Friday, 11 July 2008

Hancock

Language: English
IMDB Rating: 6.9/ 10

Plot: A hard-living superhero who has fallen out of favor with the public enters into a questionable relationship with the wife of the public relations professional who's trying to repair his image (IMDB).

Wednesday, 9 July 2008

Battle Royale

Language: English
IMDB Rating: 8.0/ 10

Plot: Forty-two delinquent students, three days, one deserted Island: welcome to Battle Royale. A group of delinquent students from a Japanese high school have been forced by legislation to compete in a new forum of reality television.The students are each given a bag with a randomly selected weapon and a few rations of food and water and sent off to kill each other in a no-holds-barred (with a few minor rules) game to the death, which means that the students have three days to kill each other until one survives--or they all die. The movie focus on a few of the students and how they cope. Some decide to play the game like the psychotic Kiriyama or the sexual Mistuko, while others like the heroes of the movie--Shuya, Noriko, and Kawada--are trying to find a way to get off the Island without violence. However, as the numbers dwell down lower and lower on an hourly basis, is there any way for Shuya and classmates to survive (IMDB)?


Sunday, 6 July 2008

The Banquet

Language: Mandarin. English subtitles
IMDB Rating: 6.5/ 10

Plot: In 907 AD, the Tang Dynasty is in tatters; infighting snarls the imperial family. Crown Prince Wu Luan loves Little Wan, but his father takes her as his Empress. Wu Luan goes into exile, studying dance and music. His uncle murders his father, taking throne and Empress; uncle sends assassins to kill Wu Luan. The Crown Prince eludes death and comes to court. The Emperor arranges for Little Wan's coronation and dispatches Wu Luan to a distant land; he then calls for a midnight banquet on the 100th day of his rule. Poison, treachery, Wu Luan's return, and the love of the innocent Qing for Wu Luan set up the final entanglements. No Fortinbras or Horatio lay the dead to rest (IMBD).


Part I


Part II

Saturday, 5 July 2008

Green Street Hooligans

Language: English
IMDB Rating: 7.5/ 10

Plot: Unjustly expelled from Harvard when a stash of cocaine is found in his possession, Matt (Elijah Wood) moves to London to live with his sister and her husband Steve (Marc Warren.) He is quickly introduced to Steve's chirpy, cock-sure younger brother Pete (Charlie Hunnam.) Initially, Pete is reluctant to get acquainted with Matt and allow him to tread around the capital city with him because he may be seen by others as an 'outsider', but after a heavy drinking session with him and his mates he quickly changes his opinion of him. On the way back from a football match, Matt is viciously accosted by a gang of Birmingham City thugs, until Pete and his friends step in and save him. It is from here that Matt learns the truth about Pete and his friends- they are football hooligans, operating the GSE (Green Street Elite) 'firm.' Initially afraid of the violence, Matt soon ends up becoming as desensitized to it as his new found friends- but as events roll on, suspicion, shocking revelations and unsettled scores combine to a devastating climax where London's most fierce football rivals- Millwall and West Ham United- are set to go head to head (IMDB).




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Green Street Hooligans

Language: English
IMDB Rating: 7.5/ 10

Plot: Unjustly expelled from Harvard when a stash of cocaine is found in his possession, Matt (Elijah Wood) moves to London to live with his sister and her husband Steve (Marc Warren.) He is quickly introduced to Steve's chirpy, cock-sure younger brother Pete (Charlie Hunnam.) Initially, Pete is reluctant to get acquainted with Matt and allow him to tread around the capital city with him because he may be seen by others as an 'outsider', but after a heavy drinking session with him and his mates he quickly changes his opinion of him. On the way back from a football match, Matt is viciously accosted by a gang of Birmingham City thugs, until Pete and his friends step in and save him. It is from here that Matt learns the truth about Pete and his friends- they are football hooligans, operating the GSE (Green Street Elite) 'firm.' Initially afraid of the violence, Matt soon ends up becoming as desensitized to it as his new found friends- but as events roll on, suspicion, shocking revelations and unsettled scores combine to a devastating climax where London's most fierce football rivals- Millwall and West Ham United- are set to go head to head (IMDB).




No video? Get the DivX Web Player for Windows or Mac.

