STAY

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STAY

Marc Forster is not a director stuck to one genre.  After Monsters Ball (which I didn't think was as great as the praise it received) put him on the map back in 2001, he followed that up with the wonderful Finding Neverland. Then a couple years later he gave us Stranger Than Fiction - and has since gone on to direct a James Bond film: Quantum of Solace and World War Z. He was also the man at the helm of The Kite Runner.  And then there’s Stay, which he did back in 2005.

Stay is an interesting film for me to write about here, because, while I did like it, I can see where people have problems with it. However, for me, the problems seemed to bother me much less than as much as the film completely intrigued me.

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FIVE MINUTES OF HEAVEN (2009)

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FIVE MINUTES OF HEAVEN (2009)

Between 2001 and 2005, director Oliver Hirschbiegel made four films in his native Germany - two of which were the pretty good Das Experiment and the great Downfall (I haven't seen the other two). Then in 2007 he faltered hard with his first english language film, the not good movie that was The Invasion.

Thankfully he got back up on the horse and in 2009 delivered Five Minutes Of Heaven, a film about truth and reconciliation that, in a way, is a reconciliation of its own with fans of Hirschbiegel who had sat through The Invasion - okay, so that's me being a bit over dramatic, but I liked the metaphor so I went with it.

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EXAM (2009)

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EXAM (2009)

Back about a decade ago I was browsing Netflix looking for a movie to watch and Exam came up as a suggestion based on the hundreds of movies I had rated and liked/disliked, etc… Now, generally I was not impressed with these suggestion services, but in the case of Exam, Netflix did good.

The film begins with eight strangers competing for a job, entering a windowless room and sitting at their assigned desks. Then an invigilator enters the room, tells them the rules of the exam, puts 80 minutes on the clock and walks out, leaving behind the eight applicants and an armed guard.

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Equilibrium (2002)

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Equilibrium (2002)

WRITER/DIRECTOR: KURT WIMMER/BUDGET: $20 MILLION/GROSS (domestic): $1,203,974

Equilibrium is set in the future after world war III. Society has realized that mankind won't be able to survive a world war IV, so the fascist regime as moved to eliminate what makes us human: feelings/emotions, literature, music and art are all being eliminated and society is on a drug called Prozium which eliminates emotions. Christian Bale is cleric John Preston. a top ranking government agent responsible for destroying those who resist the rules. but when he misses a dose himself, he begins to see things differently.

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DEATH AND THE MAIDEN

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DEATH AND THE MAIDEN

Chinatown, Rosemary's Baby, The Pianist.  When people discuss Roman Polanski’s work it’s usually those films that come to mind.  However, when I think Polanski, Death And The Maiden is often first and foremost in my head.  The three aforementioned films are great - but for me, Death And The Maiden, is maybe my favorite of them all (which is saying a lot given how good Chinatown and Rosemary's Baby are).

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BE KIND REWIND

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BE KIND REWIND

Ahhhh, the title itself brings me back to my childhood and the VHS-era. Alright, so this is gonna date me a bit, but I remember when the first video store opened up in my town and my parents would have to rent a VHS machine (along with the VHS tapes) until we eventually bought one.  And so began to grow - exponentially with each video I rented - my love of movies.

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DEAD MEN DON'T WEAR PLAID

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DEAD MEN DON'T WEAR PLAID

If, when you hear the name, Steve Martin, you think Bringing Down The House, Cheaper By The Dozen 1 and 2 and The Pink Panther remake then I feel sorry for you.  Martin is one of the great comedic performers of the last few decades.  The only problem is that most of his best work was produced a few decades ago. Which brings us to Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid.

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HUNGER

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HUNGER

Hunger is the story of the last six weeks of Bobby Sands - an Irish republican who went on a hunger strike while in prison in 1981. What is so interesting about this film is that we don't really get introduced to bobby sands until maybe the second third of the the movie. The first third of the film is focused on one of the english guards in the prison and two other inmates. Actually, there are so many interesting things about this film, and that is but one of them.

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