The Tribe (Ukraine, 2014)

Nine Things About the Movie The Tribe

1. OK, so when you think of major contributions to cinema, you may not think of the Ukraine. Until now. The Tribe is a completely unique film that pushes the boundaries of cinema, and serves as an experiment in human communication. It will be taught in film classes until the end of time.

2. The story takes place at a boarding school for kids who are both deaf and mute. Sergey is a teenage boy who has just arrived, and is immediately targeted by a group of boys. They both bully him and accept him, and he becomes part of the group. This ends up not being good for Sergey.

3. What makes the story so amazing is that the movie is "spoken" entirely in Ukranian sign language. There is absolutely no spoken dialogue, no narration, and no subtitles. There isn't even a musical soundtrack. The only sounds in the entire film are peripheral sounds like footsteps and traffic.

4. Unless you are one of the minuscule percentage of people that know Ukranian sign language, this film is the same for everybody in the world, hearing or deaf. You must concentrate and figure out the story entirely from body language, movement, and the way the movie is filmed. I was both surprised and proud that I pretty much understood what was going on.

5. It's pretty odd to watch people fight and have sex without ever saying anything. But it makes sense.

6. This movie could have ended up being a gimmicky stunt, but it's not. It tells a full story like any other movie, except that all the dialogue between the characters is in sign language. Since you don't know what the characters are saying to each other, some scenes don't make sense until a little later, when you get some more context.

7. The actors are actually deaf, and are just regular people - they are not professional actors. This is obvious in a few of the scenes, which feel a little amateur.

8. Though the movie is about teenagers, it's pretty adult, and contains scenes of fairly explicit sex and violence. It's bleak, both visually and emotionally.

9. Because it takes place in almost complete silence, and it's a drama with no special effects or loud noises, this movie is not for everybody. Some people may find it boring, or even fall asleep from a lack of stimulation. And that's too bad. Reflecting on what the movie does and says, I think it's an amazing work of art that opened my ears to parts of life that I didn't realize I could actually hear.

Y Tu Mama Tambien [Mexico, 2001]

Nine Things About the Movie Y Tu Mama Tambien [aka And Your Mother Too]

1. This is a rare “coming of age” film that dares to explore the topic of young adulthood in a deeper way than most such films do. Honestly, when this movie was released in 2001, I don’t think America was ready to handle it. It’s too truthful.

2. It stars Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna as Julio and Tenoch, two horny teenage boys who are best friends. The movie opens with two sex scenes - each of the boys is giving a special goodbye to their girlfriends before the girls take a trip to Italy.

3. Once the girls are gone, the boys are bored, so they convince Luisa, the hot wife of Tenoch’s cousin, to go with them on a road trip to a beach - even though they made the beach up in their head. Their plan is to sleep with Luisa during the trip.

4.The boys’ plan begins to work, and of course both boys start falling in love with Luisa. This opens a much deeper well of sexual angst and tension than they are ready to deal with. Emotions become raw and secrets come out.

5.  Every now and then a narrator jumps in to give some background information, or to tell the audience things that the characters don’t know. It’s a weird touch.

6. There is some political subtext to the film, which I admit I didn’t really understand.

7. Bernal and Luna positively shine as the friends who love each other more deeply than even they know. The movie would have been an awkward flop without their emotional commitment to the roles.

8. The movie won a number of international awards. Unfortunately, the films explicit sexual content prevented it from getting a wide release in America. Which is stupid. Yeah, there is a lot of sex, and a lot of nudity (male and female) but it’s not pornographic or gratuitous. It is an integral part of the characters’ development. Anyway, once again, very few Americans saw this film.

9. Even today, there are people who will not be comfortable with this movie because of the open sexuality of the characters, and the way the movie sensitively exposes secret (but common) characteristics of close male friendships. And that's too bad. This is a touching and honest portrayal of young adults figuring out that their emotions are a lot larger and less logical than they expected.

Beyond the Black Rainbow [Canada, 2010]

Nine Things About the Movie Beyond the Black Rainbow

1. There are four kinds of drug movies:

a) movies about how terrible drugs are - most movies are of this type.

b) movies that show drugs are funny and harmless - these are the weed movies like “Friday” and “Pineapple Express”.

c) movies that can only really be appreciated if you are on drugs - movies like “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”, “Brazil”, “2001: A Space Odyssey”, or “Apocalypse Now”..

d) then there is the most rare movie of all - the movie that is itself a drug. These are movies that try to cause you to feel the same way that a psychedelic experience will.

