Reviews

I am an Almodovar's fan and of course i have seen all his films so far. To me his best one is "Volver", and i think that Penelope in that one, had her best acting ever. "Madres paralelas", is, like all his films, really exciting to watch. It was near its ending though that i started wondering what i was really watching. The film starts with a certain story, continues with another one, and ends up with the one it started. Some viewers may have found this interesting and smart, to me it seemed quite absurd though. Anyway, Almodovar is a brilliant director and one can hardly reject any of his films, this one included, nevertheless a film storyline should by definition be more concrete that the one in this film and shouldn't go off course that much. Others may see it as another Almodovar's geniousity, i found it rather awkward.

I had really given up on any hope that a good straightforward and decent thriller movie was still possible to watch in our days. I was mistaken and i am very glad about it. "Alone" is not a film that we have not already watched under a different title, casting, director, production etc etc. You see, its story line seems predictable from the very beginning: A woman alone on the road and the psycho who lies in ambush round its next turn. Remember "the Hitcher"? Well, not quite but something similar to this seems to be the beginning of this film. And what happens then we have already and most certainly seen on screen before. I cannot recall the titles, but i clearly remember another film, or other films, where the victim of the abduction manages to escape etc etc. Nevertheless there are some elements that clearly distinguish this "escape" from "others in the past" and overall make the struggle of this film's victim for surviving this very "psycho's" hunt, a most interesting and thrilling story to watch. For production, direction, acting, photography, of course script and ,last but not least, an awesome and imposing music score make a clear difference to trivial nonsense of this genre we have recently seen. Good job guys, thank you!!!

Asli is a professionally ambitious young woman. And a new mother! She lives with her husband and her newborn daughter in a gorgeous apartment in a very high profile suburb of Istanbul. Her relationship with the young, simple and of a lower class origin woman and new mother as well who does the babysitting for her baby while she goes for her career, will help her cope and reconciliate with her own past as an abadoned child and her present as a mother herself.

A deeply moving masterpiece is the least i can say to describe the incredible emotional power of this film of the great Semih Kaplanoglu. In an unbelievable magical way the story unfolds the sentimental process within Asli through the incidents that occur between her, the babysitter and the baby itself which make her gradually see that things are not black and white and that understanding should prevail when it comes to judging about things around motherhood, a task that as it's finally clear to her, takes an auful lot of commitment and sacrifice.

The story flows in a most simple and unpretentious way, everything is portraited as convincing as in a documentary. It does not demand or tries to provoke any tears, yet the shocks and waves of emotion it brings are enormous just because of this. In other words, unlike most drama films "Baglilik Asli" just tells a simple story and let tears roll down the face just because this simple story is as deeply, sincerely and purely human as it gets!

I already have a good experience of korean movies, and this one has surely been one of my favourite, though to be honest, having a vague idea of what its plot is about when i decided to watch it, i was not that certain of what i could expect since films dealing according to critics and reviews with allegories and social messages always face my instinctive mistrust. Well, these elements are there too, but all slipped and fitted in a very intriguing and solid storyline which though starting as a light, almost comedian style plot, ends up in a bloodshed and furthermore in a very bitter truth, the realworld truth which is too hard to break free from. The film will capture your interest and attention within its first five minutes and this attention will be constantly increasing throughout its duration, a feature rather typical in this kind of stories where a rather insignificant and innocent act leads to a complicated and difficult to deal with situation like in many Cohen brothers films. Taking this in consideration one could say that the twist of this story is not that original after all, however this one, resulting in an escalating complication and a very bitter ending, is really irresistible, and certainly one of the best and most indriguing one you should expect from a movie! P.S Yesterday, global celebration of the Day of Greek language under the motto: "Do you know you speak Greek?". So, here's the tip of the day: Did you know that among plenty of others in your own whichever language, the title of this movie too, is actually a 100% greek word?

I don't agree with those who find the story line slow, or try to compare this film with Kubrick's "shining". This is a european film after all and european films only rarely handle their characters the way Hollywood does. In "shining" a father gets crazy and tries to kill his wife and son. Period! No further development of characters, all black and white, all it matters is horror itself. In "dans la foret", a realistic, european psychological thriller, we have a character who struggles and fights with his demons and in his desperation turns to his six years old son for help, a little boy, who having a special charisma can actually personalize his father's evil side. To a sentimentally intelligent viewer the "peace" the little boy offers to his father, a process which helps him too to get rid of his nightmares as it is illustrated in the end of the film is really heartbreaking and deeply touching. Horror is part of the story but not its goal. So i strongly recommend the film to the ones who like psychological thrillers based on human characters and not just horror. Especially the ones who are still trying to decide wheather their father has been a "devil" or an angel to them (for that was the case of the little "son" in the film) may shed a lot of tears in the end...

