AWN Blogs

This poetic Buddhist story has a lot to say about life and death, sin and redemption and love. The metaphor of the changing season representing the stages of life isn't a revolutionary artistic touch, but director Ki-duk Kim does it with original and breathtaking beauty.

Each season represents a different section in the life of the film’s characters. An old monk (Yeong-su Oh, LITTLE MONK) lives on a small floating house in a lake in the mountains. He is in care of a young boy (Jong-ho Kim, film debut) who he teaches metaphorical lessons about life and death. When the boy becomes a teen (Jae-kyeong Seo, RESURRECTION OF THE LITTLE MATCH GIRL), a young sick girl (Yeo-jin Ha, film debut) comes into the care of the monk. The teenage apprentice is quickly smitten by the girl. What happens next I will leave as a surprise. But I will say, the film deals with the issues of rebellion, temptation and redemption.

This film chronicles the faltering life of once big-time PR man Eli Wurman (Al Pacino, ANGELS IN AMERICA). He only has one more client – Cary Launer (Ryan O’Neal, LOVE STORY), an aging star who parties like a 20-year-old with women in their twenties. One of Eli’s less glamorous duties is to cover up Launer’s indiscretions like bailing out actress Jilli Hopper (Tea Leoni, FAMILY MAN) from jail.

Eli is falling apart. He is taking who knows how many prescription and illegal drugs. His doctor and friend Sandy (Robert Klein, TWO WEEKS NOTICE) is worried about him and so is his little brother’s widow Victoria (Kim Basinger, 8 MILE), who has come to New York to convince him to move down South with her again. In the midst of all of the mayhem, Eli is trying to put together a fundraiser for immigrants where he’s trying to get high-profile businessman Elliot Sharansky (Richard Schiff, TV’s THE WEST WING) and civil rights leader Rev. Lyle Blunt (Bill Nunn, SPIDER-MAN) to appear together.

It is a testament to Julianne Moore’s (THE HOURS) talent that I didn’t realize just how badly written her character was until close to the end of the film. She plays straight-laced divorce lawyer Audrey Woods who loses her first case to disheveled attorney Daniel Rafferty (Pierce Bronson, THE TAILOR OF PANAMA).

The film is an “opposites attract”/”free-spirit teaches anal person to learn how to love” type film. All the characters are one-dimensional and rarely display any real human emotions or logic. Plus the plot doesn’t seem to know what it wants. Woods and Rafferty get drunk and then hook up, which Woods is ashamed of and then later they get drunk, in Ireland of all places, and get married. (I am giving no more away than the trailer did). If the drunk hook-up is lame than the drunk marriage is pathetic.

The Coen Bros. humor is very dry. Sometimes you don’t know if you’re supposed to be laughing or not. This works in films like FARGO, but in a film like THE LADYKILLERS, which is clearly a comedy, it really doesn’t work. This film falls into the canon of Coen somewhere along with RAISING ARIZONA, which I am not a super fan.

This film is a remake of a far better Alec Guiness comedy that also starred Peter Sellers. Professor G.H. Dorr (Tom Hanks, THE ‘BURBS) is a ringleader of a heist team that is trying to rob a riverboat gambling company. He takes a room at the house of Marva Munson (Irma P. Hall, SOUL FOOD), a highly religious woman who complains to Sheriff Wyner (George Wallace, LITTLE NICKY) on a regular basis about the local youth playing that hippity-hop music too loudly. Mrs. Munson’s house will allow Dorr and his cronies to tunnel into the riverboat’s shoreline money room and steal the cash. The gang consists of foul-mouthed inside man Gawain MacSam (Marlon Wayans, REQUIEM FOR A DREAM), special effects specialist and explosives man Garth Pancake (J.K. Simmons, SPIDER-MAN), tactical master and silent assassin The General (Tzi Ma, THE QUIET AMERICAN) and dimwitted, failed football player and the gang’s muscle Lump Hudson (Ryan Hurst, REMEMBER THE TITANS).

