So I saw Hurt Locker last night and that was really good. I think that and Up in the Air have been my favorites i've seen this year. I still want to see Precious and Moon. those are next on my list to check out.
Charlotte 00 Charlotte 03 Asheville 04 Atlanta 12 Greenville 16, Columbia 16 Seattle 18 Nashville 22
I saw 'Doubt' the other day. Great film with excellent performances from Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Its one of thos films where each person will take something different away from it.
A classic French thriller with racial overtones from the director of The Beat That My Heart Skipped.
* * * * *
5 out of 5
Peter Bradshaw - Guardian.co.uk, Thursday 21 January 2010
'Du Rififi Chez les Hommes was the full title of Jules Dassin's classic tough-guy thriller from 1955 – aggro among men. Here, it is more a case of Rififi Among Men and God alike, in a blisteringly powerful prison-gangster picture from the French director Jacques Audiard. It comports itself like a modern classic from the very first frames, instantly hitting its massively confident stride. This is the work of the rarest kind of film-maker, the kind who knows precisely what he is doing and where he is going. The film's every effect is entirely intentional.
Newcomer Tahar Rahim plays Malik El Djebena, a young Arab guy about to start a six-year stretch in prison for what appears to be violence against police officers. He is a 19-year-old petty criminal, and this is his debut in adult detention. Malik is very frightened, cringing almost visibly into his clothes on walking the grim corridors of jail, and into his nakedness when he is inspected by medical officers.
On what is apparently his very first day in the exercise yard, Malik's vulnerability and his very blankness attract the hooded eye of César, the Corsican mobster with the guards in his pocket – incomparably played by Niels Arestrup. César needs someone to whack a fellow prisoner, who is about to incriminate his associates on the outside by turning state's witness. Surrounded by his thuggish courtiers, César curtly summons bewildered small-timer Malik and informs him that he must kill this switch, or be killed himself by César's lieutenants. He will be given instruction on how to do the job, and protection from César's crew for the rest of his term. No arguments: Malik is "in", a murderer. There is no way out.
Trembling Malik now finds himself in a terrifying, almost Greeneian dilemma. Should he refuse? Should he simply submit to death rather than become a murderer? The plan is that Malik must kill his victim, Reyeb (Hichem Yacoubi) with a razor-blade concealed in the roof of his mouth. Pretending to offer him a blowjob in his cell, he must work it out with his tongue and push it forward between his teeth while his face is invisibly at crotch-level, and then stand up and cut the man's throat. The scenes in which Malik must practise doing this in front of the mirror, retching and spitting blood into the sink, are the stuff of pure, scalp-prickling fear: I just can't remember being so tense in the cinema.
This nauseous forced deal between Malik and César appears to become the basis of a strange, unknowable spiritual bargain between Malik and God – or does it? Audiard makes the haunted Malik the centre of an internal crisis, part psychological, part supernatural. The terrible unsought burden of assassinhood transforms him into a grotesque, parodic "prophet" and the agent of César's downfall. Intent on self-betterment, Malik takes classes, learns Corsican-dialect Italian and, to the contemptuous disgust of the Muslim prisoners, becomes the Corsicans' Uncle Tom-ish servant boy.
But poker-faced Malik has big plans; he is rising through the ranks – and laws from the new Sarkozy government about repatriating Corsican prisoners away from mainland French jails now leave César exposed, with no bodyguards. Malik, whom César fears and suspects more than anyone, is his Quisling nemesis, his only companion, and the son he never had or wanted to have.
Audiard has created a long, involved, relentlessly brutal but gripping and thrilling picture; it has the rangy, anecdotal feel of something drawn from real life, but its realism somehow accommodates an eerie supernatural shimmer. Malik has visions which are partly, but apparently only partly, explicable as trauma. The sweat and the machismo are very familiar from the French crime genre, which was revived only recently in the 70s-era Mesrine films. The passing of contraband, the defiant songs and shouts and burning garbage being flung from the high courtyard walls surely also summon up memories of Pontecorvo's The Battle of Algiers. But the movie has its own muscular originality.
Niels Arestrup is all too plausible as the jail gang-boss, coolly proprietorial with prisoners and guards alike, sporting a mask of impassive disdain through which world-weariness and fear gradually surface. But Arestrup and Audiard have found something new in this classic persona. What we see etched on César's face is pathetic loneliness and the horror of dying alone in prison. His weakness and Malik's future strength – this is the emotional fulcrum on which this tremendous film is structured.