Such a tender and at the same time cruel story! Well, what would you expect when we are talking of one taking place in times of sheer poverty, as the case almost everywhere in Europe was after the W. W.2, in a place famous for its beauties and notorious for its "peculiarities": Naples, Italy! And not just Naples, but a poor suburb of the city, populated in general by hardworking and honest, yet backward -very conservative if you prefer- and sometimes very stubborn and tough people. The story line is developed in a most natural, unpretentious way and everything illustrated in it, characters, situations, setting etc looks as honest as in the classical neorealistic italian films of the 50s. And just as the sentimental power of films like De Sica's "Il ladro di biciclette" springs from the pure honesty and truth of the bitter story they tell, so in "L'amica geniale" is its truth and honesty that make me often cry watching it, and not any cheap or less cheap dramatic scenes trying to evoke emotion. In other words, its enormous emotional power is due to its honesty and truth, to waking up memories of a past common to a huge number of people just by honestly retelling and reminding it, in other words its tremendous emotional power is something you will find "between the lines" so to say, and not to any "melodrama" if you see what i mean.

For me, a man brought up not too far from the place where the story is being developed, not long after the period this story takes place and in a more quiet and peaceful yet in many other ways not too different environment, - and that is a neighborhood in Piraeus, Greece,- my identification with the characters of the story is inevitable, hence the shocks of emotion it makes me feel . After all, the name of the main character is Greco! Helena Greco. Let alone the place itself which "feels" by history and name as greek as it gets! Napoli-Neapoli =Newcity!

In a world where sex is easily found, in a world where most people do not have any time to even realize what sharing feels like, in a world where sex is identified with porno and the need to just feed the basic instict, in a world of easy ways to a pleasure which deep inside leaves everyone with nothing,, in a world of a plenty which leads to isolation, in a world where "making love" -or "making sex' if you prefer- equals to nothing but "self-satisfaction" where human flesh equals to dildos, in this world comes this movie to speak loudly a trouth about a human' s true needs: No matter how many ejaculations you get, you will remain unsatisfied searching for more as long as sex is just about a hole or a cock and not about sharing in every sense, or at least about sharing emotions or feeling like holding tight to your partner's body and not just using it. It's when emotions arise that the main character of this film realizes what a waste his life had been, finding out that the temporal pleasure he was constantly seeking was a mirage, a satisfaction which was never really reached.

Well, this is what this great movie is about. A story not said for the first time and certainly not for the last as long as this vicious circle of chasing an instant pleasue leaving a huge emptiness behind and leading to the next one goes on... The story is simple, but it's the characters and the conditions that matter. And they are so wonderfully illustrated in this film, they are so strongly, realistically and profoundly "next door", that they will move and touch you deeply.

Actually a very good one in both categories. Korean cinema has given some very good movies in the past -starting from the excellent "old boy"- and has already been recognised as an asset in movie industry, so it would be rather foolish to undervalue its films as coming from a country far too remote, far too culturally different, far too unknown to pay some attention to its productions. I started watching this film with no prejudice but also not been sure of the quality of what i was to watch. Right from the begining it was apparent that it was a serious production and not at all a cheap cartoon style film from a "third" country. And so it proved to be till its very end: A very well made zombie/horror film and not at all only. Through the story line and using the zombie issue as an excuse and cause, there was a very clear and interesting effort to point out the contrast of "good" and "evil" in human nature, and that is among living humans themselves. You add to this the really tender family drama unfolding along a very well and quite realistically made adventure and you have a film which captures your attention from the very beginning and finally leaves you very moved and in tears. Last but not least: The excellent acting -the little girl will break your heart especially in the final scene- and the amazing, musically simple yet really imposing, epic music score in the ending credits. Do watch it, worths every penny of it!

