MONDOmagazine » Movies

TIFF 2009: Movies, People and Movie-People!

film — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 13:00:35 +0000

By Rachel West I love TIFF. First and foremost, I love the films. They’re the reason I give up my precious 8 hours of sleep a night and balance a 40-hour work week with 15+ movies on average. Movies are the reason I run solely on trail mix, granola bars, and fast food for ten malnourished [...]

Inglourious Basterds Reviewed

film — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 03:58:58 +0000

Inglourious Basterds Directed by Quentin Tarantino Universal Pictures, 2009 By Bill Walsh Tarantino’s been worrying me lately. The last Tarantino flick I saw was Death Proof and a fan I was not. Death Proof came off like one of those “I Know What You Did Last Summer” movies that anyone could have directed, and the only thing that made it [...]

Flickchart: The New Time Waster for Film Lovers

film — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 19:12:32 +0000

By Sean Kelly A common feature of many movie sites, such as The Internet Movie Database, Yahoo Movies, Flixster, and even Cineplex.com, is the option for users to rate the films they see. Most use the traditional five star system, though IMDb uses ten stars and Yahoo Movies uses letter grading. However, if you are like [...]

Summer Movie MegaCalendar: May

film — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 05:00:43 +0000

By: Sean Kelly, Caesar Martini, Brian Last and Rachel West Summer may be months away, but in Hollywood it's already hot, hot, hot! Join some of our regulars for some educated speculation as they weigh in on May's big titles: Wolverine, Star Trek, Terminator, Angels and Demons, the return of Raimi, and more! What's worth your while and what's a waste? Enjoy the epicocity and start planning your May. [...]

Delgo Reviewed: You Haven’t Heard About It and There’s a Good Reason Why

film — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 04:00:42 +0000

Delgo Directed by Marc F. Adler and Jason Maurer Fathom Studios, 2008 By Miles Baker Opening in theatres today, Delgo is a fantasy-set CGI-animated epic about post-colonialism for children. After the Nohrin empire uses up all their natural resources, they send out search parties to find a new place to live. They find the Lockni, a family-oriented, spiritual people that look like lizards (the Nohrin look like fairies), who welcome them with open arms. [...]

Caesar’s Top 12 Favourite-ist Movies of Double-Aught-Seven

film — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 05:00:49 +0000

By Caesar Martini Well, my friends, it appears that the New Year is almost upon us. In a few short days it will be a brand new day, as 2008 - full of youth and vigor - muscles its way onto the scene, kicking the crap out of the elderly and brittle 2007, and choking it to death. I can almost hear the old year's death rattle now. Oh, Father Time. You make bitches of us all. So I'm sure you're all expecting the regular onslaught of Best (insert topic here) of 2007 lists. And by the second day of 2008, you'll probably already be tired of hearing about them. So, as a pre-emptive strike, I'm giving your most coveted - nay, THE most coveted - Best Films of 2007, right here, right now, five days early!! [...]

Reviewing The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

film — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 05:00:03 +0000

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Directed by Julian Schnabel Pathé Renn Productions, 2007 By Doug Nayler Jean-Dominique Bauby (Mathieu Amalric) was once the wild, jet-setting Editor of the French edition of Elle. Was, that is, until he suffered a stroke so serious that he became completely paralyzed. Completely with the exception of one eye, which he could blink. But because of his continued blinking proficiency, a method of blink-communication was developed. Once he'd mastered this system, Bauby wrote a book transcribed for him entitled The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Within Bauby meditates on his condition, his prospects, and his adaptation to his new condition. Bauby remembers the prospects of his life, family and career, both mourning their loss and considering how (if at all) he can maintain any of those previous connections. Only ten days after the release of the book, Bauby passed away. Not too long afterwards, director Julian Schnabel decided to adapt the book into a feature film. A feature film told mostly from the perspective of Bauby, who seldom is able to leave the medical institution in which he lives. [...]

