Painkiller
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| 97 97% | Synecdoche, New York (2008) - Rated 04 Mar 2011
"Kaufmann's brilliance here is to create a work so dense and creative on the storytelling side while remaining intensely human. This is unreal but without feeling abstracted and distant. What is it about? A lot of things. As I said it's very dense and people will be attempting to pick this apart for years to come. But it's the ability of Kaufmann and his cast to get us to connect on a very basic human level with the unreality of it all that makes this a great film."
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| 68 9% | Amores Perros (2000) - Rated 02 Mar 2011
"Didn't really feel this one. I don't think it earned the right to be so miserable."
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| 82 50% | Enter the Void (2010) - Rated 02 Mar 2011
"I could give this film a rating between about 40 and 95 and probably be able to justify it. It's long and at times tediously slow, but at the same it's an increadibly visceral and emotionally draining experience. I'm sitting here stunned after viewing it, and while I can scoff at some of the acting and the shallowness of the film's philosophy I simply can't get this out of my head. Everybody should watch it for the experience at least once. Whether it is any good or not is a different matter."
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| 88 71% | True Grit (2010) - Rated 16 Feb 2011
"Unusually for the Coens this a straight genre piece, a classic western with an adventure where the characters "grow up". Do not despair though because most of their usual trademarks are still there: idiosyncratic dialogue, wide shots of landscape, dark humour etc. And despite being confined to one genre I don't think as some have said it's a simple film. There's a lot of depth to it, and many of the themes are religious. It wouldn't be unfounded to view this as a companion to A Serious Man."
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| 76 28% | 127 Hours (2010) - Rated 14 Feb 2011
"An excellent performance by Franco, which combined with Boyle's high paced editing, surreal time lapses and saturated cinematography does a great job of demonstrating the tumolt of emotions experienced by Aron Ralston during his ordeal. The climactic scene is about as perfectly executed as one could imagine. I'm not usually squeamish with blood and gore but the sounds are excruciating. Unfortunately, despite the film's length, some of the hallucinations run on too long and feel like filler."
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| 94 83% | McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971) - Rated 13 Feb 2011
"Altman takes the Western genre and turns it on its head. Gone is the silent self-assured gunslinger, replaced by a man with more pretentions than sense, and a prostitute who is the most capable entrepenuer around. Gone are the open desolate plains, replaced with mountains, trees, mud, ice and snow. Through his naturalistic style, Altman is able to create a real sense of the misery and drudgery of the frontier life, and this only heightens the tragedy that unfolds before us."
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| 96 90% | Bloody Sunday (2002) - Rated 30 Jan 2011
"The problem facing historical films is that viewers know the ending already, so developing tension can be difficult. Greengrass provides us with a masterclass in this respect, first showing us the optimism of the marchers and contrasting that with the intentions of the British army. The camera is hand held and Greengrass avoids ever showing us the whole picture, which only adds to the sense of chaos. A word should be spared for James Nesbitt, who fits seemlessly into the Derry landscape."
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| 78 38% | In the Name of the Father (1993) - Rated 27 Jan 2011
"Day-Lewis and Postlethwaite are fantastic here. Day-Lewis is young, charismatic and angry, while Postlethwaite provides a bumbling dignity as a principled man who's hope and faith appear at first glance unsuited to surviving the crossfire the pair find themselves. The film follows Gerry's course from self-destructive fury to salvation but is let down by a poorly paced middle third and slightly simple moralising, failing to truly examine the magnitude of the injustice."
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| 96 90% | Ran (1985) - Rated 23 Jan 2011
"Grim! Ran isn't a subtle film (epics rarely are), but it's an extraordinarily powerful one thematically. In the world of Ran, there are only villians and victims. The few heros that exist are easily disposed of thanks to the wonders of modern weaponry, while fools speak more sense than the wise. There is no redemption, nothing to give the viewer any sense of hope. All of this is perfectly executed, with outstanding performances from Tatsuya Nakadai, Mieko Harada and Shinnosuke Ikehata."
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| 69 16% | Green Zone (2010) - Rated 11 Jan 2011
"Green Zone is a mixed bag. The action sequences are nothing we haven't seen before and aren't really all that exciting. The characters are one dimensional. But the strength of the film lies in its summing up of the failings by the media and US political establishment in the Iraq invasion. When Damon figures out the WMD justification is baloney, the reaction of the Iraqi characters is a justified "so what? How does that help us now?" There the film suggests there are no easy solutions to Iraq."
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