Vickie_M

Jason, I wanted to thank you for your review of Bon Voyage. I have a pass to see it this Thursday and wasn't sure if I was going to go. Your review convinced me to use the pass.

I appreciate all the reviews in this thread (and the forum). I see a lot of movies but have no writing skills to really be able to talk about them. I love reading about them though.

While I'm here I would like to recommend I'm Not Scared. We saw it at a special screening a couple of weeks ago with the director in attendance. It's a little gem. I'd suggest going in knowing as little about the plot as possible, so you can discover along with the central character what's happening. I knew the plot (I read the IMDB comments) and it didn't diminish my pleasure, but I think it would have been even better if I'd gone in cold.

Favorite film of 2008 (so far): The Fall

Favorite films of 2007: There Will Be Blood, Across The Universe, The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford, Black Snake Moan

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Edwin Pereyra

Touching The Void more than effectively combines real life interviews and reenactments to tell the events of a mountain climb that went bad for two British guys who in 1985 ascended to the top of the 21,000-peak Siula Grande in the Peruvian Grande Andes. Under the direction of Kevin McDonald, he actually makes their expedition both thrilling and captivating even when one already knows its aftermath.

Just when I thought what possibly new one could add to these mountain climbing films along comes this one from the United Kingdom that is really more about will, survival and friendship than merely accomplishing a climbing feat.

~Edwin

DVD Unwind: Paradise Now (Coming) • King Kong - - • Keane • The Squid And The Whale • A History Of Violence • Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire • The Best Of Youth (Italy) • Good Night And Good Luck • Howl\'s Moving Castle • Walk The Line - - • Zathura • North Country - -


= Standouts
= Recommended
- - = Indifferent


Quality matters more than quantity.

Film Lists: 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002 • Best Films of 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001 • Foreign & Independent Films: 2005, 2004, 2003

Edwin Pereyra

interMission

John Crowley’s interMission is a smorgasbord of individuals with personal dysfunction. It is the Irish’s answer to last year’s Love Actually as it deals with adultery, delinquency, heartache, sexual dysfunction and dead-end jobs.

For some, there might be enough here to keep them entertained including Colin Farrell as its most recognizable marquee name to draw curious audience members. But for me, it is too many of everything and not enough of one thing to establish any form of individuality. With its intersecting storylines, it is unable to set its footing on solid ground tonally.

~Edwin

DVD Unwind: Paradise Now (Coming) • King Kong - - • Keane • The Squid And The Whale • A History Of Violence • Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire • The Best Of Youth (Italy) • Good Night And Good Luck • Howl\'s Moving Castle • Walk The Line - - • Zathura • North Country - -


= Standouts
= Recommended
- - = Indifferent


Quality matters more than quantity.

Film Lists: 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002 • Best Films of 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001 • Foreign & Independent Films: 2005, 2004, 2003

Jason Seaver

How the heck do you get from Love Actually to Intermission? Sure, both have large casts and various plot threads that intersect, but there has to be a more logical comparison. Magnolia, perhaps, or some Robert Altman film or other? Or Pulp Fiction, perhaps. None of them are particularly close comparisons, but they're at least tonally closer than Love Actually.

Jay's Movie Blog - A movie-viewing diary.
Transplanted Life: Sci-fi soap opera about a man placed in a new body, updated two or three times a week.
Trading Post Inn - Another gender-bending soap, with different collaborators writing different points of view.


"What? Since when was this an energy ball movie?" - Overheard during a screening of Takashi Miike's Dead Or Alive
"What the hell religion are you people?" - Overheard during the Captain Marvel serial at SF/29
"If I feel even one bullet hit me, I will rip your lungs out through your nostrils!" - Ron Silver as himself, "Heat Vision And Jack"

Edwin Pereyra

Its easy. I counted at least 5 romantic interpersonal crises that accounted for most of the intersecting storylines with a different 3 or 4 stories added to spice things up. In addition, both films fall under the genre of dramedy.

For me, it is closer to Love Actually comparatively than it is to Magnolia or Pulp Fiction.