For sure Aranofski's darkest movie. It's interesting to watch, but i am not sure i quite agree with this sort of metaphorical stories implying or suggesting something that the viewer cannot be sure about. All i could say is that this is probably a story about a man's wish to reach a higher level of self-esteem complying with widely spread ideas of out time, like "being superior should mean you can share your possessions with others" while revealing that this giving actually hides a purely selfish and extreme egoistic feeling of show-off. The "mother" on the other hand, down to earth and rather protecting her world than sharing it, is the expression of the basic instinct of self preservation. Her words to her seemingly "generous" husband ("you have not loved me, you have just loved my love for you") is the key to understanding what his attitude and character are about. And show who the really giving is.

Not one of my best movies but certainly a very interesting one as an Aranofski film can anything but not be. Acting is great, Jennifer gives her best -though i think the ending is far too fussy to let any feelings and sentiments really reach the viewer.

Any review of this film is very much depended on the angle the reviewer looks at it. And for certain it can not be free of its tragic historical background. It's possible that a foreign viewer may consider the story of "Roza of Smyrna" too excessive and too over-dramatic to be really touched by it. This wouldn't be the case if he new the whole story, that is to say the huge historical burden it carries for its heroes. This burden has to do with the events that marked the fall of the Ottoman empire after the end of world war 1. In brief: The Greeks invaded Asia Minor which according to their own ethic ideology/story was the cradle of their national rebirth since this area was Greek speaking before the Turks conquered it less than ten centuries ago and since by the time of the W.W1 ending, millions of Greek orthodox Christians were still living there, especially by the Black Sea coast ("Pontos"), the Aegean coast, and eastern Thrace. This invasion resulted in an unprecedented disaster for the Greeks. The Turkish troops, re-organized by their new leader Mustafa Kemal, defeated the Greek army who had to leave the area, abandoning the Greek population to the anger of the Turks, especially the numerous insurgents, guerrillas and all kinds of irregular soldiers who were fighting on the side of the regular Turkish army. Smyrna (Izmir),this amazingly developed for the standards of that time great city of the Aegean coast, a city where the prosperous Greek community was the prevailing one in power, wealth and numbers was set on fire and totally destroyed and its frantically and in horror and panic trying to escape Greek population to an unbelievable extend slaughtered. As a result of this story, the Asia Minor Greeks either fled in millions to Greece and elsewhere or left their bones on their homeland which ever since lived in the Greek collective memory as a lost Paradise. This unprecedented disaster -not really known abroad- is named by the Greeks with a single word "i Katastrophi" (with a capital K: the Disaster, the Katastroph). Well unless you know all this in details, it's rather difficult to really understand how a Greek may approach Roza's of Smyrna story, for it may seem too unreal, too excessive, too over-dramatic. It may be so, yet, there are so many real tragic stories about unthinkable individual human tragedies that took place during and due to those events (the "Katastroph") that for the Greeks, no story connected to those historical events really looks unreal, exaggerated, overblown, or far-fetched. And this one, which is actually a really well made Greek-Turkish co-production is not about bad Turks and their good Greek victims. It's a story about how any ethnic angle of viewing at it may be misleading and underestimating the human factor (the simple ordinary people who are the victims of their national-political leaders)and thus unjust. This is the message delivered to the main character of the film through his investigation and his efforts to unveil the secret that Roza, an old lady descending from Smyrna living in Athens, persistently tries to keep for herself. The title of the film could be "Roza's secret", and i think one may find quite thrilling the process of unveiling it, and once it's uncovered, he may justify the dramatic reaction of its carriers, and thus be really touched and deeply moved.

Well, innocence is not angelic by definition. At least not always. It can be evil as well. This story underlines this fact in the most straightforward way i have ever seen on screen. Actually i am one of those who think that as people grow up, it's instinctively the evil that prevails in their choices and it's only through education, culture, experience and guidance that they get to understand that moral values should prevail as the only way of coexistence with other human beings. All living beings have instincts, so do humans. All living beings have "wants" cause they have needs, so do humans. Only humans, unlike animals, have also a brain that makes them want more than just a basic self preservation demands. And once they are not efficiently trained to pursue their demands without making second thoughts about a coexistence code given the existing human society, the only rule that prevails in their brain is the rule of the jungle. The "boy" in this film looks like an angel and actually could be not far from being one. But living without anything that could provide him with essential things to face the absolute loneliness and lack of any code of how far he can go with his -actually not at all excessive - demands he just gets to consider normal, things that should otherwise be taught to avoid. Trying to do his life better(he actually wants to escape from the isolated place he is doomed to live in) he gets gradually more and more accustomed with death and finally does not hesitate -actually he does it as if it's a fully justified, natural thing- to bring about the ultimate horror. Ted -that's the boy's name if i remember well- is not at all illustrated in this film as the cursed satanic "Demian" of the "Prophecy" child. What we have here is the case of a very normal, intelligent, extremely sweet, really adorable little fellow and not of any evil spirits possessions, anything but that. Actually that's what makes the story and its leading character more frightening than any corresponding "Profecy" or "Halloween" screen child murderers. It's just a sweet next door little man we have here, could be mine or yours and yet far too unknown far as his needs are concerned, needs which potentially under certain circumstances may cause destructive events and get us to really know him through them when it's too late. The film itself is very "flat" in the sense that not too many things happen in the most of it, but it's this "flat" approach that makes it realistic and so very interesting to watch as it slowly yet persistently introduces us to the "boy" 's world. In brief, a very honest, very good American film about two beautiful blue, sweet, angelic, innocent and yet evil eyes.

It's been a long time that i have given up on Hollywood blockbusters. Being more often than not very much the same, that is to say full to an unbearable extend of clichés, stereotypes, paper characters and arbitrary hence too predictable scripts, i find them too boring to watch in spite of their spectacular visual effects which i used to find impressive when i was a child but not anymore. This is the rule but as many rules this one too has its exceptions. Well, this rule does not apply to this film. What originally attracted my interest in the "passengers" was the beginning of the story: "One out of five thousand hibernated passengers of a spaceship traveling to a far distant planet wakes up because of a system malfunction ninety years before the arrival to a new interstellar colony, doomed to live, age and die in the ship before it reaches its destination". I found this idea very intriguing and though i have often in the past left in the lurch by interesting Hollywood script beginnings i decided to give this one a try. Well, i was not disappointed, not at all. Some clichés and stereotypes were of course there too, yet fully understandable given a mainstream adventure movie and not enough to prevent me from really enjoying the story -which was not just thrilling and intriguing, it was moving as well thanks to its combination of a survival drama and its very touching human feelings approach given the circumstances- from the beginning to its very end. Last but not least: Chris and Jeniffer - both beautiful and talented -in the leading roles is one of the film's assets.

Like in Ridley Scott's film, so in this one we have the story of two desperate women who fed up with the depression they get from their lives, decide to try their own getaway in an effort to be free and liberated. Only in "Thelma and Louise" we have the case of two otherwise very "main stream" females like the big majority of the average ordinary women and wives of the real world are, who facing the same routine never realize the depression which marks them through the conformity of the men's world they have to live in as women, wives, girl friends. Given this,"Thelma and Louise"'s characters represent the average modern woman to whom they deliver a straightforward feminist message: "You think that you are free and emancipated, well you are not!" . In Buchareb's film on the other hand, being a woman is only a part of the whole thing. What we have here is the case of two persons who are oppressed not just because they are women, but also because they are "different" women. Oppressed by husbands, mothers in law, even other women either because they can not have children, or because they like belly dance, even because they are dark skinned, the tortures of the main characters of the film are clearly not only associated with their sex but also with the fact that they try to pursuit their unconventional wishes. Being women makes things worse, but even if they were males they would have to undergo the same or similar discrimination, hence the only ones who sympathize with them and are kind and helpful to them, are the ones who are victims of discrimination themselves - the Indian Americans of the Indian land area-. I did like the film. The story was intriguing and touching, the acting was good, and the Arab music sonic background adorable!

Having heard good things about this movie i happily went to see it thinking that after a rather long time i was again and at last up to watching a promising thriller. Perhaps this is the reason of my disappointment since this is not a bad movie especially for a non demanding viewer. Yet i am afraid that for the ones who insist on expecting something really new and genuine when in front of a movie screen, this film won't fulfill their expectations. The accountant does not at all deviate from the normal clichés Hollywood embeds in almost all its productions: The "good guy" who proves to be even better in the end is there, the bad guys are there, the childhood traumas are there, the love story is there, the "unexpected'-yet so terribly predictable- wannabe twist (the lost brothers/opponents...reunion) is there, babbling scenes of film characters chattering about their own life dramas are there, and of course a happy ending is there as well. The ones who are really very much familiar with all these clichés - actually it's very much for them many Hollywood films are so far-fetched - may just oversee them and are welcome to accuse me of fabricating them, yet not being bothered by clichés and stereotypes is one thing, pointing them out is another. After all i am not the one who denies "fiction" elements in films, what i find annoying is their overdose.

