Title ▲ Tws summary Trust Year Viewable | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
“Dogtooth” is a curiously unappealing title, even given this celebrated movie’s self-conscious weirdness. Somehow Dogtooth made my Gotta View List, so I ultimately got around to viewing it. What a mistake. It tells the story of a wealthy and robotic Greek family who use code for common wor…
WikChip Image
Sex that is unsexy & unthreatening
|
||||||
French musical sensation Serge Gainsbourg explains himself in this surreal biopic. Largely unknown here in America, Gainsbourg was a cross between Dylan, Sinatra and Leonard Cohen in France. The women he squired – including Brigitte Bardot during her superstar heyday – comprise a good part of h…
WikChip Image
Musician's Beauty: Gainsbourg & Bardot
|
||||||
The Chinese vs. the Japanese in the 16th century makes for a great martial-arts war movie, full of Shaolin vs. samurai, kung fu vs. karate. This Chinese production tells the tale from the Chinese POV, with Japanese pirates raiding peaceful Han Chinese villages and engaging in war crimes as part o…
WikChip Video
Serious Business
|
||||||
A new addition to the canon of great mafia movies, Gomorra entertainingly details the mundane savagery and sociopathic activities of Italy’s oldest organized crime organization. Darkly funny, Gomorra brings to life Roberto Saviano’s hugely important book…
WikChip Image
Camorra Country: Cancer @ the heart o...
|
||||||
The slang for corporate recruiter once connoted a frisson of danger. Then “Headhunter” lost its edge. Headhunters returns it and then some. An insanely funny thriller, it rivals fellow Scandinavian noir classic Girl with the Dragon Tattoo…
WikChip Image
This doesn't end well.
|
||||||
The French sure know how to concoct clever romantic comedies. If only the execution were up to snuff, Heartbreaker would be a classic of the genre. Oh bien, it screams for an American remake anyway. Hollywood simply has to cast their version better for a monster hit. Heartbreaker mask…
WikChip Video
Romantic Comedy, French Flair
|
||||||
Most everyone gets murdered in this crackerjack Scandinavian noir, making In Order of Disappearance – a long yet telling title for the most assured film of the year – serious as a headshot, yet often funny as hell. The dominos start falling after an innocent guy gets mistakenly knocked-off b…
WikChip Video
A common man takes down the mob.
|
||||||
Infernal Affairs screams Hong Kong 2002. Movie theaters advertise Will Smith & Tommy Lee Jones back in black and Harrison Ford as Capt. Alexei Vostrikov. Within that milieu, Alan Mak & Wai-keung Lau’s blockbuster unspools a cop story of such depth, perfection and tension that Martin Scorsese …
WikChip Video
Rock This
|
||||||
This great martial arts movie follows the beats and tropes of fictional king fu movies while burnishing the legend of Ip Man, a real life Grandmaster of Wing Chun kung fu and Bruce Lee’s teacher. The scene of an unarmed Master Ip facing down an armed Police Captain is a classic of the form. *I…
WikChip Image
Ip Man amid the Japanese occupation
|
||||||
Ip Man 2 was supposed to focus on the legendary Grandmaster’s relationship with Bruce Lee, his most famous disciple. But Lee’s descendants didn’t go along with the plan, so the movie ends up being about Ip Man’s post-war struggles to establish Wing Chun kung fu in colonial Hong Kong. The resul…
WikChip Image
Ip Man teaches Wing Chun kung fu
|