A Nutshell Review by daface
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A Nutshell Review: The Warlords
Two's a company and three's a crowd. In movieland, that is almost always true, with no black and white, but with shades of grey instead. Of late, period or martial chivalry movies either look aesthetically beautiful like Zhang Yimou's trilogy of Hero, House of Flying Daggers and Curse of the Golden Flower, or opt for the grittier, more down to earth look with plenty of dirt and grime like Battle of Wits. Director Peter Chan's The Warlords follows the latter with its strained colors and muck on everyone's face, in parallel of the grey that befalls everyone in this tale of a trio's struggles with the System, and amongst themselves.
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A Nutshell Review: In the Valley of Elah
I'm not sure why many had loathed Paul Haggis' relatively recent meteoric rise. I had enjoyed most, if not all of his works that I have seen thus far, with his collaboration with Clint Eastwood nabbing Million Dollar Baby a best picture Oscar in 2005, and his own Crash, which was my movie of the year 2005, winning the same award in 2006. I guess with such success, the naysayers will usually be out in full force to make their voices heard, and I thought it's quite sad to have what I deem as stirring work so oft put down because of green eyed monsters.
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A Nutshell Review: National Treasure: Book of Secrets
If I may be able to conjure up conspiracy theories of my own, then I will attempt to hypothesis how National Treasure came about to debut on the big screen, based on opportunities which presented itself at the right time. First, the popularity of Dan Brown's controversial The Da Vinci Code, which was made into a movie of its own, but took a tad too long in doing so. Topping the bestseller charts around the world, it made Hollywood execs sit up and realize that wild goose chases and solving riddles and clues do make an interesting, workable formula. Coupled by the fact that the Indiana Jones trilogy (at the time) probably will not have another sequel see the light of day, then the onus is on crafting a tale based on controversies, with Indy Jones tendencies, and chances are a new winner will be born.
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A Nutshell Review: Redline
You cannot deny that we have an affinity for speed. That's why movies like Fast and the Furious, Dhoom, Rempit get made to play to the satisfaction of audiences, especially local ones. We live on a tiny island, and I cannot fathom why, for the relative efficiency of the public transportation system, most of us want to get into debt by owning a set of wheels which come with 100% tax when they reach our shores, and the myriad of taxes and bills to pay when operating one. Not only that, the high end sports cars were once quipped by a prominent politician up north that they will never reach fourth gear, lest they reach the sea.
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A Nutshell Review: My Blueberry Nights
Although I cannot proclaim to have watched all of Hong Kong auteur Wong Kar-wai's works, I can say that of those I have seen, they rung some emotional bell within me, and I count 2046 and especially In The Mood For Love as amongst one of my favourite movies of all time. The themes of love, forbidden love and melancholic longing I can identify with, and that makes those films close to heart.
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A Nutshell Review: Elizabeth: The Golden Age
Cate Blanchett reprises her role as 16th Century Virgin Queen Elizabeth I in director Shekhar Kapur's sequel of sorts to Elizabeth (199
, which I can't recall if it made it to the local screens. However the DVD of Elizabeth was recently released on DVD here, but you need not have watched that movie because the events that transpire here are after the fact of her ascension to the Throne of England, and you need not be a history buff in order to get up to speed on the events that led up to the opening of the movie. Of course it does help a bit, so if you're choosing not to approach this blind, then you can pop over to Wikipedia for a quick synopsis.
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A Nutshell Review: Breath (Soom)
Of the limited number of Korean auteur Kim Ki-duk's movies, I have only seen a handful of them, and mostly they are the relatively contemporary movies, like The Bow, 3-Iron and Time. The feeling I got from them all is consistent - that it's not your usual storytelling, as he seemed more often than not to obscure any intended message, or meaning in his tales, much like searching for an Easter Egg, or worse, that needle in the haystack to get something out of it. If I can summarize his movies in a statement, then it'll be to expect something that's totally unexpected, though not necessary always in a good way.
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A Nutshell Review: Across the Universe
Viva la Beatles! We're familiar with the many musicals that have come out of late, either being remade from stage to screen, or updated for today's era, the latest being Hairspray. And a musical made up entirely of songs by the Beatles, but not sung by the Beatles themselves? While it is easy to make a movie based on songs by the "it" group of the time (Spice World anyone?) and starring the singers themselves so that there won't be a nightmare in casting actors who can sing, or worse, start to mutilate the lyrics, how about throwing that mantra out of the window?
