What was the last movie you saw?

[Jestak]

Hana-bi/Fireworks is the second film I've seen by the maverick Japanese director/actor Takeshi "Beat" Kitano, who has made a number of very individualistic crime films over the last 20 years or so. Nishi (Kitano) is a veteran detective dealing with the terminal illness of his wife and with his partner becoming crippled in a shooting; his coping mechanism may involve turning to crime himself. The film is full of lyric sequences as Nishi and his wife take a final tour around the country, interspersed with brief eruptions of violence; the abrupt ending packs a punch. This isn't one I see myself adding to my collection but it was an interesting venture off of the beaten cinematic path.

[Jestak]

Tonight I watched The Day of the Jackal, based on Frederick Forsyth's terrific novel about a fictitious assassination attempt on Charles de Gaulle. Edward Fox is the English killer hired by the OAS to off de Gaulle, while Michel Lonsdale, assisted by Derek Jacobi, are the French detectives in charge of finding him before he can strike. The film doesn't match the excellence of the book but it is very competently executed.

[Jestak]

Over the past several years, I've enjoyed discovering a number of outstanding Australian films. My most recent find is The Tracker, something of a "down under" Western. Four men are pursuing a wanted criminal through the outback. Three are white--the officer in charge, a fanatical racist; a laconic veteran; and the third, a naive youngster who proves to have retained a conscience. The fourth is the Tracker (David Gulpilil), an aboriginal who is responsible for finding the fugitive's trail. The hunt, however, takes a back seat to the complex interactions among the four men. This was a terrific film, anchored by a superb performance from David Gulpilil, an Aboriginal actor who has been doing excellent work in Australian film for nearly 40 years, since he made a stunning debut in Nic Roeg's Walkabout.

[The girlie-wolf]

My first dragon... Saw it with my little brother... a cute movie

[HarryTuttle]

How to Train Your Dragon in 3D: Suprisingly good and original work from Dreamworks along with Kung Fu Panda being the two most original ideas they've done.

Avatar on Blu-Ray rental: I refuse to buy the barebones Blu-Ray until the extended director's cut 2-Disc edition this november and hopefully the director's cut will hit theaters this fall. Such a great if yet unoriginal Sci-fi movie just like The Matrix was and yet it worked like The Matrix.

Anyone seen the trailer/TV spots to the new Elm Street remake coming next week? i got my ticket to it thanks to getting the original on Blu-Ray as i added it to my Elm Street collection with the original Elm Street DVD boxset and Freddy vs. Jason on Blu-Ray, i'm a fan of the series and can't wait to see how it reboots the series back into it's dark roots.

[Susie]

Believe it or not- THE SHINING.

My 16 year old son had seen it and wanted me to see it - for some reason, I missed it when it was originally out! I closed my eyes for all the bloody parts. Basically I like psychological thrillers, which this is - and Jack Nicholson is just so- Jack Nicholson!!! It IS tough to believe the premise - caretaker for 5 months in a remote mountain hotel in the winter with no access - no contact with other humans??? Come on! That's just a disaster waiting to happen!! Still, for the sake of basic film history, I was glad I saw it.

[Jestak]

Some film scholar types identify certain films as "Professional Westerns;" appropriately, The Professionals is a good example of the type. Wealthy oilman Joe Grant (Ralph Bellamy) hires four men to rescue his kidnapped young wife Maria (Claudia Cardinale): Rico (Lee Marvin) is a weapons and tactics expert, Dolworth (Burt Lancaster) is a gunfighter and explosives man, Jake (Woody Strode) is an expert tracker and archer, and Ehrengard (Robert Ryan) is a horsemaster. But when Rico and his men get to the hideout of Mexican outlaw Raza (Jack Palance), they find that all is not as they have been told. Could Maria in fact be an unwilling trophy wife? Could her "kidnapping" have in fact been of her own free will? Could she and Raza be long time lovers? Perhaps. While his script gets clunky at times, writer-director Richard Brooks delivers some excellent action sequences, and his cast is generally solid. Marvin, in his brief vogue as a leading man, is a solid presence, but sometimes he's blown off the screen by the charismatic Lancaster, outstanding as a charming rogue. Cardinale is appropriately feisty and beautiful, Strode, never a great actor, handles his action very well, and Marie Gomez steals a couple of scenes as Chiquita, a lieutenant of Raza's. Jack Palance is too old for his part but gives a game effort; the real disappointment, surprisingly, is the usually dynamic Ryan--his role is underwritten, and I believe he was starting to feel the effects of the cancer that eventually killed him during the shooting.

All 1960s Westerns are overshadowed to some degree by Sam Peckinpah's two classics, Ride the High Country and The Wild Bunch, but this is a very solid, enjoyable action Western.

[Jestak]

Of all the wonderful films made by the "Archers" partnership of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, my very favorite is I Know Where I'm Going, one of the most beautiful and touching romances ever filmed. It's near the end of World War 2, and Joan Webster (Wendy Hiller) has traveled to the Western Isles of Scotland, where she is to marry a wealthy industrialist who is much older than her. But when fog and a storm keep her from crossing the channel to the isle of Kiloran, she ends up spending most of the next few days in the company of Torquil MacNeil (Roger Livesey), a naval officer on leave who proves to be the hereditary lord of Kiloran. When Joan starts to feel an attraction both to the local community and culture, and to Torquil himself, for the first time in her 25 years she begins to doubt whether she "knows where she's going."

Hiller is very good here in the lead role, Livesey shines in the one chance he got in his career to be a romantic leading man, and Pamela Brown is radiant as Torquil's friend Catriona (Michael Powell reportedly fell in love with Brown during filming). Scotland, naturally, makes for a perfect setting for a romance. There's a big ceilidh sequence in the middle of the movie that's full of life, a tense action sequence when Joan cajoles the local ferryman's apprentice to take her across the stormy seas to Kiloran, and an ending to melt the hardest of hearts.

[funkidiva]

I saw Ghost Town on DVD - funny entertaining film. Even made me cry a little when he went round helping people. More moving and serious message/meaning than I thought it would have, which is a good thing. I enjoyed it.

[Jestak]

Tonight I watched an une4ven but enjoyable comic mystery/romance called The Darwin Awards. The film takes its name from the awards given posthumously to people who manage to get themselves killed in ridiculous fashions. When San Francisco cop Michael Burrows (Joseph Fiennes) loses his job due to his tendency to faint at the sight of blood, he gets work with an insurance company, investigating accidental death claims. He is partnered with Siri (Winona Ryder), jaded on the surface but sweet underneath, and anyone who can't smell a romance on the way is not paying attention. However, Michael can't escape his two obsessions, the Darwin Awards, and the murder suspect he let get away back in San-Fran (because he fainted). Fiennes and Ryder make a nice pair of leads and director Finn Taylor got a surprisingly good supporting cast, including David Arquette, Juliette Lewis, Tim Blake Nelson, Robin Tunney, and the late Chris Penn in one of his final roles. The one big flaw is Taylor's device of having Michael followed everywhere--literally--by a film student making a documentary (Wilmer Valderrama), which smacks of an effort to be "clever."