Archive
Archive for the ‘Drama’ Category
Description:
Thirty years after an apocalyptic event, Eli (Denzel Washington) is on a journey to the west coast of the United States. On his travels he runs into many enemies, but he ably dispatches them with fluid bladework.
Searching for a source of water he arrives in a ramshackle town which is overseen by Carnegie (Gary Oldman). Carnegie is a literate man and he has gangs looking for a book, though the gangs and his own henchmen do not understand why he wants the book.
After shooing away a cat in Carnegie’s bar, Eli is set upon by a gang of bikers; Eli kills them all. Realizing that Eli is a literate man like himself Carnegie asks Eli to stay, though it is made clear that the offer is not negotiable. After Carnegie’s blind wife Claudia (Jennifer Beals) gives Eli some food Carnegie asks Claudia’s daughter Solara (Mila Kunis) to seduce Eli. Eli turns her down but before they eat he says a prayer.
The following day Solara prays with her mother and Carnegie realizes that Eli has a copy of the Bible, the book he has been looking for, as all copies were destroyed after the apocalypse. Eli sneaks out of his room and goes to the stores across the street where he asked the Engineer (Tom Waits) to recharge his portable battery.
Cast:Denzel Washington, Gary Oldman, Mila Kunis, Ray Stevenson, Jennifer Beals, Frances de la Tour, Michael Gambon, Tom Waits
Drama, Thriller, WarJanuary 25th, 2010
Description:
Inglourious Basterds is a 2009 war film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino and starring Brad Pitt, Christoph Waltz and Mélanie Laurent. It tells the story of two plots to assassinate Nazi Germany’s political leadership, one planned by a young French Jewish cinema proprietress, played by Laurent, and the other by a team of Jewish Allied soldiers led by Lieutenant Aldo Raine, played by Pitt.
In Nazi occupied France, young Jewish refugee Shosanna Dreyfus witnesses the slaughter of her family by Colonel Hans Landa. Narrowly escaping with her life, she plots her revenge several years later when German war hero Fredrick Zoller takes a rapid interest in her and arranges an illustrious movie premiere at the theater she now runs. With the promise of every major Nazi officer in attendance, the event catches the attention of the “Basterds”, a group of Jewish-American guerilla soldiers led by the ruthless Lt. Aldo Raine. As the relentless executioners advance and the conspiring young girl’s plans are set in motion, their paths will cross for a fateful evening that will shake the very annals of history.
Cast:Brad Pitt, Christoph Waltz, Michael Fassbender, Eli Roth, Diane Krüger, Daniel Brühl, Til Schweiger, Mélanie Laurent
Inglourious Basterds
Action, Adventure, Animation, Biography, Cartoon, Children, Comedy, Crime, Documentary, Drama, Family, Fantasy, History, Horror, Music, Mystery, Romance, Sci-Fi, Sports, Suspense, Teen, Thriller, Tragicomedy, War, WesternJanuary 24th, 2010
Description:
On her 18th birthday, Bella Swan wakes up from a dream in which she sees herself as an old woman. She expresses her distaste with growing older than her boyfriend Edward Cullen, a vampire who physically stopped aging at 17. Despite her lack of enthusiasm, Edward’s adoptive family throws Bella a birthday party. While unwrapping a gift, Bella gets a paper cut, causing Edward’s brother, Jasper, to become overwhelmed by her blood’s scent and attempt to kill her. Realizing that he and his family pose a danger to Bella, Edward ends their relationship, and the Cullens leave Forks, Washington permanently.Edward’s departure leaves Bella heartbroken and depressed for months. However, when her father, Charlie, wants her to live with her mother in Florida, Bella agrees to spend time with her friends. After a movie with Jessica, Bella sees a group of men on motorcycles. This reminds her of when Edward previously rescued her from an assault, and she sees his image warning her to stay away.
Cast:Kristen Stewart, Taylor Lautner, Robert Pattinson
Biography, DramaJanuary 22nd, 2010
Description:
Irena Sendler (née Krzyzanowska) is a Catholic social worker who has sympathized with the Jews since her childhood, when her physician father died of typhus contracted while treating poor Jewish patients. When she initially proposes saving Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto, her idea is met with skepticism by fellow workers, her parish priest, and even her own mother Janina.