2. This movie is in the last category. There is no way to describe this movie in regular language. Combining Kubrick, Cronenberg, Lynch, Burroughs, and Lovecraft, this isn't even really a movie by traditional standards, but an experiment in using cinema to alter consciousness.

3. The director himself called this a “trance film”, and downplayed the actual story for an atmospheric and dream-like experience.

4. It's set in 1983, but the soul of the film is locked in an acid-induced fever dream from 1965. The plot, if it matters, is about a telepathic girl held against her will in a bizarre hospital, while her doctor does strange things with drugs and a glowing crystal in an attempt to find ultimate reality. Or something like that.

5. The movie shows the dark side of the hippy movement. While trying to bring peace and light to the world, the movie argues that hippies did just the opposite, causing people to go too far in their quest for inner peace - whether it was from drugs or occult games. The Balance was upset.

6. There is not much violence, and even less sex, in this film. This film is concerned with issues far beyond such mundane dramas. For example, if you don’t get the reference that the movie’s drugs are provided by a pharmacy named “Benway”... well, then you can’t fully appreciate what the movie is reaching for. I’m sorry.

7.The film uses amazing old-school visuals and mesmerising soundscapes to make the viewer feel... weird. Trippy. Comfortably uncomfortable. The movie exterminates rational thought. Some people will understand this. Some won’t.

8. I’ve seen the film more than once, and each time I swear they changed the movie and added in scenes that weren’t there before.

9. I don’t need to tell you if you should watch this movie - you already know by the time you’ve read this far .If you are questioning whether this movie is for you… well, then it’s probably not.

I Stand Alone [France, 1998]

Nine Things About the Movie I Stand Alone

1. Out of all the countries of the world, only two - France and Germany - produce people that have the unflinching courage to make movies that depict the hellish pointlessness of life. This movie, being French, is one of those movies.

2. In 1991, French director Gaspar Noe made a short, 40-minute movie called “Meat” (the actual French title is “Carne”). It’s about a strange and bitter man working as a horse butcher. He has an autistic daughter, and he struggles to raise her by himself - without giving in to the temptation to molest her. The short film won awards for its unique vision and brutal style, but was never released on DVD, so most people have never seen it.

3. In 1998, Noe made a sequel with the American title “I Stand Alone”. The beginning of it summarizes “Meat” very quickly; but if you have the resources to find the original film, I suggest watching it before this one. It makes it easier to understand the characters and what makes them tick. Plus it gives you a taste of Noe’s unique style - and lets you decide if you actually want to watch the sequel.

4.The main character doesn’t have a name, he’s just a mentally unstable butcher. His life is miserable and empty, and he hates everything, including his wife and unborn child. And black people, and gay people, and rich people, and Nazis. Anyway, after a violent confrontation that leaves him homeless, the butcher strikes out on his own to remake his life. But life has never worked in his favor, and the butcher heads towards a breaking point. He ends up with only a gun and three bullets, and he has to decide what to do with them.

5. Most of the movie’s script consists of the butcher’s internal monologue - he narrates what’s going on inside his head as he bounces between friends, jobs, and bars.

6. While the butcher’s experiences are a commentary on contemporary French life, it could just as easily be a commentary on America.

7. The butcher is racist, homophobic, lusts after his daughter, and believes that life is completely worthless. He is one of the most unredeemable characters in cinematic history. And yet the movie makes us sympathize with him as we understand how he got this way. We recognize that society’s angry crazy people are really just sad and pathetic.

8. Twenty minutes before the end of the movie, the audience is given a warning that they might want to stop watching. This is not because the rest of the movie is too violent to handle (though it is pretty violent), but because it detonates a psychological nuclear bomb, and you are whiplashed through the butcher’s breakdown. You are horrified, then hopeful… and then horrified again.

9. It’s a controversial movie because you get inside this man’s head to such a degree that you understand how violence can naturally seem to be a solution to a life that is so tortured as to be unlivable. This movie is an intimately devastating punch in the throat that dares to show you the black truth sliding in the background of our life.

This is not a date movie.