Arestrup was outstanding in Audiard's previous film, The Beat That My Heart Skipped – also, intriguingly, in a tense, mutually resentful relationship with a younger man – but here he brings out new strains of desolation. Rahim, too, is a tremendous casting find for Audiard. The film returns us to what should be the biggest cliche in the book: the prison film, with its cells, its shouts, its corrupt guards, its boxes full of prisoners' heartrendingly meagre personal effects. But Audiard also revives the hidden source of our fascination with prisons. They are places of violence and fear, but also of paradoxical freedom – freedom from the ties of outside lives. They are places you can remake yourself, for good or ill, hellish furnaces in which you can smelt a new identity.
Inglourious Basterds - Fantastic from start to finish. I hope Christoph Waltz wins everything he's nominated for because he was outstanding.
right on cue ... golden glode winner ... :thumbup:
I agree with you on this and on Hurt Locker... I watched it last night and while I liked it, didn't see what the fuss was about. The slow motion shots were definitely cool and interesting but I'm not sure if it was extraordinary.
Inglourious Basterds
Terminator Salvation
Zombieland
Star Trek
Sherlock Holmes
Moon
Public Enemies
Hurt Locker
X-Men Origins: Wolverine
District 9
Watchmen
5. moon
this is probably because i just watched it today, but i really enjoyed this movie. it was a refreshing change in pace from the recent cgi-first, story-later sci-fi flicks that dominated the genre for far too long.
4. watchmen
blue people are cool. i was a huge fan of the graphic novel, so i was hoping the film wasn't gonna be a letdown. unfortunately, as you tell, it's not in the rightful #1 spot, but regardless it earned a spot in my top five because it came as close to the original story as it could without coming off hokey.
3. avatar
movies featuring blue people are cool. james cameron's action movies are even more cool. and all that in 3D is just plain badass.
2. inglorious basterds
tarantino at his best: telling a tale of revenge. this movie featured the ultimate villain in 2009, col. hanz landa, who got everything he deserved in the end (minus death).
1. the hangover
i caught it twice in theatres, watched a bootleg of it AT LEAST fifteen times, and bought the blu-ray on its release day. would i do this for a movie that's not the best of the year? probably, but this one actually deserves it.
notable films from 2009 which i haven't seen (and therefore were not considered), include:
the road
men who stare at goats
the blind side
(500) days of summer
Comments
right on cue ... golden glode winner ... :thumbup:
"I don't believe in damn curses. Wake up the damn Bambino and have me face him. Maybe I'll drill him in the ass." --- Pedro Martinez
Charlotte 03
Asheville 04
Atlanta 12
Greenville 16, Columbia 16
Seattle 18
Nashville 22
I too love taxi driver, requiem, and hurt locker.
Charlotte 03
Asheville 04
Atlanta 12
Greenville 16, Columbia 16
Seattle 18
Nashville 22
You owe it to yourself to at least check it out.
A Prophet (Un Prophète)
A classic French thriller with racial overtones from the director of The Beat That My Heart Skipped.
* * * * *
5 out of 5
Peter Bradshaw - Guardian.co.uk, Thursday 21 January 2010
'Du Rififi Chez les Hommes was the full title of Jules Dassin's classic tough-guy thriller from 1955 – aggro among men. Here, it is more a case of Rififi Among Men and God alike, in a blisteringly powerful prison-gangster picture from the French director Jacques Audiard. It comports itself like a modern classic from the very first frames, instantly hitting its massively confident stride. This is the work of the rarest kind of film-maker, the kind who knows precisely what he is doing and where he is going. The film's every effect is entirely intentional.
Newcomer Tahar Rahim plays Malik El Djebena, a young Arab guy about to start a six-year stretch in prison for what appears to be violence against police officers. He is a 19-year-old petty criminal, and this is his debut in adult detention. Malik is very frightened, cringing almost visibly into his clothes on walking the grim corridors of jail, and into his nakedness when he is inspected by medical officers.
On what is apparently his very first day in the exercise yard, Malik's vulnerability and his very blankness attract the hooded eye of César, the Corsican mobster with the guards in his pocket – incomparably played by Niels Arestrup. César needs someone to whack a fellow prisoner, who is about to incriminate his associates on the outside by turning state's witness. Surrounded by his thuggish courtiers, César curtly summons bewildered small-timer Malik and informs him that he must kill this switch, or be killed himself by César's lieutenants. He will be given instruction on how to do the job, and protection from César's crew for the rest of his term. No arguments: Malik is "in", a murderer. There is no way out.