Green Street Hooligans

Language: English
IMDB Rating: 7.5/ 10

Plot: Unjustly expelled from Harvard when a stash of cocaine is found in his possession, Matt (Elijah Wood) moves to London to live with his sister and her husband Steve (Marc Warren.) He is quickly introduced to Steve's chirpy, cock-sure younger brother Pete (Charlie Hunnam.) Initially, Pete is reluctant to get acquainted with Matt and allow him to tread around the capital city with him because he may be seen by others as an 'outsider', but after a heavy drinking session with him and his mates he quickly changes his opinion of him. On the way back from a football match, Matt is viciously accosted by a gang of Birmingham City thugs, until Pete and his friends step in and save him. It is from here that Matt learns the truth about Pete and his friends- they are football hooligans, operating the GSE (Green Street Elite) 'firm.' Initially afraid of the violence, Matt soon ends up becoming as desensitized to it as his new found friends- but as events roll on, suspicion, shocking revelations and unsettled scores combine to a devastating climax where London's most fierce football rivals- Millwall and West Ham United- are set to go head to head (IMDB).




No video? Get the DivX Web Player for Windows or Mac.

Friday, 4 July 2008

The Cube (1969)

Language: English
IMDB Rating: 7.8/ 10

Plot: A man awakens inside a white cube, covered in a four-by-four grid. He has no memory of how he got there and there seems no way out. But as time passes, panels open temporarily to admit an intruder or onlooker. They pop back through their panels but bar the man from going through, pointing out "this is MY door; you'll have to find YOUR door." The intruders vary from individuals to a child on a tricycle and and a rock band. More and more people start to come into the cube, filling it up and this developes into a sort of cocktail party. A rock band comes through sometime during all of this, singing The Cube's theme song, "You'll never get out, you'll never get out, you'll never get out till you die." At one point the man sees himself, a double, and has a dialog with himself about how he has to find HIS way out. Is the man a prisoner? An inmate? Someone on a voluntary retreat? The stories change with each new visitor. Eventually, just as he succumbs to despair, a square panel clicks open. The man crawls through it and discovers he is in a clinic corridor. A therapist welcomes his escape form the Cube and takes him to his office. There the therapist reveals the reason the man was in the Cube. Or does he? Once in the office the man was given a fountain pen to sign some forms before being discharged. He accidently cuts his finger, and when he sucks the cut he tastes not blood but .... strawberry jam. The office then dissolves into ... the white cube. Fade to white (IMDB).


Thursday, 3 July 2008

Half Light


language: English/ Arabic subtitles
IMDB Rating: 6.0/ 10

Plot: In London, the successful novelist Rachel Carlson is married with the mediocre aspirant writer and great editor Brian and they live in a comfortable apartment with her son Thomas Carlson. While writing a new novel, Rachel forgets the back gate open and Thomas drowns in a lake. Eight months later, Rachel is still disturbed and she decides to move alone to a seaside cottage in Ingonish Cove, a very small coastal Scottish village. Sarah decides to visit the lighthouse in the island close to her house to help in her research for the book, where she meets the lighthouse keeper Angus McCulloch. One month later, she falls for him and they make love. On the next morning, she invites Angus to go to a birthday party in the shore, and while waiting for him, she discloses that Angus McCulloch died seven years ago. Rachel returns to the island trying to prove her sanity to her neighbor Finlay Murray, and they see that the lighthouse is completely empty. Rachel has a breakdown and she asks for help to her psychiatric Dr. Robert Freedman and to best friend Sharon Winton while she is haunted by ghosts.


Wednesday, 2 July 2008

La société du spectacle

This is a must see, although the book is of course a lot better...

Language: French/ English subtitles
IMDB Rating: 7./ 10

Plot: The 90 minute film took a year to make and incorporates footage from The Battleship Potemkin, October, New Babylon, Shanghai Gesture, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Rio Grande, The Charge of the Light Brigade, Johnny Guitar, and Confidential Report, as well as Soviet and Polish films, industrial films, American Westerns, news footage, advertisements, and many still photographs. Events such as the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald (who assassinated U.S. President John F. Kennedy in 1963), the revolutions in Spain in 1936, Hungary in 1956 and in Paris in 1968, and people such as Mao Zedong, Richard Nixon, and the Spanish Anarchist Durruti are represented. Throughout the movie, there is both a voiceover (of Debord) and inter-titles from "Society of the Spectacle" but also texts from the Committee of Occupation of the Sorbonne, Machiavelli, Marx, Tocqueville, Emile Pouget, and Soloviev. Without citations, these quotes are hard to decipher, especially with the subtitles (which exist even in the French version) but that is part of Debord’s goal “to problematize reception” (Greil and Sanborn) and force the viewer to be active (wiki).


