Viskningar och rop Cries and Whispers
Ingmar Bergman 1972 Sweden 1st time; DVD
A dying woman is tended to by her maid and two sisters.
Spellbinding stuff from start to finish, a film which began as a recurring, stubbornly insistent image in the director's imagination, and found its way over the course of a few years into a narrative about the persistence of Time and the inevitability of Death. It is grounded in Bergman's most controlled manner, an air of artistic - that is, personal - excellence and technical - that is, aesthetic - achievement. It takes on themes from all his other films, for instance, but stands alone in visual style, told entirely in imagery of blacks, whites and reds, with actors shot against the block-red walls of the interior setting, an immaculate mansion. The title is entirely fitting, as the narrative unfolds in long bouts of silence, with characters tormented by ticking clocks and whispers which lead in and out of their flashbacks (the transitions to which are notified by a fade to red), and exploding every now and then into violent screaming and inexplicable tears; a mesmerising work, really, terrifying and bleak, though shot with such fine detail and attention paid to characters' claustrophobic fear of death (or life?) that the closing moments, a flashback to green fields and white dresses, is uplifting and relieving.

Beer League ** 1/2
(First Viewing)

Beer, broads and baseball combine with hilarious results in Artie Lange's Beer League, an over-the-top comedy about a group of misfits whose weekly softball games seem to have a lot more to do with getting into fights for macho dominance than hitting home runs. Artie is an unemployed and unmotivated drunk that is predictably still living with his mother. He is on a losing softball team, and he and his teammates are facing the end of softball as they know it if they can't pull it together. When love enters his life, it unexpectedly alters Artie's low self-esteem, and the odds for winning, not only the league trophy, but a new life, are certainly looking up. He and his teammates will have to go for the win, and survive all the comedy and chaos along the way.

Not quite sure why the movie is entitled Beer League because it didn't really combine beer and softball like I thought it would. Regardless, it was a very funny movie that didn't get a lot of exposure in theaters or on DVD (the Blockbuster I rented it from only had 3 copies). However, it was nice to see and hear a movie that looks like it was shot around my area of New York, so I could kind of relate to it on that level. It was also great to see Ralph Macchio & Seymour Cassel working again.

Irish, it is nice to see you writing detailed reviews. Please continue the trend

Thanks svsg, we'll see how long it lasts

Matrix Revolutions (part 3) No Stars
This is almost like a spoof of the first two parts. Ridiculous stuff. The fight between humans and machines was too long and boring for most part. Then you have all the cliched hollywood lines about love, choice, peace etc. And the fight scene between Neo and Smith is laughable. In the first part there were some deep philosophical questions. The second part already set the trend of non-sense with "going to source", 'key maker', 'frenchman' and other assorted garbage. The third part takes it to the next higher level. Everyone told me not to watch it, but I made the 'choice', like morpheus

I think Matrix is one of the most overated films in history.Ive never been able stomach this film in full

JFK ****
(Nth Viewing)

A mixture of fact and speculation surrounding the death of U.S. President John F. Kennedy on 22nd November, 1963. New Orleans District Attorney, Jim Garrison, re-opens the files on the investigation and takes a critical look at the facts given by the F.B.I. His persistent questioning and poking his nose where it shouldn't be causes his and his family's lives to be at risk. But he keeps on the trail and soon uncovers a lead which points to the the war in Vietnam.

What negative thing can be said about this film? My favorite Oliver Stone film and I believe it's his greatest work. Definitely one of the 10 best movies of the 1990s with an incredible cast that includes, but is not limited to: Kevin Costner, Tommy Lee Jones, Kevin Bacon, Gary Oldman, Joe Pesci, Walter Matthau, Jack Lemmon, Sissy Spacek, John Candy, Donald Sutherland, Brian Doyle-Murray, and John Larroquette. It's such a f*cking shame what happened to that man on November 22nd, 1963 (in front of his wife no less) and the way the government covered up the autopsy and "investigation". My personal opinion is that Johnson had something to do with it but that's just me. Whether or not you believe Oliver Stone, Jim Garrison, or the movie, it is still a masterpiece.

