Recent Movies

[IN CINEMAS MAY 4, 2018] AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR - TEASER TRAILER

Avengers: Infinity War (2018)


The plot is unknown at this time.

Directors:

,

Writers:

(comic book by), (screenplay) | 2 more credits »

Stars:


Official Sites:

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Country:

Language:

Release Date:

4 May 2018 (USA)  »

Also Known As:

Mary Lou  »

Company Credits

Production Co:

 »


Technical Specs

Color:

Aspect Ratio:

2.39 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

IMAX has stated that this film, along with Untitled Avengers Movie (2019), will be entirely filmed with IMAX 2-D digital cameras. This will make it the first non-documentary film to be entirely shot with IMAX cameras. See more »

Quotes

[from trailer]
Thanos: I know what it's like to lose; to feel so desperately that you're right, yet fail all the same.

Connections


  Status: Post-production | See complete list of  » 

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[PREVIEW] WHAT'S IN CINEMAS 2018 PART 1

Since there are no new movies and trailer showing right now I thought let's do a preview of some movies which will be shown in cinemas 2018.

This video is a non stop collection, and is about 30 minutes, so sit back and relax.

Molly's Game | January 5 
The Commuter | January 12 
12 Strong | January 19 
The Current War | January 19 
Maze Runner: The Death Cure | January 26 
Black Panther | February 16 
Annihilation | February 23 
Death Wish | March 2 
Red Sparrow | March 2 
Tomb Raider | March 16 
Pacific Rim 2: Uprising | March 23 
Ready Player One | March 30 
X-MEN: The New Mutants | No official Release Date


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24 HOURS TO LIVE (2017) - TRAILER

24 Hours to Live (2017)


An assassin seeks redemption after being given a second chance at life.

Director:

Stars:


Storyline

Making a rare foray into rock 'em, sock 'em action territory, Hawke plays a CIA agent who sacrifices everything for his employers, including his family and, ultimately, his own life. No sooner has he shuffled off this mortal coil, though, than he finds himself mysteriously resurrected for one last mission that's timed to last exactly 24 hours. Once the countdown clock embedded in his arm reaches zero, he'll once again nod off into an eternal slumber if he hasn't completed his task. Before that happens, expect him to wreak bloody havoc on both his targets and his former CIA minders.

Taglines:

Contracted to kill. Fighting to survive.

Genres:

Action | Thriller

Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated R for strong bloody violence throughout, language and some drug use | See all certifications »

Details

Country:

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Language:

Release Date:

26 October 2017 (Kuwait)  »

Also Known As:

24 Horas Para Viver  »

Company Credits


Technical Specs

Runtime:

See  »

Did You Know?

Goofs

When Travis is talking to Frank on the pay phone it is clearly out of service as there is nothing on the screen of the pay phone indicating that there is a call in progress.

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12 STRONG (2018) - TRAILER

12 Strong (2018)


12 Strong tells the story of the first Special Forces team deployed to Afghanistan after 9/11; under the leadership of a new captain, the team must work with an Afghan warlord to take down the Taliban.

Director:

Stars:


Storyline

The True Story of the Army's Special Forces "Green Berets", who within weeks responded to the 9-11 attack. Green Berets and AFSOC took over the country and allowed other Special Forces and the rest of the conventional military to begin the real war. 


Taglines:

The Declassified True Story of the Horse Soldiers See more »

Genres:

Action | Drama | History | War

Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

rated R for war violence and language throughout

Parents Guide:

 »

Details

Official Sites:

Country:

Language:

Release Date:

19 January 2018 (USA)  »

Also Known As:

12 δυνατοί: Η απόρρητη αληθινή ιστορία των στρατιωτών με τα άλογα  »

Filming Locations:

 »

Company Credits


Technical Specs

Sound Mix:

Color:

Aspect Ratio:

2.39 : 1
See  »

Did You Know?

Trivia

General Abdul Rashid Dostum was quoted, 'I asked for a few Americans, they brought with them the courage of a whole Army' according to eyewitness Robert Young Pelton's in his March 2002 National Geographic Adventure article "The Legend of Heavy D and the Boys". Pelton was the only journalist with the Green Beret and CIA team whose story is featured in "Horse Soldiers" See more »

Soundtracks

Azan
Performed by Jamal Farraki
Traditional, Arranged by Pat Jabbar
Courtesy of Barraka El Farnatshi Productions

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[IN CINEMAS 11/22/2017] THE MAN WHO INVENTED CHRISTMAS (2017) - REVIEW + HD TRAILER

The Man Who Invented Christmas (2017)


The journey that led to Charles Dickens' creation of "A Christmas Carol," a timeless tale that would redefine the holiday.