Wolf Creek 2 [Australia, 2014]

Nine Things about the Movie Wolf Creek 2

1. Made eight years after the first “Wolf Creek”, this movie continues the adventures of Mick Taylor, the awkwardly charming but brutal serial killer with a nerve-grating chuckle.

2. Like the first movie, this is “inspired by true events”, which means it was partly inspired by two famous Australian killers. But this story never happened.

3. There is a pretty obvious anti-tourist element in the plot of this movie. I might take “visit Australia” off of my bucket list.

4. The first movie was about two European backpackers that are stalked by a killer in the outback. The sequel is about two European backpackers that are stalked by a killer in the outback.

5. Director Greg McLean broke some rules of horror films in the first movie. He also breaks some rules of horror sequels in this movie. So despite having the almost exact same setup, this movie goes in a wildly different direction than the first. It does a pretty good job of subverting expectations and surprising you, at least for awhile.

6. The first half of the movie seems determined to be more violent than the first one. It’s pretty extreme. But it runs out of creative steam about halfway through, and then settles down into your more traditional “terrorize the captive” sequences.

7. Like the first film, the acting is better than you usually find in these kinds of movies. Ryan Corr is really good as the British surfer unwillingly brought into the drama. And John Jarratt guarantees that the Mick Taylor character joins the hall of fame of truly evil villains.

8. There is a very dark and macabre sense of humor to the movie, which lends a somewhat surreal quality to the film. A lot of it comes from Mick Taylor muttering to himself, so unless you are an expert at understanding Australian accents and slang, make sure you have the subtitles on.

9. This isn’t better than the first movie, but it’s not really worse, either. There are some very memorable scenes here. If you are a fan of the first film, you’ll like this one, too. And if you weren’t a fan of the first one, well, this won’t change your mind.

TRAILER

Snowpiercer [USA, South Korea, 2014]

Nine Things about the Movie Snowpiercer


1. This crazy cool science fiction film is one of the most astounding, violent - and weird - movies of the year.

2. The opening credits frontload the story: In 2014, in order to combat global warming, a chemical was released into the atmosphere to cool the temperature a few degrees. Only it went too far and the planet froze. The only survivors are a few thousand people on a train that continuously circles the globe. The train is divided according to class structure, with the richest people living in the head of the train, and the poorest living in the tail.

3. The movie opens by dropping you onto the train in the year 2031, and lets you figure out the rest of what’s going on by yourself. It gives you the broad strokes, but you have to do some work to figure out some of the details.

4. The main focus of the movie is a revolution by the poor people to advance and take over the head of the train. But as the class warfare escalates, you learn more of the secrets about the train. The story slowly spins outward to encompass a lot of issues and ideas.

5. The movie balances humor, anxiety, fear, chaos, and horror, and places it all on a moving train that nobody can leave. It is a lot darker and more violent than I expected.

6. The mood is lightened a few times by some really weird humor that feels out of place with the rest of the movie, but it’s well done, so you just go with it.

7. The acting is uniformly great. This is easily the best performance I’ve seen by Chris Evans. I didn’t know he could actually act, but I totally forgive him for being Captain America now. And while Tilda Swinton has never given a bad performance, she is deliciously deranged in this movie. This will go down as one of her more memorable roles.

8. Being directed by a South Korean director, the movie was released last year in South Korea, where it broke box-office records. But the American studio releasing the film wanted some changes to make it less weird, not as dark, and easier to understand. The director refused, and there was a battle over the control of the film. The director won, and the movie was released in its original form, although just in a small amount of theaters.

9. Not everyone is going to like this movie. It’s pretty strange. It’s political, psychological, and philosophical. There’s a high body count. It’s both thought-provoking and gut-wrenching. But if you want a science fiction film that is the exact opposite of blockbusters like “Transformers”, then this is what you want to see.

Wolf Creek [Australia, 2005]

Nine Things about the Movie Wolf Creek

1. This low budget serial-killer thriller manages to be better than almost all horror movies America has put out in the decade since it was made.

2. Of course, it’s “based on a true story”. Of course, this story never happened. The movie was based on elements of several crime cases in recent Australian history.

3. The first half of the movie is relatively slow, to make sure you get to know the main characters, two British female tourists who are backpacking across Australia with their Australian friend Ben. During their travels their car breaks down, and they are rescued by a kindly old man who takes them back to his mining site camp.

4. The second half of the movie tells you what happens to them when they reach the old man’s camp. It is a cruel, violent, rush.

