HouseOfD

Written and Directed by David Duchovny, House of D is about a man coming clean to his wife about how messed up his childhood was.

I really liked this film but, then again, I am a sucker for movies about kids losing parents. I have the feeling that this film is reserved for art-house audiences.

I will say this... Erykah Badu gives an impressive performance.

xXx:StateOfTheUnion

1) Action heros aren't supposted to be pudgy.
2) Stuff blows up for no good reason. (an inflatable raft hitting a police cruiser does not cause an explosion)
3) If you are going to use a different Bond in each film - just use a differnt Bond in each film. Don't write it into the story.
4) This movie sucks but it will still break $10mil opening weekend because people have no taste.

TheHitchhiker'sGuideToTheGalaxy

You've read the books.
You've seen the BBC series.
You've got high expectations for this film and it meets every last one of them.

KungFuHustle

A film by Stephen Chow. 'nuf said.

If you need more... It is an absurdist martial-arts comedy with a partial ganster theme.

Look, it was written by, directed by, and stars the same people that made Shaolin Soccer. If you still don't know what I'm talking about - take a chance and go see a movie, the likes of which, you've never seen before.

TheInterpreter

Sydney Pollack is still the man. This is a solid political-suspense thriller. I was a little annoyed bt all the shots that start out of focus but, once things got rolling, either they stopped happening, or I stopped noticing.

The film feels a little long (it is only 2h8m but it feels closer to 2.5h).

Sean Penn is as Sean Penn does (this time he is CIA and has a dead wife), Nicole Kidman's accent doesn't get in the way, Catherine Keener did a good job showing up for her nonexistent roll, and Sydney Pollack manages to do a bang-up job directing himself. Then again, as I've stated before, Sydney Pollack is the man.

ALotLikeLove

Everyone will either want to see this because of Ashton Kutcher and Amanda Peet or avoid it because of Kutcher and Amanda Peet.

For those of you that already want to see this film - it is a lovely little romantic comedy - you will enjoy it.

For those that think it has a bad (or even mediocre) cast - this might be the film that moves both A.K. and A.P. up in your esteem. Dare I say it... they make a cute couple.

I was ready to hate all over this film whether I hated it or hated them in it, but, not only do they work, but, they work really well together.

DC Film Fest

"Pirated Copy" - Written and Directed by He Jianjun.
This film is about the economic strife in Beijing and it set among the world of DVD piracy. The documentary-ish style worked well for the story. This would have made an interesting 50 minute film but it was padded with unbearably long takes up to an astonishing 89 minutes. I don't expect to ever hear from it again.

"Dalecarlians" - Written and Directed by Maria Blom.
A Swedish "Home For The Holidays"
This is not an internation hit - it's just a really good film about all the stuff you only get with family.
Premise - a woman, who has lived in the city for 15 years, goes home to her parent's country-side house to celebrate her father's 70th birthday.
This is a film about your family knowing you so well that they stop actually seeing you and everyone fails to notice who each other has really become.
This is one of those movies about family that is, at once, funny and heartbreaking.
If you can find this film - Ii recommend it. Then, after you see it, go tell your family you love them.

"Hawaii, Oslo" - Written by Harald Rosenlow Eeg / Directed by Erik Poppe
A shorter, much simpler, more direct, and Norwegian "Magnolia".
- a man escapes from jail on his brother's birthday.
- the brother is going to marry a girl he hasn't seen in 11 years.
- the girl's purse is stolen by two kids (brothers) who's father just passed away and who's mother walked out when they were born.
- the mother is found OD'd by the papergirl.
- an ambulance driver rescues the mother and delivers a baby.
- the parents of the newborn are told their baby won't live past the next few days.
- and one man had a vision of it all and has conspired with fate to set things right.
This is a really good flick. I can't imagine that it will ever get any play in the States but if you see it on DVD - give it a chance.

"Short Cuts" - various
This was the festival's short film program.
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"Bebe" - John Fiege, USA
Daddy is busy meditating and tells his daughter, Bebe, to go outside because she is making to much noise. Outside, Bebe watches as a cyclist stops to go skinny dipping. Bebe then steals his cloths. The cyclist chases her up to the house where the father offers the man some tea while he finds Bebe. Bebe throws the cloths on the ground and plays with the dogs. This was a boring, trite, and uncreative short. I was offended when the crowd gave it a standing ovation. (the writter / director was at the screening and the crowd was being polite but this short was so bad the writter / director should have apologized).