This film is the fourth in the popular Japanese horror series and it is the best. Throughout the series, the main problem has been that there isn’t a clear central character to care about. Here we have Kyoko Harase (Noriko Sakai, narrator of POKEMON: PICHU AND PIKACHU), a horror movie actress who visits the cursed house of the previous films to do a documentary. As in the other films, the curse of Kayako (Takako Fuji) and her son Toshio (Yuya Ozeki) tracks down all that have contact with the house. However, this time they seem to be toying with Kyoko, who is pregnant.

As part of the series, this film does the best job of making us care about a character who is being hunted by the curse. However, the film still lacks any fight by the characters. They all seem like helpless fodder. The inactivity of the characters gets frustrating. If they make a fifth JU-ON, I’d like to see somebody try to figure out the curse and stop it.

In no way am I saying its as emotional wrenching or as intellectually stimulating, but this film reminded me of IRREVERSIBLE. Maybe it was the tone and it definitely has the power to make you squirm.

Director Marina de Van (UNDER THE SAND) plays the lead role of Esther, a self-loathing woman, who after having an accident that severely cuts her leg becomes obsessed with self-mutilation. The film builds slowly developing Esther’s psychology. Her friend Sandrine (Lea Drucker, SHOOTING STARS) and her boyfriend Vincent (Laurent Lucas, WITH A FRIEND LIKE HARRY) become quickly concerned with her dangerous behavior.

The film does a wonderful job of portraying Esther’s uncontrollable obsession. It’s amazing how the film makes you tense just by having Esther alone, because we know how dangerous she can be to herself. Eventually, she breaks with reality and takes the self-mutilation to an unimaginable level. There is a scene in this film that makes you feel so uncomfortable just like IRREVERSIBLE’s infamous rape scene. The only thing I wish the film had done more was explain this next step more. Psychologically I’m not sure what the film is trying to say.

In general, the reviews for this film were not that good. However, Roger Ebert has been championing this film since its release, so I had to give it a shot. The film is based on a novel by Gail Carson Levine, which I have not read, however I have read that the film takes a lot of liberties with the book. First and foremost, the film really tries to be a live-action SHREK by brining pop culture and modern references into a fairy tale setting. This is where ELLA ultimately fails.

The modern winks were hit or miss throughout the film, some even groan inducing. I really think the filmmakers should have modeled the movie more after THE PRINCESS BRIDE, a masterful example of playing fantasy for laughs. Ella (Anne Hathaway, THE PRINCESS DIARIES) has been cursed with the gift of obedience. Whenever anyone tells her to do something she must obey. Once her evil step-sisters Hattie (Lucy Punch, TV’s THE 10TH KINGDOM) and Olive (Jennifer Higham, TV’s STAR) find out about the curse they set out to make Ella’s life miserable. Adding to the tension between Hattie and Ella is Hattie’s love and Ella’s dislike of the handsome prince Char (Hugh Dancy, KING ARTHUR). Ella has an activist heart and dislikes Char’s seemingly pretty boy mindlessness. However, as these types of stories go, Ella and Char are brought together. Char likes Ella because she’s not like the other girls who chase and swoon over him.

Wherever you stand on the morality of pornography, it’s hard to deny it’s intriguing. And anyone who knows porn legend Ron Jeremy will be intrigued at how it is possible that a fat, hairy and fairly unattractive man who looks like he hasn’t showered in ages could be the most successful male porn actor of all time.

The film shows Jeremy as a good-natured man, who is kind and lonely. From a young age he wanted to be a performer. He stumbled into porn by accident after a picture of him appeared in PLAYGIRL, which showed off his talents – if you know what I mean. He’s been stuck in porn ever since. Known as the Clown Prince of Porn for his sense of humor, he has appeared in some mainstream films and has a side career as a stand-up comedian. However, his friend Al “Grandpa Munster” Lewis describes his stand-up act perfectly – “the worst I’ve ever seen.”

Nick Broomfield is a gutsy documentarian. It’s amazing sometimes what he gets people to do on camera. I’ve seen his other celebrity docs about serial killer Aileen Wuornos and Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss and it seems that Broomfield is interested at how people latch onto famous people and take advantage of them.

