I’ve seen the XMen film and I must say i am very impressed. I       had on purpose avoided reading too much about it beforehand. The casting       is close to brilliant; the story zooms along (even though you *do* figure       out most of it early on); the effects are great but you don’t really think       about them until after the film (which is the way it should be). I think       some purists might dislike the small changes and differences but I think       it made for a very good porting of the universe to film…

Taxi 2 - Taxi was fun, but Taxi 2 is an all around romp. It manages       to combine a polished american style action film (clichéed vilains,       car chases, combat.. and witty one liners) with the best of french comedy       (twisted situations and misunderstandings and loads of self-irony). Some       very cool car chases, and a martial art fight scene that should become       a piece of anthology…

Toy Story 2. I must say it’s even better than the first one. What       a romp! GO SEE IT. ANd if you haven’t seen the first one, what the heck       were you thinking?

"a Straight Story", in a totally different register.       A very very nice film too, odd and funny and touching. Not much happens,       but you sure aren’t bored. It’s very well filmed and directed, the dialogues       are absolutely wonderful. Reminded me of something in the family between       "What’s Eating Gilbert Grape" and "Fargo"       (two excellent films too), but it isn’t dark.

Tarantino: Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown.

Besson: especially "Nikita", "Leon"       and "Taxi2", also the 5th Element, Le Grand Bleu… (haven’t       seen Joan of Arc yet).

The Cohen Brothers, especially "Fargo" (haven’t seen       The Big Lebowski, arg!). Also "the Hudsucker Proxy"

"Babe" was great (didn’t see the second one yet). "The       Crying Game" good film but very disturbing.

SF: Even though they are a bit superficial "The Fifth element"       and "The Matrix" are good films that pull you in and       have amazing esthetics. I rather liked "Stargate", again       I think because of the artistic concept and look. "Starship Troopers"       was quite entertaining and sarcastic. "Twelve Monkeys"       - no critic here. Oh and "MIB" was fun, almost too short!

Many good french films in recent years "le bonheur est dans le       pré" (a simple comedy) and "Ridicule"       come to mind, "Le diners de cons" is hilarious, and the       play was even better. "Il Postino", very nice film (french and       italian)."Trois couleurs…."

I also like animated films. Unless I’m told it’s bad or *only* for kids       I usually go see all the animated films. Loved Toy Story 1 and       2, thought "the prince of Egypt" was rather good (nice songs),       Mulan was very enjoyable. My favorites in the older classics would be       "the 101 Dalmatians" (a favorite since childhood), "mrs       Brisby & the rats of nihm" (sp?)... oh and "The Wrong Trousers"       and co
   

"Himmer über Berlin" ("Les ailes du désir"       / "Wings of desire") by Wim Wenders. a website       about it

2 "women" films: "Le Festin de Babette" (Babette’s       feast?)- "Fried Green Tomatoes At The Whistle Stop Café"       (ok, that one was mainstream i guess)

"the Shawshrank Redemption" (a rare example of a great       story becoming a great film)

"Cyrano de Bergerac" it just works!

The Two Towers - plain loved it.  Even though it takes some liberties with the story to add tension, what is not to love in this film?

The Pianist - quite difficult to watch at times,  a beautiful and sobering film.

Chicago - sheer fun, done wonderfully - and i love the 30’s look anyway.

Its been so long since I have added my short reports on films I’ve seen, I thought I would do a catch up exercise. I’ll try to add a 1-2 line comment to each.
This is about 15 months of DVD rentals via a mail service + a few I own. Still trying to remember some.
(most recent first)

No Man’s Land (aka Nicija Zemlja) - a film about ennemi soldiers stuck in a trench while the UN try to get them out. Manages to be both profoundly “human” and terribly cynical at the same time. An incredible story, with humour but very dark in the end. Some incredible lines… like this bosnian soldier in a sad trench, reading the paper and going “what a terrible mess, in rwanda!“

The Chorus (aka Les Choristes)  - lovely film, excellent acting including by the children and teens. The story is “teacher changes pupils’ life”, a classic theme, but the whole film is quite subtle and understated and so enjoyable. The music can only be described as luminous. I enjoyed it. I hear they are going to remake it in the UK/US and can only worry - they will probably add mounds of drama (one or more of death! sex! guns!)...

Brotherhood (aka Taegukgi) - a film about the Corean war, following two brothers recruited by force. Not knowing much about the Corean war I found it very good, as it seemed to show the chaos and absurdity of war, and a lot of incompetence and malice on all sides. I totally got immersed in it, the supension of disbelief held through which is quite rare for me

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Not so long ago i started thinking about what stories I enjoyed as books and would like to see made into film.

Well here’s one I would not have dared suggest, due to the dark and hugely complex stories (that, and it’s not finished yet) but of course if you go from film to TV then it might just work:

HBO has acquired the rights to turn George R.R. Martin’s bestselling fantasy series “A Song of Fire & Ice” into a dramatic series to be written and exec produced by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss.