Höstsonaten Autumn Sonata
Ingmar Bergman 1978 Sweden 1st time; DVD
A journalist invites her recently widowed mother to stay with her and her husband, but things turn bitter…
Draining in the same sense as Scenes from a Marriage, using extended conversation as a way of both establishing its characters and their relationships and also bringing them to their closure. It does this cleverly and interestingly, using non-diegetic flashbacks, all shot from the same head-on angle and from the same long-shot distance, as cut-aways during the conversations; there's only one time we hear any sound in any of these flashbacks, after a revelation of a would-be affair between the mother's husband and her pre-illness daughter... the sound is of the husband's footsteps leaving the house having kissed the daughter the night before, and the sound of the shoes on wood is quietly devastating. Bergman's use of colour isn't as obvious or interesting as when he uses it elsewhere, and it might have even looked better in black-and-white, especially with such an important scene involving piano keys. It is probably Ingrid Bergman's best performance, and Liv Ullmann is brilliant, playing out of type, and with the most to do over the course of the film. The two most interesting characters in the film, however, are Ullmann's husband who opens the film with a speech to camera, and the terminally ill daughter, whose scenes are effectively painful to watch. In the end, it is a good job that Bergman a) writes good dialogue, and b) is an expert at extracting good performances from his actresses.

Both Classics.

What a lazy ass.

Irish, nice review on JFK. Not Stone's best movie, but thats only belittling JFK. This and NIXON are perhaps Stone's supreme triumphs as a directors before he got full of his own style with subsequent works.

Fuck BEER LEAGUE. Watch BEERFEST again! My #10 movie of 2006.

"Schitzengigglez"

FINALLY some appreciation! I begin to write my reviews and I was wondering what happened to some recognition (J/K) Moving on, I've only seen Nixon once and I wasn't too keen on it. I'd have to give it another viewing sometime down the road but I remember by the end of it, I was glad it was over (I'm not as passionate about Nixon as I am about Kennedy).

And I agree, Beerfest is better than Beer League although I did enjoy both.

Dane Cook: Vicious Circle * 1/2
(First Viewing)

Vicious Circle captures the hottest comic in America in his first HBO comedy event, a unique "in the round" performance before his hometown Boston fans.

Not Dane's best stuff on this 90 minute stand-up routine. The very first performance I saw from Comedy Central a couple of years ago was much more enjoyable, and it was only 30 minutes. This wasn't a horrible performance (it had its moments), but he did a bit about crying that last about 15 minutes. I think he spent too much time on some jokes and seemed to have only a couple of jokes that he spent A LOT of time talking about.

Repo Man
(First Viewing)

Frustrated punk rocker Otto quits his supermarket job after slugging a co-worker, and is later dumped by his girlfriend at a party. Wandering the streets in frustration, he is recruited in the repossession of a car by a repo agent. After discovering his parents have donated his college fund to a televangelist, he joins the repossession agency (Helping Hand Acceptance Corporation) as an apprentice "repo man". During his training, he is introduced into the mercenary and paranoid world of the drivers, befriended by a UFO conspiracy theorist, confronted by rival repo agents, discovers some of his one-time friends have turned to a life of crime, is lectured to about cosmic unconsciousness by the repo agency grounds worker, and finds himself entangled in a web of intrigue concerning a huge repossession bounty on a 1964 Chevy Malabu driven by a lunatic government scientist, with Top Secret cargo in the trunk.

A very lame film with some pretty weird sh*t in it. I thought the story was a little confusing it parts and didn't explain things too clearly, particularly the 1964 Chevy Malabu. Harry Dean Stanton was really my only enjoyment from the movie but overall I thought this was a horrible movie. People had been asking for it quite a bit at my work and it was on TV, so I figured I'd record it see what was so great about it.

A brief history of Irishman at the movies:

RONIN (1998)

"What's in the briefcase? What? It makes no sense. This sucks!"

PULP FICTION (1994)

"WHAT THE F*CK?!!? What's in the damn briefcase! This sucks! Wait, Quentin Tarantino made this movie? *pause* BEST MOVIE EVAH OF 1990s!!!"

BTW Irish, did you know that Tarantino actually is a major fan of REPO MAN?(Though knowing him, he's got like 67,942 favorite movies)

Hell, its a really admired cult movie from the 1980s, and one that yours truely reviewed for the now-morbid RRA'S CULT MOVIE REVIEW.

