Sort by
Listing Movies
Display Movies
Double Indemnity (1944)
It's love and murder at first sight!
Filmmaker(s): Billy Wilder

A rich woman and a calculating insurance agent plot to kill her unsuspecting husband after he signs a double indemnity policy. Against a backdrop of distinctly Californian settings, the partners in crime plan the perfect murder to collect the insurance, which pays double if the death is accidental.

The Match is Out Filmviewing is like most things in life: there are a few predefined roles among which it is convenient to pick. Once you define who you are in the world of cinema, it determines a lot of what you think about what you...


Published September 20, 2022
| Categorised as IMDB Comments, Twos |
Tagged: , ,
Rikyu (1989)
Filmmaker(s): Hiroshi Teshigahara

Late in the 1500s, an aging tea master teaches the way of tea to a headstrong Shogun. Through force of will and courageous fighting, Hideyoshi becomes Japan’s most powerful warlord, unifying the country.

Broken Black Bowl Film can be something thinly exploited for pleasure, or it can serve as tool for living. Many films span the two existences, but not this one. If you are looking for a way to amusingly spend time, this isn't for you. But if...


Published September 20, 2022
| Categorised as IMDB Comments, Twos |
Tagged: , ,
Indochine (1992)
A great film from a mysterious world
Filmmaker(s): Régis Wargnier

Set in colonial French Indochina during the 1930s to 1950s, this is the story of Éliane Devries, a French plantation owner, and of her adopted Vietnamese daughter, Camille, set against the backdrop of the rising Vietnamese nationalist movement.

Communism as Theater Nothing has the same flavour of sadness as a film gone awry, especially a film with weight. And this has weight at least from its aspirations and budget — even more from the much delayed European examination into their colonial crimes. There’s some lovely...


Published September 19, 2022
| Categorised as IMDB Comments, Twos |
Tagged: , ,
China 9, Liberty 37 (1978)
The deadliest crossroad.
Filmmaker(s): Monte Hellman

Gunslinger Clayton Drumm is about to be hanged when he is given a chance to live if he will agree to murder Matthew (Oates), a miner who has steadfastly refused to sell his land to the railroad company. Matthew’s refusal is a major obstacle to the railroad’s plans for expansion.

Whoring and Teaching And so we have it: arguably the last spaghetti western. Wonderfully photographed. Well acted. This time around what we get is an erotic western. Our hard boiled hero is a gunslinger as usual but good hearted enough to not kill his mark simply...


Published September 19, 2022
| Categorised as New Comments, Twos |
Tagged: , ,
And Then There Were None (1945)
Filmmaker(s): René Clair

Ten strangers are summoned to a remote island and while they are waiting for the mysterious host to appear, a recording levels serious accusations at each of the guests. Soon they start being murdered, one by one. As the survivors try to keep their wits, they reach a disturbing conclusion: one of them must be the killer.

Dame Agatha's Dead Christie has been as profoundly influential in film as Shakespeare. We can't take too lightly how often we see the effects of her experiments in tweaking the identity of the reader/ viewer. This is one of her most interesting constructions: presented quite differently...


Published September 18, 2022
| Categorised as IMDB Comments, Twos |
Tagged: , ,
Snatch (2000)
Stealin' stones and breakin' bones.
Filmmaker(s): Guy Ritchie

Unscrupulous boxing promoters, violent bookmakers, a Russian gangster, incompetent amateur robbers and supposedly Jewish jewelers fight to track down a priceless stolen diamond.

Style, But to What End? This kind of film superficially resembles what I really yearn for: heavy cinematic qualities in the filmmaking. I look for a harmony of vision among how the camera is managed, the edits are composed, the music punctuates the image. Snatch has...


Published September 17, 2022
| Categorised as IMDB Comments, Twos |
Tagged: , ,
Rain Man (1988)
A journey through understanding and fellowship.
Filmmaker(s): Barry Levinson

When car dealer Charlie Babbitt learns that his estranged father has died, he returns home to Cincinnati, where he discovers that he has a savant older brother named Raymond and that his father's $3 million fortune is being left to the mental institution in which Raymond lives. Motivated by his father's money, Charlie checks Raymond out of the facility in order to return with him to Los Angeles. The brothers' cross-country trip ends up changing both their lives.

Drizzle When this was new, few of us knew of neurodiverse folks. So the setup as a road movie where our bad soul gets redeemed worked. If you allow the genre. We were all amazed as Hoffman’s portrayal. Neither is unusual now, which I suppose is...


Published September 11, 2022
| Categorised as New Comments, Twos |
Tagged: , ,
2012 (2009)
We Were Warned.
Filmmaker(s): Roland Emmerich

Dr. Adrian Helmsley, part of a worldwide geophysical team investigating the effect on the earth of radiation from unprecedented solar storms, learns that the earth's core is heating up. He warns U.S. President Thomas Wilson that the crust of the earth is becoming unstable and that without proper preparations for saving a fraction of the world's population, the entire race is doomed. Meanwhile, writer Jackson Curtis stumbles on the same information. While the world's leaders race to build "arks" to escape the impending cataclysm, Curtis struggles to find a way to save his family. Meanwhile, volcanic eruptions and earthquakes of unprecedented strength wreak havoc around the world.

Foreground - Background When you make a film that is nothing but flavoured special effects, when you make the matter of those effects into a character, you have two decisions to make. The first is whether you are dealing with object or environment. This is a fairly...


Published September 11, 2022
| Categorised as IMDB Comments, Twos |
Tagged: , ,
Mystery Road (2013)
Some roads lead to murder
Filmmaker(s): Ivan Sen

A murdered girl is found under a bridge on a remote road and indigenous detective Jay Swan gets the case. Jay finds that no-one is that interested in solving the murder of an indigenous teenager and he is forced to work alone.

Wholeness in What You Sow All of us want to be genuinely ourselves, and nearly all of us are at the mercy of societal imprints with urges so great we cannot escape them. Few of us can be calm in ourselves. I suppose this is one reason...


Published August 14, 2022
| Categorised as IMDB Comments, Twos |
Tagged: , ,
Rio 2 (2014)
It's on in the Amazon.
Filmmaker(s): Carlos Saldanha

It's a jungle out there for Blu, Jewel and their three kids after they're hurtled from Rio de Janeiro to the wilds of the Amazon. As Blu tries to fit in, he goes beak-to-beak with the vengeful Nigel, and meets the most fearsome adversary of all: his father-in-law.

People, Not Situations Getting back into thinking about how narratives get put together, I am reminded of how many radically different strategies there are in approaching a film. If you talk to the (old) Pixar guys, what you’ll hear is a focus on story, a cinematic notion...


Published July 13, 2022
| Categorised as IMDB Comments, Twos |
Tagged: , ,
preloader image