Movie reviews

Best Movie of 2008 - Striped Pyjamas

This was a dreary year for movies. Some good stuff but nothing great with the exception of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (5/5). There is a great film about the IRA hunger strikers called, you guessed it: Hunger (4/5). ..and then a very cool movie about the Naples Mafia (4/5). Hollywood produced a load of junk and even the holiday movies like 4 Xmas's 3/3 and madagascar2 (3/5) were just average.

Boy in the Striped Pyjamas is a masterpiece although quite depressing. The end of the movie is like the financial crises at the end of this year,.A few years ago we saw Munich -4/5 (terrorist movie) on xmas day and this one we saw on Thanksgiving. It provides no cheer at all, maybe see it on tax day. You have been warned.

Indiana Jones and Tropical Thunder

I finally saw the new Indiana Jones (215) which is just terrible . Harrison Ford is ok…his new sidekick (son) is ok but the endless chases don’t seem to have beginnings or worse endings. If you want to see a Hollywood chase movie, go see Tropical Thunder (3/5) which features an Epic performance from Tom Cruise as a Dr Hollywood figure. The rest is long periods of stupidity mixed with moments of genius. It’s a good cast and worth watching on DVD while doing your e-mail. Just pay attention when Cruise gets control.

www.mofilm.com launched

Lost art of movies has now launched a short film festival dedicated to Art, Commerce and Technology. Visit www.mofilm.com and come to the festival next February 18th in Barcelona at the GSM Mobile World Congress.

Summer Schlockbusters

Yawn. Indiana Jones has aliens. Iron man with a cool Downey Jr has to build his robot suit twice in the same movie. Here comes the Hulk with no plot but lot’s of smash and bash. Or you can go see Brick Lane 5/5 from the UK about Indians struggling against racism in the UK. There are a string of these great movies like Bend It Like Beckham 4/5, This is England 5/5 and Love and Hate 5/5 that blow away the tired Hollywood blockbusters.

The Movie of the year

Let me start by saying that I am a Republican before rating Sicko (5/5) as movie of the year. This, again, is a great documentary in a year of great documentaries. It is also interesting to see that Michael Moore and his kind use all sorts of manipulative tricks to increase excitement that used to make good Hollywood movies. American Gangster (2/5) should have been a thrilling new Godfather (5/5) but it just looks tired and worn out. Sicko, by contrast has comedy (breaking into Gitmo) and drama (curing the Sept 11 firefighters) and relevance. If America can waste money on all sorts of pork...can't we just provide universal basic helth care?

King of Kongs - Fist full of Quarters

King of Kongs (5/5) continues the hot streak of amazing documentaries dramatizing the quest to set the all time Donkey Kong record. Like Helvitica (5/5) this impossibley wonderful movie is more exciting than anything ever produced by James Bond and other thrillers. It is too bad they are so hard to find.

2nd best movie of the year

Helvetica (5/5) may be the smallest movie ever made being about the font after all. It includes drama, conflict and comedy as the history of the font unfold. This is far more exciting than all of the end of the world movies that Hollywood spews out. Go see it.

Music movies rev up the year

Once (5/5) is the standout out music movie about a down and out singer songwriter and candidate for movie of the year. The music is great and I hope the guy releases an album. The big music movie is August Rush (2/3) which is a big attempt with a brilliant story with brilliant music which is then ruined by TERIBLE directioo and the worst performance (miscasting?) of Robin Williams ever. The band visits (3/5) is a small egyptian movie that is worth seeing just for the section on how to pick up a girl.

Summer sequels suck

I will write as little as possible about the bloated summer sequels for Shrek, Pirates, Ocean 13 and Spiderman. They all suck. 1/5 for the lot of them...if you have to see one...go see Shrek because a bad cartoon is better than a bad live action movie. Go see the aborigine independent 10 Canoes 4/5 instead.

300 is 500!

The movie trailer for 300 (4/5) looks terrible. It is impossible to see how the comic book style violence could be a good movie but then great direction, tight storytelling and excellent acting take over. This needs to be seen on a big screen...I saw it with 30 Accenture Marketing Scientists and despite our geeky sounding name...we had a rousing post film debate where everyone had a good time. I also discovered that our group likes violent movies with attendees voting Godfather, Goodfellas, Clockwork Orange etc...as best of all time.