2013-09-30

Harold and Maude

Harold and Maude (Hal Ashby, 1971)
Harold (Bud Cort) is a twenty something son a of a wealthy socialite woman (Vivian Pickles) who wants him to become someone and be more like her. He is just doing the exact opposite and simulates his death by multiple simulated suicides. He even regularly attends funerals and he is captivated by death. Until one day, at a funeral, he met Maude (Ruth Gordon) who is passionate about life and is 79 years old.

2013-09-27

The Devils

The Devils (Ken Russell, 1971)
Banned in many countries and rated X in others, Ken Russell’s telling of Urbain Grandier’s (Oliver Reed) priest life and trial is an unforgettable film. Depicting a sexually repressed head nun, sister Jeanne (Vanessa Redgrave) masturbating and dreaming of Grandier as a christ figure that she wants to fornicate with. She goes berserk when she learns that the priest got married with another woman. Accusing him of witchcraft and fornication.

2013-09-25

Soy Cuba (I Am Cuba)

Soy Cuba (I Am Cuba) (Mikhail Kalatozov, 1964)
Presenting the Cuban revolution with the angle of the Soviet propaganda films, Mikhail Kalatozov’s filmmaking techniques overlays on its actual subject and shadows his storytelling. The sumptuous and extraordinary tracking shots of this visual masterpiece present four vignettes on the people of Cuba and how it led them to a revolt. Shot during the Cuban Missile crisis, Soy Cuba plays more like a documentary than a fiction. Manipulative and objective as it can be, the outstanding cinematography isn’t the only thing to notice.

2013-09-23

The China Syndrome

The China Syndrome (James Bridges, 1979)
Kimberly Wells (Jane Fonda) is a television reporter put on jobs about hot air balloons and carnavalesque info for the channel 3. It is clear in her boss’s mind that her looks and beautiful face goth er the job. But she knows she can do deep subject reports. One day she is asked to do a report on the Ventana Nuclear power plant with freelance cameraman Richard (Michael Douglas) and sound recording artist Hector (Daniel Valdez).

2013-09-20

Top Films of Edgar Wright by LMdC


Top Films of Edgar Wright
1.       Shaun of the Dead (2004)
2.       Hot Fuzz (2007)
3.       Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (2010)
I still haven’t seen : A Fistful of Fingers (1994) The World’s End (2013) Ant-Man (2015)

2013-09-18

Alice (1990)

Alice (Woody Allen, 1990)
Blending the telling of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Tale, and Federico Fellini’s Juliet of the Spirits, Woody Allen’s Alice starring Mia Farrow is often overlooked compared to his Crimes and Misdemeanors of 1989 and Husbands and Wives of 1992. Speaking of blends, Alice is also a blend of genres, navigating between comedy, fantastic, and drama, the character of Alice Tate (Mia Farrow) is the wife of a wealthy business man (William Hurt) but she isn’t really in love anymore.

2013-09-17

Now You See Me

Now You See Me (Louis Leterrier, 2013)
Still today, most of us are sceptic cynics and we want to know how a trick is done and we always try to see the strings that demonstrate how it works. I am one of those pricks. However, a part from us still wants to believe or be fooled or tricked. A well executed magic trick is like a well executed film. It is believable, natural, and the audience is entertained and doesn’t get the trickery. It might be this feeling of enjoying a great trick, or getting into a movie, that I like to get myself to believe for a moment. It is probably that, it makes me really enjoy moving pictures so much.

2013-09-16

Le Sang des bêtes (Blood of the Beasts)

Le Sang des bêtes (Blood of the Beasts) (Georges Franju, 1949)
This short film directed by French filmmaker Georges Franju is one of the most beautifully shot black and white surrealist pictures while coldly explaining the slaughter of horses, cattle, and sheeps.