Director:

Writers:

(screenplay), (book)

Stars:


The Man Who Invented Christmas tells of the magical journey that led to the creation of Ebenezer Scrooge (Christopher Plummer), Tiny Tim and other classic characters from "A Christmas Carol." Directed by Bharat Nalluri (MISS PETTIGREW LIVES FOR A DAY), the film shows how Charles Dickens (Dan Stevens) mixed real life inspirations with his vivid imagination to conjure up unforgettable characters and a timeless tale, forever changing the holiday season into the celebration we know today. 

Official Sites:

Country:

|

Language:

Release Date:

22 November 2017 (USA)  »

Also Known As:

Dickens: L'uomo che inventò il Natale  »

Company Credits

Show detailed on  »

Technical Specs

Runtime:

Color:

Did You Know?

Trivia

Donald Sumpter (who portrays Jacob Marley in the film) has appeared in two other adaptations of a Charles Dickens story: Great Expectations (1999) and The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (2001).


Having seen pretty much all of the key cinematic depictions of the immortal Charles Dickens story “A Christmas Carol” over the years, I can honestly say that I could go the rest of my life without seeing another permutation of the tale. That feeling was again reinforced after watching “The Man Who Invented Christmas,” a saccharine stab at a new holiday perennial that tries to fuse the classic Yuletide yarn with a “Shakespeare In Love”-style literary origin story and manages to let both of them down, not to mention a performance by Christopher Plummer as Ebenezer Scrooge that deserves a much better showcase than the one provided here.

The year is 1843 and Dickens (Dan Stevens) is in a commercial slump—his previous three novels have found little favor with the buying public—and he is in need of money in order to help support himself, his loyal wife Catherine (Morfydd Clark), their four children (with a fifth on the way) and an expensive home renovation. While casting about for ideas for a new book, he takes inspiration from his new maid (Anna Murphy), whose literary tastes are of a somewhat lurid bent (she is a big “Varney the Vampire” fan), and who mentions to him a folk tale about mysterious spirits being revived at Christmastime. This sparks something in Dickens and he decides that he will write and self-publish his own holiday-themed ghost story in time for Christmas as a way of replenishing his coffers. There is one little hitch to this endeavor—Christmas is about six weeks away and to miss that immovable deadline would be disastrous.

This might seem to be an impossible task to pull off, especially since he will be attempting to work in a house filled with children, workmen and the unexpected presence of his cheerful but constantly broke father (Jonathan Pryce). Luckily for Dickens, everywhere he goes in London offers him some nugget that he channels into his work, ranging from a lame nephew to an ancient waiter at his club with the delightful name of Marley. The real burst of inspiration comes when Dickens happens upon the evening burial of a man attended only by his aging and apparently heartless business partner (Plummer), who immediately becomes the model for Scrooge himself, especially his constant uttering of “Humbug.” While trying to work the story out from the confines of his study, Dickens finds himself interacting with the characters he has created as he tries to work out what happens to them. The story soon becomes a race against time as Dickens tries to resolve the ending of the book (he seems very keen on Tiny Tim dying) and get the manuscript to the publisher in time before it is too late while at the same time confronting the still-lingering after-effects of his father’s lifetime of financial irresponsibility in the hopes of reconciling with him before it too is too late.

Based on a non-fiction book of the same name by Les Standiford, “The Man Who Invented Christmas” has been adapted by screenwriter Susan Coyne and director Bharat Nalluri into the kind of hard-sell holiday whimsy that may appeal to those who wish that more places would start playing Christmas carols before Halloween while at the same time driving others up the wall. The notion of watching Dickens create his most everlasting work sounds intriguing in theory but the execution here is more off-putting than delightful. Not particularly keen on nuance or subtlety, this is a film in which everything, especially Stevens’ decidedly manic take on Dickens, is pitched as broadly as possible. An even bigger problem with the film is the way in which it handles its presentation of the creative process. Granted, watching someone sitting at a table and scratching away with a pen while working out story problems does not exactly make for great cinema, but the solution to that obstacle—having him constantly pilfering characters, ideas and even chunks of dialogue from his forays into the real world—feels like a cheat and does an enormous disservice to one of literature’s great imaginations. “Shakespeare in Love” was not exactly a realistic depiction of the writing process either but it feels like cinema verite when compared to what is depicted here.

