REVIEW: The Kingdom [2007]

“If we go slower, next time we might pick out livestock” Here is the introduction of screenwriter Matthew Michael Carnahan, brother of high-octane director Joe Carnahan. With this being his first film, it appears as though he has already reached A-list status. I mean his next three scripts will be brought to the screen by Oscar winner Robert Redford, Oscar winner Kevin MacDonald, and his brother. After viewing this entry, I must say I am looking forward to the others, if not with a little trepidation, very much. The Kingdom…

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REVIEW: Eastern Promises [2007]

“Good evening” I have been a David Cronenberg fan ever since my college portfolio review, where the professors, looking over a piece I did in high school, asked if I had ever seen Videodrome. At that point I had already seen eXistenZ, yet didn’t know it was from the same creative mind. Ever since, I have continued my quest to see everything he has done. I’m not quite there, but over the past few years, I have been allowed to see his work on the big screen. First was his…

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REVIEW: Modern Times [1936]

“These are but a few delightful features of the Billows Feeding Machine” Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times is a wonderful little film. It is in effect a series of shorts strung together and connected by the two leads, Chaplin’s tramp and Paulette Goddard’s gamin. The tale is about how the machine age has taken over industry, throwing men on the streets with no jobs or money to keep their families afloat. In a brilliant stroke of ingenuity, Chaplin decides to scrap the idea of making this a “talkie” and allows only…

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REVIEW: Resident Evil Trilogy [2002, 2004, 2007]

“Project Alice is online” **Contains Spoilers** Paul WS Anderson has given us the newest trilogy of diminishing returns. I have never played the video game before and therefore went into the 2002 original Resident Evil containing little knowledge of the mythology. With that novice mentality, I found myself really enjoying the film. It gave me the background needed, the action and suspense expected, and a cliffhanger leaving me anticipating more. That continuation came but two years later with the subtitle Apocalypse. Here was a film that showed how the series’…

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REVIEW: The Trial [1962]

“To be in chains is sometimes safer than to be free” What do you get when you combine two masters at their craft like Franz Kafka and Orson Welles? Why, The Trial, of course—a heady, surrealistic commentary on society and justice. Much like the novel Atlas Shrugged, laws here are made not to be followed, but to be broken. Society is constructed on the spine of guilt. One doesn’t need to be aware of what they have or haven’t done; to just be accused is all that is needed to…

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REVIEW: Shoot ‘Em Up [2007]

“You know what I hate?” Talk about action packed. Straight from the get go, Shoot ‘Em Up puts the pedal to the floor and never lets up. The opening sequence is quite the setpiece for ushering the audience directly into the film, enhanced beautifully by Wolfmother’s “Joker and the Thief”. Our hero Smith is sitting on a park bench, eating a carrot, when he sees a pregnant woman being chased down the street by a murderous gentleman. Smith begrudgingly follows to be of help and unwittingly becomes involved in a…

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TIFF07 REVIEW: Redacted [2007]

“Welcome to the goddamn army” Our final foray with the 2007 Toronto Film Festival screenings was Brian De Palma’s Redacted, a film about what is going on in Iraq that the government doesn’t want the public to know. All those black scribbles on documents and censored video coverage are examples of redaction and this movie aims to show the world the ugly truth, unfiltered. As the director said after the showing, the movie is “fictionalized for lawyer purposes,” but actually based on footage and accounts that he found on the…

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TIFF07 REVIEW: Cassandra’s Dream [2007]

“Being rescued is one of my wicked dreams” I went into the Toronto Film Fest screening of Woody Allen’s latest movie Cassandra’s Dream completely void of knowing anything about it. With no other preconception besides the fact that I really enjoyed Match Point, I sat down to see what was in store this time around. Would it be a comedy or a drama? Since his last entry, Scoop, was a comic one, which I have not yet seen, I was ready to be enthralled with a mystery of dramatic proportions.…

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TIFF07 REVIEW: Margot at the Wedding [2007]

“I think we should do an audit” Noah Baumbach’s follow-up to his critically acclaimed film The Squid and the Whale falls way short of living up to the expectations laid before it. There were numerous moments in Margot at the Wedding’s predecessor that skirted the line of acceptance, but they never crossed it. With this entry, however, Baumbach crosses the line early and soon finds that he can’t find his way back. No character here is really likeable at all. Everyone is a bit off mentally and unfortunately acknowledge that…

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TIFF07 REVIEW: Into the Wild [2007]

“Facing the blind deaf stone alone” Sean Penn’s new movie Into the Wild arrives on the wave of a well-regarded novel about a college graduate who decides that the anger and violence in civilized society is too much to handle and commences a journey through nature in order to truly live life as it was meant to be. This film is a wonderful glimpse into the life of a kid, wise beyond his years, and the bonds that he creates with people along the way. A victim of excess in…

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