Using forged identification to present herself as a nurse to guards at the entrance to the enclave where the Jewish population has been sequestered, Irena tries to convince the parents of young children to allow her to smuggle them out to safety. Many fear they will never see them again, and she assures them she will document where each child is sent to facilitate their reunion with their parents once the war is over. Others bemoan the fact their children will be raised in a faith other than their own and forget their religious beliefs and traditions, but Irena convinces them this is a small price to pay in exchange for keeping them alive.
Cast:Anna Paquin, Goran Visnjic, Marcia Gay Harden
Description:
In 1891 London, Sherlock Holmes (Robert Downey, Jr.) and Dr. John Watson (Jude Law) race to prevent a human sacrifice ritual conducted by Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong). Holmes and Watson stop the sacrifice just in time and neutralize Lord Blackwood while Holmes saves Watson from a glass shard Blackwood used to kill his enemies that he barely sees until the last second, after which the police, led by Inspector Lestrade (Eddie Marsan), arrive and arrest him.
Blackwood’s execution occurs three months later, during which Holmes has become bored without a new case. Watson prepares to leave 221B Baker Street to establish his own business, and he intends to marry Mary Morstan (Kelly Reilly). Blackwood requests Holmes’ presence on the day of his execution, and warns him that three more deaths will occur after his execution that will change the very nature of their world. Blackwood is executed by hanging, and declared dead by Dr. Watson himself.
Holmes is re-acquainted with Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams). She offers him a sum of money to pursue a case of a missing red-haired midget by the name of Reordan. Holmes disguises himself to find the identity of Adler’s employer, but can only surmise that he is a professor.
Cast:Robert Downey, Jr., Jude Law, Rachel McAdams, Mark Strong
Description:
Ethan Hawke plays Edward Dalton, a hematologist in the year 2019, in which a plague has transformed much of the world’s population into vampires. Edward is employed by Bromley Marks, a pharmaceutical company that is the chief supplier of blood for the American population, which is operated by Charles Bromley (Sam Neill). As the human population nears extinction, vampires must capture and farm every remaining human for their blood, or find a blood substitute before time runs out. When deprived of blood for extended periods of time, vampires lose their human-like characteristics and begin to transform into winged bat-like monsters called “sub-siders,” those of which have diminished mental capacity and no ability to speak and are driven strictly by their impulse to feed. However, a covert group of humans makes a remarkable discovery, one which has the power to save the human race. After being saved by Edward, Audrey (Claudia Karvan) – the group’s leader – brings him in on the secret: there is a cure to vampirisim. One of the group, Elvis (Willem Dafoe), is a human who was cured of being a vampire. Following a car crash in which he was thrown through the windshield, and into a river, he was exposed to sunlight by accident for a very short time before hitting the water, thus extinguishing the fire. Upon emerging, he discovered that he was human again. Edward attempts to replicate this by using a fermentation vat with an added trap door to initiate controlled sunlight exposure, concluding that the blood needs to be exposed to sunlight while in the human body for the treatment to be effective. After several controlled exposures using the vat’s air vent to suck out the fire, the experiment is successful and Edward is cured.
Cast:Ethan Hawke, Willem Dafoe, Claudia Karvan, Isabel Lucas, Sam Neill
Comedy, DramaJanuary 22nd, 2010
Description:
Cold Souls is a 2009 comedy film written and directed by Sophie Barthes. The film features Paul Giamatti, Dina Korzun, Emily Watson, and David Strathairn. Giamatti stars as a fictionalised version of himself, an anxious, overwhelmed actor who decides to enlist the service of a company to deep freeze his soul. Complications ensue when his soul gets lost in a soul trafficking scheme which has taken his soul to St. Petersburg. The film then follows Giamatti desperately trying to find his soul.
Paul Giamatti stars as himself, agonizing over his interpretation of “Uncle Vanya.” Paralyzed by anxiety, he stumbles upon a solution via a New Yorker article about a high-tech company promising to alleviate suffering by extracting souls. Giamatti enlists their service — only to discover that his soul is the shape and size of a chickpea. His intention is to reinstate it once he survives the performance but complications ensue when a mysterious, soul-trafficking “mule” borrows Giamatti’s stored soul for an ambitious, but unfortunately talentless, Russian soap-opera actress.
