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Tropic Thunder (2008)
Get Some.
Filmmaker(s): Ben Stiller

A group of self-absorbed actors set out to make the most expensive war film ever. After ballooning costs force the studio to cancel the movie, the frustrated director refuses to stop shooting, leading his cast into the jungles of Southeast Asia, where they encounter real bad guys.

Three, Five, Eight seen to be only eight ways for humans to reference themselves. Only 5 are considered possible though I have encountered six I believe. Rarely, three are present here. Robert Downey Jr is an actor on-screen. We never lose sight that it is he....


Published November 30, 2024
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Synecdoche, New York (2008)
Filmmaker(s): Charlie Kaufman

A theater director struggles with his work, and the women in his life, as he attempts to create a life-size replica of New York inside a warehouse as part of his new play.

Death of a Playwright am thrilled by this film: all the wonderful narrative devices that I find delicious and engaging, and this time turned to have an effect on the viewer that is not to be lost lightly. He's wonderful. But I'm amazed at the writers...


Published November 30, 2024
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Bolt (2008)
Fully Awesome. Ridonculous. Let It Begin.

Bolt is the star of the biggest show in Hollywood. The only problem is, he thinks it's real. After he's accidentally shipped to New York City and separated from Penny, his beloved co-star and owner, Bolt must harness all his "super powers" to find a way home.

Locked Door is a children‘s film in the modern mould. That means it has to have cinematic values that affect and impress, and at the same time sport an acceptable message. Usually it about the value of family and finding self; here it is both....


Published November 23, 2024
| Categorised as IMDB Comments, Threes |
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Wanted (2008)
Choose your destiny.
Filmmaker(s): Timur Bekmambetov

Doormat Wesley Gibson is an office worker whose life is going nowhere. He meets a sexy woman named Fox and discovers that his recently murdered father - whom Wesley never knew - belonged to the Fraternity, a secret society of assassins which takes its orders from Fate itself. Fox and Sloan, the Fraternity's leader, teach Wesley, through intense training, to tap into dormant powers and hone his innate killing skills. Though he enjoys his newfound abilities, he begins to suspect that there is more to the Fraternity than meets the eye.

Shoots Itself in the Head a trend in these big budget action moves to try and support the thing with hefty story components: profundity, explorations of fate and power (often via revealed conspiracies). We come to expect this, and I believe have rather clear thresholds...


Published November 21, 2024
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Bottle Shock (2008)
Based on a true story of love, victory, and fermentation
Filmmaker(s): Randall Miller

Paris-based wine expert Steven Spurrier heads to California in search of cheap wine that he can use for a blind taste test in the French capital. Stumbling upon the Napa Valley, the stuck-up Englishman is shocked to discover a winery turning out top-notch chardonnay. Determined to make a name for himself, he sets about getting the booze back to Paris.

Jostled of these sorts of things. Something happens that when it happens around you, it seems pretty interesting. When someone thinks “they should make a movie out of this” usually they are wrong. The supposedly interesting thing here is that a California wine won a French...


Published April 2, 2024
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The Oxford Murders (2008)
There is no way of finding a single absolute truth
Filmmaker(s): Álex de la Iglesia

At Oxford University, a professor and a grad student work together to try and stop a potential series of murders seemingly linked by mathematical symbols.

Talk Around Her is simply a fact that no film can stand by itself. Even when you deeply lose yourself in the experience, the cognitive machinery you use is different than in daily life — more toward directed dreamstate. Added to that is the knowledge...


Published February 23, 2024
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A Film with Me in It (2008)
A black comedy about screenwriting and slightly fatal accidents
Filmmaker(s): Ian Fitzgibbon

A dissolute scriptwriter and a dejected actor become unwittingly drawn into a labyrinthine mess when several people experience bizarre accidental deaths in their flat. Though the men didn't deliberately cause any of the incidents, they fear that they will be unfairly pegged as murderers if they relay information to the cops, and promptly set about disposing of the corpses in gruesome ways.

Interesting and Uninteresting Muddles again, we have a script concept that is promising enough to matter. Once again, we have an inept film built on that idea, inept because the writer wanted to be in it. The overall shape is an ordinary, explicit fold: one buddy...


Published February 22, 2024
| Categorised as IMDB Comments, Twos |
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Let the Right One In (2008)
Eli is 12 years old. She's been 12 for over 200 years and she just moved in next door.
Filmmaker(s): Tomas Alfredson

Set in 1982 in the suburb of Blackeberg, Stockholm, twelve-year-old Oskar is a lonely outsider, bullied at school by his classmates; at home, Oskar dreams of revenge against a trio of bullies. He befriends his twelve-year-old, next-door neighbor Eli, who only appears at night in the snow-covered playground outside their building.

Choosing (and werewolf) films have always been built on a foundation of sex, some approach to sex. Often the reference is blunt and the sexual issues unsophisticated, as in the ‘Twilight‘ franchise. Here we have something rather extraordinary, a well made film with a novel...


Published February 22, 2024
| Categorised as IMDB Comments, Threes |
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The Machine Girl (2008)
It's Payback Time!
Filmmaker(s): Noboru Iguchi

The life of a young, Japanese schoolgirl is destroyed when her family is killed by a Ninja-Yakuza family. Her hand cut off, she replaces it with various machines-of-death, and seeks revenge.

Borrowing something disturbing about American filmmakers going to other cultures to borrow porn tropes. ‘Kill Bill‘ just never seemed right, like a traditional Jewish grandmother making Tacos for her goyim daughter-in-law‘s brownie troop because she thought that’s what it was all about. Today, when we watch...


Published February 22, 2024
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The Brothers Bloom (2008)
They'd never let the truth come between them.
Filmmaker(s): Rian Johnson

The Brothers Bloom are the best con men in the world, swindling millionaires with complex scenarios of lust and intrigue. Now they've decided to take on one last job – showing a beautiful and eccentric heiress the time of her life with a romantic adventure that takes them around the world.

Yes I say, Yes Yes (No) structure here selects one of the few models we have for dramatizing inner complexities. The grand problem is that people are fascinating, but we need a narrative skeleton to ‘see‘ into them. One choice is to take a standard...


Published February 16, 2024
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