The Beauty Academy of Kabul
Directed by: Liz Mermin
[New York, NY] : Docurama : Distributed by New Video, c2006.
Every culture has a unique perspective on what is beautiful. The Beauty Academy of Kabul tells the story of six teachers, including three Afghan women returning after many years, who start a beauty academy for local women in Kabul. Beauty salons are seen as a way for Afghan women to regain social and economic freedom in post-Taliban Afghanistan, and beauty is recognized as a symbol of returning freedom, self-esteem, and hope for the future. The film includes brief historical clips of the ongoing turbulence in Afghanistan and touches on a number of interconnected issues, such as gender inequalities, arranged marriages, rigid social conventions, and the continual threat of violence. Mermin skillfully balances the good intentions of the academy with the harsh realities of the life of females in Afghanistan. She also successfully incorporates clashes between the American instructors, who can be overly brash and somewhat insensitive to the trauma these women have endured, and the Afghan natives, who don't necessarily believe that the empowerment of women to control their own lives can ever be accomplished. Overall, the film is a testament to perseverance in the face of adversity as Afghan women embrace the chance to gain new skills and further education.
Review from Library Journal
The Hills Have Eyes 2
Written by Jonathan and Wes Craven
Directed by Martin Weisz
Beverly Hills, Calif. : Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, c2007
- Staring:
- Michael McMillian
- Jessica Stroup
- Daniella Alonso
- Jacob Vargas
- Lee Thompson Young
- Ben Crowley
- Eric Edelstein
- Flex Alexander
- Reshad Strik
- Michael Bailey Smith
Horror sequels and remakes usually signify one more trip to the well, with a bucket of blood. But while "The Hills Have Eyes 2"--a sequel to a remake--may inhabit familiar geography, screenwriters Wes Craven and son Jonathan have shifted the dramatic landscape: The scene is still the A-bomb test site of Wes Craven's 1977 original, and it includes the mutant cannibals of Alexandre Aja's 2006 remake. This time, though, the victims are National Guardsmen, the issues include training and equipment, and the entire scenario adds up to an unmistakable critique of the war in Iraq.
The politics of "Hills 2" won't enlist any new converts to the horror ranks, but existing fans will be drawn to the combination of visceral tension, violent payoff and the patented Craven gift for innovative gore.
The scene is a 1,300-square-mile patch of New Mexico, where the Carter family of the previous "Hills" pics met their fate at the hands of mutant psycho Quasimodo look-alikes, bio-victims of government nuclear tests. Immediately upon arriving, the "Hills 2's'" National Guard patrol is set upon by the grotesque cave-dwellers, who hit and run with such eerie speed that the Guardsmen--all young and untrained--are immediately unnerved. It doesn't do much for their confidence that the team of scientists and military they were supposed to meet have all vanished.
While nothing is as broadly political as the impalement--via American flag--in the 2006 "Hills Have Eyes," the sentiments are obvious enough. Napoleon (Michael McMillian), the smartest member of the co-ed Guard group that finds itself in a hostile desert, is challenged about his lack of enthusiasm for the war.
"Presidents lie too much," he says. He's given little slack: "The last president who told the truth was Truman," barks his commanding officer, Sarge (Flex Alexander), "and you know what he said? 'The buck stops here!'"
Sarge and Napoleon are never going to get along, but the way things are working out with the natives, it really won't matter.
In their first outing as a screenwriting team, the Cravens don't offer a lot in terms of plot--mostly the imperiled attempt to become unimperiled. But with the exception of a ridiculous "Are you OK?" when the person has been abducted, beaten and raped (and which may have been intended as a "Scream"-style joke line), the dialogue sparks and the humor relieves without intruding on the mood of terror. A scientist offering a cheery "Hi!" to a ghoul lunching on intestines? How can you not laugh?
Helmer Martin Weisz, whose background is largely in music-videos, meets the challenge of creating dread in broad daylight, before the entire cast of soldiers and carnivores heads underground, into the warren of mines and tunnels where the mutants dwell.
Cinematographer Sam McCurdy's work is really fine--the outside world is crisp, creepy and khaki-colored, while his subterranean shooting is in surroundings so deprived of light you're surprised you can make out what's down there. But, oh yes, you can. And you probably won't like what you see.
Review from Variety - John Anderson
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Written by Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin.
Directed by Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam
Culver City, Calif. : Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment, c2003.
A comedic take on the adventures of King Arthur and his knights in their attempt to find the Holy Grail, this movie is a touchstone of geek culture. I watched when I was in Junior High School and have watched it every year or so since then. I still find it hilarious.
