Primeval (2007)

"Primeval" is no work of genius, and like most mainstream films, is loaded with clichéd moments that we've seen in better movies.this movie contains the most offensive line in the history of films(in my opinion):"I wouldn't say this in front of white people, but at least the slave trade got people out of Africa. I would do anything to get out of here."(a black character)
the actual story details an American news team (the brooding male leader, the hot female sidekick, and of course, the token black guy who serves mostly as comic relief) traveling to the war-torn Burundi to film and hopefully capture Gustave, an enormous crocodile who has eaten hundreds of people. Naturally, things go wrong, and the river soon runs red. An interesting aspect of the movie is the inclusion of a warlord in the plot, adding a second threat to the protagonists (Gustave is, of course, their first threat). when the movie more-or-less forgets about one of it's main stars - The Crocodile - it slips into a boring movie about a group of people being attacked by angry African soldiers rather than being a movie about a group of people being killed off by a big nasty croc.
The characters are completely boring and the only character who I'd say is likable in the movie is Orlando Jones' character as he provides a quick couple of laughs. Every other character is just dull and unlikeable.
either buy some alcohol with it or watch it really late...cause it is one boring flick and you'll probably fall asleep due to it's slowness. Not recommended, and disappointing.
1.5/5

Nikita (1990)

The story on the surface is absurd and something you'd expect from a grade `B' international intrigue thriller. Anne Parillaud plays Nikita, a bitter, drug-dependent, unsocialized child of the streets who is faster than a kung fu fighter and packs more punch than a Mike Tyson bite. She's killed some people and is given a choice between death and becoming an assassin for the French government.This premise should lead to the usual action/adventure yarn, with lots of fists flying, guns going off, people jumping off of buildings, roaring through the streets in souped up vehicles, spraying bullets, etc., as blood flows and bones shatter. And something like that does happen. However there is a second level in which Nikita becomes the embodiment of something beyond an action adventure heroine. She is coerced and managed by society. Her individuality is beaten out of her so that she can be molded into what the society demands. She comes out of her `training' with her individuality compromised, her free and natural spirit cowed, but undefeated and alive, and she sets out to do what she has been taught to do. And then she falls in love. And she notices, somewhere along the way, amid the murder and the mayhem, that there is something better than and more important than, and closer to her soul in this world than killing and being killed. She finds that she prefers love to hate, tenderness to brutality. She sees herself and who she is for the first time, but it is too late. She cannot escape. Or can she?
Parillaud brings a wild animal persona tinged with beauty and unself-conscious grace to the role of Nikita. Marc Duret plays Rico, the tender man she loves, and Tchéky Karyo is her mentor, Bob, whom she also loves.
Besson's Nikita is a work of art that explores the human predicament and even suggests something close to salvation.
3.5/5

This Is England (2006)

Set in 1983 with a backdrop of the war in the Falklands the film opens with a montage of relevant images that really take you back and put you in the right space to meet Shaun. Shaun the films central character (played superbly by newcomer Thomas Turgoose) is a typical eighties kid washing neighbors cars for cash to buy a catapult and being constantly picked on for being different. When we first meet him we quickly learn that his father was a victim of the war raging at Maggie's command. Enter the gang Woody, Milky, Pukey, et all, a rag tag bunch of mods and skinheads complete with crimped haired girlfriends, with the absence of his father and any real sense of being part of something Shaun is quickly welcomed into the group and takes up not just the mannerisms or clothes but drinking, smoking and growing up to quickly. Things go OK for a while until Combo arrives on the scene. Straight out of prison and a British blooded skinhead through to his core you can sense trouble on the horizon. Soon the gang becomes segmented because of differences of opinion and fuelled by the war and the council estate mentality of accepting foreigners' things start to spiral out of control and Shaun finds himself in way above his head.
A brilliantly written script that can at times have you laughing out loud and at others sitting nervously on the edge of your seat as the tension builds is delivered well by all the cast.The music is fitting, mixing eighties chart hits with haunting piano pieces.There is defiantly a more matured Meadows at work here but he's lost none of his cheeky charm and observational skill. The metaphor of the country getting behind Thatcher in the Falklands juxtaposed with that of the skinheads, including the initiated Shaun, getting behind the slightly off kilter Combo is handled with a great sense of poignancy and it is moving to see both stories unfold from within the film and library footage. Racism and intolerance are by no means behind us but here we are shown one of the skeletons in the Great British (sic) closet through the eyes of a child and one who would grow up to represent the next generation.
4/5

Riri Shushu no subete (2001)