“Fire” is the first TV project for Benioff (“Troy”) and Weiss (“Halo”) and will shoot in Europe or New Zealand. Benioff and Weiss will write every episode of each season together save one, which the author (a former TV writer) will script.

The series will begin with the 1996 first book, “A Game of Thrones,“ and the intention is for each novel (they average 1,000 pages each) to fuel a season’s worth of episodes. Martin has nearly finished the fifth installment, but won’t complete the seven-book cycle until 2011.

And as these things go, there’s just been announcement that Stephenson’s “The Diamond Age” is also heading for a TV adaptation. That seems a bigger challenge yet, due to the mix of styles and realities in this book. Although it will be easier to adapt than “Snow Crash”, which I remember enjoying but something also not quite understanding - The Diamon Age is an “easier” book.

This reminds me that I haven’t read his books since “Cryptonomicon” (thoroughly recommended, by the way), I should check out what he’s done.

Three colours Bleu / Blanc / Rouge: classics I hadn’t seen in a long time. It’s arthouse cinema, and the DVD supplements help a lot for people who aren’t necessary into that kind of stuff up front. Rouge is probably the most accessible.

Constantine - nowhere near as bad as many people said it was. More enjoyable than the superman film.

Kikujiro - it’s the third time I watch this film, saw it once at the cinema and twice on DVD. I just like it. It’s just surreal enough, and touching.

Broken Flowers - great acting. Just a quirky slice of life, and you keep expecting some coincidence to happen and resolve things, but of course it doesn’t. Shows how conditioned we are from a certain kind of cinema and TV to think that everything that happens is relevant, that if you bump into one person at the beginning of a film they’ll reemerge at the end and there’ll have been a reason all along… An indie arthouse film with big actors in it. But it’s not a film for someone who can’t cope with films that don’t have a strong plot and message.

Music and Lyrics - Finally a good romantic comedy. It is well written, acidic in many places, and has many great funny ideas. And the film intro is a gem.

Cars - predictable but very very fun

An inconvenient truth - i thought i didnt really need to see it, since I am already a convinced green… but i watched it to make some other people see it, and what a powerfully delivered message it it. Should be compulsory viewing.

Twilight Samurai - highly recommended. Not your “heroic” samurai film, but more a real life chronicle of what life was. It makes you care about all these people even though, to us, they are stuck in this incredibly alien structured world.

Kontroll - a surreal film in the Budapest subway. I’m still not sure how to interpret it, but it was still a nice one to see

Superman Returns - The film industry should give more credit to scriptwriters. This has quite good actors, huge budgets, nice production design - but if the writing is bad, it’s all for nothing. I thought the plot and the dialogues were so bad it was incredible at times.

Mission Impossible 3 - competent

The Cuckoo - an interesting film in 3 languages about 3 people who get stuck together in the tundra (or whatever they call it up there in finland). A russian soldier, a finn on the german side, and a local native woman. It is quite different from anything I have seen this year even though the theme is quite like “no man’s land”. I thought the film was really good except for one scene (the fight with death) which should have been cut in half.

the usual 2-line-per-film catch up format. One day I promise I’ll write a proper review or two…

Days of Glory (aka Indigènes) - at the Bradford Film Festival. Brilliant war film. Highly recommended. I seem to have picked a whole series of films about injustice recently.

Fast Food Nation - at the Bradford Film Festival. Very well acted and immensely enjoyable, non preachy, in spite of the prickly topic. I found some of the drama a bit… unlikely and I don’t really see what the “shock” is all in this film. I suppose it could be a shock for people who don’t know much about illegal immigrants or the food industry, but to me it seemed quite straightforward and not really controversial or biased. A fun film, well crafted.

Water - at the Bradford Film Festival. This film is beautiful and quite shocking at the same time, as it follows a child who is married then widowed and then left in a widow’s house to starve out of sight for the rest of her days… and the women around her, and how they struggle, accept and just go on day by day. The perspective from a child means obviously that a lot of questions can be asked and answered for us who are not familiar with the cultures of India, in a way that feels quite natural. The film happens in the 50s but the situation in the film is still happening today, and I felt quite low at the end for seeing not a comment of “this was made illegal in x” but a “this is still happening to thousands of women today”.

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As readers will know, last week I saw the film Water, and after watching the film I wanted to do a bit more research, find out about the film and other films by the same filmmaker etc.

A surprising article I found is this one, by an australian who worked on the first attempt to do the film. The film was considered so controversial crowds demonstrated against it, there was sabotage, arson etc. Quite incredible. This is a film that advocates something as fundamental as human rights, that makes a case against such obvious wrongs… That such a film would be generating so much protest, so much hatred is scary.

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