5. If you get a chance, look for the name of the mining site camp written on a sign. Spelled backwards, it’s the name of a serial killer the movie is based on.

6. The movie was hated by many mainstream critics, who were appalled at the brutality and bleakness of the film. Roger Ebert gave it a rare rating of zero stars.

7. But other critics placed it on various “best of” horror lists, for the exact same reason. I am one of these critics.

8. What impressed me the most was how relatively smart this movie is - the characters feel genuine, and they have more common sense than your usual movie victims. The movie breaks some traditional rules of horror, so it’s hard to predict what is going to happen - which makes it hurt all the more when you see what does happen.

9. This movie is not for everyone, but it is an intelligent, intense, sadistic piece of work that has more courage 
than most of its contemporaries.

Are All Men Pedophiles? [Netherlands, 2012]

Nine Things about the Movie Are All Men Pedophiles?

1. This is an unusual documentary about the natural attractions that men have to younger girls. It weaves together threads from evolution, religion, psychology, and society.

2. A lot of time is spent explaining that what a lot of people consider pedophilia is really hebephilia (which is attraction to adolescents). This distinction is very important to narrator/director Jan-Willem Breure.

3. There are interviews with victims of pedophiles, and admitted pedophiles.

4. The movie highlights the hypocrisy of western culture, which condemns attraction to younger girls while simultaneously portraying girls as sex objects, especially in the fashion industry.

5. The movie does a remarkable job of walking a fine line on the subject... as much as one can. It seeks to understand the different forms of men’s attraction to girls, without condemning all forms outright. This has caused controversy, and the director has been accused of not having a strong enough agenda, making him kind of suspicious.

6. The movie also makes the case that the fear of pedophilia has gone too far, that paranoia is taking over, and that men and boys are being taught that they are naturally a danger to girls.

7. There is a weird strangeness to the film, due to the way the interviews are edited. The people move and talk in slightly abnormal ways, almost like they were computer generated. It’s very creative, but it’s also very distracting.

8. After the credits, you see director/narrator Jan-Willem Breure give his own answer to the question in the title of the film. It’s sort of a bold answer.

9. This is an interesting, confrontational, and sometimes uncomfortable examination of human sexuality. It leaves you feeling that love and desire are hopelessly uncontrollable, no matter how society tries to structure them.

Berberian Sound Studio [Britain, 2012]

Nine Things about the Movie Berberian Sound Studio

1.This mindbender is a movie about making a movie. It’s partly a drama, and partly a tribute to the giallo films of the 1970’s. It’s by a fairly new director, Peter Strickland.

2. It’s about a shy, introverted foley artist (that’s the guy in charge of sound effects in movies) named Gilderoy that makes a trip to Italy to work on a film that he thinks is about horses. Gilderoy discovers the movie is actually a horror movie, and he is responsible for making the torture and killing scenes sound realistic. This does not sit well with the more peaceful nature of Gilderoy, and he has trouble doing it.

3. The producer and director of the horror film are rude, egotistical, and sexist. Their behavior gets progressively worse. The horror scenes get more extreme. Gilderoy is feeling more stressed and uncomfortable. 

4. Eventually, his reality begins to crack. He starts to become detached, and the boundaries of his life get fuzzy. And then, well, it’s hard to explain what happens next. He seems to slowly become fictionalized. His life transforms, in bits and pieces, into the movie he’s working on. I think.

5. While the movie being made is a horror film, we never see any of it.The director of the real film, Strickland, reverses everything. Instead of seeing the various tortures and murders being depicted, we just witness the ways in which the various sounds of it are created. This makes the movie quite educational.

6. Fans of 1970’s Italian giallo directors like Argento and Fulci will appreciate the camera work and the soundtrack of this movie (and the one in it).

7. As you might suspect, this movie is all about the sound. Pay attention to how and when sound is created, used, and repeated. They provide one of the few clues to what is actually going on.

8. It’s hard to say if the movie actually means anything, or if it is just a “Twilight Zone”-ish head scratcher. If Strickland is trying to say something deeper about movies, or life, or whatever, it probably comes from the fact that the killers in giallo films stereotypically wore black gloves and a trenchcoat. Look for where that shows up in this film.

9. This is an impressive film for the director, who had only made one film before this, with his uncle’s inheritance money. It’s a creative, strange tale of movies and madness. And lots of garden vegetables.