"Viands" - Jose Antonio, Spain
A delightfully disturbed story of a man that stops by a quaint little restaurant for lunch. The master chef, Papandrev, won't let the man leave until he has tasted every one of the chef's delicious creations. Rated: "This film will make you skip lunch" for scenes of intense and violent force-feedings.

"Milo 55160" - David Ostry, Canada
Milo works in Heaven's processing department. He is a bureaucratic St. Peter. This was the best short of the set. It is super funny and original. I hope it makes it onto a DVD collection of shorts so that more people get to see it.

The Perpetual Twilight of Gregor Black - "Nigel Atkinson and Huw Davies", UK/Scotland
Oh, Look! An experimental art film.
Man wakes up, hides wife's shoes, and walks to work.
Work appears to be a shack on a cliff with a skylight and a peephole.
Someone throws a rock through the skylight.
The man collects the rock and heads home.
Meanwhile, the wife wakes up, hunts for her shoes, and goes to work.
She works as a consessions girl at the local theater.
A boy buys an ice cream and some drips on the woman's shoes.
The manager comes over and licks it off the shoe and the woman looks embarrassed.
She returns home, puts her shoes away, and goes to bed.
The man comes home, sees that his wife found her shoes, places the rock on a shelf with a bunch of other rocks, and goes to bed.
The End.
I give this film credit for playing with rear-projection.
Thats about it.

"Stop!" - Mathijs Geijskes,
A film within a film within a film within a film within a play within a tv show within a film within a film within a film within a film within a play within a tv show within a film...
Uber-meta. Points for it being cyclical.

"Among Thieves" - Oscar Daniels, USA
A tear-jerker about a man that trades his life to end the suffering of an elderly woman. This was the other good short in the program.

"Little Terrorist" - Ashvin Kumar, India
This is the film that won the Academy Award for best Short Feature. It won because it has war-torn countries, a couple of religions (that hate each other, of course), tolerance, intolerance, and child abuse all in the span of 15 minutes. This is a film that banks on the viewer agreeing that differing views of God is reason enough for war. Oh, and that beating children is funny.
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"Kontroll" - written and directed by Nimrod Antal
Budapest subway ticket enforcers have a rough job. They are harrassed, spit on, and beaten daily - and that's just what they do to each other.
One such employee will stop a madman, find, love, and get a good nighht's sleep before all is said and done.
This is a tense and funny film full of great characters and unbelievable situations - and it all happens on the Budapest subway. This is a film to see. It is available on PAL DVD and should be getting an NTSC transfer in the near future. By all means, check it out.

Oldboy

Ok, quick plot summary for those out of the loop...

Oh Dae-su (played by Min-sik Choi is kidnapped and held captive for 15 years. All he has to keep him company is a TV with 500 channels, a plate full of dumplings, and his rage. After his release he, naturally, wants revenge, but his captor insists that they play a game. Oh Dae-su has 5 days to figure out who his captor is and why he was locked up. If he fails - his daughter will be killed.

This is a movie with intense violence, frank sex, and plenty of adult language. Oldboy plays out like an action flick, but, ultimately, this is a film about the dissatisfaction of torture and revenge. Oh Dae-su makes it very clear early on in the film that no one will walk away from this clean.

This is a fantastic movie. It was beautifully shot, brillantly acted, and some the fight choreography is not to be believed (there is a long single-take fight scene in a hallway that has, apparently, become quite infamous in Asian cinema). The torture scenes, of which there are a few, are brutal.

Oldboy is a film that should be seen, although it is not for the squeemish.

StateProperty2

I'd never heard of this movie before I got to the theater.

It is presented, stylistically, like 'Pootie Tang' but this film is eons from the Pootie.

Its all about thug life and how commin' up in the hood means you gotta do some stuff most of the rest of the world would condemn. Like thinking it's badass to have a nickname like "the crazy chicken", selling massive amounts of crack, and bustin' a cap because it beats dealing with that person later. Prison is just a thing you do. You go down for a few years, make some new connections, walk, and return to the life that put you behind bars.

There is a lot of plot in this movie but it's hard to tell who's-who and what's-what between all the celebrity cameos (ODB, we miss you) and people getting shot that have nothing to do with anything.

It looks like a documentary, sounds like a documentary, and has the production values of a documentary but... it isn't a documentary. At least, I don't think it is. They didn't really change people's names. Beannie was 'Beans'. Cam'ron was 'Cam'ron'. ... and so on.