It centers on Ichihara, the persecuted protagonist who eventually finds himself atop a group of persecutors. He's in adult situations, but doesn't have adult faculties, and any grown-up that could help him escape the escalating sadomasochism of his friends is too clueless or apathetic to help. Ichihara fixates on Lilly Chou Chou, a figure whom he thinks embodies his disillusionment with his unfolding life. When he finds that his best friend/tormentor shares his love of Lilly Chou-Chou, it's too much for him to take.
In a flashback to their first year at school, fellow student Hoshino (Shugo Oshinari), known on the message boards as Blue Cat, reaches out to Yuichi after being ridiculed in school and both join the Kendo club. When Yuichi spends the night at his house, Hoshino introduces him to Lily. Their friendship shifts, however, after a summer vacation in Okinawa full of strange events in which Hoshino is almost drowned and they witness a serious traffic accident. This fifteen-minute vacation segment, saturated with brilliant color and shot by a jerky hand-held camera, contains the film's most unnerving moments, and we instinctively know that the lives of the vacationers will never be the same.In the next school year, shaken by his near drowning and the loss of his family's textile factory, Hoshino undergoes a drastic personality change. He assaults the school bully, Inubushi and becomes a bully himself, forcing Yuichi to become involved in bullying others, robbery, and running a prostitution ring involving one of their classmates, Shiori Tsuda (Yu Aoi). Sadly, the adults in the story seem helpless and can only respond in an uncomprehending manner. The only response a teacher has to a girl who had her head shaven was to buy her a wig. Yuichi passively agrees to Hoshino's demands but their friendship becomes increasingly strained when he tells him to follow and watch Shiori, a girl that likes him but cannot express her feelings.
All About Lilly Chou Chou is beauty that's sought after. By foregrounding the filmmaking process and complicating the line between pain and pleasure, it forces the audience to be repulsed, enamored, whatever. Presenting the film in traditional cinematic language wouldn't do justice to the depth of the narrative. It's a film for catharsis. Iwai's breathtaking images together with the poetic music of Debussy capture the adolescent experience in a way that is heartbreakingly real and, although the film's shifting time line may makes the story hard to follow for some, the message comes through with unmistakable clarity. Lily is a film of mood where black is the color and none is the number, but the darkness is redeemed by its appreciation that the solace of art is available to all, even those suffering the most desperate pain.
3.5/5

Paranoid Park (2007)

A fascinating aspect of "Paranoid Park" is that Gus Vant Sant shows mature fair-play about his traumatic failure with the "Psycho" remake (also photographed by Doyle). Most obviously with two scenes that directly revisit "Psycho": the car-driving scene under heavy rain with non-stop music on the soundtrack -- a sign of the ominous events -- and the magnificent shower scene, this time in extreme close- up and extreme slow-motion, with running water flowing through Alex's hair forming a strange, translucent octopus-like image of mesmerizing beauty, thanks to a sound mix of (apparently) rattling rain and loud bird sounds (that also inspired the classic Bernard Herrmann's staccato shower murder theme of "Psycho" -- remember that Norman Bates was a bird taxidermist).
In "Psycho" and in "Paranoid Park", the shower scenes are a body/soul-cleaning ritual and a turning point for the protagonists: for Marion Crane it's unexpected death (punishment), for Alex it's the decision to keep silent about his crime (self-punishment). As in "Psycho", there is the observation of guilt under "innocent" appearance (Alex, Marion Crane, Norman Bates all "look" perfectly innocent), and repressed sexuality (both Alex and Norman know they're attractive to women and sexually benumbed). And as in "Psycho", there's the unfailing intuition of a detective.
A special mention should go to the soundtrack in Paranoid Park, which is one of the strongest features of this film.My favorite use of music in the film is in the opening shots of skateboarders in the skate park (from which the film's title is taken). Warm electronic tones and burblings envelope a continuous slow-motion camera shot of skateboarders as they rove around the the curves and angles of the park and the effect is really quite magical.
The main weakness in the film is GVS's portrayal of women. It's obvious Alex doesn't give a damn about his hysterical cheer-leading girlfriend determined to get rid of her virginity, but did she have to be portrayed as an insufferable bore? And did Lauren McKinney, who plays the girl secretly in love with Alex, have to be so unflatteringly photographed? (compare her cruel close-ups with the slow-motion parade of gorgeous skateboarding ephebes at the school). And need I say Alex's mother is only seen out of focus, far in the distance or from behind? (this time around we DO get to see the face and body of a father in a GVS film -- and, man, it's a scary vision!).
Even if "Paranoid Park" isn't your cup of tea, one has to admit GVS is a rarity among established contemporary American filmmakers: he has, through the years, learned to acknowledge his thematic obsessions (young male beauty, the loneliness of non-conformism, the failure of the American dream and the traditional family, the complexity that lies under the apparent numbness and superficiality of American teens), and put them in films that -- while certainly not for all tastes -- get more satisfying and fascinating as they get more personal and self-revelatory by refusing to be "big".
3.5/5

Manorama Six Feet Under (2007)

