Smilla’s Sense of Snow            

NETFLIX SYNOPSIS:  When her 6-year-old neighbor falls from a roof, Smilla Jasperson (Julia Ormond) suspects the boy’s death was no accident. She starts investigating and discovers that the boy’s father died on a secret expedition while working for a mining company. With the help of a mysterious neighbor known as the Mechanic (Gabriel Byrne), Smilla defies local authorities and begins a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse to uncover the truth.

REVIEW:  Great premise, story, locations and potential, but lackluster performances, gaping plot holes and awkward transitions keep this from being the film it should have been.  The far northern scenery and elegant interiors are superb, though.  Viewers wanting more should read Peter Hoeg’s excellent novel.

3 stars
Kym

              Ruby in the Smoke            

NETFLIX SYNOPSIS:  After her father drowns in the South China Seas, young Sally Lockhart (Billie Piper) is drawn into a world of mystery, danger and great treasure. Along with the help of her friends Jim and Frederick, Sally confronts deadly villains and draws upon her sleuthing skills to discover the truth behind her father’s death. This Victorian-era Masterpiece Theatre story is adapted from a book by author Philip Pullman.

REVIEW:  Masterpiece (Theater) rendition of Philip Pullman’s YA novel featuring plucky young Victorian heroine Sally Lockhart. Billie Piper (of New Dr Who fame) is perfectly cast as Sally. An almost unrecognizable Julie Walters is superbly evil as the bitter hag pursuing Sally. There’s smoke, a ruby, a mystery, and not quite the usual snuff of a Masterpiece offering. Still, Piper and Walters are very good, and it’s an enjoyable adventure. I look forward to the next installment, The Shadow in the North, due to air on PBS in late September 2008.

3.5 stars
Kym

                    Stay                   

NETFLIX SYNOPSIS:  This racy thriller bends reality about five different ways when a psychologist’s (Ewan McGregor) suicidal client starts making bizarre predictions that, to everyone’s mounting consternation, begin to come true. Now, the shrink must race against the clock to save everything he loves before it disappears forever. Naomi Watts, Ryan Gosling, Bob Hoskins and Janeane Garofalo co-star in this suspenseful yarn directed by Marc Forster.

REVIEW:  Well-crafted, visually sleek thriller about a psychiatrist (Ewan MacGregor) racing against time to prevent a young patient (Ryan Gosling) from committing suicide.  Or is it?  Convoluted sequencing, repetitive clues and a general air of surreality should clue you in that things are not quite as they appear.  This type of contrivance often gets on my nerves, but it’s quite well done here.  Once you know the story, the film merits a second watch to observe how carefully –and cleverly — everything is tailored together. Even in the more confusing moments,compelling performances kept my attention from wandering.  Gosling is a particular standout, as is Bob Hoskins in a small but pivotal role.

4 stars
Kym

                The Dark Knight                

NETFLIX SYNOPSIS:  Batman (Christian Bale) teams with Lt. James Gordon (Gary Oldman) and District Attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) to continue dismantling Gotham City’s criminal organizations in this sequel to Batman Begins. But a psychotic new villain known as the Joker (Heath Ledger) threatens to undo all their good work. The star-studded cast includes Maggie Gyllenhaal, Morgan Freeman, Anthony Michael Hall, Michael Caine and Eric Roberts.

REVIEW:  You might not have heard about it, but a small art-house movie called `The Dark Knight’ opened this weekend and I got a chance to see it.  Well, okay, maybe you saw some of the $100 million that was spent on advertising for it. The critics love it and it seems to have had the biggest weekend of all-time (if WB didn’t fudge the numbers again).  IMDb currently has it ranked as the #1 rated movie of the week?, 2008?, no, of all-time, with an average 9.7 rating!  Is it better than the Godfather, Star Wars, and Casablanca combined?

No, it isn’t.  Although any teen-age boy (such as my son), might make a case for it.  It is very, very good, I would say the best super-hero movie ever made.  It’s better than Spiderman, better than the original Superman, and better than any previous Batman movie.  Full disclosure: I’ve watched most of the super-hero movies, but never considered myself a big fan.  I also never read any comic books. [Preview for the Watchmen before Batman: I have no idea what that's about!]

The good:  Christian Bale is solid as always.  He had more to work with in Batman Begins, but he is believable as a billionaire playboy, and as a guy who can beat up 10 guys at once.    The rest of the cast –   Michael Caine, Maggie Gylenhaal, Gary Oldman, Aaron Eckhart, Morgan Freeman — all do great work.  William Fichtner even gets a nice cameo as a bank manager at the start of the film. The reason the cast is so good is because of Christopher Nolan’s direction and writing.  The dialogue isn’t brilliant, but compared to other Hollywood action films, it shines.  Nolan’s action scenes are better than Batman Begins.  Still too much camera movement and quick cuts for my taste, but you always have a good sense of where you are and what’s happening.  Also, great use of Chicago! (for once, it isn’t New York or LA) No CGI trains and buildings this time, just straight helicopter shots without showing the landmarks.  (Yes, I am from Chicago.)