Also, for such a heavy topic, they really went out of their way to avoid forming an opinion. There isn't a moral. Lots of people die and everyone just keeps doin' what they do. Because it looked like a Documentary and didn't have a strong message about drugs or murder being bad, I walked away ith the feeling like this film and it's makers holeheartedly endorse this lifestyle. Which is probably the case see as the film was written by, directed by, and stared, Damon Dash - CEO of Roc-A-Fella Records and all the cameos were Roc-A-Fella artists and all the cloths were, either, RocaWear or State Property gear.

Was it a good movie? Probably not. Was it a bad movie? I sat through the whole thing and never found the moral. What does that mean? I haven't a clue.

I'm just going to call it a 90 minutes commercial.

TheAmityvilleHorror

This is one of the best horror flicks to hit theaters in a while.
There is nothing new or revolutionary here - it is just wall-to-wall creepy.

... and they were kind enough not to make it "he's crazy" or "it's the devil!", and for that I applaud them.

If you like horror and want to see it done right - go see this movie.

BeautyShop

This movie is what Barbershop 2 wanted to be - funny.

It you thought Barbershop was funny beyond Cedric... then you will enjoy beautyshop.

My only real quip... Alicia Silverstone's accent. WAY TOO MUCH. No one else had a southern drawl so her's stood out. I know southerners that sound EXACTLY like that.. but... it was too much given the context. I feel about it, the same way I felt about Keira Knightley's accent in 'The Jacket' - I understand why, but it just wasn't necessary and, ultimately, was distracting.

Sahara

The most important pieces to making this film work are making sure that Matthew McConaughey is effortless at making Pitt look brilliant and that he and Steve Zahn work as long-time buddies.

They do.

Breck Eisner did a good job with the cast but, at times, Sahara feels like his first big-budget studio film. Which it is.

Penelope Cruz looks good but was completely unneccessary as Eva Rojas (who gave weight to the book but was reduced to 'obligatory hottie' by writter Thomas Dean Donnelly and understandably so - a direct adaptation would have yielded a 4+ hour movie).

Fans of Dirk Pitt Adventures will be dissapointed with this film. Matthew McConaughey is too young and the wrong breed of cocky to be Dirk Pitt and Steve Zahn isn't even remotely Italian. There is a reason Clive Cussler sued the studio over this film.

If you don't care about any of that... Sahara starts off a little slow but, once it finds it's footing, end up being a lot of fun.

FeverPitch

This is a by-the-book, paint-by-numbers, romantic comedy. Boy meets girl, boy and girl fall in love, boy loses girl, boy and girl both learn something, boy gets girl back.

This would have been a boring film if it hadn't been directed by the Farrelly Bros. They tried to play this movie as straight as possible and they succeeded, but everything they know about filmmaking they learned on gross-out comedies and it shows.

(Drew Barrymore gets sick and the sound of her vomitting is graphic. Nora Ephron wouldn't have devoted that much energy to the vomit)

I know I'm making it sound like this is another gross-out flick by the Farrellys but it isn't. Their comedic timing was born in something other than romantic comedies and that alone saves this film.

Yes, Jimmy Fallon is cute and loveable and, yes, Drew Barrymore is beautiful and charming but that does not a film make. Garry Marshall wouldn't have handled Fallon's brand of funny as well. Even James L. Brooks couldn't have made Drew's power-hungry work-a-holic endearing. It took the Farrelly's to make this film work and the result is a very standard but very sweet film.

SinCity

Mad props to Rodriguez for going around everyone and everything to make this movie the only way it could have been made.

This is a groundbreaking and revolutionary film. It is georgeous, well acted, and interesting. It was a little slow at times but that happens with faithful adaptations.

This is a film that needs to be seen in theaters (if only to encourage more filmmakers to take more risks).

Okay, the review-for-the-masses is over. From here on out is where I let my geek shine.

I would liked to have seen a little more effort put into this film. I feel like they only gave 90%. Let me state, right here and now, that i am NOT a purist-fan of the comics. I read the comics once about 4 years ago. This is strictly an observation from a filmic standpoint.

The film is the comic. Camera angles match the panels. Dialogue is as it was. This film IS the comic. Now, There are some shots that are completely black & white (no grey), just like the comic. Why, then, was there any grey at all anywhere in the film. If you are going to do the comic... do the comic. Don't just do it when it seems easy or absolutely necessary for effect.

That is my only gripe. I really enjoyed this film. I'm glad it got made and I'm glad it got made right. This is not a perfect film but it IS a damn good one.