Tuesday, 1 July 2008

An Inconvenient Truth

Language: English
IMDB Rating: 8.1/ 10

Plot: Director Davis Guggenheim eloquently weaves the science of global warming with Mr. Gore's personal history and lifelong commitment to reversing the effects of global climate change. A longtime advocate for the environment, Gore presents a wide array of facts and information in a thoughtful and compelling way. "Al Gore strips his presentations of politics, laying out the facts for the audience to draw their own conclusions in a charming, funny and engaging style, and by the end has everyone on the edge of their seats, gripped by his haunting message," said Guggenheim. An Inconvenient Truth is not a story of despair but rather a rallying cry to protect the one earth we all share. "It is now clear that we face a deepening global climate crisis that requires us to act boldly, quickly, and wisely," said Gore (IMDB).


Monday, 30 June 2008

Mindwalk

Language: English
IMDB Rating: 7.4/ 10

Plot: A US politician (Sam Waterston) visits his poet friend (John Heard) in Mont. St. Michael, France. While walking through the medeival island discussing their philosophies of life they happen upon Sonja (Liv Ullman), a scientist in recluse, who joins in their conversation. The two men listen to the ideas of this brilliant woman and discuss how her ideas can work in their own politician and poet lives (IMDB).


Sunday, 29 June 2008

ChungKing Express

Language: Cantonese/ English subtitles
IMDB Rating: 8.0/ 10

Plot: Wong Kar-Wai's movie about two love-struck cops is filmed in impressionistic splashes of motion and color. The first half deals with Cop 223, who has broken up with his girlfriend of five years. He purchases a tin of pineapples with an expiration date of May 1 each day for a month. By the end of that time, he feels that he will either be rejoined with his love or that it too will have expired forever. The second half shows Cop 663 dealing with his breakup with his flight attendant girlfriend. He talks to his apartment furnishings until he meets a new girl at a local lunch counter (IMDB).

Friday, 27 June 2008

Bomb the System

Language: English
IMDB Rating: 6.3/ 10

Plot: A tribute to graffiti art and the city where it all began. Blest, a 19-year-old graffiti writer, has just graduated from high school. With no ambition toward mainstream goals of work and family, he spends his time bombing the city with graffiti messages until he and his crew become the most wanted bombers by the corrupt NYPD Vandal Squad. He even attracts major media and gallery attention for his tags. Also part of Blest's crew are Buk 50 and his younger brother Lune, whose arrest and beating by the NYPD causes the crew to wage a full-on graffiti war against the city. As they fight with their spray cans and their tags, Blest meets a political activist, Alexandra. Soon after, Blest's relationship with Buk 50 and the crew fragments as Blest ponders his position in life (IMDB).

Rocket Science

Language: English
IMDB Rating: 6.8/ 10

Plot: Coming of age in Plainsboro, New Jersey. High school student Hal Hefner stutters. On the evening his parents stop arguing and separate, 43 miles away at the state tournament, his school's legendary debater, Ben Wekselbaum, goes blank mid-sentence, Ben's teammate Ginny Ryerson doesn't get a first-place trophy, and the world changes. That fall, to Hal's amazement, Ginny recruits him for the debate team, mentors him, and will be his partner. He still has his stutter, but he works hard and he falls in love with Ginny. On the day of the first debate of the season, the world changes again. From then until the day of the state tournament, Hal has a lot to sort out. Is love rocket science (IMDB)?

Thursday, 26 June 2008

Quiet City

Language: English
IMDB Rating: 6.5/ 10

Plot: Jamie is 21. She's from Atlanta. She's come to Brooklyn to visit her friend Samantha, but she can't find her. Jamie tries calling, but Samantha's phone is dead. Jamie meets Charlie when she asks him for directions. Nothing to do and nothing but time leads them to bowls of coleslaw, footraces in the park, art shows, and after parties (IMDB).


Wednesday, 25 June 2008

Sicko

Language: English
IMDB Rating: 8.4/ 10

Plot:Documentary look at health care in the United States as provided by profit-oriented health maintenance organizations (HMOs) compared to free, universal care in Canada, the U.K., and France. Moore contrasts U.S. media reports on Canadian care with the experiences of Canadians in hospitals and clinics there. He interviews patients and doctors in the U.K. about cost, quality, and salaries. He examines why Nixon promoted HMOs in 1971, and why the Clintons' reform effort failed in the 1990s. He talks to U.S. ex-pats in Paris about French services, and he takes three 9/11 clean-up volunteers, who developed respiratory problems, to Cuba for care. He asks of Americans, "Who are we?" (IMDB).