...or "uncovering Mary Poppins" would perhaps be a more appropriate title for this great film. If nothing else, this would certainly be much better than the stupid and totally irrelevant one the film had in my country ( "The magic umbrella") associating in a most naive and superficial way this touching psychological drama with W. Disney's "Mary Poppins". Perhaps that's why i did not care to watch it till yesterday, thinking that i have had enough of magic umbrellas in my childhood. I never thought that the film had nothing to do with "Mary Poppins" as a fairy tale and her magic umbrella itself, but it was instead focusing on uncovering the real drama that inspired the good witch's story. In this movie we actually watch two,at first glance irrelevant to each other, stories. One that took place in the beginning of last century in Australia and one that takes place in the beginning of the -60's when Mrs Travers, the author of "Mary Poppins" tries to come in terms with W. Disney about how the book would be transformed into a movie. Though it's difficult to understand at the very beginning why she is so unbearably stubborn and insisting on how the characters of the book would be shown and illustrated in the film and overall about the film itself, soon, as her own life's story unfolds making clear what her fairy-tale's characters really represent, her attitude and her almost repulsive behavior become more understandable and she herself more likable and compassionable. After all for many of us our childhood's demons are still a part of our life, consciously or subconsciously controlling and influencing our personalities and we all have a Mr Banks or an Elias Disney (Walt's "demon") to save/make up with, don't we? The film is really good and exciting to watch. Perhaps the excellent revival of the sixties and its characters contribute a lot to this. And of course the revival of these characters through the great performances of -my beloved- Emma Tomson in a "contra role"-that is to say a role we are not used to seeing her in- as a typical aging English shrew, as well as that of Tom Hanks (great as Walt Disney) and the rest of the cast, make this revival absolutely convincing. In Brief, "saving Mr. Banks" is a really good, truthfully tender and touching film which does deserve your attention!

Perhaps one has got to have that kind of special relationship to this unique city to really be touched by this film, yet i would really like to ask everyone to watch it and let himself be drifted away by the aura it sprays from the screen. Istanbul of the Turks, the historical Konstantinopolis of the Greeks, the beloved Polis (again a Greek word) of the Armenians, is a city deep in the heart of not only the above mentioned folks, but also a city that almost all the peoples of the Balcans are very much attached to. For the Greeks it's the cradle of their national rebirth, for the Turks the cradle of their own ethic civilization, for the Armenians the place where they lived in hundreds of thousands and the city where their ethnic cleansing was ordered from, for the Jews the city which gave them shelter in the dark medieval times and hosted a great prosperous community of theirs, for other ethic groups -Slavs, Arabs, Kurds- the just till one century plus few years ago, capital city of the country they lived in -The Ottoman empire-... All these nations have a lot to remember about their good life there and the cruel way this life had to be ended after the collapse of the Ottomans, just a century ago. The -historic and sentimental - background of the stories it tells give an extra power to this film. The memories it brings, even though it doesn't in all cases directly refer to the above mentioned historic and sentimental background, are inevitably for the viewer very much part of it. Especially for the viewer who knows, the viewer who consciously or subconsciously takes part either to Istanbul/Konstantinopolis/Polis's history or just to the "history" of other parts of the area. The Greek and Armenian pogrom, the events in Palestine, the war in the former Yougoslavia. Yet, if one just let himself free to feel the stories of the film itself, he may easily join this city's powerful spirit, even if he does not belong to persons which are personally or ethnically attached to Istanbul's past. And can really be touched and moved. All the stories are very well-done, all the film is. Yet, if i have to point one as the most sentimentally powerful one, that would be the story of the woman, who "sees" in a young Turk's face, her lost in the Yugoslavian war son. This is really heartbreaking and made me bitterly cry. If you have read all this, you do know why you must see this really elegiac, excellent, tender, and yet amazingly realistic - as much as documentaries are- film!

