordinates into the Galactica that rsembled the notes from the song All Along the Watchtower (that I'm still not sure if her father was original composer cos would he have intentionally known it's influence).
This jumped the fleet to Earth 2.0 as it's being called by fans. This earth is our earth we know and they all dock in Africa.
Kara says goodbye to Lee and while he's talking about his desire to explore the new world and enjoy his life, he turns around and Kara is gone. I think she went to the other side to be alongside with Anders.
Anders led the entire fleet of ships into the sun.
The reason for this apparently, was because Adama decided that for a clean slate, a chance o intervene with the mantra of "All this has happened before..." they needed to try and just rely in themselves. So the Admiral had Anders take control via his Hybrid abilities of the fleet, and they went into the sun. I take it none of them ever went into space again. Which in a way is saddening, but I suppose they were all as humanity, sick of space.
Head-6:
It seems that Head6 and Head Baltar to a lesser degree, the figures that Baltar (and Caprica) saw from the start of the show were also...angels.
God:
God exists in the BSG universe.
Lost : A Show that's followed it's title too far?
I don't watch this anymore and never really watched it as a fan before. I'm not a Lost fan, just a past passive observer.
But I've heard about the island time hopping. So the island is a greeny exostic delorian?
I'm surprised people still watch this show and are as excited about it as they were when it first came out, cos it's gotta be frustrating.
Lost was a show that kinda brough back the idea of having the fanbase of a show try and work things out and give people things to tink about, clues ect. But for a show that's so famous in it's fan intrigue, it does a poor job of executing any satisfactory feedback.
There are 10 questions to every answer and what few answers the show gives, somehow through the magic of mindgames, creates another question. Too many.
Heroes (for all it's current problesm according to some) and BSG and any other show do a better job of maintaining a manageble ammount of puzzles, theories and prophecies in their story arcs. There's also a potential for the shows to actually answer every question come the end of their run.
Lost will never answer everything by the end of this season and next years final finale.
And you know that people will be upset with whatever the one big reveal is, as they've already covered so many theories themselves.
81st Academy Award Winners
Best Actor in a Leading Role
Sean Penn Milk
Best Actress in a Leading Role
Kate Winslet The Reader
Best Actor in a Supporting Role
Heath Ledger The Dark Knight
Best Actress in a Supporting Role
Penélope Cruz Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Best Picture
Slumdog Millionaire Christian Colson
Best Foreign Language Film
Departures – Japan Yojiro Takita
Best Documentary Feature
Man on Wire Simon Chinn
Best Animated Feature
WALL·E Andrew Stanton
Best Director
Danny Boyle Slumdog Millionaire
Best Writing - Original Screenplay
Dustin Lance Black Milk
Best Writing - Adapted Screenplay
Simon Beaufoy Slumdog Millionaire
Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award
Jerry Lewis Comedic film and humanitarian work
Bride Wars
If you're looking for a comedy with weird plot twists and a sprinkling of humor, then you'll still be searching - Bride Wars excels at the former and sadly fails at the latter. It's not entirely silly sabotage and witless laughs as a few scenes and characters do stand out of the cliché wedding comedy crowd, but ultimately the tragic outcomes and easy clean-up of a far too messy situation will leave viewers wishing for a more comfortably predictable plot line.
Liv (Kate Hudson) and Emma (Anne Hathaway) have been best friends since childhood and both have always dreamed of a gorgeous June wedding at the luxurious Plaza Hotel. When both girls' boyfriends ask for their hands in marriage, Liv and Emma enlist the highly reputable wedding planner Marion St. Claire (Candice Bergen) to acquire their dream locale. Unfortunately a clerical error has their weddings set on the same day and thus begins a rivalry of increasingly ruthless sabotage as both girls refuse to reschedule their most important day.
No experimentation or originality can be seen in Bride Wars. Everything is terribly formulaic, from the music-narrated montages to the carefully patterned dialogue to the high points and low points for each of the heroines. When a half-expected love triangle forms, it is completely unnecessary and sorely mislaid - this is the kind of film where each event is better off contributing solely to comedy and every sad moment is best coated with ridiculous gags and off-the-wall mood-shifting resolutions. Touches of seriousness have no place in Bride Wars, which struggles so greatly with its adult dilemmas that the moments of humor feel forced - shoved into the cracks to even out the heartbreak most won't be feeling for these cookie-cutter characters.
If it wasn't bad enough that no individuality finds its way through all the girl-oriented giggling, hormonal wedding craze and subdued cat-fighting, the humor itself is oftentimes indecipherable from the drama. Sometimes it's funny to see these girls bitterly attack one another even if we're meant to sympathize, and other times it's disheartening when we're supposed to be laughing. Either way, so little of the film sparks interest or concern over two hopelessly contrived, generic best friends that it would be as wasteful to debate over them as it was to spoil two hours of valuable time watching the film. Hopefully even the target audience will realize the recycled, uninspired nature of Bride Wars.
2.5/5
Upcoming Reviews
The Watchmen