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Runtime: 1 hr. 45 min. THE AMERICAN
Genre: Action & Adventure,
Mystery & Suspense, Drama Theatrical Release: Sep 1, 2010 Wide
Synopsis: Story: Academy Award winner George
Clooney stars in the title role of this suspense thriller. As an assassin, Jack Academy Award winner George Clooney stars
in the title role of this suspense thriller. As an assassin, Jack (played by Mr. Clooney) is constantly on the move and always
alone. After a job in Sweden ends more harshly than expected for this American abroad, Jack retreats to the Italian countryside.
He relishes being away from death for a spell as he holes up in a small medieval town. While there, Jack takes an assignment
to construct a weapon for a mysterious contact, Mathilde (Thekla Reuten). Savoring the peaceful quietude he finds in the mountains
of Abruzzo, Jack accepts the friendship of local priest Father Benedetto (Paolo Bonacelli) and pursues a torrid liaison with
a beautiful woman, Clara (Violante Placido). Jack and Clara’s time together evolves into a romance, one seemingly free
of danger. But by stepping out of the shadows, Jack may be tempting fate.
Starring: George Clooney, Paolo Bonacelli,
Thekla Reuten, Violante Placido, Irina Björklund, Johan Leysen, Filippo Timi, Anna Foglietta, Lars Hjelm, Björn Granath, Giorgio
Gobbi, Silvana Bosi, Guido Palliggiano, Samuli Vauramo, Antonio Rampino, Isabelle Adriani, Ilaria Cramerotti, Angelica Novak,
Raffaele Serao, Sandro Dori Director: Anton Corbijn
critique:
By
stepping out of the shadows, Jack may be tempting fate, but he is not tempting another Academy Award nomination.
Savoring the peaceful quietude he finds in the mountains of Abruzzo, doesn't seem quite a stretch for a guy who lives in Italy.
Clooney does, in fact, have a home there. Director: Anton Corbijn is more of a photographer, again, than
a directer, in this movie as he combines long silences in-between frame after frame of Clooney's Irish decent and it's profile.
Suspense? Not much intrigue in this blogg-meister opinion. Weak premise and weaker thrills.
Hidden
from critics until just before its release, high profile Clooney 's dirty secret is that 'The American' turns out to be that
it's an 'art film. Surprise! Director Anton Corbijn has crafted a quiet, haunting European thriller, drained of emotion and
moving to its own snails pace, about as deliberate as a rubber brick and predictable as a banana peel.
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Director Atom Egoyan usually creates his own extraordinary screenplays; here, though, he has adapted a 2003 movie called "Nathalie..., and renames it, CHLOE. |
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TOLSTOY
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The Last Station
Mirren
and Plummer make Leo Tolstoy seem more unpleasant in his sunset years. Leo and Sofya Tolstoy seem still sexy in the film than you might expect in a historical picture. Helen Mirren, although, she’s 64, is simply sexy forever. As she enters her 70s, we'll begin to develop a fondness for sexy older women.A formidable
patriarch, Christopher Plummer avoided playing Tolstoy as a Great Man. He does what is
more amusing; he plays him as a Man Who Knows He Is Considered Great. Helen Mirren plays a wife who knows his flaws, and loves him since
the day they met. "The Last Station" has the look of Zhivago in the springtime. Tolstoy says he is celibate. Sofya
has him pegged as gay, but Masha (Kerry Condon), a newbie devotee, pegs Tolstoy like many other charismatic leaders, simply
exempting himself from his own teachings. The 13 children provide a clue.
Chertkov, the quasi-leader of Tolstoy's quasi-cult, hires a young man named Valentin (James McAvoy) to become the count's private secretary. In this capacity,
he is to act as a double agent, observing moments between Leo and Sofya when Chertkov would not be welcome. “The Last Station" relates to the last year of Count Tolstoy (Christopher Plummer), a bearded 19th century figure presiding over a household
of the world’s first Hippies. The chief schemer is Chertkov (Paul Giamatti), his intense follower, who idealistically believes Tolstoy
should leave his literary fortune to the Russian people. It's just the sort of idea that Tolstoy might seize upon in his utopian
zeal. Sofya (Helen Mirren), on behalf of herself and her children, is beside herself
about this.