Amores Perros [Mexico, 2000]

Nine Things about the Movie Amores Perros [aka Love’s a Bitch]

1. This movie is the first of director Alejandro González Iñárritu’s “Death Trilogy”. Don’t take the word “death” literally here - there are different kinds of death. 

2. It consists of three separate stories in Mexico City that intersect in one random, life-changing moment. 

3. The first story is set around the dogfighting culture. A young man is obsessed with his sister-in-law, and attempts to win her away from his brother who is an abusive, small-time criminal (this story was Gael Garcia Bernal’s first film role, who is one of the best actors to come from Latin America in a long time).

4. The second story is about a supermodel and her secret boyfriend, who is cheating on his wife. When things go bad for the supermodel’s career, and her dog gets trapped under the floorboards of the apartment, the stress on the couple reaches a breaking point.

5. The third story is about a homeless man who collects stray dogs, follows people around the city, and sometimes shoots them. When he collides with people in the other two stories, he begins to question what he’s doing.

6. The script is engaging and well-constructed; the choices a character makes in one of the stories cause consequences in the other stories. But none of the characters ever actually meet each other. It’s like a chain of dominoes that you didn’t even know was set up.

7. Dogs play a significant symbolic role in each of the stories, and serve as metaphors for the deeper themes of love, loyalty, freedom, exploitation, and violence.

8.There are a lot of graphic depictions of dogfighting and other cruelty to animals. Iñárritu was heavily criticized for this, but he wanted to give an honest depiction of the underground economy in Mexico City, which includes dogfighting.

9. “Amores Perros” is an examination of different forms of love, and different ways that love can cause chaos in life. It’s a smart, original drama that makes you care about the characters. And in the end, it makes you reflect on your choices, and how those choices may impact people you’ve never even met.

Nymphomaniac [Denmark, 2013]

Nine Things about the Movie Nymphomaniac

1. This is the third film Lars von Trier’s Depression Trilogy, after Antichrist and Melancholia. It’s a 4-hour movie that was released in theaters in two parts. The original version is over 5 hours long, but, as of the time of this writing, has never been released anywhere. It’s the most straightforward and easily understood of the three films, but it still requires focus, stamina, and an open mind.

2. While all three films can be seen as stand-alone films, they should be seen in order, as “Nymphomaniac” shares the casts of the first two movies, and brings the themes full circle. There are several explicit references to “Antichrist” in this movie.

3. Charlotte Gainsbourg returns once again in the third episode, exposing herself in new and humiliating ways. This time, she plays a sex addict that is found beaten in the street by a kindly, intellectual old man who brings her home. She tells her life story to him.

4. The movie makes the claim that sexuality is the single most powerful force in a person’s life. As a consequence, this is an extremely sexually graphic movie - all of the main actors had to employ body doubles (which means porn stars) when filming the actual sex scenes.

5. In this movie, sex is described not only literally, but also in metaphors. Music, fishing, mathematics, delirium, religion, and systemic violence are some of the perspectives through which the movie looks at sex.

6. Von Trier deconstructs sex and love and shows that they are really manifestations of loneliness, emptiness, and meaninglessness. They are sometimes useful distractions, and sometimes destructive forces, in a random and coincidental world that cares nothing for us.

7. The anti-woman themes that many people see in “Antichrist” are explored and expanded in this film, which is a raw and anguished cry of a woman’s struggle with her natural power.

8. The acting in this movie is uniformly good; Shia LaBoeuf does a great job (although his accent sucks), and Uma Thurman delivers a jaw-dropping performance of an abandoned wife. But Jamie Bell almost steals the whole movie in his portrayal of a sadistic man offering his services to discerning women.

9. This movie is a long, angry look at the hypocrisies and social inheritances in modern life. I would hesitate to recommend this movie (or the other two films in the trilogy, for that matter) to anyone who has never experienced Lars von Trier before. But for those that are ready for this scorching, sexual, existential howl, it’s a fascinating conclusion to a remarkable trilogy.

WARNING: This trailer is NSFW.

Melancholia [Denmark, 2011]

Nine Things about the Movie Melancholia

1.This extraordinary film is the second in director Lars von Trier’s Depression Trilogy, after “Antichrist”. It’s not a sequel, it is a companion film. It examines similar themes, although this time in a science fiction genre. This movie is not as extreme as “Antichrist”, and is easier to understand. But that doesn’t mean this movie is a walk in the park. After all, it is Lars von Trier.