While connected by an overarching plot (finding the grail) the movie plays out very much like a sketch comedy show, with each scene being one elaborate joke that may or may not advance the plot. These scenes usally have a catch phrase or idiom that you or your children will repeat, well, repeatedly.
A fun movie to watch, especially your first time, and the humour has not dulled even after 30 years. Some of the scenes are a little racy, (especially the castle Anthrax bit) but nothing that can't be seen on modern Television shows such as Gray's Anatomy or Desperate Housewives. But you might want to keep your youngest children from seeing it.
Mr. Brooks
Screenplay by Bruce A. Evans and Raynold Gideon.
Directed by Bruce A. Evans.
Beverly Hills, Calif. : MGM Home Entertainment ; Montreal : Distributed by Alliance Atlantis, c2007.
- Starring:
- Kevin Costner
- Demi Moore
- Dane Cook
If you've seen the trailer for the Kevin-Costner-is-a-killer movie "Mr. Brooks," you might fear that the entire plot has been given away. The good news: there are many twists, turns, subplots and surprises that the coming attractions don't even hint at. The bad news: these twists and turns are so preposterous, or so irrelevant, that they undermine the movie they're meant to tart up.
The title character, played by Costner, is a pillar of the Portland, Ore., community, a happily married husband and father who has an unfortunate addiction to murder. He even goes to AA meetings to deal with his problem, though he's understandably reticent about sharing. His only confidant is--himself: Mr. Brooks has a devilish alter ego who goads him on in his life of crime, and this evil id-dude is played, very cannily, by William Hurt. As the bickering sides of Mr. Brooks's twisted psyche, Costner and Hurt have a delicious chemistry, but it doesn't bode well for a movie when the only two compelling characters are the same person, talking to himself.
Their testy, complicitous bond is far more interesting than Mr. Brooks's relationship with his wife , his troubled daughter , who has abruptly dropped out of college, the driven cop (Demi Moore) who is hot on his trail or the amateur photographer (Dane Cook) who happened to catch on film Mr. Brooks's latest killing--a couple in the act of making love. It's not giving too much away to reveal that this creepy fellow is no conventional blackmailer; instead of money, he wants the chance to accompany Mr. Brooks on his next killing.
This sicko is barely credible (an actor more experienced than Cook might have helped), but Bruce A. Evans and Raynold Gideon's script has far more rank improbabilities ahead, the most egregious involving Mr. Brooks's lovely daughter. As if there weren't enough to hold our interest, they give us an escaped convict pursuing Moore for sending him up the river. (These scenes seem to have been borrowed from another movie entirely.) Did I mention that Moore's cop character is also a millionaire? Don't ask.
For its first half, "Mr. Brooks," directed by Evans, is pretty engaging trash. Costner is usually most fun when he's subverting his nice-guy persona ("No Way Out"), and here he gets to play both a paragon and a villain. The basic premise has real potential: think what Claude Chabrol could do with it. But Evans and Gideon aren't seriously interested in the psychology of their characters. They're so worried about holding our attention they overload their tale with bombshells, byways and bogus suspense. The movie becomes a crazy quilt of competing stories, none of them properly developed. You could cut half the major characters out of "Mr. Brooks" and never miss them.
Review from Newsweek (June 11, 2007) - David Ansen.
Music and Lyrics
Written by Marc Lawrence.
Directed by Marc Lawrence.
Burbank, Calif. : Warner Home Video, c2007 .
- Starring:
- Hugh Grant
- Drew Barrymore
- Brad Garrett
- Haley Bennett
- Matthew Morrison
- Aasif Mandvi
- Scott Porter
As Hugh Grant ages, something is becoming clear: The actor's most compelling attribute is not his floppy forelock but the vein of charming self-loathing that has always been pulsing under his masterfully mussed-up hair. The posh stuttering, the artful dishevelment, the way his characters blink and back away (from women, certainly, but also from men as chums or colleagues) are all gestures of a very cultivated, very British embarrassment. Oh, dear God, am I really an Oxford graduate mucking about as a movie star? his pouting mouth pleads, while magazine editors put him on Sexiest Man lists. How can you stand me when I'm such a delightfully horrid, selfish man? his characters flirt.