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A Nutshell Review: I Am Legend
Out of curiosity I went to look up Will Smith's filmography, and realized that since Michael Bay's Bad Boys in 1995, he had averaged just one movie a year, most of them being box office successes save for blips like Wild Wild West, and in films spanning a wide genre from biopics to romantic comedy to action and drama. Today his name alone on the marquee can open a movie, and I Am Legend is probably a true test of that drawing power, because for the most parts, his Robert Neville is the last man on Earth.
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A Nutshell Review: Dan in Real Life
Comedian Steve Carell burst into mainstream prominence as the world's best known 40 Year Old Virgin, and popularity grew with his The Office US series. But a quick blip on the radar with Evan Almighty made us wonder if he will be able to sustain a series of successes given what I think is a dearth of funny comedians to hit the big screen of late - output seemed to have slowed a bit from the likes of Mike Myers, Ben Stiller (The Heartbreak Kid was not exactly really funny), Will Farell and even Jim Carrey, with whom Carell will be collaborating with in an animated feature in next year's Dr Horton Hears a Who.
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A Nutshell Review: Michael Clayton
I can't recall the last time I watched a satisfying lawyer related movie, and it brings me back to the time in the 90s where the John Grisham novels were being rushed to be made into films, starting with The Firm, and somehow stopping abruptly after the release of The Runaway Jury. While the Grisham novels always have a top lawyer with just morals, this one has almost everyone being a shady lawyer battling against one another's wits and wills.
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A Nutshell Review: Vexille
This year had perhaps seen a bumper crop of anime movies making it to the theatres, with the likes of The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, Paprika, Brave Story, Doraemon, and now, a science fiction mecha genre anime by the producer of Appleseed, Fumihiko Sori.
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A Nutshell Review: Mission Sex Control
First of all, let's get our minds out of the gutter. The title already provided you a clue with the keyword here being "Control", meaning this is no free-wheeling "mission sex" comedy with expectations of copulation being put in the spotlight. Rather, this turns out to be educational (for a while) and comedic in playing on misconceptions, before turning the wheel to become an all out melodramatic movie.
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A Nutshell Review: Eastern Promises
David Cronenberg's previous offering, A History of Violence, was hailed by many as a work of genius and made it to the mainstream paper's top movie of 2005. But I thought the original story in the graphic novel form was far superior, as he injected his own take for the second half of the film, which earned William Hurt an Academy Award nomination for his role as a gangland boss. Those in tuned with Cronenberg's works will know that his movies are usually warped in certain ways, but with A History of Violence, and now Eastern Promises, it seemed that they have become easier to grasp, and perhaps even more mainstream in its appeal.
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A Nutshell Review: Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem
My very first encounter with Aliens Versus Predator, was actually a coin operated arcade game some more than 10 years back. For 20c for 3-5 chances (depending on how the owner configured the machine), you can choose between a 2 Predator Warriors, or 2 humans, to go up against an Alien infested land, where you score points with multiple Alien kills, and get to use some of the cool weapons (always like those killer discs) and combo moves to finish off opponents. Needless to say, who would want to use the human characters, when you can play Predator?
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A Nutshell Review: Assembly
Feng Xiaogang's Assembly was the opening film at last year's Pusan International Film Festival, and tickets were sold out in record time once they were made available online. Such is the faith (or curiosity) of the new film from the director who brought us movies like World Without Thieves, and martial arts Hamlet The Banquet. When you think of Chinese directors making a movie based out of Chinese history, you can't help but imagine the massive amount of propaganda that get so blatantly infused into the story and especially the dialogue. But here, Feng managed to bring about a movie which goes beyond the usual ra-ra, and shows us that a movie with universal themes can also come out from what is essentially a war movie based upon China's tumultuous era after WWII.
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A Nutshell Review: Reservation Road
You wonder what goes through the minds of those involved in hit and run accidents. In that split second after impact, you are presented a choice, and your life will change, one way or the other. One probably has to consider whether to stop and render assistance, and in doing so owning up to the accident, but having a chance to save a life if the circumstances allow for it. Or to hope that nobody saw you did what you did, and bolt. Negligent drivers, either through drink driving, or being distracted while on the road, probably won't elicit much sympathy, especially so from the family of the victim, and in Reservation Road, powerful drama is weaved amongst the characters on both sides of the hit and run equation.