The one aspect of “The Man Who Invented Christmas” that does work well is the striking turn by Christopher Plummer as the film’s ersatz Scrooge. Of course, Plummer is one of those actors who seems virtually incapable of turning in a bad performance, but his work here is really strong. Scrooge is, of course, a role that seems tailor-made for hamming it up, but Plummer instead takes a quieter and more delicate approach that stands in marked contrast to the rest of the film, and is all the more effective as a result. He is acerbically funny in his interactions with his creator but also manages to inject a few moments of genuine pathos into the proceedings as well, a feat all the more considerable since he is playing an overtly fictional character. You know, I would like to partially walk back what I said earlier and state that if someone were inspired by this film to cast Plummer in a straightforward version of “A Christmas Carol,” I would actually be interested in seeing such a thing. Until then, we will have to make do with his appearance here, which stands out like a delightful sugar plum in the middle of an otherwise stale cake.

FINAL RATING: 5/10 FOR THE GENRE AND 5/10 OVERALL.


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[IN CINEMAS 11/22/2017] DARKEST HOUR (2017) - REVIEW + HD TRAILER

Darkest Hour (2017)


During the early days of World War II, the fate of Western Europe hangs on the newly-appointed British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who must decide whether to negotiate with Hitler, or fight on against incredible odds.

Director:

Stars:


Within days of becoming Prime Minister of Great Britain, Winston Churchill (Gary Oldman) must face one of his most turbulent and defining trials: exploring a negotiated peace treaty with Nazi Germany, or standing firm to fight for the ideals, liberty and freedom of a nation. As the unstoppable Nazi forces roll across Western Europe and the threat of invasion is imminent, and with an unprepared public, a skeptical King, and his own party plotting against him, Churchill must withstand his darkest hour, rally a nation, and attempt to change the course of world history.

Official Sites:

Country:

Language:

Release Date:

22 November 2017 (USA)  »

Also Known As:

A Hora Mais Negra  »

Company Credits

Production Co:

 »
Show detailed on  »

Technical Specs

Runtime:

Sound Mix:

Color:

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Sir John Hurt died during the filming of the film. Hurt was supposed to be in the film portraying Neville Chamberlain, but Gary Oldman said in an interview, that because of how sick he was, and that he never made it to a reading, Hurt never filmed a scene, as he was being treated for cancer, which later took his life, as filming was going on. The film will still be dedicated to Hurt, as it was his final project, with which he was involved. 

I’ve been trying to think when there was a historical drama I found as electrifying as Joe Wright’s “Darkest Hour.” It may have been Steven Spielberg’s “Munich,” which topped my 10-best list a dozen years ago. They are very different films, of course, and it could be that Wright’s boasts stellar accomplishments in more departments. While Gary Oldman’s phenomenal work as Winston Churchill had been heralded in advance, it is astonishingly equaled by the film’s achievements in direction, screenwriting, score and cinematography.

It’s a strange irony that the same patch of British history—a few days in the spring of 1940—has been treated in two big, Oscar-aimed 2017 movies (and even plays a role in a third film from earlier this year, “Their Finest”). In various ways, Wright’s film and Christopher Nolan’s “Dunkirk” are instructive companion pieces, with different aims that effectively orient them toward different audiences. “Dunkirk” imagines the evacuation of British troops under the onslaught of Nazi forces in a way that puts sensation over sense; it says nothing of the event’s historical context or import. Indeed, it could have been made with all action and no words, where “Darkest Hour” is all about words, words-as-action and this seminal event’s meaning to our world. It asks you to engage intellectually, not just viscerally.

But if it’s a history lesson, it’s one that plays like a tightly wound, pulse-pounding thriller. And why not: the decisions it depicts may have determined the fate of the world. The action takes place from May 8 to June 4, 1940 (the film regularly slams the dates at us in big block letters), and is framed by two important addresses in the House of Commons, the “Norway Debate” and Churchill’s rousing, epochal “We shall fight them on the beaches” speech. In between, Churchill becomes Prime Minister, because he’s the only member of his party acceptable to the opposition, and then rallies the country to fight Hitler when other politicians want to strike a deal with him.
Understanding the importance of this story’s events is not terribly easy now because it’s difficult to look at the world of 1940 as people did then. The Germans may have subjugated several European countries, but the coming slaughter of the continent’s Jews was still unsuspected, and Hitler was widely seen as a very effective authoritarian ruler (a quality that some non-Germans beset with dithering democrats frankly admired) rather than a murderous madman. Churchill’s virtue in this moment was to see the truth more clearly than others did, and to understand both the absolute necessity and the arduous difficulty of fighting the Nazi regime to the death.

