Movie Reviews – Judge By Reviews

Fish Tank – Mia, a foul-mouthed,stroppy fifteen-year-old, lives on an Essex estate with her tarty mother,Joanne, and precocious little sister Tyler. She has been excluded from school and is awaiting admission to a referrals unit and spends her days aimlessly. She begins to develop an uneasy friendship with Joanne’s handsome, extrovert Irish boyfriend,Connor, who encourages her one interest, dancing, and eventually they have sex, after which he disappears from all their lives. When Mia tracks him down she finds that he has not been wholly honest with them and decides to take revenge, which almost ends in disaster. However, she does find consolation with Billy, a young traveller, after making up with her family.

Antichrist – A couple lose their young son when he falls out the window while they have sex in the other room. The mother’s grief consigns her to hospital, but her therapist husband brings her home intent on treating her depression himself. To confront her fears they go to stay at their remote cabin in the woods, “Eden”, where something untold happened the previous summer. Told in four chapters with a prologue and epilogue, the film details acts of lustful cruelty as the man and woman unfold the darker side of nature outside and within.

Inglourious Basterds – During World War II, Lt. Aldo Raine leads his squad of Jewish-American soldiers behind enemy lines in Nazi occupied France. Their job is simple: kill the enemy. They also have a particularly violent approach to what they do scalping their victims. Soon they are known and feared throughout the German army. In Paris, Shosanna runs a cinema and through a chance meeting with a German war hero, is selected to host the premiere of one of Dr. Josef Goebbels propaganda film. With all of the German high command scheduled to attend – including Hitler, Goering and Martin Bormann – it seems like the ideal opportunity for Lt. Raine and his men to bring the war to a quick end. Shosanna, who is Jewish and whose parents and siblings were killed before her eyes, also has her own plans for the evening’s festivities. When she realizes that the man who killed her family Colonel Hans Landa, known as the Jew Hunter, will also be there it makes her own plans complete.

Bright Star – London 1818: a secret love affair begins between 23 year-old English poet, John Keats (Ben Whishaw), and the girl next door, Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish), an out-spoken student of high fashion. This unlikely pair begin at odds, he thinking her a stylish minx, while she was unimpressed not only by his poetry but also by literature in general. However, when Fanny heard that Keats was nursing his seriously ill younger brother, her efforts to help touched Keats and when she asked him to teach her about poetry he agreed. The poetry soon became a romantic remedy that worked not only to sort their differences, but also to fuel an impassioned love affair.

Chun feng chen zui de ye wan – I attended the North American Premiere of “Spring Fever” at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival. A co-production of Hong Kong and France, director Ye Lou’s “Spring Fever” is quite a unique film about a gay love triangle. There’s very little dialogue, which is a device I normally relish, but here it just drags out the already minimal action. The film is shot with all hand-held and shaky camera style, using lots of extreme closeups. It might not have been that hard to handle except that the picture itself was very dark at times so it was often difficult to even see what was taking place. I don’t know if it was the source print, digital transfer, or projection, but it made for a very disappointing experience.

Vincere – The powerful new film from acclaimed auteur Marco Bellocchio (My Mothers Smile, Good Morning, Night, The Wedding Director), VINCERE is a compelling drama based on the littleknown story of Benito Mussolinis first wife. Ida Dalsar (Giovanno Mezzogiorno) and Mussolini (Filippo Timi) begin their liaison in 1914; she is a well-to-do beauty salon owner and he is an impoverished young Socialist and union activist. When Ida sells all her possessions to fund her lover’s new newspaper, the rise of Fascism is set into play An official selection of the Cannes, Toronto and Telluride Film Festivals, VINCERE is a gripping film that combines drama, archive footage, and music creating a highly cinematic oratorio of enormous emotional force.

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