Tuesday, 24 June 2008

Roshomon

Akira Kurosawa's Roshomon (1950) is considered to be one of the best movies ever made. It certainly is a historic masterpiece, produced with both philosophical and psychological overtones.

Plot: In 12th century Japan, a samurai and his wife are attacked by the notorious bandit Tajomaru, and the samurai ends up dead. Tajomaru is captured shortly afterward and is put on trial, but his story and the wife's are so completely different that a psychic is brought in to allow the murdered man to give his own testimony. He tells yet another completely different story. Finally, a woodcutter who found the body reveals that he saw the whole thing, and his version is again completely different from the others.

Monday, 23 June 2008

Smoking Aces

Language: English/ Dutch subtitles
IMDB Rating: 6.6/ 10

Plot: Mob boss Primo Sparazza has taken out a hefty contract on Buddy "Aces" Israel, a sleazy magician who has agreed to turn state's evidence against the Vegas mob. The FBI, sensing a chance to use this small-time con to bring down big-target Sparazza, places Aces into protective custody-under the supervision of two agents dispatched to Aces' Lake Tahoe hideout. When the word of the price on Aces' head spreads into the community of ex-cons and cons-to-be, it entices bounty hunters, thugs-for-hire, deadly vixens and double-crossing mobsters to join in the hunt. With all eyes on Tahoe, this rogues' gallery collides in a comic race to hit the jackpot and rub out Aces (IMDB).

Part I


Part II

Genesis

Language: French (though little text)
IMDB Rating: 6.9/ 10

Plot: This film boldly undertakes to tell the story of life from the Big Bang to the variety of species that we know today. And the history lesson becomes a fairy tale.

Genesis asks that you leave aside everything you know about yourself, and think of your body as the substance that makes up the universe, your life as the energy that sparkled up the Big Bang, your projects as a shape, a limited space of organized chaos, resisting the deterioration of time.

The film is breath-taking and captivating from the opening sequence to the last shot. Every image of the film is carefully selected and placed in a sequence: swirling dirt becomes a galaxy; rings of water float on the sound of the mating dance. The technological prowess of the filming is staggering, but does not surpass the ingenuity of the editing, and camera movements: shot in his apparent loneliness, the insect looks like a genius, solving obstacles one after the other. Human meaning is attached to all images shown, from the fish pretending to be daydreaming while baiting its prey, to the crawling crab signaling to a rival. The story of the earth is told by the reality of those jungles and tropical beaches, that we know so little about: swimming frogs start to hop; the giant tortoise becomes a dinosaur (IMDB).

Sunday, 22 June 2008

Baraka

Language: None
IMDB Rating: 8/ 10

Plot: Without words, cameras show us the world, with an emphasis not on "where," but on "what's there." It begins with morning, natural landscapes and people at prayer: volcanoes, water falls, veldts, and forests; several hundred monks do a monkey chant. Indigenous peoples apply body paint; whole villages dance. The film moves to destruction of nature via logging, blasting, and strip mining. Images of poverty, rapid urban life, and factories give way to war, concentration camps, and mass graves. Ancient ruins come into view, and then a sacred river where pilgrims bathe and funeral pyres burn. Prayer and nature return. A monk rings a huge bell; stars wheel across the sky (IMDB).


Saturday, 21 June 2008

Terror Storm

Language: English/ Danish subtitles
IMDB Rating: 8.1/ 10

Plot: Throughout history, criminal elements inside governments have carried out terror attacks against their own populations as a pretext to enslave them. TerrorStorm reveals how, in the last hundred years, Western leaders have repeatedly murdered their own citizens while posing as their saviors.


Friday, 20 June 2008

Zabriskie Point

Language: English
IMDB rating: 6.8/ 10

Plot: An epic portrait of late Sixties America, as seen through the portrayal of two of its children: anthropology student Daria (who's helping a property developer build a village in the Los Angeles desert) and dropout Mark (who's wanted by the authorities for allegedly killing a policeman during a student riot) (IMDB).