"A very lame film with some pretty weird sh*t in it. I thought the story was a little confusing it parts and didn't explain things too clearly, particularly the 1964 Chevy Malabu. Harry Dean Stanton was really my only enjoyment from the movie but overall I thought this was a horrible movie."

Poor Irish, its about as confusing as a European TV Ad. Besides, the plot is simple. Notice the map of the United States in the credits. Notice how the red line starts in LOS ALAMOS, New Mexico. Look it up at wikipedia. Major governmental site for nuclear research. Ding!

So what was the big deal with the 1964 Chevy Malibu? Basically the nutty scientist was stealing away a top secret, and aparently super awesome, radioactive weapon. What is this green glowing thing? Its a MacGuffin. It doesn't friggin matter. If anything, its almost an excuse of a final stage in the punk Otto's days in LA.

Though notice how the green glow in the back trunk zapped everyone, it embraces the one character, albeit mentally slow, that probably isn't occupied by the viles of humanity, and which he allows Otto to enjoy as well.

Sadly, your mistakes that you made when you watched SWINGERS have occured again. Shame on you!

If SWINGERS, like CLERKS, were time capsule movies about a group of slacker males, albeit different coasts of America, in mid-1990s America, REPO MAN is from a decade earlier. Besides capturing the trademark essential but natural weirdness of Los Angeles. It contains as well alot of the notable acts of the punk rock music movement in LA of the time in its worthy soundtrack.

As for this being "weird," thats like calling President Bush a fool. Nobody is going to dispute it. Attacking it for being weird is like slamming KILL BILL for being badass.

Thing is, its the weird essence of humor in REPO MAN that makes it a really good cult classic. Take all the products that are shown in the movie, all with generic labels. BEER, SODA, CHIPS. Certainly these days, like 22 years ago when REPO MAN was made, we have foods and products that seem to be rather similar in how they taste, save for the pretty corporate label.

Hell, the best gag in the movie is when Otto takes out a can from his fridge and starts eating. What is it? The can is simply titled FOOD. The fact that its like that green gloop that the family in the SIMPSONS gobbled up for years for dinner...

Really, the best one-line sentence that explains my feelings on REPO MAN is this, that someone from IMDB wrote: "An absurdist punk rock sci fi classic"

How true!

Never saw Ronin

I did like the labels and how they all looked alike (that was nice)

I just watched "Blood Diamonds", and i must say i was left with a strange feeling in my stomach. The great things about the movie was the realistic views on the terrible situation in Africa (Chirlden soldier, civil war etc.). Your left with information that you normally dont get from the media, who often pretends that Africa dosen´t excist.

When that is said, i actully found the rest of the movie really unintteresting. It kinda remiends me of a 90´s action movie, with the Governator...

I just watched

License To Kill.

Wow, has to be one of my favourite Bond's ever (I'm a Bond Maniac.)

Timothy Dalton played a great Bond, and the villian Sanchez has to be one of the best in the series.

8/10

Have you seen Goldfinger or GoldenEye, The Mob?

Brokeback Mountain ****
(Third Viewing)

In the Summer of 1963 Wyoming, two young men, Ennis a ranch hand and Jack an aspiring rodeo bull rider, are sent to work together herding sheep on Brokeback Mountain, and what had otherwise been anticipated to be a rather uneventful venture, will soon turn into an affair of love, of lust, and complications that will spand through 19 years of their lives. Through marriage, through children, and through the mighty grip of societal confines and the expectations of what it is to be a man.

A truly beautiful and powerful love story. "That gay cowboy movie" as it has, and probably will be known as forever, was the best picture of 2005 IMO and was robbed at the Oscars (BIG surprise there). Beautiful scenery and wonderful performances turned in by Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Williams, and Anne Hathaway. Enjoyable cameo's also from Randy Quaid, Linda Cardellini, and Kate Mara. Ang Lee truly deserved his Best Director Oscar if you ask me because he didn't use a lot of camera tricks. I feel he didn't try to tell the story through his directing, but rather trusted in the story and screenplay enough to not interfere with his perspective. I'm not trying to sound rude here but to me it just seems Ang shot the film as it was originally wrote and didn't try to make it "Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain."

