A Slew of Rentals (including wicker man!)

[Kam]

Coming Home - (1978) HIGHLY Recommended. Hal Ashby's movie that garnered Jon Voigt and Jane Fonda academy awards about the effects of the vietnam war on a wounded veteran recovering and a wife waiting for her husband to return from the war. Fonda volunteers at the vet hospital after her husband (bruce dern in a phenomenal role) leaves for vietnam. She meets and begins a relationship with a crippled Jon Voigt. A powerful movie showing the effects of the war without being anti-war at all. Ashby, as anti-war as he was himself, did not make a preachy movie (i dont think any of his movies are ever 'preachy') but instead wanted to bring home the point (pay attention to voigt's closing speach to the high schoolers about serving) that we all have a choice.

Hour of the Wolf - (1968) Highly Recommended. Ingmar Bergman's only (i think) horror movie is a pyschological tale of an artist and his wife moving to an island, meeting the owners of the island, and the complete weirdness that follows. Max Von Sydow plays the guy perfectly, his insanity slowly building and even taking over his wife, who is overcome and enveloped by her hubby's total nuttiness. The build-up is very slow and methodical as the pieces of the story slowly unfold and you wonder what is really going on in the castle that the owners invite the couple over to for dinner.

Nightwatch - (2005) Recommended. A Russian movie about the forces of light and darkness banking on a prophecy from thousands of years ago coming true and throwing the balance of power to one side or the other. After a bloody war between the two sides, the generals meet and declare a truce. The good guys, called the Night Watch, patrol the badguys and make sure they adhere to the truce, while the bad guys, called the Day Watch, do the vice-versa. It's a fun, entertaining movie, but i had to watch it twice to finally really get everything that was going on. And, it was better the second time around. Its meant to be a trilogy, and they are currently shooting (or maybe it's wrapped) Day Watch. It was good enough that i'll see daywatch. The effects are itneresting, the story is pretty cool, overall good entertainment and worth a look.

Duma - (2004) HIGHLY Recommended. Great family movie about a young boy who takes in a cheetah cub, raises him, and then has to return him to the wild. I don't want to give anything else away other than the journey the two take and the relationship between the boy, the cheetah and a traveller they come across who helps (or does he?) them is so well told its just worth sitting down and seeing. AND, what's more impressive, is there were no digital cheetahs, all the interactions with the cat and the kid are real.

The Devil's Backbone - (2001) HIGHLY HIGHLY Recommended. A Ghost story set in an orphanage in spain at the end of WWII. An orphan boy is brought to an orphanage and soon discovers a mystery surrounding the death of boy. A great, fun, chilling, scary, suspensful, entertaining, well told story. Put it on your netflix queue, line it up, sit back, and enjoy.

Three... Extremes - (2005) Highly Recommended. (HIGHLY HIGHLY Recommended for one story) Three short horror films from some of asia's best directors.
Dumplings (by Fruit Chan) About an older actress wanting to capture the beauty of her youth by going to a woman who makes dumplings that can do just that. The imagery here... is flat out disgustingly haunting. along with the sound effects. it's just... wow. those light of heart might want to skip this one.
Cut (by Chan-Wook Park, director of Oldboy, one of my prior favorite movies i reviewed a while back) The best of the three films. Its another perfect tale of vengeance and just so damn good, it's chilling in that it really makes you look at humanity and what we can, and are capable, of doing.
Box (by Takashi Miike) Possibly the most scary of the three, until you get to the end and the reveal, which ruined the 'horror' but made for a good movie and creeps you out even more.

The Wicker Man - (1973) (for you def!) Recommended. I checked it out after hearing so much about it and wanting to see it before the remake. The trailer of the remake really looks like they're following the original, other than i don't know how they could possibly make this a happy ending without ruining the entire purpose of the movie. It's a very slow build, with a nice, kind of creepy feeling to the whole thing, as nothing much happens while The Equalizer goes around and investigates the dissapearance of a young girl and then the huge ending is really good and you kind of wonder if it really is going to end that way until it finally does. If only the investigation portion of the movie was more interesting. It's very Blair Witch in the same way, that the ending is phenomenal almost inspite of the entire build up.

And that's all for now

peace
k2

[Defshep]

Nice set of reviews, Kam. Thanks for The Wicker Man heads up. I'll probably rent it with Night Watch this weekend.

[L.J.]

Can't remember the last time I rented a movie.

I purchased Duma a couple of weeks ago but haven't had a chance to watch it yet. It's on my list of movies to get around to. That list seems to be getting longer and longer.

Nice reviews Kam!

[Worf101]

Coming Home -
Three... Extremes - (2005) Highly Recommended. (HIGHLY HIGHLY Recommended for one story) Three short horror films from some of asia's best directors.
Dumplings (by Fruit Chan) About an older actress wanting to capture the beauty of her youth by going to a woman who makes dumplings that can do just that. The imagery here... is flat out disgustingly haunting. along with the sound effects. it's just... wow. those light of heart might want to skip this one.
Cut (by Chan-Wook Park, director of Oldboy, one of my prior favorite movies i reviewed a while back) The best of the three films. Its another perfect tale of vengeance and just so damn good, it's chilling in that it really makes you look at humanity and what we can, and are capable, of doing.
Box (by Takashi Miike) Possibly the most scary of the three, until you get to the end and the reveal, which ruined the 'horror' but made for a good movie and creeps you out even more.

k2

I rented this about a month ago... there's now a 3 Extremes 2. It a trio of horror films from the 3 main Asian Countries. "Dumplings" is from China, "Cut" is Korean, and "Box" is Japanese. Each is far different from the other and reflect the state that the Cinema is in each country. China and Japan have gone through their "ChopSocky" and "Rude Boy" stages. Both "Box" and "Dumplings" reflect a more mature cinematic style than "Cut" which is by far the more brutal of the two. Korea is just coming into it's own in terms of Cinema and it'll be inteesting to see where it goes. I find current Japanese Horror/Sci Fi to be almost "Bergmanesque" in the way they slowly build and craft their tales. Good stuff.

Da Worfster