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.

Deliver Us From Evil

Denmark 2009

Fri os fra det onde 4.8/5 9.5/10





A father returns to his old hometown with his young family. Events force him to face the small town's xenophobia.



Very nice, Bornedal. Will you ever let me down? This director knows not only how to make the movie look good
but write as well. This is an intense, cold hearted film based in a small, middle of nowhere town,
about two brothers, Johannes and Lars. A vitally brilliant cast.
The brothers are polar opposites. Blood is thicker than water and in this movie, there is a lot of it.
Lars is the alcho-loser scum bag selfish brother with the whore girlfriend that he beats.
Johannes on the contrary is the modest, successful lawyer with the beautiful, smart family, renovating an old house.
Alain is Johannes friend who buried his family in the conflict of Bosnia and then fled to the remote region.
Alain is known to Lars and his troupe of even bigger scum bag loser friends as the "Nigger" because of his distinct Islamic "irregularity" of the small town's folk. This all comes down strongly in a whirl pool of intense violence when Lars runs over the wife of an old senile, retired local gangster turned Christian extremist, known as Major Ingvar. Lars frames Alain who then is sheltered by Johannes with his family caught in the middle when the senile old man comes out of retirement to avenge her death,
but spirals further into his senile Christian extremism with violent revelations.

This film brings it. The grain and hue of the cinematography is some of the coolest I've seen in a while.
It's silver with veiny blues, allotted with deep greens and rich, black reds. The pace is flawless and told without
a second of lag or loop hole. It's a film of great acceptance and exceptional craftsman ship.

A very heartfelt and brutal story of all the essential elements of friendship, family, redemption and death.

Stoked on his adaptation of Dean Koontz novel The Husband.

I Am Not Your Friend

Hungary 2008

Nem vagyok a barátod 3.8/5 7.8/10






I AM NOT YOUR FRIEND is a film of improvisations - not only from the part of the nine amateur actors, but from the D.O.P, the director and the scriptwriters as well. The story unfolded itself instantly by the reactions and ideas of actors during the 20 days of shooting and developed into what is presented to the audience. But the story perhaps is less important than the world which opens up in front of us, a taste of Budapest in January 2008



György Pálfi's 3rd feature is far from his previous as far as directive style and story telling.
Like a Hungarian cinema verite styled Closer, I Am Not Your Friend opens with a short film
that takes place in a daycare center, where voyeuristically captured hungarian children interact with
one another is purely rewarding experience. Where conversations amongst the kids (ages 3-5 approx)
seem adult despite their frivolous content. As the feature starts we are introduced to each character
in an off kilter sense. One character is the focus and named and interacts with characters that eventually become
introduced as the focus, even though that have already appeared with dialog and intermittent character development
through relationship establishments that eventually leads to a whole cast of interconnected characters.
The characters are all sexual deviants. Some having sex with the other's spouse or husband and not even realizing it
and some realizing it and not caring. Almost all the characters are shit beings but every one of them
has a favorite song and when alone they sing that song aloud. This anecdote provides a depth to each of them.
As the film progresses and relationships crumble and/or grow, one may begin to wonder where the film is going or
what it's trying to say. But with it's hefty, realistic, subtle twist, some one fucks over the wrong girl.

The message and moral becomes very clear;
Women are strong, resourceful creatures especially when their heart is broken.

Sleep Dealer

USA/MEXICO 2008




In a futuristic yet not unfamiliar world, the lives of three strangers connect in surprising ways amid a backdrop of militarization, closed borders and an all-encompassing global technological network. At the center of this potent sci-fi tale (nominated for a Best First Feature Independent Spirit Award) are Memo (Luis Fernando Peña), a peasant displaced after his village is attacked; Luz, a writer (Leonor Varela) who plugs her brain into the net; and Rudy (Jacob Vargas), an American security company worker.

8.5/10



A potent, time piece of realistic technologically steered rhetoric placed in the not so distant future,
where the borders of Mexico and the USA have been permanently blocked off to end illegal immigration.
A young man named Memo is out of touch with his boring country lifestyle and does not appreciate the smalls things in life until they are taken away from him, though his heart is indeed a great one.
Upon a tragedy Memo sets off to Tijuana to get a job working in San Diego, Ca... wait, what?
You see there is a company called TruNode, throughout the film we are filled in with commercials that throwback to propaganda, encouraging people of all shapes, sizes and creeds
to have nodes installed into their bodies and "plug in" and via remote viewing, work remotely a machine in the United States. A very cool concepts filled with budgeted yet ambitious special effects and detailed, yet not far fetched gadgets and machinery.
Along the way Memo befriends a girl and there is your love story. Great film. Looking forward to seeing what this director does next. A very promising young talent.

Bronson

2009 UK/DENMARK



Nicolas Winding Refn's vivid and unflinching biopic delves into the life of Britain's most notorious prisoner, Charlie Bronson (Tom Hardy) -- who's been jailed for nearly 35 years -- and attempts to dissect the real man behind the deranged persona. While Bronson's primary ambition was to be famous, he became a celebrity of sorts as a criminal who seized myriad opportunities to demonstrate extreme and terrorizing savagery.

9/10




This is near masterpiece for reasons not only associated with the main actor, Tom Hardy's performance, but because of it's on and off linear, narrative story telling. From the get go we are immersed into a biopic told directly through the words of the Bronson character himself, in a black abyss of a room with only light shining onto his bald head, distinctly twisted mustache and prison coveralls that stick to his broad shoulders.
He's not charming,he's not smart, or resourceful, but he's intimidating. Really intimidating.The look of self certainty in his eyes and his raspy, yet brooding voice with his thick British accent, begins to elaborate his life's tale in visual gushes of realistically choreographed fist fighting, face stomping, face biting, mouth frothing, veins popping, plethora of testosterone and ego maniacal... well sanity. Whether most of this biopic is true or merely elaborated for cinematic purposes, the point is finely met and it never gets boring, that being a character study/biopic hybrid that shows from start to finish the self-transformation of a man. As it is really well made and done so with a high entertainment value by somehow, attaining substance and sincerity.
If I had to make any comparison to any other film,
I would utter CHOPPER but if it were done by Kubrick. This film has a risky pace, that really works for it's content. Which all in all, is pretty twisted and hilarious. Don't miss it.