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: Guillem Morales

Release Date: 20 May 2011

Tagline: You can’t hide in the dark.

Main Cast:

Belén Rueda … Julia Levin / Sara

Lluís Homar … Isaac

Pablo Derqui … Ángel

This is a real treat!

In a nutshell, Sara and her twin sister, Julia both suffer from the same degenerative eye problem that is untreatable. After Sarah is found hanged at her home, Julia and her husband temporarily move in to Sarah’s home to deal with the funeral and such like. However, Julia suspects that her sister was murdered and tries to get to the bottom of it. As her own sight begins to falter things take a turn for the worse and she finds herself in a very dangerous situation.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Certificate:

Director: Takashi Miike

Release Date: 25 September 2010

Tagline: Take up your sword.

Main Cast:

Kôji Yakusho … Shinzaemon Shimada

Takayuki Yamada … Shinrouko

Yûsuke Iseya … Koyata

Gorô Inagaki … Lord Naritsugu Matsudaira

WARNING – MAJOR SPOILER BELOW!

This should have been called 12 Assassins and a Village Idiot With a Sling Shot. I love a good martial arts and sword fight film, but this is tedious beyond belief. Films of this genre, e.g. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,  are usually very believable. I understand that you sometimes have to suspend disbelief, but this goes beyond that.

Let’s start with the ‘village idiot’. He is found in the forest/mountains where a group of highly trained samurais have got lost in on the way to the showdown with the evil Lord Naritsugu Matsudaira. He’s the only one who lives in the forest/whatever, but they find him caught in a trap up in a tree. He’s an idiot, but surely not so much of an idiot that he would get caught in one of, presumably, his own traps.

Moving on to the fight scene. The amount of ludicrous traps that are made and set seemingly overnight in a small village are ridiculous. Somehow, the said assassins and idiot manage to fight and kill around two hundred proficient swordsmen. This goes on for an insufferable amount of time. The final scene where Lord Naritsugu Matsudaira is confronted by the man set on killing him is a total let down. At the end of the film, there are only two men left standing; one assassin and the idiot.

Yawn.

Rating: 2.5 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: Haim Tabakman

Release Date: 2 September 2009 (France)

Main Cast:

Zohar Shtrauss … Aaron Fleischman (as Zohar Strauss)

Ran Danker … Evri

Tinkerbell … Rivka Fleischman

I have no idea about Israeli films and what are taboo subject matters, but I’m guessing this is one of them. It’s basically a story of having to repress emotions and desires and the consequences one faces in a religion and community where such desires are deemed unacceptable. It also shows that religion is still controlled and driven by fear.

This isn’t a bad film, but it’s dreary. Very dreary.

Rating: 2.5 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:

Directors: Luis Piedrahita and Rodrigo Sopeña

Release Date: 29 May 2009

Tagline: Think inside the box.

Main Cast:

Lluís Homar … Hilbert

Alejo Sauras … Galois

Elena Ballesteros … Oliva

Santi Millán … Pascal

Federico Luppi … Fermat

I enjoyed this. However, it is far too much like Cube for me to rate it too highly. In a nutshell, four geniuses have been selected (supposedly on their ability to solve a kind of mathematical problem) to attend a special gathering of elite minds. They are all directed to drive to an isolated location, and are all given pseudonyms. It soon becomes clear that they have fallen into a deadly trap and must use their intelligence and quick thinking if they are to save their lives.

There are, however, two plot holes (see here http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1016301/goofs) that are far too big to overlook. All in all, though, I did enjoy it, and would recommend watching it.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

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

Certificate:

Directors: Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza

Release Date: 28 May 2010

Tagline: Fear revisited.

Main Cast:

Jonathan Mellor … Dr Owen

Óscar Zafra … Jefe (as Oscar Sánchez Zafra)

Ariel Casas … Larra

Alejandro Casaseca … Martos

Pablo Rosso … Rosso

Pep Molina … Padre Jennifer

[REC] 2 is an absolute corker of a sequel. It follows on directly from [REC] and is just as creepy and scary as the first. The story takes a really interesting twist and also leaves a loose ending, so we may be in for a trilogy. There’s nothing really to review, because you have to see the first one as 2 would make no sense on its own. If you liked the first, then you’ll love the sequel.

Bloody marvellous!

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars