Sort by
Listing Movies
Display Movies
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 Beware 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
| Categorised as IMDB Comments, Ones |
Tagged: , ,
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 It 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
| Categorised as IMDB Comments, Threes |
Tagged: , ,
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 Once 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 |
Tagged: , ,
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 Vampire (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 |
Tagged: , ,
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 There’s 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
| Categorised as IMDB Comments, Ones |
Tagged: , ,
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) The 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
| Categorised as IMDB Comments, Twos |
Tagged: , ,
Me and Orson Welles (2008)
All's Fair in love and Theater.
Filmmaker(s): Richard Linklater

New York, 1937. A teenager hired to star in Orson Welles' production of Julius Caesar becomes attracted to a career-driven production assistant.

F is for Fake Okay, start with one of the most interesting and influential characters in film. Make a film that has him in it. Take one of the most interesting and theatrical productions in theatre, present it is as film and make the same film...


Published February 16, 2024
| Categorised as IMDB Comments, Ones |
Tagged: , ,
Secrets of the Dead: Sinking Atlantis (2008)

Metastories Somewhere along the line, we lost the thread. The way we approach art has been transformed into a fixation on artist as celebrity. The practice of governing has been ignored in favour of fantasies about how we should be governed. It matters less what Johnny...


Published February 14, 2024
| Categorised as IMDB Comments, Ones |
Tagged: , ,
Lovely, Still (2008)
Something mysterious, new, unexpected and lovely is happening to Robert Malone.
Filmmaker(s): Nicholas Fackler

A holiday fable that tells the story of an elderly man discovering love for the first time.

First Date I rarely do this, recommend a bad film. But I will ask if you start this, that you see it through. The film takes advantage of the fact that we have a profoundly well developed notion of a movie romance. We have that here: older...


Published February 9, 2024
| Categorised as IMDB Comments, Twos |
Tagged: , ,
Red Cliff (2008)
The future will be decided.
Filmmaker(s): John Woo

In 208 A.D., in the final days of the Han Dynasty, shrewd Prime Minster Cao convinced the fickle Emperor Han the only way to unite all of China was to declare war on the kingdoms of Xu in the west and East Wu in the south. Thus began a military campaign of unprecedented scale. Left with no other hope for survival, the kingdoms of Xu and East Wu formed an unlikely alliance.

Tectonic Extremes I am not a fan of Woo, and the reason becomes more stark when you compare this to Zhang‘s work. Zhang creates a world of grace in which people move, affected by the laws of that world. They can act, based on the values in...


Published February 9, 2024
| Categorised as IMDB Comments, Ones |
Tagged: , ,
preloader image