Posts Tagged ‘movies’

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AFI FEST 2011: Café De Flore

30, Nov 2011
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I tend to go into a lot of films at the AFI Fest 2011 Presented by Audi blind, doing little to no research beforehand. What ends up happening is that there’s a fairly even mix of films that impress and films that just don’t do anything for me. Then there are a few that just outright surprise me and end up ranking ridiculously high on my Flickchart. This would be that film.

Café De Flore has two stories happening in parallel, the first about Antoine, a popular Montreal DJ struggling with a recent divorce. Despite ruining the lives of his family with the separation he’s the happiest he’s ever been in his life. Happening in tandem to this is the story of Jacqueline, a single mother in 1960s Paris taking care of her special-needs son. Both stories are connected by the song Café De Flore and perhaps much more.

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AFI FEST 2011: Rampart

13, Nov 2011
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RAMPART

My Flickchart Ranking: #934

Directed By: Oren Moverman
Starring: Woody Harrelson • Steve Buscemi • Sigourney Weaver • Robin Wright • Ben Foster
Genres: Drama • Police Drama

Rank This Movie

[disclaimer: I had to cut out of the last 20 minutes of the film to get in line for the next screening. My review only reflects up until that point. It might have gotten better.]

I can count the number of Police Dramas I’ve seen on one hand, and for good reason. The genre just doesn’t interest me all that much. Some of it has to do with the trappings of the genre – the rogue cop with aviator shades, the hardened chief ready to kick ass and the sarcastic detective who is more or less a jerk – but a majority of it is just that the plots are never all that engaging. And this film is no exception.

Rampart is the story of Dave Brown (Woody Harrelson), a hard-boiled police officer caught in the middle of a scandal involving the LA Rampart division. As his career deteriorates, so does his personal life. His wife and ex-wife kick him out of their homes, and his estranged daughter defies him every chance she gets. The only means he has to cope are through his job and his evening trysts with Linda, played by Robin Wright. Eventually, even those come under fire.

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Parental Guidance Not Needed

17, May 2011
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A local theater screens cult favorite movies every other Saturday night and recently played The Goonies. I got to talking with a friend of mine about it, and how it represents the movies of our youth that targeted us as viewers. Looking over the list of films that have played during this midnight series I see Beetlejuice (1988), Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), Pee-wee’s Big Adventure (1985), Gremlins (1984), The Princess Bride (1987), Ernest Goes to Camp (1987), Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), Return to Oz (1985), The Dark Crystal (1982) and Labyrinth (1986). Every one of those movies was released in the 1980s and rated PG. Other films include both Ghostbusters (1984) and Ghostbusters II (1989), the Back to the Future and Indiana Jones trilogies, most of which were released in the 1980s as PG films. I’ll grant you that some of these are “lesser” cinematic achievements (Return to Oz will scarcely be discussed in the same breath as The Wizard of Oz), but many are bona fide classics.

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The Guilty Pleasures: Dragon Edition

27, Apr 2011
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Dragons. Are there any cooler creatures in all of mythology? Unfortunately, in the world of celluloid, these great creatures of imagination have not really gotten their due. (At least, not in live-action cinema; why I have not yet seen How to Train Your Dragon is still beyond me.)

Is there any live-action film in which dragons have truly come off as cool as they deserve? Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire wasn’t too bad, but the dragons aren’t the stars. As I impatiently await the day when Peter Jackson brings his vision of the ultimate dragon, Smaug, to life in The Hobbit, I think about other dragon-themed movies that I have enjoyed in the past. None of them are deserving enough to be called “great”, but I’m very forgiving of movies I want to like. In one of these cases, I was the perfect age to see a dragon with real presence brought to life on the big screen – even if the movie he inhabited was far from perfect. Without further adieu, I present, in ascending order on my Flickchart, my picks for Guilty Pleasures starring dragons.

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Movies We Love (Despite Their Flaws)

2, Mar 2011
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This is a bit of a companion piece to another article I wrote about movies I don’t love, despite containing some great scenes. In this case, I have movies that I do love, despite the fact that I can acknowledge them to have flaws. These are not necessarily the “Guilty Pleasures” – movies that you know are bad, but love anyway. These are films that are generally considered to be at least pretty good; they all rank in the global Top 2000 on Flickchart, and three rank in the global Top 200. They all rank in my personal Top 200, and two of them are in my Top 20. One is a Best Picture Oscar winner. Three of the other four were nominated for at least one Oscar, and the fifth made many critics’ Top 10 lists the year it came out. I love them all, but I can admit each of them has certain “issues”. Here they are, in ascending order on my Flickchart:
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In Search of Best Picture

17, Feb 2011
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As the Oscar telecast creeps up on us again, it begs the question: How many times has the Academy really gotten this “Best Picture” thing right, anyway?

Think about it. How many controversial decisions are there in the Academy’s history? How many times is a movie other than Best Picture long remembered as the best of the year?

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