Alice in Wonderland
Alice's adventures played like a series of encounters with characters
whose purpose was to tease, puzzle and torment her. Tim Burton's new 3-D version of "Alice in Wonderland" answers many a childish question. This has never been a children's
story. There's even a little sadism embedded in Carroll's fantasy. It reminds me of uncles who tickle their nieces until they
scream. "Alice" plays better as an adult hallucination, which is how Burton rather
brilliantly interprets it until a pointless third act flies off the rails. It was a wise idea by Burton and his screenwriter,
Linda Woolverton, to devise a reason that Alice (Mia Wasikowska) is now a grown girl in her late teens, revisiting a Wonderland
that remains much the same, as fantasy worlds must always do.
Burton is above all a brilliant visual artist, and his film is a pleasure to regard.
He brings to Carroll's characters an appearance that is distinctive and original. These are not retreads of familiar
cartoon images. They're grotesques, as they should be, from the hydrocephalic forehead of the Red Queen (Helena Bonham
Carter) to Tweedledee and Tweedledum (Matt Lucas), who seem to have been stepped
on. Wonderland itself is not limited to necessary props, such as a tree limb for the Cheshire Cat and a hookah for the Caterpillar,
but extends indefinitely as an alarming undergrowth beneath a lowering sky. The landscape was designed by Robert Stromberg
of "Avatar." When
we meet her again, Alice has decidedly mixed feelings about her original trip down the rabbit hole, but begins to recall Wonderland
more favourably as she's threatened with an arranged marriage to Hamish Ascot (Leo Bill), a conceited snot-nose twit. At the
moment of truth in the wedding ceremony, she impulsively scampers away to follow another rabbit down another rabbit hole and
finds below that she is actually remembered from her previous visit.
Burton shows us Wonderland as a perturbing place where the inhabitants exist for little apparent reason other than
to be peculiar and obnoxious. Do they reproduce? Most species seem to have only one member, as if nature quit while she was
ahead. The Mad Hatter, played by Johnny Depp, is that rare actor who
can treat the most bizarre characters with perfect gravity. This
is a Wonderland that holds perils for Alice, played by Wasikowska with beauty and pluck. The Red Queen wishes her ill, and
the White Queen (Anne Hathaway) wishes her well. To be sure, the insecure White Queen doesn't exhaust
herself in making Alice welcome. The Queens, the Mad Hatter, Alice, the Knave of Hearts (Crispin Glover) and presumably Tweedledee and Tweedledum are versions of humans; the
others are animated, voiced with great zest by such as Stephen Fry (Cheshire), Alan Rickman (Absolem the Caterpillar), Michael Sheen (White Rabbit), Christopher
Lee (Jabberwocky), Timothy Spall (Bayard) and Barbara Windsor (Dormouse). The third act dissolves it into routine and the boring action of every conceivable battle
sequence, duel, all carnage, countless showdowns and all-too-long fights to the finish.
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CHLOE
Chloe updates the classic femme fatale with a Pay
The Piper theme.
Amanda Seyfried is "Chloe” in a Toronto
backdrop which is refreshing and
fun. Catherine the gynaecologist only knows about one kind of orgasm but Chloe’s sexual expertise makes up for the movie’s
small detail failures.
As obsessions go, Chloe’s is reminiscent of
the movie, Fatal Attraction”. Although no bunny boiler, Chloe could use some psychoanalysis, if only for her own good.
She is the one worth caring about in is film.
Chloe is a young prostitute with a chasm
deep,dark side.Catherine,a middle-aged gynaecologist,is unaware of this when she engages Chloe as an undercover temptress to bait her husband, David, a music professor he is suspected of having affairs
with his female students. Over the course of several liaisons with David, Chloe confirms Catherine's worst fears in graphic detail. This is disturbing news — although not nearly
as disturbing as what's really going on.
"Chloe" is as sleek and erotic as a mystery can be and spiked with many twists, although many are expected. It's well
cast however — with Amanda Seyfried as Chloe, Julianne Moore as Catherine, and Liam Neeson as David. --- Catherine has made a Faustian bargain with Chloe by trying to ascertain any
level of her husband's extramarital desires through hiring Chloe. To tempt David into the final act of betrayal,
Catherine engages Chloe until the deed is done. Catherine finds herself in a dramatic change of desire and
when the debt comes due is not able to afford its emotional costs. | Director Atom Egoyan usually creates his own extraordinary screenplays; here, though, he has adapted a 2003 movie
called "Nathalie...,
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