In response to shiny, bigger, better American consumerism comes Cold Souls, a metaphysical comedy in which souls can be extracted and traded as commodities. Balancing on a tightrope between deadpan humor and pathos, and between reality and fantasy, the film presents Paul Giamatti as himself, agonizing over his interpretation of Uncle Vanya. Paralyzed with anxiety, he stumbles upon a solution via a New Yorker article about a high-tech company promising to alleviate suffering by deep-freezing souls. Giamatti enlists their services, intending to reinstate his soul once he survives the performance. But complications ensue when a mysterious, soul-trafficking mule borrows Giamatti’s stored soul for an ambitious, but unfortunately talentless, soap-opera actress. Rendered soulless, he is left with no choice but to follow the trail back to St. Petersburg.
Cast:Paul Giamatti, Emily Watson, David Strathairn
Comedy, DramaJanuary 22nd, 2010
Description:
As young children, half-siblings Axel and Yanne are adopted to Norway. They are separated on arrival, he to material wealth on Oslo’s west side, she to an average family on the east side. In contrast to her younger brother, Yanne remembers their journey to Norway, but she has no idea where he might be now. All this is about to change, however, as Yanne’s Polish friend Maria starts working as a maid for Axel’s parents, there discovering a photograph of a young boy. Maria has seen the same picture on the wall of Yanne’s flat. She decides to reunite them. But before having time to realize the consequences, she sets in motion a chain of events which throws many people into emotional turmoil.
Cast:Hermann Sabado, Agnieszka Grochowska, Mads Sjøgård Pettersen, Yngvild Støen Grotmol, Ole Paus, Birgitte Victoria Svendsen
Drama, Horror, ThrillerJanuary 22nd, 2010
Description:
Four volunteers sign up for what initially appears to be a typical paid research study, only to discover that they’ve unwittingly become involved with a classified government program that was said to have been terminated nearly two decades ago, in this tense psychological thriller from director Jonathan Liebesman. The allure of a little extra cash proving too powerful to resist, four strangers decide to partake in a paid research study. As the study gets underway, the group is presented with a series of questions, and given a finite window of time in which each individual member must submit a unique numerical answer. At first, the participants all assume that the subject who gives the most obviously incorrect answer will be removed from the experiment, though it doesn’t take long for the group to realize that the correct answer isn’t always the answer that the researchers are looking for. Meanwhile, as the brooding Dr. Phillips (Peter Stormare) attempts to manipulate the study to get the answers he wants, the newest member of his team, military psychologista Ms. Reilly (Chloe Sevigny) begins questioning the ethics of such a diabolical experiment.
Cast:Chloë Sevigny, Nick Cannon, Timothy Hutton, Clea DuVall, Shea Whigham, Peter Stormare
The Killing Room
Biography, Drama, RomanceJanuary 16th, 2010
Description:
London 1818: a secret love affair begins between 23 year-old English poet, John Keats (Ben Whishaw), and the girl next door, Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish), an out-spoken student of high fashion. This unlikely pair begin at odds, he thinking her a stylish minx, while she was unimpressed not only by his poetry but also by literature in general.
However, when Fanny heard that Keats was nursing his seriously ill younger brother, her efforts to help touched Keats and when she asked him to teach her about poetry he agreed. The poetry soon became a romantic remedy that worked not only to sort their differences, but also to fuel an impassioned love affair.
When Fanny’s alarmed mother and Keats’ best friend finally awoke to their attachment, the relationship had an unstoppable momentum. Intensely and helplessly absorbed in each other, the young lovers were swept deeply into powerful new sensations, “I have the feeling as if we’re dissolving,” Keats wrote to her. Together they rode a wave of romantic obsession that only deepened as their troubles mounted.
When Keats fell ill a year later, the two young lovers faced no marriage but separation. In Keats’ own poignant words, “forever panting and forever young.”
Cast:Ben Whishaw, Abbie Cornish, Paul Schneider, Kerry Fox, Thomas Sangster
Biography, DramaJanuary 15th, 2010
Description:
On July 2, 1937, Amelia Earhart (Hilary Swank), along with her navigator Fred Noonan (Christopher Eccleston), is on the last leg of an around-the-world flight. Moving in vignettes from her early years when Earhart was captivated by the sight of an aircraft flying overhead on the Kansas prairie where she grew up, her life over the preceding decade gradually unfolds. As a young woman, she is recruited by publishing tycoon and eventual husband George Putnam (Richard Gere) to become the first woman to cross the Atlantic Ocean, albeit as a passenger. Taking command of the flight results in a success and she is thrust into the limelight as the most famous woman pilot of her time. Putnam helps Earhart write a book chronicling the flight, much like his earlier triumph with Charles Lindbergh’s We, gradually falling in love with his charge, and they eventually marry, although she enacts a “cruel” pledge as her wedding contract.
Cast:Hilary Swank, Richard Gere, Ewan McGregor, Christopher Eccleston
Watch It Now – Amelia
Comedy, DramaJanuary 15th, 2010
Description:
My Year Without Sex is a title both straight-up and misleading: the story is about a character who abstains for a year but sex (or a lack thereof) is not a significant part of the story. After developing a brain aneurism, Natalie (Sascha Horler) is warned to avoid bursts of energy such as lifting, sneezing and you-know-what. This inevitably puts pressure on her relationship with hubby Ross (Matt Day) and the nuclear family synergy shared with their two young children. On the slow mend, Natalie joins a community choir run by a born again 80s rocker while Ross frets over the future of his job and the kids deal with the death of a goldfish. Like its characters, the film ambles along with a kind of day-to-day sincerity, and while the family goes through tough times the story maintains a soft-edged sweetness that coyly avoids falling even temporarily into doldrums of grief and despair.
My Year Without Sex is well acted. Sascha Horley and Matt Day contribute earthy and unassuming performances, creating an endearing partnership.
After the tumultuous breakthrough that was Look Both Ways, however, there is a sense that Watts is running at half or quarter speed in My Year Without Sex, the film a little too modest and soft-pedalled to register a strong impact. Still, it’s intelligent, endearing and pleasantly handled.
Cast:Sacha Horler, Matt Day, Jonathan Segat, Portia Bradley, Roy Davies, Catherine Hill
Biography, DramaJanuary 14th, 2010
Description:
English naturalist Charles Darwin has many children, but is especially fond of his eldest daughter Annie. He teaches her about his evolution theory, and tells her true stories; her favorite story, in spite of the sad ending, is about young orangutan Jenny, who is brought from Borneo to the London Zoo, where she finally dies of pneumonia, in the arms of her keeper. Darwin is furious when he learns that their clergyman has made her crawl on rock salt as punishment for defending her father’s theory, which the church opposes.
Darwin visits the town of Malvern for James Manby Gully’s water cure therapy, to cure his chronic illness. He has a water tower built in his garden to continue the therapy. When Annie gets seriously ill he takes her in 1851 to Gully to get the water cure too, against his wife Emma’s will, but Annie dies anyway, peacefully, after her father, at her request, tells her Jenny’s story once more. Darwin is devastated. The film shows her in flashbacks and hallucinations. For a long time Annie’s death is a taboo subject to talk about between Darwin and Emma, as Darwin fears that Emma blames him for the girl’s death. Later Emma denies this, she has felt guilty herself for not stopping him, and not travelling after them.
Cast:Paul Bettany, Jennifer Connelly, Jeremy Northam, Toby Jones, Benedict Cumberbatch
Comedy, DramaJanuary 14th, 2010
Description:
“A Serious Man is the story of an ordinary man’s search for clarity in a universe where Jefferson Airplane is on the radio and F-Troop is on TV. It is 1967, and Larry Gopnik (Tony Award nominee Michael Stuhlbarg), a physics professor at a quiet Midwestern university, has just been informed by his wife Judith (Sari Lennick) that she is leaving him. She has fallen in love with one of his more pompous acquaintances, Sy Ableman (Fred Melamed), who seems to her a more substantial person than the feckless Larry. Larry’s unemployable brother Arthur (Richard Kind) is sleeping on the couch, his son Danny (Aaron Wolff) is a discipline problem and a shirker at Hebrew school, and his daughter Sarah (Jessica McManus) is filching money from his wallet in order to save up for a nose job.”
“While his wife and Sy Ableman blithely make new domestic arrangements, and his brother becomes more and more of a burden, an anonymous hostile letter-writer is trying to sabotage Larry’s chances for tenure at the university. Also, a graduate student seems to be trying to bribe him for a passing grade while at the same time threatening to sue him for defamation. Plus, the beautiful woman next door torments him by sunbathing nude. Struggling for equilibrium, Larry seeks advice from three different rabbis. Can anyone help him cope with his afflictions and become a righteous person — a mensch — a serious man?”
Cast:Michael Stuhlbarg, Richard Kind, Sari Wagner Lennick, Fred Melamed, Aaron Wolff