Thursday, 19 June 2008

Monty Python's And Now For Something Completely Different

Language: English
IMDB Rating: 7.5/ 10

Plot: A collection of re-filmed sketches from the first and second series of the cult TV comedy show "Monty Python's Flying Circus". Includes such classics as "Nudge, Nudge", "Hell's Grannies", "Killer Cars", "Dead Parrot", "Lumberjack Song", "Blackmail" and "Upper Class Twit of the Year" (IMDB).


Wednesday, 18 June 2008

American Beauty

"A dark comical masterpiece that single-handedly announces the collapse of the American family infrastructure as it exists on the brink of Y2K (TNT RoughCut)."

"A dynamite comedy-drama that, unless it stiffs big-time at the box office, should be up for multi-Oscar nominations come February" (Seattle Post-Intelligencer)

Language: English
IMDB Rating: 8.6/ 10

Plot:Lester and Carolyn Burnham are on the outside, a perfect husband and wife, in a perfect house, in a perfect neighborhood. But inside, Lester is slipping deeper and deeper into a hopeless depression. He finally snaps when he becomes infatuated with one of his daughter's friends. Meanwhile, his daughter Jane is developing a happy friendship with a shy boy-next-door named Ricky, who lives with a homophobic father (IMDB).

(Note that the player opens a new window/ tap. Close that tab/ window and return to this site to see the movie in the megavideo player)

Tuesday, 17 June 2008

Super Size Me

Language: English
IMDB rating: 7.6/10

Plot: Why are Americans so fat? Two words: fast food. What would happen if you ate nothing but fast food for an entire month? Filmmaker Morgan Spurlock does just that and embarks on the most perilous journey of his life. The rules? For 30 days he can't eat or drink anything that isn't on McDonald's menu; he must wolf three squares a day; he must consume everything on the menu at least once and supersize his meal if asked. Spurlock treks across the country interviewing a host of experts on fast food and an equal number of regular folk while chowing down at the Golden Arches. Spurlock's grueling drive-through diet spirals him into a physical and emotional metamorphosis that will make you think twice about picking up another Big Mac (IMDB).


Monday, 16 June 2008

Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam

Language: English
IMDB Rating: 7.6/ 10

Plot: Dear America, is most certainly one of the really great war films, and this is because nearly everything is real, all footage and the letters read are real, the only things that aren't authentic are the actors voices, however these are some of Hollywoods finest so believing them to be the actual soldiers, mothers, nurses is easy.

Accompanied by a great soundtrack (has there ever been a Vietnam movie with a bad one) this is one of the most moving and poignent movies you will see, it is through its realness that ones gets a feel of how bad war really is, it is probably one of very few war movies that really makes you fear war, because there is no adventurous sub plot, just some letters from young guys, most of whom just want out (IMDB).

Rocky, Horror, Punk

Language: English
IMDB Rating: 7.0/ 10

Plot:After Janet accepts Brad's marriage proposal, the happy couple drive away from Denton, Ohio, only to get lost in the rain. They stumble upon the castle of Dr. Frank-N-Furter, a transvestite who is holding the annual convention of visitors from the planet Transsexual. Frank-N-Furter unveils his creation, a young man named Rocky Horror, who fears the doctor and rejects his sexual advances. When Frank-N-Furter announces that he is returning to the galaxy Transylvania, Riff Raff the butler and Magenta the maid declare that they have plans of their own. (An audience participation film)(IMDB).

Sunday, 15 June 2008

La Teta i la lluna

Post: A child does not stand the idea of having a new brother and dreams about drinking milk from the breasts of his mother again. The child asks the moon to bring him a tit only for him (IMDB).

Language: Catalan/ Spanish/ French - English subtitled
IMDB Rating: 6.6/ 10

Smash Palace

Plot: Al Shaw's life revolves around motor racing and his back country junkyard, the "Smash Palace". His French wife, Jacqui, doesn't appreciate the lack of attention due to Al's obsession with cars. When Al finds her in the arms of another man, he takes his daughter, Georgie and heads for the bush, desperately hoping to hold on to the only family he has left (IMDB).

Language:
English
IMDB rating: 7.5/ 10

Saturday, 14 June 2008

Les Choristes

Language: French spoken/ English subtitles
Year: 2004
IMDB rating: 7.8/ 10

Plot: Set in 1948, a professor of music, Clement Mathieu, becomes the supervisor at a boarding school for the rehabilitation for minors. What he discovers disconcerts him -- the current situation is repressive. Through the power of song, Clement tries to transform the students (IMDB).


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