The film’s title is entirely accurate. With the Germans threatening to obliterate Britain’s army prior to the Dunkirk evacuation (which is alluded to rather than shown here), and Churchill soon to hear Franklin Roosevelt decline to help the Brits due to the anti-interventionist sentiment in Congress, the United Kingdom was at a very dark and lonely place indeed. It’s no wonder that Churchill’s main opponents in this drama, Neville Chamberlain (Ronald Pickup) and Lord Halifax (Stephen Dillane), encouraged having Mussolini negotiate a deal with Hitler that might have spared Britain from invasion and potential mass slaughter. Even King George VI (Ben Mendelsohn), before being won over to Churchill’s viewpoint, was amenable to dealing with the devil.

The Winston Churchill we see here is no cartoon hero or plaster saint. As the recent, wretched “Churchill” (which was as roundly denounced by historians and Churchill experts as “Darkest Hour” has been praised) did, Wright’s film notes the dark stain on the leader’s public career that the battle of Gallipoli in World War I represented, but doesn’t make it a psychological millstone. “Darkest Hour” likewise frequently shows us its protagonist from the viewpoints of his acerbic though supportive wife, Clemmie (the brilliant Kristin Scott Thomas), and his young, endlessly put-upon secretary, Elizabeth (Lily James). Yet the freshness of this film’s portrayal begins with the dramatic sharpness and historical intelligence of Anthony McCarten’s script, which gives us a 
Churchill who is drawn into dynamic action by the looming shadow of Hitler’s evil.
After charting the perilous political waters, he must navigate to gain the support of his war cabinet, the film climaxes with a sublime invention: a scene in which Churchill, on the way to Parliament, bounds out of his traffic-bound limousine, hops on the Underground and listens to a car full of average Londoners voice their support for his war aims. As corny as this may sound, it’s an entirely appropriate way of registering the kind of popular backing, even affection, that Churchill enjoyed during wartime (he was voted out of office as soon as the war ended), and it works in part due to the spunky charm and thoroughgoing excellence of Gary Oldman’s performance, which deserves every award it will inevitably win.

A kindred excellence characterizes the striking collaboration between Joe Wright and cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel, who together give the film a very nuanced and engaging balance of light and shadow, eloquent movement and meditative stasis. For my money, Delbonnel’s work surpasses even “Dunkirk” to emerge as the best cinematography of the year so far. Wright’s team also benefits from the understated lyricism of Dario Marianelli’s score.
The events leading up to the charged drama we see in “Darkest Hour” have not been totally forgotten, of course. The name of Neville Chamberlain, Churchill’s predecessor, will forever be associated with the term “appeasement,” which these days hardliners use at every opportunity to denounce attempts to negotiate with objectionable regimes and rulers. But Wright’s film indirectly makes the point that not every tinpot dictator is a Hitler nor is every posturing, hawkish politician a Churchill. Certain times and men are indeed exceptional, which is why a movie like “Darkest Hour” itself stands apart from more routine historical dramas.


 FINAL RATING: 8/10 FOR THE GENRE AND 5/10 OVERALL.


Thanks for reading and have fun watching movies.

[FROM INDIA IN CINEMAS NOVEMBER 30] BRIMSTONE & GLORY (2017) - REVIEW

Brimstone & Glory (2017)


 

Ecstatic ritual, danger and the absolute beauty of fireworks. 
 

Official Sites:

Country:

|

Language:

Release Date:

2 March 2017 (USA)  »

Box Office

Opening Weekend:

$2,125 (North America) (29 October 2017)
 »

Company Credits


Technical Specs

Runtime:

Color:

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1 
 
 
Small towns live and die according to what seem like whims of fate. But just as every great fortune has its origin in a great crime, every small town that survives has a particular economic motor. Some are more interesting than others. The Mexican town of Tulpatec survives through pyrotechnics.