KURT & COURTNEY created a lot of buzz in 1998, because it was pulled from the Sundance Film Festival after Courtney Love threatened to sue. Eventually, the film was released on video and bolstered the conspiracy theories that surrounded the death of Nirvana lead singer Kurt Cobain.

Did he really commit suicide or did his wife Love have him murdered? Broomfield starts out the doc looking into the many conspiracy theories. Could Cobain really have pulled the trigger on the rifle? Would the amount of drugs in his system really have left him unable to move, rendering suicide impossible? Bloomfield interviews private eye Tom Grant, who Love hired to originally investigate Cobain's death, Hank Harrison, Love's father, and punk singer El Duce, who all believe Love conspired to have Cobain murder. I’ve heard many people walk away from this film, saying that it proves that Love had Cobain killed, but it didn't convince me. The evidence is flawed at best or in some cases a big stretch.

There is a short list of directors that even in their lesser work I find greatness and inspiration. John Sayles is one of those directors. I have seen seven of his films and six I'd recommend to anyone in a heartbeat. (LIMBO, I felt was an experiment that failed). Like all his films, it is filled with dozens of well-developed characters. The worlds he creates are full like life, because there are no real side characters. The “minor characters” you know have lives that have nothing to do with the main characters.

The story chronicles the many faces of Mexican baby adoption. We are introduced to six white American woman, who are staying at a hotel where they are waiting for the day when they will be given a baby, which has taken as long as nine months. Skipper (Daryl Hannah, KILL BILL: VOL. 2) is an exercise freak and into holistic medicine. Leslie (Lili Taylor, HIGH FIDELITY) is a single, editor from New York, who the other women think may be a lesbian. Gayle (Mary Steenburgen, WHAT'S EATING GILBERT GRAPE?) is a born again Christian, who actually is a real born again Christian. Nan (Marcia Gay Harden, POLLACK) is a know-it-all, who might be a little too off to be having children. Jennifer (Maggie Gyllenhaal, SECRETARY) is an emotional young woman married to a busy broker. Eileen (Susan Lynch, FROM HELL) is an Irish immigrant living in Chicago, who does not have the same kind of money the other women have.

This film is totally absurd and that’s why I loved it. The film is like an Ingmar Bergman film if Bergman was a member of the Monty Python comedy troupe. The film starts off with absurd vignettes that establish a modern city, at the turn of the 21-century, that has gone into total chaos. In light of the fact that the Y2K catastrophe was just another miscalculated overreaction, the events of this film seem even more poetically ridiculous.

Director Roy Andersson takes pot shots at everything and knows the old statement that tragedy is comedy. What ties together the absurd gags is Kalle (Lars Nordh, LEADING ASTRAY) who, at the beginning of the film, wanders into a café with his face full of soot and yells at his son Stefan (Stefan Larsson, ANJA) for not taking the fact that his father’s business just burning down as all that tragic. Soon enough we find out that Kalle burnt down his furniture store on purpose to rook the insurance company into thinking he sold more expensive sofas than he really did. Kalle has another son named Tomas (Peter Roth, VÄGEN UT), who “wrote poetry until he went nuts.” One of the funniest scenes in the film takes place at the asylum when we first meet Tomas and it’s only a side gag like something out of AIRPLANE!

I must admit that I have never read the book in which this film is based on. But do to its classic status and what I’ve read about it, I think it might be fair to say that the film has less bite than the book.

Becky Sharp (Reese Witherspoon, FREEWAY) is an orphan living at an all girls’ school. She is set to become a governess, but dreams of a better life. The mother (Deborah Findlay, ME WITHOUT YOU) of her best friend Amelia (Romola Garai, I CAPTURE THE CASTLE) describes her best – “At first I thought of her as a mere social climber, but now I see she’s a mountaineer.” The film makes Becky likeable and makes her out to be more than just a “mountaineer” at times. However, the true pleasure of the film is when it bears its teeth. My favorite sequence is with Becky and Miss Matilda Crawley (Eileen Atkins, COLD MOUNTAIN). The bite of the social commentary that the novel must have comes out brilliantly in these segments.