Oh, did I mention Heath Ledger?  He almost lives up to the hype.  The Joker steals every scene and will probably be remember as one of the great villains of cinema.  He only uses knives, and I realized how much scarier knives are than guns in movies.  [Do any of the great villains use guns?  I couldn't help but think of No Country for Old Men last year.]  I’m not sure if he will win an Oscar, but he deserves a nomination.

The bad:  Too much plot!  The movie is 2 ½ hours and it is rushed, especially the final hour.  A 2nd villain gets added and I never bought into it or fully understood his arc.  It works with the overall story and it is needed to reach the final conclusion, but there were just too many sub-plots going on.  They all worked, but I wish they could have spent more time on them.  Maybe it could have worked better as two 2 hour films.

This movie is dark, scary, and unconventional.  It isn’t a little kid’s movie.  I had a few small children in the audience and a crying baby;  I kept thinking they shouldn’t be here.  No swearing, no sex, not much blood, so I see why it is only PG-13, but it was as disturbing as any R rated film ever gets.  Then again, I saw Jaws (rated PG) in the theater when I was 6; scared the hell out of me, but it is still in my top 10 favorite films.

My final rating: 4 ½ stars.  Not the greatest movie of all time, but for me, it’s as good as a super-hero movie gets.

Phil

            Dr. Who: The Androids of Tara        

NETFLIX SYNOPSIS:  “The Androids of Tara” is part of the “Key to Time” series of episodes. The medieval society of Tara is the setting when the Doctor and Romana get caught in a power play between the good Prince Reynhart and the evil Count Grendel — contenders for the throne of Tara. Things become even more dicey when Romana is mistaken for an android. Gadzooks!

REVIEW:  One of the best episodes of the Key to Time sequence, which in turn is the best sequence of the Tom Baker years…and IMO Baker is the quintessential Dr Who, a true nonpareil. Anyway…this is a great episode with a deliciously nasty villain, gorgeous scenery, duplicitious plots, multiple Romanas, and K-9 saving the day. If you’re not a Whovian most of that probably doesn’t make sense, and the episode probably won’t either.  Oh – mustn’t forget the androids!  

4 stars
Kym

           Rumpole: The Lost Episode        

NETFLIX SYNOPSIS:  Witness the debut of British barrister Horace Rumpole, who emerges in all his claret-quaffing, cheroot-smoking glory in this original BBC television play created three years before the launch of the long-running Rumpole TV series. In this “lost episode,” Rumpole (Leo McKern) faces an open-and-shut case that he plans to wrap up by noon. But once he discerns the telling secret of his teenage client, he smells victory and mounts a full-on defense.

REVIEW:  This was a 1975 episode, written by John Mortimer,  of the BBC series Play for Today.  It more or less served as the “pilot” for the highly successful Rumpole of the Bailey series, which started in 1978. Titled “Rumpole and the Confession of Guilt,” the lost episode is obviously a theatrical play staged for the screen, and much less overtly comedic than the series it inspired. The foundations of Rumpole’s character, career and home life are clearly laid, however, as is his relationship with “She Who Must Be Obeyed.” A solid effort and must-see for Rumpole fans.

3.5 stars
Kym

               In Bruges              

NETFLIX SYNOPSIS:   After accidentally killing an innocent boy in London, Irish hit men Ray (Colin Farrell) and Ken (Brendan Gleeson) are sent by their boss, Harry (Ralph Fiennes), to lay low in Bruges. But, uncomfortable in this foreign city, the two professional killers soon get into trouble. Complicating matters further, when the guilt-ridden Ray falls for a girl working on a film shoot, he finds himself confronting the girl’s jealous ex-boyfriend.

REVIEW:  This is a most disarming movie, one that starts off as a sweet, funny buddy picture (even if the buddies are hitmen) that gets progressively darker (and funnier), until the brutal, ultra-violent, ironic black comedy of the third act. In some ways it feels like a stage play in the way it’s structured, all the little incidents and coincidences that occur as the story goes along come back into play in the plot later on, but it never feels contrived, everything seems to fit just perfectly.

There are many scenes of absurdist comic irony, such as the one where the older hitman, Ken, is about to make a hit on his young partner, Ray, but instead ends up saving Ray’s life as he is about to kill himself. In another scene the hitmen’s boss, Harry, who has been portrayed as savage and cold, has come to Bruges to kill Ken as payback for not killing Ray, then reveals himself to be a sentimental man who has his own code of honor as he cannot bring himself to do the deed. This scene is quickly followed-up by another twist as these two then turn on each other in an instant due to another surprising turn of events. The whole last act is full of these kinds of ironic twists and turns, all arising out of the behavior of believable characters and cleverly plotted circumstances. The climax of the film is sublime black comedy and again, deeply ironic, as Harry, believing he has killed a child (who is actually an adult dwarf) kills himself due to his uncompromising sense of “sticking to your principles”.

