Certificate:

Director: Pedro Almodóvar

Release Date: 26 August 2011

Main Cast:

Antonio Banderas … Robert Ledgard

Elena Anaya … Vera

Blanca Suárez … Norma

Jan Cornet … Vincente

Marisa Paredes … Marilia

Blimey! What an amazing film. Pedro Almodóvar does it again.

A brilliant plastic surgeon creates a type of synthetic skin that withstands any kind of damage. His human test subject is a beautiful woman named Vera who is contained within his home, and cared for by his head servant Marilia. Vera wears a skin-coloured suit made out of fabric instead of clothes and she is constantly watched by Robert and Marilia. She never leaves her room, which only Robert himself holds the key to.

You get no more than that from me! An absolute must see.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Certificate:

Director: Giorgos Lanthimos

Release Date: 23 April 2010

Main Cast:

Christos Stergioglou … Father

Michele Valley … Mother

Aggeliki Papoulia … Older Daughter

Mary Tsoni … Younger Daughter

Hristos Passalis … Son

Anna Kalaitzidou … Christina

Oh my. What a film! Dogtooth is unlike any other film I’ve ever seen. I really don’t know how to review it, because it causes all sorts of conflicting emotions. The film centres on a family where the parents keep their children totally isolated from society and and do not allow any outside influences to corrupt them. The children’s ages are never revealed but, physically, they are all adolescents. They have very low mental ages, and are all all totally emotionless in the sterile environment. The children never question their circumstances as this is all that they know. However, the father regularly brings home a work colleague of his to the house to provide sex for the son so that his natural male ‘urges’ are kept under control. Unsatisfied with the emotionless sex, she approaches the older daughter for sexual favours of her own, and this is where the seed of ‘corruption’ is planted.

So, what are the motives of the parents? Personally, I was left with the impression that they genuinely want to protect their children from all the bad things in life.

Dogtooth contains scenes of awkward humour, but those moment always end with an unsettling feeling. Overall, it’s a fantastic film that captivates from the start. It’s not always an ‘easy watch’, but it is a unique one.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Certificate:

Director: Dennis Gansel

Release Date: 19 September 2008

Main Cast:

Jürgen Vogel … Rainer Wenger

Frederick Lau … Tim Stoltefuss

Max Riemelt … Marco

Jennifer Ulrich … Karo

Fascist autocracy could never happen again in these enlightened times, could it? Worryingly, the answer is yes and The Wave demonstrates this brilliantly. A school has a ‘project week’, and teacher Rainer Wenger is assigned a class to discuss autocracy. However, things soon get out of hand…

Undoubtedly based on the events of the real life ‘Stanford Experiment’ (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_experiment), The Wave is a powerful film that shows how careful and alert we must all be that such events never happen again.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Certificate:

Director: Dean Parisot

Release Date: 28 April 2000

Tagline: The show has been cancelled, but the adventure is just beginning.

Main Cast:

Tim Allen … Jason Nesmith

Sigourney Weaver … Gwen DeMarco

Alan Rickman … Alexander Dane

I’m a ‘fanboy/girl’. I love going to conventions for my favourite programmes/films and have stood in awe of some of my favourite actors and have, on occasion, been barely able to utter much more than an “I love you” with a stupid grin on my face! Whilst I am seriously dedicated to my celluloid heroes, I am also able to take a bit of genial fun-poking too, and this is what Galaxy Quest is. Specifically, it is a parody of Star Trek‘s fans. ‘Trekkers’ (they hate being called ‘Trekkies’) do a lot of dressing up and acting in character at their conventions (some even speak nothing but ‘Klingon’ all weekend – which is, in truth, very sad), and this makes them a perfect subject for a parody.

On to the story. Actors from a long since ended TV show (Galaxy Quest) appear at a fan convention – some more happily than others – and are approached by some (seemingly nutters) people claiming to be from another galaxy requesting help.  It turns out that these people really are aliens, and they have watched episodes of “Galaxy Quest” believing that it is real life events, and they are on earth to recruit the ‘crew’ to help them vanquish their enemy. Needless to say, the Galaxy Quest crew find themselves well out of depth, but can they pull this charade off, and help defeat the enemy!

Alan Rickman is  brilliant as the jaded actor who is resentful of the fact that the only living he can now make is off the back of the character he played and now hates, and Sigourney Weaver as the ‘blonde bimbo’ role from the TV show is totally brilliant! Gwen DeMarco is the very antithesis of Ellen Ripley (Alien) – genius casting!

Not only does this film work as a parody, but it also works as a stand alone sci-fi film in its own right. It’s bloody marvellous

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Certificate:

Director: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck

Release Date: 13 April 2007

Tagline: Before the fall of the Berlin Wall, East Germany’s Secret Police listened to your secrets.