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A Nutshell Review: Love in the Time of Cholera
The title will probably elicit the first reaction from you - the number of words, and whether this is yet another Painted Veil, which is also a love story set during the time of a cholera outbreak. Being a period movie as well, the lack of recognizable names might not serve as a plus point for those looking out for stars, but with Atonement taking its own sweet time in getting released here, this movie might serve as a substitute while awaiting for the real McCoy to arrive.
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A Nutshell Review: Le Grand Chef
A romantic comedy about food should evoke some hunger pangs, as well as some mouthwatering oohs and aahs for the sheer visuals of food that you'll probably swear you can smell and taste, if done right. However, the first reactions from Le Grand Chef is "eeeeeeeeeeeee" followed by plenty of reeling from the graphic nature of fresh sashimi preparation. The opening scene is the preparation of fresh golden blowfish, where you'll see the fish still gasping in its last stages of life, snuffed through a deft decapitation of its head, followed by the fins, before skinning it in one fall swoop, disembowelment and the slicing of its meat so thinly that it's translucent.
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A Nutshell Review: Linger
A romance movie may be simple to make, but also amongst the most difficult. Almost every other movie out there has a romantic angle in it, and if the movie is one that has it as a primary, it either be something jolly good to appeal to the masses with a strong storyline, or be differentiated through the many gimmicks like time travel or the supernatural, or contain charismatic and beautiful leads to shoulder the movie.
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A Nutshell Review: American Gangster
Ridley Scott's American Gangster has many similar parallels to Derek Yee's Protege, in that it's a story about the scourge of drugs, and each containing the respective insights into the entire production, processing and distribution processes, stemming again from material sources in South East Asia. While the latter is a fictional account, American Gangster is based on the true story of Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington), the black drug lord whose meteoric rise to power was deemed incredulous because of race and colour, and the story of the detective Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe) whose team had broken through the complex web of mob dealings to take down the gangsters, as well as their corrupt own.
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A Nutshell Review: One Missed Call
One Missed Call gets filed amongst Hollywood Remakes of Japanese Horror that shouldn't have been green lighted in the first place. I suppose with the likes of so many of such remakes, the supposed winning formula would be to adopt the story, slap some relatively known actors in it, and employ every trick in the Hollywood horror book, and expect the box offices to go ka-ching! Wrong! One Missed Call happens to be One Big Bore!
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A Nutshell Review: 3:10 to Yuma
It's been a long wait for the remake of 3:10 to Yuma to finally reach our cinemas. In fact, the Code 1 DVD is already out, and I thought it was probably missed opportunity if there are interested folks out there who decide to get the DVD instead of catching it on the big screen. I do not understand why the need for the delay, contrary to the belief that it is a Western movie which might be an unpopular genre to go into, and of course, I can only recall a handful which made it to cinemas here in recent times - Dances with Wolves, Unforgiven, Tombstone and Wyatt Earp - the last 2 being movies about the legendary lawman and the shootout at OK Corral.
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A Nutshell Review: The Mist
With a title like The Mist, you probably won't be faulted if the first thing in your mind is that it's one of those run of the mill horror movies, like The Fog and The Haze (ok, so I made the last one up, it's actually a recently made short film competing in Berlin). And the trailers do suggest strange shenanigans happening inside a mist shrouded town, so in the hands of any mediocre storyteller, it's so easy to make them go Boo. Based on the novella by Stephen King, The Mist turned out to be unexpectedly excellent, with audiences whooping for joy both at the right and wrong places.
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A Nutshell Review: Cloverfield
In recent history, Hollywood had tried this stunt before. Remember the Godzilla of 1998? Audiences were teased with a tail here, a roar there, and the filmmakers pretty much had the monster kept under tight wraps. Until it opened, and because it failed to live up to its hype, and didn't meet everyone's expectations of how the good old Japanese lizard would look like and behave, it tanked at the box office. Now, Cloverfield adopted similar strategies in having us hear a roar, and to witness its destructive powers, without a visual clue of what it looked like. Did it deliver?
Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2008/01/cloverfield.html