The dialogue is brilliant, witty and sharp, and at times the conversations between Ken and Ray, one older and heavy, the other younger and thin, goes round and round; it has the feel of the classic absurdist patter of an Abbot and Costello routine but w/an modernist spin, such as this exchange after Ken has saved Ray from shooting himself:

Ken: What the f— are you doing, Ray? Ray: What the f— are _you_ doing? Ken: Nothing. Ray: Oh, my God . . . you were gonna kill me. Ken: No, I wa– You were gonna kill yourself! Ray: Well . . . I’m allowed. Ken: No, you’re not! Ray: What? I’m not allowed, and you are? How’s that fair?

“In Bruges” is that rarest of breeds, a modern tragi-comedy that really works. The city of Bruges is presented as a kind of purgatory, where 3 very bad men are given a last chance to redeem themselves and where, despite themselves, in a perverse way, they all actually do.

5 stars
Harold

                  The Shaft                 

NETFLIX SYNOPSIS:  A dangerous, secret presence that seems to mysteriously inhabit an elevator in New York City’s Millennium building is killing off passengers — and the death toll keeps rising. When a mechanic (James Marshall) and a reporter (Naomi Watts) go to investigate, they must battle a vicious enemy and discover a secret that could add them to the casualty list. Dan Hedaya, Michael Ironside, Ron Perlman and Eric Thal co-star.

REVIEW:  This was on the SciFi channel this evening and I’d never heard of it so I tuned it in.  I actually enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would. It was pretty creepy at points, and had a few funny situations here and there.  But then it went off into some weird territory, trying to explain why the elevators are now killing machines, which I felt it never recovered from.

Actually, at the start of the film, I thought they had a great premise that they could have gone with, along the lines of “Village of the Damned.”  The opening scene has a number of near-birth pregnant women taking the elevator down from their exercise class and getting stuck on the express elevator.  The final shot when they are rescued never really shows us what happened to them — cutting to another scene — so we assume they are all OK.  But, I was thinking, WHAT IF when the elevator doors opened:

– None of the pregnant women are pregnant any longer, and there are no signs of the newborns? — Only a bunch of babies are found on the floor of the elevator, but no mommies?

Now either of those would have been REALLY out there — especially after the “Twilight Zone” marathon they ran over the weekend. 

2.5 stars
Randy the Ogre

                  Semi-Pro                

NETFLIX SYNOPSIS:  Will Ferrell stars as Jackie Moon, owner and coach of the Flint Michigan Tropics — the team with the worst record in the renegade American Basketball Association. With the franchise on the brink of collapse, can Jackie’s squad rebound to salvation in the National Basketball Association? Director Kent Alterman’s entertaining comedy (set in 1976) also stars Woody Harrelson, Maura Tierney, André Benjamin and Andy Richter.

REVIEW:  Another year, another dim-witted, half-baked comedy from Will Ferrell.  2008 finds us watching Will’s send-up of the ABA, a basketball league that encountered minor success in the late 1970s before being gobbled up by the NBA.  Will plays, uh, himself, as usual, this time as an owner/coach/player of an ABA franchise in Flint Michigan, who will find his team contracted as the ABA shuts down for good.  Unfortunately, unlike last year’s surprisingly amusing Blades of Glory, this is one of those “unfunny” Ferrell flicks where you can safely predict every punch line before it flies out of his piehole.  My favorite part was a brief early cameo by old ABA players George “Iceman” Gervin and Artis “A-Train” Gilmore.  If only the rest of the film had such spirit.

2.5 stars
HAWK

               Werewolf of London            

NETFLIX SYNOPSIS:  Botanist Wilfred Glendon (Henry Hull) is in Tibet searching for a rare flower that only blooms by moonlight when he’s attacked by a strange howling creature. After surviving the attack, Glendon travels back to London. But when the city is besieged by a series of werewolf attacks, Glendon learns the awful truth: He’s the werewolf! The only thing that can cure his affliction is the rare Tibetan flower in this horror classic from Stuart Walker.

REVIEW:  This is actually the first mainstream werewolf movie, preceding the classic The Wolf-Man by 6 years.  The plot is somewhat similar to the Universal Mummy movies, with a scientist who becomes afflicted with the “curse” abroad and returns home to share it with family and friends.  There are plenty of Freudian interpretations that may be applied to the relationship between Glendon — before and after his metamorphosis — and his gal, if that’s your bag, especially once her old beau comes poking around.  The makeup and special effects are quite good for the day, but the plot drags almost unforgivably, especially considering the short length of the feature.

3 stars
HAWK