This is the ultimate anthem to human loneliness, helplessness and above all desperation. Actually there are no words to describe the chills and vibes of horror this movie gives. Now, to be exact, i refer to the second half of it, for i find its first one a little irrelevant and not at all matching to its sequence, for which the viewer is not at all, or only very slightly prepared. To be honest, "melancholia" looks like two films/stories in one. Its first part focuses on the reaction of the unconventional sister to what is supposed to be - yet not against her own free will- the happiest day of her life: Her wedding day. The second half of the film focuses on the imminent total destruction of the Earth, and its main character is the conventional, down to earth sister through whom we experience the ultimate panic, terror and desperation of the inevitable end of days. The only link between these two parts of the story, is the unconventional, unconformable, misfit, depressed sister, whο proves to be - unlike her freaked out sister and exactly because of all these features of her character - totally indifferent to the rapidly approaching doomsday and therefore the most prepared for it ("None will miss mankind" she says), helping her sister and her son deal with it. Was the director's goal to focus on these two different aspects about life? I can not really tell. What i can say is that the second part of the film is so incredibly powerful, imposing and frightening that if so, all the first part introduction seems to be far too long, far too redundant, far too much of minor power to fit to the second one, which seems to occur out of nothing yet is so imposing that it makes the viewer forget entirely all he had watched before. Have you ever asked yourself how it would be if a lot of scientists predicted the end of the world while others disputed this prognosis? Have you ever imagined which side you would choose to believe? Have you ever thought of what you would do if this end was getting more and more possible and near? Have you ever dared to deeply, really and consciously wonder how you would react when you found out that this ultimate horror was soon to become an inevitable fact? I am sure you haven't, simply because this is far too hard for a human being to. I haven't either, yet i have always wondered how such a beyond any imagination and sense of desperation and terror frightening event could be shown on a movie screen. Well, believe me, "Melancholia" is the only film so far, which can make the frisson and the ultimate anguish of such an event reach every cell of a viewer's brain, yet without using visual effects we have seen in lots of eschatological Hollywood stupidities in the past, because the story it tells is deeply human, deeply real, deeply possible: It shows you yourself, overwhelmed with panic, anguish, emotional pain, fear and desperation trapped in a mouse trap on fire, struggling for a non existing shelter, facing the end of days, the end of you and -above all - the end of your beloved ones whom there is no way to protect. Last but not least: Kirsten and Charlotte give an amazing performance.

Another great - for its genre- french film. Like all good comedies it doesn't lack realism -even though some excessive elements are there too- and its intrigue is compelling enough to keep the viewer's strong interest from the very start to its end. What i mean is that this movie, being a comedy, is allowed to base its story on certain unreal background factors not having to fully explain or take that serious certain details of its script. And of course the viewer in turn shouldn't bother to analyze how f.ex, far as this very film is concerned, one is so easily supposed to that perfectly be able to stage fake situations -making them look real- in order to influence people's minds about their love choices! Yet, unrealistic elements are always part of a comedy film if only they serve as background of the main story-line, Just like in a science fiction story a lot it is about is fiction and given this the realism of the main story is separately to check out. Given all this, I would have given ten -bright- stars to this brilliant film and to its intriguing main story-line if its very ending was not that Hollywood typical cliché like, which i think takes away a part of the film's otherwise sincere approach to the situation it describes, given of course the genre it belongs to.Yet this is not enough to spoil the overall good vibes it gives.

Unlike most Hollywood films, yet like quite a few -honest or not -rebelious ones, this one is supposed to censure and pull up the modern American way of life and its values. The thing is that this concept has already got a little old fashioned already. And in the "weather man" seems to get over reacting and somehow excessive too. Watching the film i couldn't help wondering what the weather man's problem really was. And all i could see is that the problem was exclusively his. He was not any specially intelligent or gifted person, yet he had a good job, the "system" seemed to be anything but against him, he had no debts, he had not cheated anyone or stolen anything, he was a decent person. OK, he was separated and his teen-aged children had a few problems but that's not anything most people do not have to deal with all over the world, so all the fuss was more or less about his own unstable character and had nothing to do with problems coming from any "bad system" or any "evil society". Not that a man's internal instability is not a problem itself, and not that the world around us is always as ideal as we would like it to be, yet i don't think that in the case of this film's main character's occasion it's the system to blame for the troubles he faces or better thinks he does.The fact that the film does not see it this way trying to convince us that the situation it illustrates is similar to the one we were acquainted with in the "american beauty" is its main weakness i am afraid, that's why i find it a little irrelevant. Not bad but a little overblown.

