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At it's heart, it's about a man, desperate to find and save his daughter, and willing to employ any means necessary to get her back.
Robert Ludlum's character comes alive in a three part series that every action fan should see. A fantastic story of the life (and pre-life) of Jason Bourne. The action is top notch and the acting superb.
Matt Damon, Franka Potente and Doug Liman directing.
Ben Manibag appears to be your average overachiever; a bright kid, with good marks in school and a steady job. He appears to be every parents' dream. However, Ben and his friends are living double lives as they play dirty outside of school. Always committing some sort of petty crime, it is only a matter of time that Ben and his friends become greedy and start taking more risks and performing dangerous crimes. The appearances of being "bright and perfect students" gives them the freedom to do almost anything they wish without being examined under a microscope, and with your typical "model student" stereotypes to keep their darker sides hidden. Of course, everything that has a beginning has an end. It's just a question of when the downward spiral begins and how deep they fall into the rabbit hole with no option of turning back.
Parry Shen, Jason J. Tobin, Shirley Anderson, Sung Kang with Justin Lin directing.
"Closer" is about deception in all its various mutations: lying, cheating, pretending to love someone, pretending not to love someone. Truly it is about anything other then actually being close. In fact the movie is about staying as far away emotionally from people as you can: playing games with each other, taunting each other with frank descriptions of intimate encounters and brutal arguments in which the need to hurt and cut as deeply as possible is paramount. It is about self-destructing relationships destructing before your eyes and gaining some type of redemption, if the redemption is truly worth it.
Natalie Portman, Jude Law, Julia Roberts and Clive Owen, with Mike Nichols directing.
What happens when the final scene of a movie makes the rest absolutely obsolete? It becomes one of the best movies to ever grace a screen. The characters are formidable. They are usually suspects and if they are always going to be this way then why not fit the crime? They do and this sends them into a whrilwind of crime and deception and truth. The thing is though the truth part is never found; there is never an answer to the undying question, "Who is Keyser Söze?"
Stephen Baldwin, Benicio del Toro and Kevin Pollack, Gabriel Byrne, Kevin Spacey are directed by Bryan Singer.
This movie nearly convinces you that there is a shred of logic in the tenets of white supremacy. If that statement doesn't horrify you, it should; Norton is so fully immersed in his role as a neo-Nazi skinhead that his character's eloquent defense of racism is disturbingly persuasive. Looking lean and mean with a swastika tattoo and a mind full of hate he is more than convincing as a Nazi. Eventhough never nominated for an oscar, the lead role is worthy of one.
Edward Norton, Edward Furlong, Beverly D'Angelo are directed by Tony Kaye.
A gruesome display of non-seen violence in a plot fattened by the seven deadly sins concocted by a ravenous serial killer. The cimenatography is ingenious and each scene is arranged in rust, death, confusion and grotesque.
Morgan Freeman, Brad Pitt, Kevin Spacey, Gwyneth Paltrow are directed by David Fincher.
The film is far more atmospheric than plot-driven: we whiz through Tokyo parties, karaoke bars, and odd nightlife, always ending up in the impossibly posh hotel where the two are staying. The wisps of bittersweet loneliness of Bill and Charlotte are handled smartly and romantically. The two lost souls find each other at the hotel, spend time with one another, and even sleep in the same bed together. But we know that while this is providing a small comfort for the time being, it is not a lasting solution to their problems. And we also understand that both Bob and Charlotte -- even if Bob's wife were in Tokyo with him, and John was by Charlotte's side all the time -- would still be lonely. Their life struggles lie deeper than what one person can provide, especially the persons they have chosen to settle down with.
Giovanni Ribisi, Scarlett Johannson, Bill Murray are directed by Sophia Coppola.
The reasons for the crime are unknowable like human existence itself. For those critics who fault Van Sant for not committing himself to a thesis, the unknowable should have sufficed. That is not to say the long takes, and interminable tracking shots aren't boring; it's just that the viewer must give in to the director's vision of teenage life as essentially devoid of humor, excitement, and rationale. This mirthless world may serve as a possible cause for the slaughter. As one of the murderers tells the other at the beginning of the rampage, `Have fun.'
Throughout this docudrama, Van Sant turns our expectations upside down: The misfit girl is not saved just because she is like the assassins; the muscular, seemingly impervious African-American student, tracked like a savior through the halls, is not a hero at all, but another disengaged high-schooler not reading the signals.
The aphorism about the ignored elephant in the living room, where it no longer can be seen because it's been there too long, or the one about the blind men who, each with a part of the elephant, can't describe the whole, can be the appropriate theme of this cinema-verite dissection of the senselessness of evil. Greedy without audacity and cruel without courage; there was not a foresight of serious intention in the whole bunch of them, crime and it criminals are inscrutable.
Directed by Gus VanSant.
*This list excludes the expectant movies that all argee on, Godfather, Casino, Casablanca, etc.
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