Trembling Malik now finds himself in a terrifying, almost Greeneian dilemma. Should he refuse? Should he simply submit to death rather than become a murderer? The plan is that Malik must kill his victim, Reyeb (Hichem Yacoubi) with a razor-blade concealed in the roof of his mouth. Pretending to offer him a blowjob in his cell, he must work it out with his tongue and push it forward between his teeth while his face is invisibly at crotch-level, and then stand up and cut the man's throat. The scenes in which Malik must practise doing this in front of the mirror, retching and spitting blood into the sink, are the stuff of pure, scalp-prickling fear: I just can't remember being so tense in the cinema.
This nauseous forced deal between Malik and César appears to become the basis of a strange, unknowable spiritual bargain between Malik and God – or does it? Audiard makes the haunted Malik the centre of an internal crisis, part psychological, part supernatural. The terrible unsought burden of assassinhood transforms him into a grotesque, parodic "prophet" and the agent of César's downfall. Intent on self-betterment, Malik takes classes, learns Corsican-dialect Italian and, to the contemptuous disgust of the Muslim prisoners, becomes the Corsicans' Uncle Tom-ish servant boy.
But poker-faced Malik has big plans; he is rising through the ranks – and laws from the new Sarkozy government about repatriating Corsican prisoners away from mainland French jails now leave César exposed, with no bodyguards. Malik, whom César fears and suspects more than anyone, is his Quisling nemesis, his only companion, and the son he never had or wanted to have.
Audiard has created a long, involved, relentlessly brutal but gripping and thrilling picture; it has the rangy, anecdotal feel of something drawn from real life, but its realism somehow accommodates an eerie supernatural shimmer. Malik has visions which are partly, but apparently only partly, explicable as trauma. The sweat and the machismo are very familiar from the French crime genre, which was revived only recently in the 70s-era Mesrine films. The passing of contraband, the defiant songs and shouts and burning garbage being flung from the high courtyard walls surely also summon up memories of Pontecorvo's The Battle of Algiers. But the movie has its own muscular originality.
Niels Arestrup is all too plausible as the jail gang-boss, coolly proprietorial with prisoners and guards alike, sporting a mask of impassive disdain through which world-weariness and fear gradually surface. But Arestrup and Audiard have found something new in this classic persona. What we see etched on César's face is pathetic loneliness and the horror of dying alone in prison. His weakness and Malik's future strength – this is the emotional fulcrum on which this tremendous film is structured.
Arestrup was outstanding in Audiard's previous film, The Beat That My Heart Skipped – also, intriguingly, in a tense, mutually resentful relationship with a younger man – but here he brings out new strains of desolation. Rahim, too, is a tremendous casting find for Audiard. The film returns us to what should be the biggest cliche in the book: the prison film, with its cells, its shouts, its corrupt guards, its boxes full of prisoners' heartrendingly meagre personal effects. But Audiard also revives the hidden source of our fascination with prisons. They are places of violence and fear, but also of paradoxical freedom – freedom from the ties of outside lives. They are places you can remake yourself, for good or ill, hellish furnaces in which you can smelt a new identity.
you got a explosive team that just ends up in the dessert with some other people fighting insurgents. where did that scene come from?
then they are running around the streets looking for poeople in the alley.
we won't even metion the late night trip into the city to see the Beckham's family
it was average at best
Inglourious Basterds
Terminator Salvation
Zombieland
Star Trek
Sherlock Holmes
Moon
Public Enemies
Hurt Locker
X-Men Origins: Wolverine
District 9
Watchmen
5. moon
this is probably because i just watched it today, but i really enjoyed this movie. it was a refreshing change in pace from the recent cgi-first, story-later sci-fi flicks that dominated the genre for far too long.
4. watchmen
blue people are cool. i was a huge fan of the graphic novel, so i was hoping the film wasn't gonna be a letdown. unfortunately, as you tell, it's not in the rightful #1 spot, but regardless it earned a spot in my top five because it came as close to the original story as it could without coming off hokey.
3. avatar
movies featuring blue people are cool. james cameron's action movies are even more cool. and all that in 3D is just plain badass.
2. inglorious basterds
tarantino at his best: telling a tale of revenge. this movie featured the ultimate villain in 2009, col. hanz landa, who got everything he deserved in the end (minus death).
1. the hangover
i caught it twice in theatres, watched a bootleg of it AT LEAST fifteen times, and bought the blu-ray on its release day. would i do this for a movie that's not the best of the year? probably, but this one actually deserves it.
notable films from 2009 which i haven't seen (and therefore were not considered), include:
the road
men who stare at goats
the blind side
(500) days of summer