2013-09-13

Night Moves (1975)

Night Moves (Arthur Penn, 1975)
Harry Moseby (Gene Hackman) is a retired professional football player working as a private investigator in Los Angeles. He is dedicated to his job, but is also following his wife Ellen (Susan Clark) because she and a man named Marty Heller (Harris Yulin) are having an affair.
Aging actress Arlene Iverson
(Janet Ward) hires Harry to find her trust-funded daughter Delly Grastner (Melanie Griffith), distracting Harry from his marital problems. Harry goes to a Hollywood film set to interview a stuntman he knows, Ziegler (Edward Binns), about an unsolved death during the shooting of a film, and a mechanic, Quentin (James Woods), who knew the lascivious teen Delly before she took off for Florida.


2013-09-11

Oz the Great and Powerful

Oz the Great and Powerful (Sam Riami, 2013)
Far from his first inspired films, Evil Dead, Evil Dead 2, Dark Man, The Quick and the Dead, and even Army of Darkness, Sam Raimi’s adaptation of L. Frank Baum’s Oz the Great and Powerful visually surpasses any other release in High Defintion with its satured bright colors and fantastic imagery. Telling how the magician got into the world of Oz that will eventually be visited by Dorothy.

2013-09-10

Sharknado

Sharknado (Anthony C. Ferrante, 2013)
The fine folks over at Video Services Corp and The Asylum have granted me of a screener of the film. It is a very good quality DVD and the transfer is amazing. The Canadian release date is September 10 2013.
Presented as the new B-movie of the moment, Sharknado stars more or less has-beens like John Heard, Tara Reid, and Ian Ziering. Produced by Asylum entertainment, the first minutes of it picturing dozens of sharks swimming into one direction with very very low budget special effects doesn’t really gives seriousness to the best movie title ever. Even the catch phrase of the poster : Enough said, is enough to make anybody laugh. Once we get passed the cheap 3D animations of sharks flying around, we are in for a treat that links the early careers of Ziering (90201) and Reid.

2013-09-09

J'ai tué ma mère (I Killed My Mother)

J’ai tué ma mère (I Killed My Mother) (Xavier Dolan, 2009)
Considered as the young prodigy of Quebecois Cinema, Xavier Dolan’s first feature is a not so juvenile effort. Far from being the masterpiece that many chauvinist film critics of the Province of Québec shouted out loud, J’ai tué ma mère is an inspired indie film about a sixteen years old son and his tumultuous relationship with his mother (Anne Dorval). Dolan himself often stated that it is semi-autobiographic and his relationship with Antonin (François Arnaud) as lovers might be one of the elements that reflected his own life. However, the character of the teacher Ms. Cloutier (Suzanne Clément), as the substitute mother might represent his real mother that was a teacher.

2013-09-06

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (Sam Peckinpah, 1974)
Director Sam Peckinpah often stated about Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia that it is his only film to have been released the way he intended it to be. As of today, The Wild Bunch and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid have been re released with new director’s cuts.

2013-09-04

Stalker

Stalker (Andreï Tarkovsky, 1979)
In a not so far dystopian future, a man called the stalker (Alexander Kaidanovsky) guides people to pass in an area called the Zone to access to a room where men attain their most cherished dreams. The Zone is a place where the laws of physics don’t apply and it is an ever changing place. The stalker brings with him two men; the professor (Nikolai Grinko) and the writer (Anatoly Solonitsyn). The writer wants to regain his inspiration and the professor wants to win the Nobel price. This journey to find the center of the Zone and access to higher learnings brings them to not only an eerie and desert place but a journey into the meaning of their lives and the presence of humans of earth.

2013-09-02

Shame (2011)

Shame (Steve McQueen, 2011)
This second collaboration of actor-director Michael Fassbender and Steve McQueen is a fascinating tale of the modern day sickness of sex addiction of the emptiness and the isolation of the post-modern world. Brandon (Fassbender) is a successful executive living in New York City and he is addicted to sex. Women are entering his bed one after the other. Some are complete strangers, others are prostitutes. He also masturbates in front of porn, web cam sex, at his office stall, and every way he possibly can. Nothing seems to satisfy his void and his needs. One day his distressed sister (Carey Mulligan) comes at his apartment and they sure have many subtext tensions. He was never returning her calls and he seems to have a retain when it some to intimacy with people.
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