Main Cast:

Ulrich Mühe … Oberstleutnant Anton Grubitz

Martina Gedeck … Christa-Maria Sieland

Sebastian Koch … Georg Dreyman

Know everything. They pretty much did. This might, at first, seem like a boring and dull subject, but the films hooks and reels you in from the first few minutes. A member of the East German authorities is given the task to monitor a writer who is seen as a threat to the government by writing anti-Communist material. The whole house has been bugged and Grubitz listens to and reports on any and every event that happens. However, the longer he listens to the events, the more unsure he becomes of his convictions…

Brilliant!

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Certificate:

Director: Alejandro González Iñárritu

Release Date: 18 May 2001

Tagline: Love. Betrayal. Death.

Main Cast:

Emilio Echevarría … El Chivo

Gael García Bernal … Octavio (as Gael García)

Goya Toledo … Valeria

An absolute must see. It’s wonderful on so many layers, that to reveal any of them would be wrong. Watch it and observe all the details. The way that all three stories are linked is sublime. Cinema at its best.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Certificate:

Director: Peter Brook

Release Date: 13 August 1963

Tagline: Evil is inherent in the human mind, whatever innocence may cloak it…

Main Cast:

James Aubrey … Ralph

Tom Chapin … Jack

Hugh Edwards … Piggy

A wonderful vision of human (especially male) behaviour.

Read the book, then watch the film.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Certificate:

Director: Mike Hodges

Release Date: 5 December 1980

Tagline: He’ll save every one of us!

Main Cast:

Sam J. Jones … Flash Gordon

Melody Anderson … Dale Arden

Max von Sydow … The Emperor Ming

Bloody wonderful. If you were born in the 1970s and loved sci-fi, then you *have* to not only watch, but will also love this. In actual fact who wouldn’t love this? You’d have to be bereft of all sense of imagination and joy to dislike Flash Gordon. Unmissable to my generation (I was born in 1971), but perhaps not to others.

It’s my review and therefore gets five stars and a rating of unmissable!

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Certificate:

Director: Christopher Nolan

Release Date: 16 July 2010

Tagline: The dream is real.

Main Cast:

Dom Cobb … Leonardo DiCaprio

Arthur … Joseph Gordon-Levitt

Ariadne … Ellen Page

Eames … Tom Hardy

Saito … Ken Watanabe

Ok, first things first. 12A? Ludicrous. Not only is there a lot of violence, you’ll have to be very intelligent and/or are able to concentrate well to follow this if you are twelve. Any child less than this age/and or ability will only whinge, moan, declare (loudly) that they want to go to the toilet (it’s 148 minute long) and, more than likely, run around. Therefore, watch it with children present at your peril – distractions *will* result in you being completely lost.

Secondly, forget what you have heard about how it’s confusing and incomprehensible. The primary plot is very easy to grasp. It’s only when you try to link every subtle and glorious details that you begin to question and mull things over.

The primary plot is this. Dom Cobb and his colleagues are thieves, but not in the ordinary sense. They go into the the dreams of people to extract and steal things that are in the dreamer’s mind. They are architects of dream worlds and are able to manipulate the dreamer. Cobb has been accused of his wife’s murder and is unable to return to his home and children. A powerful business man, Saito, offers him a chance to get this accusation ‘taken care of’ if he helps him plant a seed (an inception) in to the mind of his terminally ill fiercest rival’s son. The inception in question is to place the idea that the son does not simply inherit the company and keeps it as it is, but to convince him that he is his own man and dissolve the company and follow his own path. Saito claims that if the son continues the business as it is, then it will be “the next superpower”. It seems that Saito has the world’s best interest at heart, but this is niether confirmed or proved false. Needless to say, Dom accepts this job.

It makes total sense. At least on the surface. I need to watch it again to fully understand all the intricacies of the film as a whole!

Inception is a true slice of originality that is sadly lacking in today’s remakes and regurgitations of the same plot but with different trimmings and actors. Absolutely bloody marvellous!

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

P.S. Leonardo DiCaprio is proving himself to be an exceptional actor with every passing year

Certificate:

Director: Niels Arden Oplev

Release Date: 12 March 2010

Main Cast:

Michael Nyqvist … Mikael Blomkvist

Noomi Rapace … Lisbeth Salander

Lena Endre … Erika Berger

Sven-Bertil Taube … Henrik Vanger

This is an absolute cracker. An adult, engrossing and thrilling film that does not fail to deliver. It’s absolutely brilliant on every level, and if you are a film lover, then you need to see it.

I really can’t give anything away, but the story is about how, forty years ago, Harriet Vanger disappeared from a family gathering on the island owned and inhabited by the powerful Vanger clan. Her body was never found, yet her uncle is convinced it was murder and that the killer is a member of his own tightly knit but dysfunctional family. He employs the disgraced financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist and the tattooed, ruthless computer hacker Lisbeth Salander to investigate.

Fantastic. What are you waiting for – watch it now!

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars