Where the Wild Thing Are

USA 2009

4.5/5 8.8/10





An adaptation of Maurice Sendak's classic children's story, where Max, a disobedient little boy sent to bed without his supper, creates his own world--a forest inhabited by ferocious wild creatures that crown Max as their ruler.



A potent exclamation of being a lonely troubled child, is adapted better than anyone could of imagined from the Maurice Sendak book.
From the start an intimate portrait of the young boy Max is painted beautifully. Confronting his fears,
unbeknown insecurities of his older sister's coming of age lifestyle, understanding his jealousy issues with his financially stressed, but loving mother's relationship with a boyfriend who doesn't approve of Max's out lashes. A story about building unconditional friendships, with understanding that you're not alone in the world and there are in fact others just like you is delivered sincerely, with a great cast. Funny, natural, smart and profound the dialog is genuine and deep. The impact is heavy with this one. Don't miss.

Mirageman

Chile 2007

5/5 10/10







A shy, inconspicuous man named Maco (Marko Zaror) decides to become a self-made superhero when he gains national notoriety for unintentionally rescuing a television reporter from the clutches of two dangerous criminals. Action director Ernesto Diaz Espinoza follows the success of his South American breakout film, Kiltro, with this martial arts gem that also stars Maria Elena Swett, Ariel Mateluna and Mauricio Pesutic.



This film is pure gold. Reasons being many, but mainly for rich character emphasis and the action sequences.
Secondly there is a deep emotional construction of all the characters. Focusing on those who have withdrawn from
society as true underdogs and some that are in the spotlight doing anything to boost their financial and commercial ego.
A young shy martial artist who works at a dead end local club as a doorman, trains extensively in the martial arts as a passion and purpose.
His heart is big and pays weekly visits to his younger artistically talented brother in a mental hospital who has lost all of his barrings due to being raped by a group of men who killed his family during a random street assault.
This group of men are of larger crime syndicate known as The Pedophile Network who kidnap and market young children in
a twisted sexual trafficking ring. Police are helpless due to lack of evidence and cannot seize, search the powerful crime ring.
One night while jogging the young shy martial artist prevents a burglary and a rape of a young news anchor. She then calls
him out during a report on live television and kind of paves the idea for MIRAGEMAN.
From there we see a classic take on developing a super hero, but in a low budget, modestly ambitious stylistic way.
Setting up an email MIRAGEMAN receives messages online of people in distress, sometimes backfiring in his face.
We see him deal with his social insecurities and the treachery of the media moguls that helped his inception into crime fighting.
From natural comedic relief to sad sights of emotional distress as well as brutal full contact fight scenes. I actually think this may
be my favorite super hero movie. Do not miss this inventive and big hearted action film.

Paranormal Activity

USA 2007

3.5/5 7.5/10



Bumps in the night begin to spook San Diego couple Katie (Katie Featherston) and Micah (Micah Sloat). When Katie fears their home may be haunted by ghostly intruders, skeptical Micah plants a camera in their bedroom to prove nothing is amiss -- but he's in for a chilling surprise. Soon, the stage is set for a roller coaster of creepy thrills in this intensely gripping, no-budget suspense thriller in the vein of The Blair Witch Project.



3.5 out of 5 rating. As a hyped up phenomena that corroborates with the Blair Witch project as far as marketing and budget goes, I would most definitely agree that Paranormal Activity as a movie itself is just as formidable in it's scary succession. Though well thought out, believably acted and genuinely creepy, there were times where it felt contrived. But more pros than cons, this minor gripe is easily forgotten and long lost in the character build. I personally could identify with the bf and gf because a lot of the dialog reminded me of my gf and I. From harmless bickering and teasing to intense yelling and passion for one another onn both positive and negative scales. The main emphasis of what is actually happening to the 2 is extensive but over all leaves the audience in the dark with what the cause or reason of such a "haunting" is. That is definitely a pro about the film. Merely hinting around and poking at some back story involving the GF and her past, really upped the creepiness. Full of sounds, and subtle visuals and psuedo-spiritual psychological torment, each step the film takes is careful, well played out, hardly compromising the pace of the film in any aspect. Despite the ending and some minor contrived comic relief, Paranormal Activity is a robust, low budget, clever little social experiment on the masses that no one really needs to watch again, but something most people will be thinking about for days.

The Devil's Game

더 게임
Deo ge-im

Korea 2008

4/5 8/10




A young illustrator in his prime named Min,lives a modest living doing portraits in the city,
his girlfriend whom he's very much in love with, owns a flower shop with her mother.
The Mother and girlfriend owe money to some local gangsters and it's a lot of money for those living a modest life.
One day, Min gets a mysterious phone call from a joyous old man who declares Min lucky and that by being male, he had won the old man a bet. The old man insists on thanking Min personally. Min meets the old man and discovers he's loaded with billions, huge paintings cover his mansion walls, with butlers and servants at his beckoning. The old man wants to make a bet. What is at stake is huge. And what
follows is a 180 degree turn into loneliness, self loathing, true love, treachery, cold heartedness, a couple ridiculous break throughs in medical science and an open ending that leaves the viewer thinking not only about the turn of events that have unfolded in front of them
but your actual life and what you should not take for granted.

Grace

Grace

USA 2009




2.8/5 5/10



When an accident takes the life of the unborn, 8-month-old fetus inside her, Madeline Matheson (Jordan Ladd) insists on delivering the stillborn child -- only to discover that the baby is alive and heinously hungry. Before long, voracious baby Grace spurns milk and forces Madeline to slake her insatiable appetite for blood. Paul Solet directs this masterful horror movie, while Gabrielle Rose and Stephen Park co-star.



As much as I wanted to like Grace, I just could not get passed a few key points that were just left empty.
There is this ominous shell of promise around Solet's debut feature but the hollow inside suggests that maybe more attention
should have been made to cementing the reason behind what Grace is all about, a zombie/vampire baby and her docile mother.
The look and feel of the film is really well constructed and directed. The acting is fallible but satisfyingly convincing.
What makes the audience wonder is the point, the reason, the explanation. Where in films that interpretation and open endings
are made essential and acceptable, Grace I feel as a story, doesn't cop out, but the film does not know what to do with itself
and ultimately in the end does feel like a cop out. The director's point I'm sure was to establish the idea of unconditional love
amongst a Mother and her kin, but ends up being a passive aggressive utterance of vaguely captured emotion that bears no substance
or true understanding of what is trying to be said. The idea would have been cool if a balance of such anxiety could have been
laid next to, what exactly the baby was and why. Because a Mother's love and yearning and desire to have a child for which on 2 previous occasions her husband and her had a miscarriage, doesn't constitute any substantial reason for such an exploitation.
Subplotted of Grace's dead father's Mother, desiring to take the child away and raise it her self is just as forgetful and loose
as the midwife, hired by Garce's Mom who was once involved as lesbians with... Huh?

ENTER THE VOID

Okay, this isn't really a review or an over view this is me being mad and disappointment
in the lack of character richness that I've come to expect from Noe's films.

I did not give a fuck about these characters, they were pieces of shit who deserved their tragic upbringing and the whole reincarnation out of body experience, if that was the point and the characters were something to forget, you failed even more Noe.
And I love the guy.

Enter the Void 2/5 6/10






Cool idea, technically the best film ever made thus far, but poor, writing and the mistake of casting no name actors
to fill in such shallow shoes, leads to a tiring whirlwind of contrived profound failure. A film that is probably the most inventive and obscure pile of shit ever constructed yet it holds no substance or real character value. No name actors could have worked but these ones sucked and ruin it from the start. The characters of Alex and the parents of a drug abuser friend Victor are the only characters that can act and they are mere sub blots. The children actors couldn't even save this despite the few rewarding moments the younger Linda tour de forced. Half of the film could have been left on the editing room floor. I absolutely fucking hated how demanding this films was. Some might defend it, "Oh the hallucinations and visuals, er"... People, Jan Kounan in 2004 made a half decent film called Blueberry: L'expérience secrète and guess what? They easily rival those of Enter the Void.
However, all the hating aside; best editing, I've ever seen. This is such a subversive stamina draining journey on an impact scale of 2001: Space Odyssey. 155 minutes and the opening credits are the best thing about this film. The transitions are amazing at first, but continually their grandeur is over played and their welcome over stayed and they become ridiculous, needlessly self indulgent in all the wrong ways. Sorry but maybe I'll like this in 4 years because right now I just don't get it.

Oscar and Linda are brother and sister. As toddler's they are young and happy amongst their happy parents.
One night, the family in a car in a tunnel, are in a head on collision with a semi truck. The parents die.
The kids are kept by their grandmother who is dying. For the children's sake despite their incredible bond and
traumatic life altering experience are then given up for separate adoption to foster homes. This is never expanded upon
and makes the grandma a dying idiot for why would she separate the two?
This feels completely empty, needless and just a contrived emphasis on their tragic up bringing.
Oscar as a child seems to understand being 2 years or so older and plays it a cool silent soldier.
(I guess the blood pact the two toddlers made with a knife
in flashback scenes means he knows they will never truly be separated...pft)
in the meanwhile toddler Linda is flipping out, screaming... exclaiming stuff about them always being together.
Usually when little kids flip out and act crazy it's effective in adult films, in Enter the Void this is hit or miss.
So after 15 years or so of living apart Oscar moves to Japan and meets Alex.
A sensitive artist drug dealer who introduces Oscar to his drug contacts. Oscar then begins dealing drugs to make a living.
He doesn't really deal seriously, or get even when they flashback and explain how everything unfolded
so this makes the turn of events even more obnoxious.

He meets up with a creepy
gay drug dealer, who really holds no value to the story, (like most of the characters). Once Oscar had made enough money that is when he called his sister up, paid for her to fly over to Japan and live with him. For some reason she lectures him on becoming a druggie when she's out at the club dancing nude and face sitting and whoring herself to the owner. She's a stupid fuck. As is
Oscar. I have no sympathy for these people, both are shallow and clueless and deserve what they get.

Valhalla Rising

Valhalla Rising 4/5 8/10





1000 AD, for years, One Eye, a mute warrior of supernatural strength, has been held prisoner by the Norse chieftain Barde. Aided by Are, a boy slave, One Eye slays his captor and together he and Are escape, beginning a journey into the heart of darkness. On their flight, One Eye and Are board a Viking vessel, but the ship is soon engulfed by an endless fog that clears only as the crew sights an unknown land. As the new world reveals its secrets and the Vikings confront their terrible and bloody fate, One Eye discovers his true self.



A Tarkovsky throwback to the bone. From graphic violence to atmospheric art house, the score swells as the blood spills
and each character delves into their self questioning being and the audience is subjected to it. It pulls you in, it doesn't demand your attention, you ask for it's. The film builds, stacking on layers of a foreboding sinisterness, only to let up with the silence of
violence and wilderness. A character dissection of a mythical mute warrior named One Eye (for literal reasons) who is said to be from hell, escapes captivity where his unmatched strength was exploited in brutal fights to the death by his captors. One Eye upon his escape comes across a group of Christian Inquisitors on a distorted journey to claim and rebuild the Holy Land of Jerusalem in the name of their lord and riches. The Christian vikings murder and burn those who deny Christianity but dare not challenge the legendary strength of One Eye. As the film assembles itself in 6 labeled parts, we see each of the men unravel into their own perception of existence which clearly



What we get here is pretty much Torkovsky's Stalker meets all the cool violent parts in that shitty movie Pathfinder.