Grant is game for a new level of meta-ha-ha, joke's-on-me in Music and Lyrics. But with Drew Barrymore as his costar, this bland, light romantic comedy insists on keeping the commentary as disposable as one of the '80s gumball tunes Grant used to swivel to as Alex Fletcher, a washed-up '80s pop star. Alex had some hits in a Wham!-like band called PoP, and it shows: Grant readily embraces bad hair (that of a has-been desperately trying to accommodate the '00s), bad tight shirts, and a cute spritz of eau de failure. Having split with his PoP partner--the lyric-writing half of the duo, who went on to even greater success--Alex makes his dough singing solo on the nostalgia circuit (high school reunions, amusement parks). The faintly idiotic gigs are enough to bankroll a modestly comfortable, unattached, showbiz-adjacent lifestyle on Manhattan's Upper West Side.
Review from Entertainment Weekly-Lisa Schwarzbaum.
Read the rest of the review here.
Happily N'ever After
Written by Robert Moreland & Douglas Langdale
Directed by Paul Bolger and Yvette Kaplan.
Santa Monica, Calif. : Lions Gate Entertainment ; Distributed in Canada by Maple Pictures, c2007.
- Starring:
- Freddie Prinze, Jr
- Sarah Michelle Gellar
- Patrick Warburton
- George Carlin
- Sigourney Weaver
- Wallace Shawn
- Andy Dick
This CGI movie was similar to the Shrek series of films. It has fairly big name actors providing the voices for this tale of Fairy Tales turned upside-down.
The story follows the tale of Ella, who is destined to marry the Prince and become queen at the expense of her evil stepmother and stepsisters. Her evil stepmother is not pleased with this, and seizes control of the fairytale land in order to let "evil" win.
The movie is somewhat lacking in both the animation and the story when compared to Shrek, but is not completely worthless. I would suggest this film if you want a family friendly DVD and have already watched all of the Shrek films. A good enough time waster for a rainy weekend when the kids are stuck inside.
The Departed
Written by William Monahan. (Original 2002 screenplay by Siu Fai Mak and Felix Chong)
Directed by Martin Scorsese.
Burbank, CS: Warner Home Video, c2007.
- Starring:
- Leonardo DiCaprio
- Matt Damon
- Jack Nicholson
- Mark Wahlberg
- Martin Sheen
- Alec Baldwin
- Ray Winstone
- Anthony Anderson
- Vera Farmiga
- Kevin Corrigan
In South Boston, the state police force are waging a war on Irish-American organized crime. Undercover cop Billy Costigan is assigned to infiltrate the mob syndicate, which is run by gangland chief Frank Costello. Billy quickly gains Costello's confidence. Colin Sullivan is a hardened young criminal who has infiltrated the police department as an informer for the syndicate. Colin is rising to a position of power within the Special Investigation Unit. Each man becomes deeply consumed by his double life, gathering information about the plans and counter-plans of the operations he has penetrated. But when it becomes clear to both the mob and the police that there's a mole in their midst, Billy and Colin are suddenly thrust into danger. Afraid of being caught and exposed to the enemy, they each must race to uncover the identity of the other man in time to save himself.
I'm really glad I got this at the library since about halfway in, I started thinking the plot sounded familiar and I could swear I'd seen some of the scenes before. Then it hit me, I had seen this all before, but a couple of years ago in a foreign film. I'm sure many people knew about the connection but I had no idea. This was a good movie but I would have been sooo angry if I'd seen it in the theatre. Yes, the location is different but the plot is basically the same and some of the scenes and dialogue are directly taken from the original. It's got a fantastic cast and I actually liked Leonardo for a change. He was more believable in this than in Blood Diamond. It was also interesting having Wahlberg play what seemed to be a much older character since Damon is actually a year older and DiCaprio only a few years younger. Still not entirely convinced it was worth Best Picture & Director Oscars but I can't argue with Adapted Screenplay because at least someone was cognizant of the fact that Scorsese didn't do it all by himself.
You might also like to watch the original movie Infernal Affairs.
Perfume: The Story of a Murder
Screenplay by Andrew Birkin & Bernd Eichinger & Tom Tykwer. Directed by Tom Tykwer.
Hollywood, CA: DreamWorks Home Entertainment, c2007.
- Starring:
- Ben Whishaw
- Dustin Hoffman
- Rachel Hurd-Wood
- Alan Rickman
- John Hurt
R, 147 mins. (Paramount)
Smell--the most primal and evocative of the senses--is also the most difficult to translate into words and pictures anywhere near as powerful as the act of smelling itself. In Perfume, a coolly sensuous adaptation of Patrick Suskind's terrific 1986 international best-seller, the young British actor Ben Whishaw offers a potent translation of smell and its effect. Playing Jean-Baptiste, a near-feral orphan in stinking 18th-century France who is blessed, but mostly cursed, with a supernaturally sensitive nose, Whishaw somehow gives his entire begrimed, sinewy body over to the thrall of sniffing. The first time he inhales the aroma of a beautiful young girl, the experience is orgasmic enough to become an obsession, and it's clear he's destined to become the world's greatest perfumer--never mind that his preservation of natural fragrance involves murder. (J-B's teacher in odoriferous arts is played, with amusement and rouge, by Dustin Hoffman.)