The production is decent and tried to do the best of what was available. Only... far as the story is concerned there was not much available there. Hollywood script writers have obviously run out of genuine and original ideas so they can only recycle the same old fashioned demon stories we have seen in hundreds of horror films ever since cinema was born. Thrilers or horror films should no longer be based on this kind of nonsense scripts. A fan of this genre who has already enjoyed amazing twisting and really dark stories in films like "the others", "sixth sense" or even "the skeleton key", will find the story "the darkness" tells, just laughable. It's high time that Hollywood stops naming "thrillers" banal horror fairy tales like this one. A good thriller or horror movie may use "fiction" (the world of ghosts and spirits)as the background of its story, but unless it takes it to a further level giving a realistic ending or solution given the fiction it is about, it makes no sense anymore.This is the case of "the darkness". A decent production of a wannabe thriller, which is actually nothing but a trivial horror fairy-tale.

That's how i have to start my review addressing the ones who found this movie great enough to rate it with eight or even ten stars! Not that it is a bad movie but i had to mobilize all my lenience to give it six. The film starts very promising but ends up with an awkward, frustrating and very much predictable ending which is enough to spoil all the good time you might have had before. To put it straight the film is not a thriller, it's a pure horror movie. And up to a certain point it manages not only to give you some good shocks of horror, but also to intrigue you watch it further in order to find out how this horror occurs, where i comes from, and how will its challenge be met. As the plot goes on it gets more and more apparent that the scriptwriter is running out of any ideas that would give you an ending as interesting as the rest of the film. The thing is that in this kind of movies it's the ending that counts! Writing down a story with great suspense, horrific happenings and an expanding mystery is the easiest of things IF you don't have to provide it with an eloquent and -given a fantasy story - realistically explainable, sense making ending. Well, that's what "lights out" lacks. Arbitrary and unreal endings in movies of this genre is the confess of the scriptwriter that all he cared about is to stimulate interest in his film and make you wonder with questions which he can actually not answer. Well this makes me feel fooled!

...and not only. The film takes a fairy tale and turns it into a a story which though using all kinds of everything we find in fairy tales (fairies, elves, kings, queens, curses, spells, castles, palaces, knights etc. etc) it leaves out all the rest of things most fairy tales are actually made of, and that is over-simplicity not only far as their characters but also their plot itself are concerned; In most -if not in every single fairy-tale there are the good guys and the bad guys, the good things and the bad things and a direct naive message of what is good and what is bad. Maleficent lacks over-simplicity, and given a fairy-tale story, it talks about situations and feelings we're very likely to come across in our everyday real life: Greediness, love, betrayal, desperation, anger, revenge,repentance, regret, affection. Above all, it demystifies something that most fairy tales take for granted thus introducing their usually very young, innocent readers to a mentality which fully perverts reality and the existing real world. And that is "Love" as illustrated in this kind of stories. "You live in a fairy-tale" we often say to make someone see things clearly and not covered with the stardust fairy-tales have talked him into. Well, debunking the myth of "real love" fairy tales are often about, "Maleficent" makes a daring innovation like one i think we have never come across in a fairy-tale before. This, along with the rest of the above mentioned deep, complex -and absolutely real- human feelings it talks about, is -among others -what makes this fairy-tale movie unique and worth watching even by the ones who are not fond of this kind of films. No need to mention the excellent photographic work, the magnificent and utmost convincing visual effects,the imposing music as well as Angelina herself, who as Maleficent, builds a really touching character.

Ιn spite of the economic crisis, some wonderful films have been recently released in Greece. This is one of them. Though not its target, it will make you too wonder how a country like mine has got to this mess. And perhaps it will push you to discovering it. If you do, you will even more wonder how a nation with such an amazing infrastructure and culture (neat modern cities/towns/villages with beautiful brand new buildings all over, ultra modern cultural complexes among which the unique brand new opera house-national library cultural park in Athens, fantastic museums, hospitals, science and education institutions, modern highways, sport centers etc etc and above all beautiful people+a highly educated modern young and not only generation, the country of M. Kallas, M.Mercury, N.Mouskouri,M. Theodorakis, Nober prize winners Elytis and Seferis, the country of Mykonos-Corfu-Rhodes etc) could ever find itself into such a catastrophic turmoil. This film won't answer your questions but will give you an idea of the causes. And at the same time will touch your heart with its humanistic message of how love (not any love, the specific love that the Greeks have a special name for and that is "Eros") can bring together in a magic way, persons which have learned/have been taught, that the "others" and only, never themselves, are to blame for their misery. Funny thing that though the magic of this place is not at all what the film is focusing on, anything but that, this magic is simply invincible and impossible to hide. The film is a very good one. And i mean in international standards. It will touch your heart and will make you cry even if you find the story a little unrealistic which is partly true. Yet, even if you see it as a modern fairy-tale, you will have to acknowledge that its background is absolutely realistic and true and will probably make you too revise some of your own ideas about things, like its characters do.