“Brimstone and Glory,” directed by Viktor Jakovleski and backed by some of the talents behind “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” is a documentary about that town’s annual Pyrotechnics Festival, an event that, it seems, is prepared for year-round by its residents. The fireworks engineered in this place, north of Mexico City, aren’t Macy’s Fourth of July high-tech displays, precision engineered and digitally controlled. But they’re not crude either. One hallmark of the festival is the evening devoted to large sculptures of bulls, each one packed with explosives. The point of this display is to have the bull as a launching site for various light-and-sound spectacles while never burning or in any other way damaging the sculpture itself. It’s like creating a candy-dispensing piñata that remains whole. There’s a lot of ingenuity required.

And there’s a lot of danger involved. Injuries during these festivals are common. Town elders tend to be cheerful fellows who are missing an eye or a limp or several fingers. Young kids working on fireworks projects are praised for having “gunpowder in the blood.” The film doesn’t have to push hard on a thesis about how economy determines culture. The town is an organic demonstration of it.

There are religious roots to the festival. It’s dedicated to a Portuguese saint who, according to legend, rescued the patients of a burning hospital without suffering a single burn. The day-to-day life of the town is lived in constant proximity to deadly materials—large signs reading “Peligro” are everywhere. The scenes of the preparations of the explosives are fascinating, particularly because everything is so analog. Mortar and pestle are primary tools in mixing powders and dyes.
And once the big day arrives, the nimble cameras operated by Jakovleski and his team get some awesome visuals. This is a movie that repays being seen on a big reflective screen, one on which the image is projected rather than one from which the image emanates. Because the light that comes off of the screen is strong and fierce. It’s exhilarating and scary at the same time.

The mode of this short movie is naturalistic. There are interviews of people in voiceover, but not a lot of talking-head footage. The perspective is of an observer sauntering through the town and then thrust into the middle of a fearsome but exhilarating spectacle. “Brimstone and Glory” took three years to make. I think the filmmakers needed that time to come up with a result that seems so simple and straightforward, yet has such deep resonance. 

FINAL RATING: 7/10 FOR THE GENRE AND 6/10 OVERALL. Nice fireworks collection, but I am not sure if that is worth to watch it in cinemas. Better do that at home.


Thanks for reading and have fun watching movies.

[IN CINEMAS NOVEMBER 22] COCO (2017) - REVIEW + HD TRAILER

Coco (2017)



Aspiring musician Miguel, confronted with his family's ancestral ban on music, enters the Land of the Dead to work out the mystery.

Directors:

, (co-director)

Writers:

(original story by), (original story by) | 4 more credits »

Stars:


Despite his family's baffling generations-old ban on music, Miguel dreams of becoming an accomplished musician like his idol, Ernesto de la Cruz. Desperate to prove his talent, Miguel finds himself in the stunning and colorful Land of the Dead following a mysterious chain of events. Along the way, he meets charming trickster Hector, and together, they set off on an extraordinary journey to unlock the real story behind Miguel's family history.  


Country:

Language:

|

Release Date:

22 November 2017 (USA)  »

Also Known As:

Untitled Dia de los Muertos Project  »

Company Credits

Show detailed on  »

Technical Specs

Sound Mix:

| (DTS: X)|

Color:

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

The filmmakers and animators traveled to Mexico five times to research about the culture, people, food, traditions, etc. to help define the story and characters of Coco (2017). Among their journeys, they visited Mexico City and Oaxaca. Director Lee Unkrich said of the experience, "I'd seen it portrayed in folk art. It was something about the juxtaposition of skeletons with bright, festive colors that captured my imagination. It has led me down a winding path of discovery. And the more I learn about Día de Muertos, the more it affects me deeply." See more »

Quotes

[from trailer]
Héctor: What are you doing?
Miguel: I'm walking like a skeleton.
Héctor: No, skeletons don't walk like that.
Miguel: That's how *you* walk.
Héctor: No, I don't.
See more »

Crazy Credits

The Disney logo has the Santa Cecilia cemetery in the background and has the Disney music played in Mexican mariachi style. See more »

Connections

Referenced in Nostalgia Critic: Norm of the North (2017) See more »

Soundtracks

Proud Corazon
Music by Germaine Franco
Lyrics by Adrian Molina
Performed by Anthony Gonzalez