Tom Tykwer, the inventive German director of Run Lola Run, is a spicy match for the erotically charged novel. He makes effective use of images sliced thin as transparent garlic slivers to convey sensual buildup. And he conjures up a great, fleshly be-in as aroused townsfolk get a whiff of J-B's infernally perfected fragrance. Perfume misses some of the subtler base notes of Suskind's creepier, more self-aware original, but Whishaw and Tykwer blend the movie into something quite heady in its own bottle. B
Review from Entertainment Weekly -- Lisa Schwarzbaum
Compare the book to the movie or for commuters, we have the book on mp3 cd.
Nora
Screenplay by Gerard Stembridge and Pat Murphy.
Directed by Pat Murphy.
[United States]: First Look Home Entertainment, c2001.
- Starring:
- Ewan McGregor
- Susan Lynch
- Peter McDonald
- Roberto Citran
- Veronica Duffy
NORA ***
James Joyce and Nora Barnacle had the kind of marriage that makes people wonder what keeps them together -- a bookish genius and a chambermaid make unlikely bedfellows. (Or perhaps they're likely bedfellows; whether they have anything to talk about afterward is the only thing that makes them unlikely.) By her own admission, Nora never read any of Joyce's books, though she was the inspiration for Ulysses' Molly Bloom.
To the film's credit, Nora -- based on Brenda Maddox's 1988 biography of the same name -- sheds light on this odd pairing, presenting a wealth of details about the emotional side of Joyce's life.
The film begins with "Jim" Joyce (Ewan McGregor) picking up Nora (Susan Lynch) on Nassau Street in Dublin. Their courtship proceeds with perfect turn-of-the-century propriety until one night when, as they cuddle in an alleyway, she undoes his trousers and puts her hand inside. Joyce is overwhelmed by this moment of intimacy -- or "naturalness" as he puts it -- and this creates an unexpectedly strong bond between them. Soon they leave together for Europe, and the rest of the film follows their relationship over the years.
Susan Lynch is the dominant force in the film -- she's such a firecracker, it's not a stretch to imagine a writer becoming enraptured by her. Her passion is intense, and Lynch is fearless in the raw love scenes. The film's sexual frankness serves as a potent reminder that sex wasn't an invention of the 1960s.
McGregor is less sure of himself, but that's not necessarily his fault -- the script almost reduces Joyce to a secondary character in the story of his own life. The biggest problem with the film is that there's not enough poetry in it -- it conveys the idea that Joyce is a raging soul, but is content to leave it at that. This lets the film down badly -- you're left wondering why on earth feisty Nora would put up with such a dull husband.
Review from eye Weekly -- Catharine Tunnacliffe
Lady in the Water
Screenplay by M. Night Shyamalan.
Directed by M. Night Shyamalan.
Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video, c2006.
- Starring:
- Paul Giamatti
- Bob Balaban
- Sarita Choudhury
- Jeffrey Wright
- Freddy Rodriguez
- Bryce Dallas Howard
- Jared Harris
A building super tries to rescue a woman from the pool he maintains. However he knocks himself unconscious and when he comes to, there's a semi-naked woman in his apartment...He notices that somehow she causes him to not stutter. One of the tenants tells him an an ancient Asian fable that he links to his mysterious guest. She is a 'narf' from the Blue World. She must accomplish her mission and then return home. She is fated to meet one person who will then change the world. Mission accomplished but then the return journey is aborted. More details of the fable emerge that complicate things. She is a very special 'narf' so her enemies are very determined. The super must recruit archetypal helpers (healer, guild, translator) to ensure her safe return.
My opinion. This movie was not what I expected. I thought it was going to be a scary horror film but it only had a few jumpy bits. This made me glad! (He even made it into a children's book.) Overall, the movie was slow but interesting. The creature design was pretty good. I was kinda suprised how large a part Shyamalan played compared to his previous movies. It was somewhat predictable but I enjoyed the growing community of the apartment complex which is greatly lacking in most urban centres. Thanks to the research for the review, I only just realized Shyamalan also wrote and directed Unbreakable!