The writing is clever, the visuals are impressive and the performances are very good. Director Navdeep Singh stays with his sub-heading 'In the desert nothing is as it seems'. So in 'Manorama 6 Feet Under' nothing is indeed as it seems. Singh smartly unfolds the mystery and springs a lot of surprises. The film is set in sandy Rajasthan which is portrayed as mysterious, dry, isolated, illusive and frightening. Thus, it's a perfect set-up for the film.
Manorama SFU is all about a somewhat corrupt junior engineer Satyaveer (Abhay Deol) who moonlights as a writer of detective fiction and lives in a small town in Rajasthan. His only published work is MANORAMA. He is 'happily' married to Nimmi (Gul Panag) and has a kid. One day he is asked by a woman called Manorama (Sarika) to investigate her husband PP Rathore, the minister of public works (KulBhushan Khrabanda). Satyaveer manages to take some photos of the minister and hand them over to Manorama. Strange events follow where she tells him she is being stalked and may be killed, tells him her age, and then dies. He is stalked and attacked by hoodlums but persists in trying to unravel the mystery with the help of Manorama's room mate Sheetal (Raima Sen). But there is a doctor, a mysterious woman who wants to marry the doctor, the novel Manorama; the minister is connected to all this and to a proposed canal scheme. The plot twists and turns in a very ingenious and real way and keeps one wanting to know more and more. This mystery may have been inspired by Chinatown but it is very much its own film, intelligent, well paced and interesting.
The cast gives commendable performances, Abhay Deol is wonderful, Gul and Raima are real and believable. Then there is Sarika - how does she look so good at her age? Vinay Pathak is great as Nimmi's brother and small town cop. The snooping neighbors, the hoodlums in the desert, the old Taxi Walla - the film does not miss a beat.
4/5

Quantum of Solace (2008)

Well, this isn't one of the great Bond films, and Casino Royale set the bar far too high for it to compete. But it's certainly not a disappointment if you go in aware of that.Where Casino Royale was like making love all night long, this is more of a gratifyingly frenzied fuck of a film.
If you are a Bond fan like me, and - when the end credits roll - think to yourself that the movie you just saw had more in common with the last two Bourne-movies, than the first 21 Bond-movies, then you know there's a problem!
On paper Quantum of Solace may be a Bond movie. But many of those things that people use to associate with Bond movies are gone. Some for no obvious purpose or reason.It wasn't enough for them to take away Moneypenny, Q, the gadgets, the humor and witticism, his "shaken, not stirred", the line "my name is Bond, James Bond." They even ditched the famous opening gun barrel-sequence, and you won't hear the James Bond theme right until the very end (as in Casino Royale which - besides being 40 minutes longer - "felt" more like a Bond movie)
Quantum of Solace is very fast paced, like a Bourne/Bond-movie should be. We jump from location to location, action sequence to action sequence. It can be very confusing watching Bond on a rampage still dealing with "personal issues" (like Bourne). Bourne Ultimatum had a rooftop-chase. So does Quantum of Solace. Bourne Ultimatum had a fistfight in a small cluttered apartment filmed the way I mentioned earlier. Well, so does Quantum of Solace. How original!
It's like they took some of the best parts of the two last Bourne movies and said "let's do almost the exact same thing and add something more, like letting him fly a plane." So Bond does that, in what I think is the second-best part of the movie. The best part for me, was oddly enough not an action sequence, but when Bond for once does some real spy work on a floating opera stage accompanied by a great music score. Very Bondian.
3/5

The Lady Vanishes (1938)

Miss Froy (Dame May Whitty) mysteriously vanishes while on a long train journey through the Swiss Alps during a cold winter. Margaret Lockwood as Iris Henderson is the only person on the train who believes that Miss Froy has disappeared (or in fact that she even existed!) but Lockwood manages to persuade fellow traveler music scholar Gilbert Redman (Michael Redgrave) to assist her in the search. Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne (as cricket fans Charters and Caldicott) have seen Miss Froy but are fearful that an investigation into her disappearance might delay the train and therefore stop them getting to Manchester in time for their beloved Test Match so they decide to stay silent. Paul Lukas (Dr Hartz) tries to convince Lockwood she is mistaken and has imagined the entire episode due to a blow on the head she received prior to the train journey. Cecil Parker (Mr Todhunter) has his own reasons for keeping quiet as he does not want his illicit affair with Linden Travers to become public knowledge. Several other passengers on the train have seen Miss Froy but do not want to be involved which confuses our heroine and places her in grave danger as the journey progresses.
Although Hitchcock was noted for his wit and often sprinkled his films with wickedly funny moments, he seldom gave comic elements such a free reign as he did in THE LADY VANISHES.
Although it lacks the subtle tones of his later work, Hitchcock guides them all with never a misstep through a complex script that progresses from very lighthearted to extremely sinister and then back again, and the result leaves audiences with both the satisfaction of a well-made thriller and the glow of a romantic comedy.
3.5/5