"Coco" is the sprightly story of a young boy who wants to be a musician and somehow finds himself communing with talking skeletons in the land of the dead. Directed by Lee Unkrich ("Toy Story 3") and veteran Pixar animator Adrian Molina, and drawing heavily on Mexican folklore and traditional designs, it has catchy music, a complex but comprehensible plot, and bits of domestic comedy and media satire. Most of the time the movie is a knockabout slapstick comedy with a "Back to the Future" feeling, staging grand action sequences and feeding audiences new plot information every few minutes, but of course, being a Pixar film, "Coco" is also building toward emotionally overwhelming moments, so stealthily that you may be surprised to find yourself wiping away a tear even though the studio has been using the sneak-attack playbook for decades.
The film's hero, twelve-year old Miguel Riviera (voice by Anthony Gonzalez), lives in the small town of Santa Cecilia. He’s a goodhearted child who loves to play guitar and idolizes the greatest popular singer-songwriter of the 1920s and '30s, Ernesto de la Cruz (Benjamin Bratt), who was killed when a huge church bell fell on his head. But Miguel has to busk in secret because his family has banned its members from performing music ever since Miguel's great-great-grandfather left, abandoning his loved ones to selfishly pursue his dreams of stardom. At least that’s the official story passed down through the generations; it’ll be challenged as the film unfolds, not through a traditional detective story (although there’s a mystery element to “Coco”) but through an “Alice in Wonderland” journey to the Land of the Dead, which the hero accesses through the tomb of his ancestors. 

Family and legacy as expressed through storytelling and song: this is the deeper preoccupation of “Coco.” One of the most fascinating things about the movie is the way it builds its plot around members of Miguel’s family, living and dead, as they battle to determine the official narrative of Miguel’s great-great grandfather and what his disappearance from the narrative meant for the extended clan. The title character is the hero’s great-grandmother (Renee Victor), who was traumatized by her dad’s disappearance. In her old age, she has become a nearly silent presence, sitting in the corner and staring blankly ahead, as if hypnotized by a sweet, old film perpetually unreeling in her mind.

The machinations that get Miguel to the other side are too complicated to explain in a review, though they’re comprehensible as you watch the movie. Suffice to say that Miguel gets there, teams up with a melancholy goofball named Hector (Gael Garcia Bernal), and has to pose as one of the dead with the aid of skeletal facepaint, but that (like Marty McFly returning to the 1950s to make sure his mom ends up with his dad in “Future”) the longer Miguel stays on the other side, the more likely he is to end up actually dead.

I’m reluctant to describe the film’s plot in too much detail because, even though every twist seems obvious in retrospect, Molina and Matthew Aldrich’s script frames each one so that seems delightful and inevitable. Many of them are conveyed through a stolen family photograph that Miguel brings with him to the Land of the Dead. The deployment of the photo is a great example of how to tell a story through pictures, or more accurately, with a picture. Somebody’s face has been torn out; there’s a guitar that proves to be important later, and there are other ways in which visual information has been withheld from Miguel (and us) so that it can be revealed or restored when the time is right, completing and correcting an incomplete or distorted picture, and "picture.”
What’s freshest, though, is the tone and outlook of the film. “Coco” opened in Mexico a month before it opened in the USA and is already the highest grossing film of all time there. It assumes a non-American point-of-view on spirituality and culture—not in a touristy or “thought experiment” sort of way, but as if it were merely the latest product of an alternate universe Pixar Mexicano that has existed for just as long as the other one. The film’s stable of voice actors reads like a Who’s Who of Latin-American talent: the ensemble includes Edward James Olmos, Alfonso Arau, Ana Ofelia Murguia, Alanna Ubach and, in a small role, to my surprise and astonishment, playwright Octavio Solis, who was one of my teachers in high school back in Dallas. Michael Giacchino's score is unsurprisingly excellent, as are the original songs—in particular, the future Oscar winner "Remember Me," the greatest tear-eruption mechanism to accompany a Pixar release since the "Toy Story 2" centerpiece "When She Loved Me."

Like most Pixar productions, this one is filled with homages to film history in general and animation history in particular. I was especially fond of the references to the dancing skeletons that seemed to pop up constantly in cartoon shorts from the 1930s. There’s a touch of Japanese master Hayao Miyazaki in the film’s matter-of-fact depiction of the dead interacting with the living, as well as its portrayal of certain creatures, such as a goofy, goggle-eyed dog named Dante (modeled on Xoloitzcuintli, the national dog of Mexico) and a gigantic flying dragon-type beast with the personality of a plump old housecat.