2. Von Trier wrote the movie based on a depressive episode he actually had, and the insight that depressed people tend to be more calm in situations of high pressure - because they are already prepared for the worst result.

3. The opening sequence of the film is a breathtakingly beautiful, surreal montage of scenes that represent themes explained during the course of the film. These scenes are juxtaposed with images of the destruction of the Earth as another planet collides into it.

4. The first half of the movie takes place at a wedding reception for Justine and Michael at a secluded country estate. The reception slowly unravels, partly because so many attendees make the evening about themselves. But the main problem is that Justine suffers from a debilitating depression, and is unable to hold herself together.

5. The second half of the movie takes place at the same country estate, shortly after the wedding. Justine is living there with her sister Claire and Claire’s family. A rogue planet, aptly named Melancholia, is making a near approach to Earth.

6. Claire is terrified that the planet will hit Earth. Her husband tries to convince her that the planet will miss Earth. Justine is calm in her knowledge that Melancholia will actually destroy our planet.

7. Charlotte Gainsbourg, who starred in “Antichrist”, plays Claire here. Her two roles in these movies make fascinating counterpoints. Kirsten Dunst almost burns a hole through the screen in her portrayal of Justine. It might be her best performance ever.

8. Von Trier wasn’t concerned with making the collision of the two planets scientifically realistic - his point was to illustrate the behavior of the human psyche under extreme circumstances.

9. This movie is a gorgeous, intimate apocalypse. Von Trier is telling us that whether it’s a brain problem or a cosmic one, we are all alone in this universe. Nothing we do ultimately matters, and we’re all helpless to control our own fate. We are just thrown around by forces greater than us until we die. But it’s still beautiful.

If that’s not a message you want to hear, then you should stay away from this movie.

Antichrist [Denmark, 2009]

Nine Things about the Movie Antichrist

1.This is the first film in director Lars von Trier’s remarkable “Depression Trilogy”. I had to watch it twice to really start unpacking it enough so that I could start writing my thoughts about it.

2. It’s not really about the Antichrist. At least, not as most people think of it.

3. The “Prologue” is one of the most gorgeously tragic and sexually explicit opening sequences in film history.

4. It’s about a therapist and his wife whose child has died. The wife is undergoing extreme grief over the loss, and her husband tries to help her by taking her to a secluded cabin in the woods. Once they get to the cabin, he starts getting visions of things like foxes eating themselves. She thinks the ground burns her feet. It just gets worse from there.

5. The cinematography is entrancing, trippy, and gorgeous. The soundtrack is surreal and disconcerting.

6. Nick is the only named character in the movie, and he’s dead five minutes into the film. The husband and wife (played by Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsborg) are never given names. In fact, every other person in the movie actually has their faces blurred out.

7. This film is an examination of many things - death, grief, internalized misogyny, the evil of human nature, and the meaninglessness of everything. It requires a lot of reflection to make sense of what’s actually going on. Von Trier does not make easy movies.

8. This movie was quite controversial when it was made because of it’s extreme sexual imagery and violence. A few scenes were filmed with porn stars taking the place of the main actors.

9. This movie is definitely not for everyone. It’s a difficult, brave, important, psychosexual nuclear bomb. It’s not a horror film, but it uses horror movie conventions to make the point that the real horror is life itself… and maybe our own souls.

Pompeii [Germany, Canada, 2014]

Nine Things About the Movie Pompeii

1. The only thing that most people know about Pompeii is that it was an Italian city destroyed by a volcano and buried in ash a long time ago. So this movie makes up the rest of the story.

2. The plot of the movie is as generic as you can get. You can almost hear the filmmakers say, “Well, the event happened in gladiator times. And it’s about a bunch of people who can’t escape where they are and they all get killed. So let’s make ‘Gladiator’ meets ‘Titanic’. And even though it’s in Italy, let’s make everybody talk with a vague sort-of-British accent.”

3. And that’s exactly what they did. It’s your basic poor-boy/rich girl story. It’s about a boy named Milo that is captured in war, becomes a slave, and then is sent to Pompeii to fight as a gladiator. While there, he meets Cassia, the daughter of the city ruler. They fall in love. Her dad is upset. The usual.

