In Bruges is marketed as a much faster-paced shoot-’em-up than it ultimately is. This is not a bad thing, but it might come as a surprise to a moviegoer. However, like the enjoyment of Bruges the city, taking it slow and savoring the quieter moments brings a great deal of pleasure in the […]
Long did I put off watching this film – it’s lonely watching foreign screeners with no companion and I kept hoping for a reprieve, until finally I had to complete my Oscar ballot. And yet I struggle still to find the words to describe this film. Marion Cotillard’s win? Totally justified. Best […]
Despite all appearances, the writer of this $1.5 million dollar (NZ; so $1,285,290 USD) film did not see Napoleon Dynamite until after making this movie. This begs the question: How universal is this odd sort of loser character? Flight of the Conchords’ Jemaine Clement’s character Jarrod is a passive, apathetic, self-centered insecure […]
Day Watch (Dnevnoy Dozor)
Catch it on HBO
Fans of Night Watch, we eagerly gobbled up previews for this sequel. The trilogy is based on popular Russian fantasy novel by Sergey Lukyanenko (1998), and began with the excellent film Night Watch. We rushed out to our local art-house theater to fight the crowds we had fought the […]
This film might have slipped entirely under my radar had not the local art-house mailing list told me it was directed by the guy that did The Closet (http://www.cinerina.com/reviews/the-closet/). That was all I needed. The French title, La Doublure means roughly The Stand-In, but I think naming it The Valet suits the tone […]
Das Leben der Anderen
This film won the 2006 Oscar for Best Foreign Film, beating heir apparent Pan’s Labyrinth. It is visually and narratively much more conventional (and non-violent) than that film, and only as political as is required for the plot. It takes place in East Germany in 1984, about 5 years before […]
This is an exceptionally difficult movie to describe, never mind assess. On one hand, it has the simplistic charm of a old-fashioned fairy tale, with high stakes, magical and arbitrary rules, and an easily manipulated heroine. On the other hands, it is a depiction of a brutal despot’s heartless greed for an heir and power […]
I had inadvertently read a good deal of press about Babel and of course made my own assumptions about the film based on the title. What I did not expect Babel to actually be was a slow-building, much more effective version of Crash. The film begins with three seemingly unrelated stories, filled with flavor […]
Nochnoi Dozor
Highly anticipated, we waited eagerly for two years to see Night Watch after first hearing about it. Russia, not wanting to be left behind by the U.S. and Japan in creating creepy cool horror films that keep people up (talking or shuddering, depending on your tolerance level), has given us this first in a […]
If you have ever heard of Charles Busch’s Vampire Lesbians of Sodom, this film is its artistic alter ego. So many movies involving vampires these days go in one of two directions (both far away from Bram Stoker’s original re-invention of the legend) - either goth-rock toughies or embarrassingly cheesey suavesters. Eternal is […]
