Terrence Malick is a reclusive director that shies away from Hollywood limelight (like Vampires from the Sun). On average, he has made a movie every eight years. His first two works, Badlands (1973) and Days of Heaven (1978) are now considered classic. The latter starred a young Richard Gere and won Malick the Best Director prize at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival. He has never been a box office favourite, but critics and actors have always loved him. His reluctance towards fame and his peculiar but highly recognizable style have given him and his movies cult status. In 1998, after a 20-year hiatus, Malick’s return behind the camera with The Thin Red Line, a lyric and masterful adaptation of the James Jones’ Second World War novel of the same title, was rightly welcomed as the cinematic event of the year. With a worldwide gross of almost 100 Million dollars, the movie is to date his most successful at the box office. Continue reading »
Beginners (2010)
Critics: 50 reviews Metascore: 81/100 (based on 28 reviews from Metacritic.com)
Director:Mike Mills
Writer:Mike Mills
Stars: Ewan McGregor, Christopher Plummer and Mélanie Laurent
Meet Hal (Christopher Plummer), his son Oliver (Ewan McGregor), and Oliver’s new girlfriend Anna (Melanie Laurent), they are all beginners. In what? In matters of Love and Life.
Beginners, Mike Mills’ second feature-length film, is a movie about the importance of the choices one makes to fill life with joy, rather than sadness. It tells three stories in three different timelines, interwoven with each other. The fil rouge that links each story is Oliver, a 38-year old artist. Through his eyes and voice (and the use of some clever graphics by the director), we go back and forth in time: we are shown glimpses of Oliver’s Mom and her unhappy marriage with Hal, a museum director and a closeted gay in a society that considers homosexuality an illness in desperate need of a cure; after his wife’s death, 75-year old Hal decides to begin a new life, we see him finally embracing his homosexuality freely and unabashedly; the third story is about Oliver himself: few months after his father’s death, still mourning for his loss, he meets Anna, a French actress, at a costume party. It is a particular moment in Oliver’s life, he’s trying to make sense of his own past, his own present, and decide which shape to give to his own future. Continue reading »

Genre: Drama, Romance
Running Time: 123 min.
MPAA Rating: R
Director: Ben Affleck
Writer: Peter Craig, Ben Affleck, Aaron Stockard, Chuck Hogan
Cast: Ben Affleck, Rebecca Hall, Jon Hamm, Jeremy Renner, Blake Lively, Titus Welliver, Pete Postlethwaite, Chris Cooper
Synopsis
“The Town” is Charleston, a one-square mile neighbourhood of Boston, a blue-collar suburb and the capitol city of America when it comes to bank robbers. Doug MacRay (Ben Affleck, billed also as director and co-writer here) is one of them. He is the leader of a gang of four responsible for robbing several banks and armoured trucks. Their robberies have always gone smooth, but during their last job (which is the opening scene of the movie), one of the gang members, the hot-headed Jem (James Coughlin) decides to take a bank manager, Claire Keesey (Rebecca Hall), as a hostage to protect their escape. As soon as they are clear, they release the hostage unharmed. Continue reading »
Joaquin Phoenix was gone and now he is back! Are we sure he was never gone in the first place?
After Casey Affleck announced that it was nothing but a joke, everywhere and everybody was ready to believe it. Well I don’t doubt that the documentary is really a joke, what a doubt is what it implied: that Phoenix’s first appearance on Letterman was a joke as well.
Why does everyone think the first appearance on Letterman’s was a joke? I see the whole thing from a different perspective: Mr. Phoenix was really gone back then, he unwisely sank his career down the drain… what came after is a an act of artificial resurrection, a clever one indeed. One that attempts to cover everything, even that stupid appearance on the Letterman’s show, with a larger-than-life blanket that says that everything was nothing but a joke. Continue reading »