~Edwin

DVD Unwind: Paradise Now (Coming) • King Kong - - • Keane • The Squid And The Whale • A History Of Violence • Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire • The Best Of Youth (Italy) • Good Night And Good Luck • Howl\'s Moving Castle • Walk The Line - - • Zathura • North Country - -


= Standouts
= Recommended
- - = Indifferent


Quality matters more than quantity.

Film Lists: 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002 • Best Films of 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001 • Foreign & Independent Films: 2005, 2004, 2003

Brook K

Jason, your review makes me wish I'd seen Bon Voyage in LA instead of Eternal Sunshine. I might have seen it just on principle if I'd read the poster close enough to see that it had Isabelle Adjani. But I was with my wife who has an aversion to subtitles so it was out of the question anyway. Hopefully it will show up in Atlanta soon.

I've still only managed to see 2 2004 films so I've had nothing to post about here yet.

I know what I'm gonna do tomorrow, and the next day, and the next year, and the year after that. - George Bailey

2002 Sight & Sound Challenge: 313 Last Watched: Time of the Gypsies

Last 10 Films Watched:
The Odd Couple - C / Water Lillies - B+
Foreign Correspondent - B / The Small Back Room - B+
Days of Wine and Roses - B / Redbelt - C
Torn Curtain - C+ / The Wrong Man - B+
Dial M for Murder - B+ / I Confess - A-

DVD BEAVER My Collection

Edwin Pereyra

Monsieur Ibrahim

Films with good intentions sometimes do not make the greatest movies nor should they automatically be given a passing grade just for trying. Such is the case for Monsieur Ibrahim – a coming of age film about a boy (Pierre Boulanger) in Paris who is taken under the wing of an elder shopkeeper (Omar Sharif). Its creators play it so safe that the film is just another addition to the industry’s churn rate. I’m sorry, but “playing it safe” just doesn’t cut it with me anymore.

Sharif and newcomer Pierre Boulanger are both interesting to watch but young Pierre is unable to handle the more dramatic moments that the story demands. (Yes, those fake tears are very noticeable.) The film also deals with religious tolerance and friendship.

Ibrahim has heart but everything points to no more than your basic average fare.

~Edwin

DVD Unwind: Paradise Now (Coming) • King Kong - - • Keane • The Squid And The Whale • A History Of Violence • Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire • The Best Of Youth (Italy) • Good Night And Good Luck • Howl\'s Moving Castle • Walk The Line - - • Zathura • North Country - -


= Standouts
= Recommended
- - = Indifferent


Quality matters more than quantity.

Film Lists: 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002 • Best Films of 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001 • Foreign & Independent Films: 2005, 2004, 2003

Jason Seaver

Touching The Void - (out of four)

This is a movie about crazy people. The type of people who see a cliff face no-one has ever climbed, so high that the air thins and the temperature drops well below zero - let's make this very clear, these are not the environments in which human beings have evolved to thrive - and say, golly, this looks like fun. To compound this, the two young English mountain climbers in this movie then decide to climb this mountain in the Andes as they would an Alp, in one push, rather than in stages that allow for resupply. This, it strikes me, is an incredibly stupid thing to do, and if something goes wrong, well, you've kind of got it coming.

Now, there wouldn't be a movie if something didn't go wrong. Indeed, what happens as they descend the mountain is the very reason the phrase "things went horribly wrong" exists. And then, things got worse.

The outcome of this adventure is never seriously in doubt. Climbers Joe Simpson and Simon Yates are both interviewed in the talking-head segments, so they obviously survive their ordeals - although without full body shots, it's still quite possible that they were maimed, somehow; I half expected the movie to end with a pull-back revealing amputated limbs (this doesn't happen). The purpose of this movie is not to keep the audience in suspense; it is to make it very clear to each and every member of the audience that we aren't nearly as tough as these guys. That, in similar situations, we would give up, fail, act indecisively, or otherwise behave in a manner that would conclude with our frozen corpses not being found for decades. Happily, Joe and Simon don't rub our faces in it. They are very matter of fact in their recollections. It's not just that they're telling the story nearly twenty years after it happened in a very English, self-effacing manner. Throughout