I've seen them all, and I own them all.

I don't know why some people dont like LTK, I found it very good, and it's right there in my top 5, with Casino Royale, Goldfinger, OHMSS, TLD.

I didn't hate License To Kill (and I've only seen it once) but I don't really remember loving either of the Timothy Dalton James Bond movies. I do remember enjoying Franz Sanchez and young Benicio del Toro's performances. But as I stated earlier, my 2 favorite Bond movies are Goldfinger snd GoldenEye. However, my least favorite Bond was probably On Her Majesty's Secret Service.

Goldfinger is always and enjoyable watch, as for Goldeneye, I hate beggining, but I like it after about the first 30 minutes.

I must say I'm surprised to see OHMSS as your least favourite, most people found it the best. My only problem with it was George Lazenby, and Diana Rigg. Although I loved Savalas at Blofeld.

What do you hate about the beginning of GOLDENEYE anyway?

Of course, GOLDFINGER is the shit. Probably the only comic bookish Bond movie that never falls into the self-parody trap of camp and sillyness that Moore's 007 works would repeatedly do.

Glad that you quite dug CASINO ROYALE as well.

Of course OHMSS is pretty good, and of course, Irish would hate it. Too predictable these days, I'm afraid.

While Lazenby doesn't draw a light as Bond, he doesn't fail either. What I dug about OHMSS is that while previous and subsequent Bond efforts would have the hero crack a safe as easily as a box of Cracker Jacks, OHMSS shows how cracking locks take effort and time.

I did like the opening. It threatens to be camp non-sense when Lazenby breaks the fourth wall and refer to Connery, but its funny.

But mostly, maybe its the tragedy of the ending. While each of those Bond flicks always have the gadget-popping hero score with the girl at the end, they never come back. Bond is a womanizer, but whatever because its his nature, or its dictated by fate, who knows. But those 007 movies rarely talk about such a fact for Bond, though GOLDENEYE did mention it.

When OHMSS didn't make as much money as say GOLDFINGER or YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE did, alot of people asserted that downer ending of OHMSS is why it failed.

What a crock of shit. CASINO ROYALE, if you will, had a downer ending, and guess what? Its the highest grossing Bond film ever, with $63 million over the amazingly mediocre DIE ANOTHER DAY.

Bandidas **
(First Viewing)

In turn-of-the-century Mexico, two very different women become a bank-robbing duo in an effort to combat a ruthless enforcer terrorizing their town.

Plenty of eye candy in this "Western" but that's the extent of it. It was like going to see Snakes On A Plane, you knew what you were gonna get. Fortunately for male viewers, most should walk away from this film satisfied, that is if they are a fan of either Penelope Cruz or Selma Hayek's work. Consider me Pro Cruz (screw that skank Hayek)! Aside from the two main stars, Steve Zahn as always lightens the mood and can always find a way to make me laugh. Dwight Yoakam was equally enjoyable as the villain, Tyler Jackson.

Idiocracy
(First Viewing)

Joe Bauer, an Army librarian, is judged to be absolutely average in every regard, has no relatives, has no future, so he's chosen to be one of the two test subjects in a top-secret hibernation program. He and hooker Rita were to awaken in one years, but things go wrong and they wake up instead in 2505. By this time, stupid people have outbred intelligent people; the world is (barely) run by morons--and Joe and Rita are the smartest people in America.

Now I've seen my fair share of stupid movies in my lifetime (moreso recently than I care to admit), but this movie REDEFINES that phrase "stupid movie." The movie wasn't funny WHATSOEVER. I cannot believe this is the same Mike Judge who gave us Office Space. The best way for me to give an accurate opinion of what I really thought about this movie: take Napoleon Dynamite for instance. A pretty silly and "stupid funny" movie that took quite a risk in that it had very little expectations of being the phenomenon that it was and had great risk of being an absolute disaster. Now Napoleon was able to catch on, but Idiocracy is the disaster Napoleon Dynamite could have been. I think the movie tried to be silly and "stupid funny" but was doomed after the first 5 minutes (which was the only time I laughed during the movie). I would rather cut my eyes out with shards of glass than see this movie again.