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Black Swan (2010)
Perfection is not just about control. It's also about letting go.
Filmmaker(s): Darren Aronofsky

A journey through the psyche of a young ballerina whose starring role as the duplicitous swan queen turns out to be a part for which she becomes frighteningly perfect.

The Math I encountered “Pi,” I was profoundly upset. It happened again with “Beautiful Mind” and “Good Will,” other films about mathematical imagination. How, I wondered, could something as inherently cinematic as the mathematical imagination be so clumsily handled? How is it that the only...


Published January 19, 2024
| Categorised as Fours, IMDB Comments |
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The Bird People in China (1998)
The children of the sky.
Filmmaker(s): Takashi Miike

Wada, a salary man, is enlisted to venture off to China to investigate a potential Jade mine. After his arrival, Wada encounters a violent, yet sentimental, yakuza, who takes the liberty of joining his adventure through China. Led on their long and disastrous journey to the mine by Shen, the three men come across something even more magical and enticing.

Purity, Song, Jade has a pretty solid pattern. He makes films for a distinctly Japanese audience, teasing out some issue or two that seems culturally rooted. This is his context. He shifts it into a magical, cinematic world and imagines scenes as episodes within this...


Published September 11, 2023
| Categorised as IMDB Comments, Threes |
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Billy Elliott (2000)
Inside every one of us is a special talent waiting to come out. The trick is finding it.
Filmmaker(s): Stephen Daldry

County Durham, England, 1984. The miners' strike has started and the police have started coming up from Bethnal Green, starting a class war with the lower classes suffering. Caught in the middle of the conflict is 11-year old Billy Elliot, who, after leaving his boxing club for the day, stumbles upon a ballet class and finds out that he's naturally talented. He practices with his teacher Mrs. Wilkinson for an upcoming audition in Newcastle-upon Tyne for the royal Ballet school in London.

Battle Dancer is a replacement comment. Though the dance was passable here, the story is so vapid and unembellished, I sat there looking for another movie. And I found one, battling to get out. It was clever and true, overlooked because of the mediocrity placed in...


Published August 27, 2023
| Categorised as IMDB Comments, Twos |
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So I Married an Axe Murderer (1993)
The honeymoon was killer.
Filmmaker(s): Thomas Schlamme

Just after a bad breakup, Charlie MacKenzie falls for lovely butcher Harriet Michaels and introduces her to his parents. But, as voracious consumers of sensational tabloids, his parents soon come to suspect that Harriet is actually a notorious serial killer -- "Mrs. X" -- wanted in connection with a string of bizarre honeymoon killings. Thinking his parents foolish, Charlie proposes to Harriet. But while on his honeymoon with her, he begins to fear they were right.

Green Haggis a movie only develops worth after a subsequent movie worked. I myself disliked “Shrek” because of the underhanded attempt to undermine the Disney/Pixar alliance, and the smarmy Bill Gates strategy. But some people did like it, largely because of the voices and key...


Published July 27, 2023
| Categorised as IMDB Comments, Ones |
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Better Living Through Circuitry (1999)
A Digital Odyssey into Electronic Dance Culture
Filmmaker(s): Jon Reiss

A documentary about the Electronic Dance movement of the '90s. It is the first such full-length film on the topic. It was produced by Cleopatra Pictures and Entertainment Group, presided by Cleopatra Records founder Brian Perera. The film features interviews with BT, The Crystal Method, Electric Skychurch, Genesis P-Orridge, Frankie Bones, DJ Spooky, Roni Size, and DJ Keoki.

Honest Music, Dishonest Business trends are often shaped by strange overlaps in market forces. You have to have a steady stream of “artists” who are compelled to do their thing, driven primarily by an urge to express. We have that in this music, because the...


Published July 14, 2023
| Categorised as IMDB Comments, Twos |
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Before Midnight (1933)
Lurking FINGERS of DEATH reached out of the dim and ghostly past!
Filmmaker(s): Lambert Hillyer

A detective tries to figure out who killed a man who predicted his own death.

The Written Mystery early thirties was a time of great experimentation with the detective narrative, leading eventually to noir. This is one of those experiments, and a rather fine one. It has a framing device where an old cop is telling a young one about the...


Published June 30, 2023
| Categorised as IMDB Comments, Twos |
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Even Dwarfs Started Small (1970)
Filmmaker(s): Werner Herzog

The inhabitants of an institution in a remote country rebel against their keepers. Their acts of rebellion are by turns humorous, boring and alarming. An allegory on the problematic nature of fully liberating the human spirit, as both commendable and disturbing elements of our nature come forward. The film shows how justifiable revolt may be empowering, but may also turn to chaos and depravity. The allegory is developed in part by the fact that the film is cast entirely with dwarfs

Chicken Out is important to me. He seeks out situations that have recoil, he takes chances and makes honest choices. His being is broken, and that means the choices and the power of the situations affect me. But sometimes he works with a situation that doesn’t...


Published June 29, 2023
| Categorised as IMDB Comments, Twos |
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Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead (2007)
No one was supposed to get hurt.
Filmmaker(s): Sidney Lumet

When two brothers organize the robbery of their parents' jewelry store, the job goes horribly wrong, triggering a series of events that send them and their family hurtling towards a shattering climax.

Space are from time to time successful presentations in the sense that the characters work. You understand them well enough to have some genuine acceptance of their reality as humans, but that means you realise that there are things going on that do not have...


Published June 29, 2023
| Categorised as IMDB Comments, Threes |
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Beautiful Losers (2008)
Make Something From Nothing
Filmmaker(s): Joshua Leonard, Aaron Rose

This documentary follows the lives and careers of a collective group of do-it-yourself artists and designers who inadvertently affected the art world.

Slacker Art is a wonderful little niche genre. Movies are essentially striving to art. Few qualify. Almost no one can manage the complex juggling act that it takes. It just involves too many people, too many risks, too many dependencies on happy accidents. But the...


Published May 16, 2023
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Beautiful Kate (2009)
The past is always present.
Filmmaker(s): Rachel Ward

Ned Kendall is asked to return to the remote and isolated family home by his sister, to say goodbye to his father who is dying. Ned also brings his young aspiring actress fiancee who struggles with the isolation. When home he starts having memories of his childhood many involving his beautiful twin sister and his older brother. These memories awaken long-buried secrets from the family's past.

Writer’s Blocks the last year, I saw a film (“In My Father’s Den“) with much the same themes. In that New Zealand film, a man, a celebrated war correspondent returns to his rural home on the death of his father. There are significant unresolved frictions...


Published May 16, 2023
| Categorised as IMDB Comments, Twos |
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