4. Meanwhile, the volcano starts acting up. For some reason, it only happens at night, like the volcano was some serial killer, and people start disappearing.

5. Besides the love story, there is a half-baked political subplot. Since we all know how the movie ends, the story is not only silly, it’s pointless. There’s no reason to care much about the characters.

6. The last half-hour of the film is all about the destruction of the city. It’s pretty cool to watch, and the 3D effects are well done.

7. The director did take a lot of time to make the city itself historically accurate, basing it on studies of the actual ruins. Historians give the movie points for this.

8. Scientists who study volcanoes say that the depiction of the volcano is also historically accurate, except for when it rains fireballs.

9. This is a simple, old-fashioned disaster movie that offers nothing special in terms of story, but is fun to watch.

We Are What We Are [Mexico, 2010]

Nine Things about the Movie We Are What We Are

1. The idea for this movie is pretty interesting, but it doesn’t play out quite as well as I hoped.

2. It’s about a family that stays close by performing cannibalistic rituals.

3. The movie starts out with the death of the father. Then the eldest son, Alfredo, decides he must take over as head of the household. He plans on proving his worth by finding the next human to bring home to eat.

4. The bulk of movie follows the escapades of Alfredo and his brother trying to capture various people to kill. They visit homeless kids, prostitutes, and gay bars. But their quest doesn’t work out quite as well as they planned.

5. There are a couple of cops that are trying to figure out who the family is, and catch them, so that they can be famous.

6. The family is so weird that it’s hard to really relate to anyone in the film. You watch the movie, but you don’t really feel it.

7. The biggest problems in the movie are the uneven acting, and the fact that some parts don’t really make sense. Characters seem to know where to go without being told, and they don’t always seem to have a reason for doing things.

8. There are some pretty violent and gory scenes. It is a cannibal movie, after all. But it’s not as gory as you might think. It could have been much worse.

9. The moral of the story seems to be, if you are going to kill and eat someone, get it right the first time. And don’t ever swallow a whole finger.

Philomena [United Kingdom, 2013]

Nine Things About the Movie Philomena

1. The movie poster for this film is one of the biggest misrepresentations of a movie I’ve ever seen. It makes the movie seem like some kind of screwball road-movie-romantic-comedy for retired people. This is absolutely NOT what the movie is.

2. Based on a true story, this is a charming but heartbreaking comedy drama. It’s also simultaneously heartwarming, but without being sappy or saccharine.

3. It’s about a young troubled girl, Philomena, who goes to live with nuns in Ireland in the 1950’s. But this is not “The Sound of Music”. Not by a long shot.

4. Philomena is pregnant, and she is one of thousands of pregnant girls who work in convents almost as slaves, while the nuns sell the children.

5. As an older woman, Philomena decides she wants to find the son that the nuns took from her and sold to rich Americans. She teams up with Martin, an unemployed journalist, to help her solve the mystery.

6. What Philomena discovers gives proof to the old saying “Truth is stranger than fiction.”

7. Martin is an atheist, and Philomena is a devout Catholic. They have strong words for each other at different stages of their quest. It’s a fascinating partnership, and give an extra layer of depth to an already interesting story.

8. I’m used to seeing Judy Dench play smart, strong female characters. It’s pretty shocking to see her play such a timid, simple, religious woman going far out of her comfort zone to look for her son.

9. The movie is very critical of the Catholic Church, and rightfully so. The book that the movie is based on uncovered some very cruel and hypocritical activities of the Church in Ireland.

I Am Love [Italy, 2009]

Nine Things About I Am Love

1. This is an elegant Italian film about a wealthy family that completely implodes over the course of a year. 

2. I'm not sure if I actually liked it or not.

3. Tilda Swinton stars as a matriarch that falls in love with someone she shouldn't. Tragedy ensues.

4. The movie does a good job of slowly pulling together various small elements throughout the movie until they crash together at the end.

5. The keyword in the above sentence is "slowly". This film moves at a snail's pace.

6. Taken altogether, this is an character interesting study. Swinton does a great job as someone who knows she should resist her feelings, but just can't.

7. There are some great, almost poetic, individual scenes. And it's an interesting look at the upper middle class from an Italian perspective. The cinematography is wonderful.

8. There are also some scenes that drag things out far longer than they need to.

9. If you like slow melodramas about how passion can simultaneously renew and destroy lives, then you might want to check this out.