I only like films with realistic scripts hence i am not at all a fan of comedies since they usually illustrate situations far away from what the real world is like,so, since this film was presented as a comedy i never thought it would be one of my choices. Nevertheless when i saw its trailer i thought that i should give it a try. And not only it didn't disappoint me at all, but it also made me a happy person, happy as i have never been recently, and made me laugh out as loud as never before, really made me burst into the biggest laughter of my life it actually made me howl with laughter in spite of the fact that i am too difficult/demanding with jokes. And then it made me cry... Well, in spite of the invincible burst of laughter it inevitably causes, "Florence" is not at all a comedy. It actually is a drama film, and a very good one. It's full of profound and tender human feelings and the story it tells is not simply realistic, it's actually very real and it's with real respect and honesty that it's being illustrated. There is nothing implying the film is trying to make a parody of Florence's strange, yet tender real story. The question that arises is how then can such a story "full of profound and tender human feelings" give such a loud laughter. Well, real life itself can give you the answer. How many times have you not laughed seeing someone -otherwise very dangerously- stumbling and falling on the ground? It's this kind of bitter laughter you get from "Florence". Bitter enough to turn your laughter into bitter tears when the laughter is over... Now of course, Stephen Frears would not have created such a really beautiful thing out of his at any case very good film, if Meryl Streep was not there. Meryl the amazing, Meryl the great. I never doubted the fact that she is an excellent actress, but for reasons i can not tell right now i also thought that she was a little (just a little) over-valuated. Her unique, unprecedented, heartbreaking and at the same time funny performance in this film, has triumphantly proved how wrong i was. Another Oscar is the least i can think her marvelous interpretation as Florence can be rewarded with.

I know that Nolan's fans will disagree with me, but there is no chance that a real and experienced movie fan-or "cinefil" if you prefer - can find this cinematographic creation as interesting and magnificent as some of its viewers obviously lacking enough movie experience and knowledge may do. Let me start with a simple question: What is "interstellar" supposed to be? Science fiction? Excuse me but then its 95-99% pure fiction and only some little part of it science. Well i wouldn't mind it at all if a. it was not taking its "scientific" elements that serious, and/or b. It was using them for conveying some really original humanistic messages we had not already seen in a movie before. And that brings us to its supposedly tender and humanistic part: The father who has to sacrifice himself to save the world and his children and after a journey to the outer cosmos comes back to earth to find out that his present,future, and past are interconnected and that the short time his journey lasted counted as decades of earth years, so his beloved ones are either dead or dying over aged persons etc. etc... Did you find it touching? If yes, you should have found convincing the way the plot flows in the film. Have you? Well, i didn't at all. The strange events (f.ex the messages through the sand lines) and the arbitrary way they bring the "father" to the secret space center where he finds out that he is meant to fly the interstellar spacecraft, and then the arrival to the planets and the -scriptly redundant- adventures there, and then the... return to earth through the black hole and a multidimensional universe to a world where time (future-past-present) and space are all mixed... sorry i just couldn't buy it. And the thing is that in spite of the fact that i was not expected to either, the "scientific" information was there too, obviously as a pretext of how -wannabe- scientifically explained the whole story was... As about the humanistic/sentimental part, too flamboyant, too melodramatic,too banal: In "Bicentennial Man" Robin Williams had already seen his beloved ones aging and dying too. To make a long story short, i think than Nolan fell again in the trap of a too made up, too flamboyant, too "i'll say everything in a single film" style,too complicated, too wannabe impressive,unique and original script, involving a film that wanted to be the "2001 space odyssey" of our time, but it only said things we have already seen or heard in other films before,moreover through an overloaded script which meaning to say too much, made no sense at all in the end. It didn't capture my attention at all. For all the reasons i mentioned before, i found it overall unconvincing and therefore boring to death.