I saw the movie in cinema, more than 20 years ago. I still remember how it looked like, and how it felt, but I don’t remember that much of these real-life Vatican politics. I would have to watch it again.
Cockneys Vs Zombies - I initially dismissed this as just another quick Zombie film being released, didn’t even pay attention who was it in. Anyway, a few friends reckoned I’d like it so I decided to give it a go. Purely enjoyable, a thousand times better than I expected it to be.
[b]GANGSTER SQUAD(2013)D:Ruben Fleischer( Josh Brolin, Sean Penn
Nothing special really, aside from a few good shootouts and an over the top performance from Sean Penn as the lunatic Mickey Cohen, there’s nothing much to like about this film.But I must admit though, that the style and locations were well done. It’s too bad, this could have been a really good mob film with better writing and director.5/10
WRATH OF THE TITANS(2012)D:Jonathan Liebesman( Sam Worthington, Liam Neeson)
I did not like the first one at all, but this sequel is much better as far as the action and special effects goes. The story was not that great and the acting worst. It’s watchable, but not a good one. 5-1/2 out 10.
IDENTITY(2003)D:James Mangold( John Cusack, Ray Liota)
I really enjoyed this movie, good story, good acting, suspenseful and original. It did not disappoint, but the ending was hmmmm… ???
[size=12pt]HOUSE AT THE END OF THE STREET[/size]
The title may remind some of us of the (in)famous The Last House on the Left, but this is not a slasher movie. It’s a thriller with strong horror influences, but it’s remarkably restrained for a contemporary movie in this genre. It was made immediately before The Hunger Games, the film that made Jennifer Lawrence one of the most popular young actresses on the planet. Watching the movie, it soon becomes clear why it was released in most countries only after she had become a star.
A divorced woman and her 17-year old daughter move to a house on the country side to have a new start. They soon find out that a drama took place in the house next door: a young girl killed her father and mother with a knife and vanished, simply vanished from the face of the earth. Or didn’t she? The daughter fancies the boy next door, the brother of the vanished girl and also the only member of the family who survived the drama (yes, he still lives in the house). Needless to say that the drama isn’t over yet …
Jennifer Lawrence is the whole show here - No, not completely true: Elizabeth Shue (as the mother) and even Max Thieriot (as the boy next door) aren’t bad either, but even in a collective acting effort they can’t save this mediocre thriller. It seems effective at first, but the screenwriters keep coming up with so many implausible twists that in the end you don’t really care what will happen next.
In case you didn’t know who Jennifer Lawrence is:
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Uploaded with [URL=http://imageshack.us]ImageShack.us[url]http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/856/jenniferlawrencehouseat.jpg/[/url]
![http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/856/jenniferlawrencehouseat.jpg/[/url]](http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/856/jenniferlawrencehouseat.jpg/%5B/url%5D){kind=link}
You have me interested in this one, one to track down.
Understandable, she isn’t ugly …
…she’s not hot either.
Not hot? Have you tasted her?
I think she’s hot, but like beauty, that’s in the eye of the beholder, I guess
Ms Lawrence reminds little bit of Juliette Lewis in that picture.
Anyway I have only seen her in Winter’s Bone. I guess the movies she’s making nowadays are something completely different…
Juliette Lewis one that mastered the ‘slut’ looking look very well.
Yeah…Jennifer Lawrence, she’s the “Hot Ticket” of Hollywood right now, and every male actor wants a piece of her, including old (horny) Jack himself. ;D
Good old Jack. ;D
Still good taste
[B]Il Conformista[/B] - Not what I was expecting at all, I don’t mind slow burn but I found this to be a bit too slow. But it did have some fantastic visual shots.
[B]From Paris With Love[/B] - Great bit of brainless action fun, very enjoyable. Travolta is crazy in it.
[B]Valhalla Rising[/B] - Another one that wasn’t quite what I expected, pretty good though and quite brutal for a 15. Another one with fantastic visuals. The Scottish Highlands are captured superbly.
Nicholas Ray’s On Dangerous Ground, which is a superb Film Noir with one of Robert Ryan’s finest performances (there is a competition) as an emotionally dead cop until he meets the blind Ida Lupino, hunting for her pedophiliac(?) brother in the snowy wastes of upstate New York. The score from Bernard Herrmann and the cinematography also help to make this one of the great noirs.
A True Mob Story - Andy Lau stars as a triad who wants to stay out of trouble and look after his son but his past catches up with him, Really enjoyed this one.
Exterminator 2 - This is what I expected the first film to be like, great action scenes throughout, and a pulse pounding score… you couldnt mistake this film for any other decade, its so 80s. … don’t understand why its rated so low on imdb.
[url]http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/854/mandingo2.jpg/[/url] [size=12pt]MANDINGO[/size] (1975, Richard Fleischer)
![http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/854/mandingo2.jpg/[/url]](http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/854/mandingo2.jpg/%5B/url%5D){kind=link}
Well well. I got the idea to watch this movie from Tarantino’s Django Unchained, in which slave owner Leonardo di Caprio organizes a fight to the death between two slaves, in what’s called a Mandingo fight. There’s an interesting supplement to the Unchained article in it, but I’ll wait until I’ve seen the sequel, DRUM, before I dig any deeper into the subject.
This movie has been called a stinker by some critics and tasteless and repulsive by others; the late Roger Ebert thought respectable actor James Mason deserved jail rather than a fee for appearing in the movie. In other words: in 1975 Mandingo was quite a shock. It tells the story of a slave owner’s son (Perry King) who rejects his own wife (Susan George) because she wasn’t a virgin on her wedding night (her brother deflowered her) and sleeps with a black slave (Brenda Sykes). The wife does the same: when her husband is away from home, she invites his Mandingo fighter into her bedroom. By the way: The Mandingo man is played by Ken Norton, presented as ‘the man who broke Muhammed Ali’s jaw’ (He did, Norton was a professional boxer and beat Ali in 1971; he allegedly broke Ali’s jaw early on into the fight, but some have suggested that Ali made this up to ‘explain’ his defeat)
I must say that this concoction of torture, incest, interracial intercourse and fighting to the death is still quite strong today. Officially the movie is part of the Blaxploitation craze that reached theatres worldwide in the early and mid-seventies, but unlike most movies in that subgenre, it’s heavy-handed, dead-serious, not playful and flashy. Don’t watch it if you’re looking for some fun in vein of Shaft or Coffy. But then again, the film is set in the days of slavery, so wouldn’t it be even more shocking if it were playful? And Tarantino was criticized by Spike Lee for turning slavery into a spaghetti western, wasn’t he?
This movie is not for the faint of heart and I don’t think it could be made, in this form, today, at least not in the US or Europe. Don’t know if that is a good thing.
I think James Mason had a lot of bottle to take on that role. It made me laugh when he puts his feet on that kid thinking he will be cured of his ailment and pass it onto the boy.
Mandingo had respectful director also, Richard Fleischer. His long and winding career includes many interesting titles: Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970) , Soylent Green (1973) , The Narrow Margin (1952), The Boston Strangler (1968) and The Spikes Gang (1974) . At the end he directed Conan the Destroyer (1984) and Red Sonja (1985).
I haven’t seen Mandingo but I know it’s notorious reputation (“major studio exploitation movie”), so I’ll probably catch it one day.