Also notable are the film's widescreen compositions, which put lots of characters in the same frame and shoot them from the waist up or from head-to-toe, in the manner of old musicals, or Hollywood comedies from the eighties like "9 to 5" or "Tootsie." The direction lets you appreciate how the characters interact with each other and with their environments and lets you decide what to look at. At first this approach seems counter-intuitive for a movie filled with fantastic creatures, structures and situations, but it ends up being effective for that very reason: it makes you feel as though you're seeing a record of things that are actually happening, and it makes "Coco" feel gentle and unassuming even though it's a big, brash, loud film.
I had some minor quibbles about “Coco” while I was watching it, but I can’t remember what they were. This film is a classic.


 FINAL RATING: 9/10 FOR THE GENRE AND 9/10 OVERALL. Overwhelming.


Thanks for reading and have fun watching movies.

[IN CINEMAS DECEMBER 1] I REMEMBER YOU (2017) - REVIEW + HD TRAILER

I Remember You (2017)

Ég man þig (original title)



A story about a young man and woman who move into a small abandoned town in Iceland to renovate an old house. Little do they know the town has a dark history.

A story about a young man and woman who move into a small abandoned town in Iceland to renovate an old house. Little do they know the town has a dark history. 

Country:

Language:

Release Date:

10 November 2017 (USA)  »

Also Known As:

I Remember You  »

Company Credits

Show detailed on  »

Technical Specs

Runtime:

 
 
It's surprising that anyone visits Scandinavia anymore, let alone lives there. After all, judging by the spate of novels and their cinematic/television adaptations that have been released in recent years, a lot of terrible things happen there. That's certainly the case in the new thriller from Icelandic director Oskar Thor Axelsson that combines familiar Nordic thriller conventions with supernatural plot elements. Compellingly creepy, I Remember You should well please the many fans of the genre.
The film, based on a best-selling novel by Yrsa Sigurdardottir (breathlessly described in the publicity materials as the "Queen of Icelandic Crime"), begins with an elderly woman hanging herself in a church. Investigating the suicide is a female detective (Sara Dogg Asgeirsdottir) and the only doctor available, Freyr (Johannes Haukur Johannesson), a psychiatrist still grieving over the unexplained disappearance several years earlier of his 8-year-old son during a game of hide-and-seek.

A parallel storyline concerns a trio of yuppies — married couple Garoar (Thor Kristjansson) and Katrin (Anna Gunnudis Guomundsdottir) and their single friend Lif (Agusta Eva Erlendsdottir) — who arrive at a rundown house on an island in the remote Westfjords region with the intention of renovating it and turning it into a summertime B&B.
The film's tension slowly — and I mean slowly — increases as the events become more and more mysterious. The suicide victim is found to have burn marks in the form of crosses all over her back, many dating back years, that correspond to the ones scratched on the church's walls. Freyr's investigation leads him to discover that the elderly woman had numerous friends who also died under mysterious circumstances and that they may all be related by the death of a young boy decades earlier. Meanwhile, Katrin, who recently gave birth to a stillborn son, begins experiencing hallucinations which are either a result of her fragile emotional state or supernatural forces.
The pic is ultimately stronger on mood than plotting, as it seemingly takes forever for the storylines to merge and for the mystery to be revealed. But that atmosphere is effective indeed, with the filmmaker infusing the proceedings with ominous touches while thankfully foregoing the sort of cheap jump scares to which he easily might have easily resorted. Much as with the recent Michael Fassbender thriller The Snowman, the forbidding wintry landscapes on display are a story unto themselves.

I Remember You certainly traffics in clichés, such as its central character of an emotionally tortured investigator dealing with tragic events in his past. But the horror elements are relatively fresh to the genre, with director Axelsson teasing them out in intriguingly subtle fashion until the ending in which the various plot strands are satisfyingly tied together.
Johannesson delivers a powerful turn in the lead role, vividly conveying his character's anguish and his determination to get to the bottom of the mysterious goings-on. And as is so often the case with Scandinavian film thrillers, there's an array of supporting players with memorable faces who embody their roles with fully lived-in authenticity.

FINAL RATING: 8/10 FOR THE GENRE AND 7.5/10 OVERALL. An elderly woman's suicide leads to a series of mysterious events in this Icelandic horror thriller.God choice of a topic which is catching enough.

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