추격자 (The Chaser)

Hands down the best action film I saw in 2008.

Eom Joong-ho is a former police officer turned pimp and his girls are disappearing. With the help of his slacker friend and employee Oh-jot, Joong-ho must match wits with a viscous killer and a corrupt and ineffective police force to find his missing girls. To say any more would give away too much of the films many plot twists.



The violence and gore of this film is visceral and raw; disturbingly realistic with a matching plot that is far more hardboiled than the self-proclaimed Oldboy. This is by no means a film for the squeamish. Regardless, instead of resorting to petty scare tactics, these scenes are masterfully directed to produce genuine tension that results in brilliant pacing. While the characters and plot are familiar enough for the genre: bad cop vs. worse villain, I never got the impression the film was lacking in originality. In fact the level of detail in the story and characters left me with a sense of fulfillment I find missing so many Hollywood action films that try to fill those gaps with shootouts, car chases and explosions. By the end of the movie I had come to understand and care for each and every one of the characters. Highly recommended.

Let the right one in - Låt den rätte komma in (2008)

This is a very creepy movie, but not in that cheap Hollywood spending billions to make a movie that is more gross than creepy, what I'm talking about is a sort of intimate creepiness.


There is no audible music, except when the characters themselves listen to the record player (or what have you). Excessive and increasingly disturbing sounds however, abound.

What makes this film so interesting is the in depth character development over the essentially minimalist Nordic backdrop.

In one sentence: its a story about a boy falling in love.

Not recommended for the faint of heart.

I Married a Strange Person?

Grant:   you ever see I Married a Strange Person?
                 bill plympton animation
                 interesting visuals, purposefully crude, very funny

 me:        nope

 
Grant:  it's about a man who gets zapped with satellite radiation and then his imagination                            becomes physical reality

Wiki:

I Married a Strange Person! is a musical, animated feature film by Bill Plympton. When Grant Boyer's satellite TV dish is hit by two birds in mid-coitus, just days before his own wedding, he gains a special secret power. His imagination is no longer something that just goes on in his head - whatever he imagines actually happens in real life. Sexual fantasies, daydreams, flashes of random weirdness, they all come true, brought into being by a strange nodule at the back of his neck, the base of his brain.

At first Grant's problems are domestic: his wife Keri is upset by the change that has come over him. During sex he fantasises about her as a nun, turns her breasts into balloon animals and imagines he's making love to three of her simultaneously, so she goes to live with her parents.

After an ill-fated television appearance, SmileCorp, the fourth-biggest US television network plots to steal Grant's nodule for their own benefit. Chaos and musical numbers abound when Keri returns to help save the day.

Check out Bill Plympton at:                               http://www.awn.com/plympton/

MAISON DE HIMIKO (Japan)

I am racking my brain trying to remember my list of good movies to recommend and I am surprised how much this one will not leave my head!

It is a fun movie!! A movie that will leave you feeling happy!

A plain faced girl is visited by a very handsome young man only to find that he bears a message from her father, his lover. Her father, we later learn, is the founder of a controversial retirement home for gays, a quiet resting place and sanctuary for those wishing to cross-dress and look beautiful in their old age.

Of course, the place and the people living there face hard social problems but the film is surprisingly calm, bearing its message quietly, point blank.

I think the film is very cleverly made, sweet and happy.

I hope you will be able to find it…

Sherlock Jr.

Sherlock Jr. (1924)

Buster Keaton at his best!!!

The night shift film projectionist in a movie theater dreams of becoming the next Sherlock Holmes.

This short film with no color and no sound is so unbelievably entertaining it outshines every high tec CG movie in the world!! Reel Stupefaction! Every moment the film is running you will be enthralled, amazed or laughing out loud! The story is clever and the acting is magic!

In this film Buster Keaton dishes out his greatest stunts. Stunt after stunt after stunt! Stunts that are so dangerous any one of them could have taken his life!! I tell you, the making of this film can be a film in and of its self.

The greatest comedian’s greatest movie!!

TIME magazine comments on Sherlock Jr.

"American surrealism? Sure. But let's not get fancy about it. It is more significantly, a great example of American minimalism—simple objects and movement manipulated in casually complex ways to generate a steadily rising gale of laughter. The whole thing is only 45 minutes long, not a second of which is wasted. In an age when most comedies are all windup and no punch, this is the most treasurable of virtues."—R.S.

Birdman of Alcatraz

Directed by John Frankenheimer. With Burt Lancaster, Karl Malden, Thelma Ritter.

This is a beautiful movie! It is about a young man who develops a friendship with birds while spending 45 years in solitary confinement. (Also interesting because one can see how different solitary confinement used to be). It is based on a true story.

The movie is famous, yes. But this is one of the good greats! Worth seeing. Quiet but touching. I would not say it is an especially deep movie but it is just so much better than what Hollywood makes today. No obvious good guy, bad guy with the happy ending. The characters are characters, real and meaningful, and their relationships with each other present a complexity and subtlety U.S. moves seems to have lost.

It is historically beautiful both as a story and as a movie.

Intacto (España, 2001)

Intacto is a wonderful thriller from the Oscar Nominated Director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, nominated for a short film titled ‘Esposados’ in 1997. This is his first feature-length film, and a kick ass one at that.

It is a complex and gripping thriller which deals with the notion of luck... who has it, who doesn´t, and what kinds of games you might try out if your really feel "lucky." What is especially interesting about the film is how convincing the argument presented is, namely that the lucky are really sponges which absorb the luck of others (an interesting way of considering how someone´s good fortune is another´s worst possible scenario).

The actors in the film are superb, and entirely convincing in their roles. I would reccomend this to anyone who is interested in suspense and thrills.

Intacto - Trailer

(Vease una critica en Español en: http://canalcine.ozu.es/datos/peliculas/pelicula151101.html)