Review — Aliens Vs Predator: Requiem

film — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 00:15:18 +0000

By Caesar Martini Ever since the end of Predator 2, when the camera casually drifted across the skull of an Alien adorning the trophy wall of a Predator space ship, fans of both genres have clapped and touched themselves with the giddy excitement of schoolchildren at the possibility of perhaps one day witnessing a climactic geek-gasm showdown between the two badass alien species.

Review — I Am Legend

film — Tue, 25 Dec 2007 22:34:30 +0000

I Am Legend Directed by Francis Lawrence Warner Brothers Pictures, 2007 By Caesar Martini I Am Legend is an adaptation of a book, or a remake of Charlton Heston’s The Omega Man, depending on how you want to look at it. It’s 2012, and humanity has pretty much been destroyed by a virus. Created by scientists as a cure for cancer, it ends up being a cure for not being a vampire. Ninety per cent of humanity is wiped out, and the leftovers are turned into the living dead. Except for Robert Neville (Smith). A military scientist who was working to reverse the effects of the virus in the last days of human existence, he is trapped in New York City[...]

Review — The Golden Compass

art — Tue, 25 Dec 2007 21:54:50 +0000

The Golden Compass Directed by Chris Weitz New Line Cinema, 2007 Caesar Martini Look out! It’s another novel for children wrenched from bookstores and put on the silver screen for all of us lazy bastards to spend two hours watching, instead of several days reading. Sometimes the book-to-film translation works quite well, other times it makes me want to head-butt small children. I haven’t read the book, so I can’t comment on the skill of translation of The Golden Compass, but if the book is anything like the movie then I’m glad I compressed all that suck into two hours of boring viewing as opposed to many, many hours of painful reading. [editor’s note: It’s not! It’s not! I swear! It’s so much better than this! ] The movie takes place in an alternate universe where people’s souls travel around with them outside their bodies, in random animal form. So imagine walking down the street and hey, there’s your soul trotting along beside you in the form of a lemur or something, making small talk with you. And what happens to one, happens to the other. So if your soul is a bird and it breaks its neck flying into a window, then, whoops, I guess you’re dead. I wonder if anybody in this fictional world ever got so unlucky to be paired up with a lemming? Bad spot of luck, that. In fact, no one seemed to have a very impractical soul-animal. Everybody’s soul was relatively compact and could keep pace with them. Like, nobody had to walk around with an African elephant or a giraffe or a three toed sloth or anything like that. I wonder if the book is the same way[...]

Review — Lars and the Real Girl

film — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 22:50:38 +0000

Lars and the Real Girl Directed by Craig Gillespie MGM, 2007 By Ian Passy This is all Zach Braff’s fault. More specifically: Garden State. It was pseudo-indie garbage where a misunderstood twenty-something man tried to make sense of stuff I do not care about; while it was not the worst film ever, it was nothing special. Then along came Lonesome Jim – which I like to call Garden State II: Garden Harder. And now we have the third film in the "pseudo-indie twenty-something man who tries to make sense of stuff I do not care about" series: Garden State III: Garden with a Vengeance. Or, as it’s better known, Lars and the Real Girl. Lars and the Real Girl has a rather simple premise. Lars (Ryan Gosling) is a socially awkward maladroit who inhabits a garage in smalltown Minnesota or some similarly terrible place that I would never live in or even visit. Lars has a meager social life that involves sharing a cubicle at work with a David Spade/elf hybrid, going to church, wearing snow boots, and avoiding human contact. This alone does not make for much of a plot, so the filmmakers decided Lars should order a realistic-looking sex doll from the internet, and that is exactly what Lars does. This is where the film starts to fall apart. Without giving away too much of the plot, I will just say that nothing of interest happens for the rest of the film[...]

Review — I’m Not There

film — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 22:38:55 +0000

I'm Not There Directed by Todd Haynes The Weinstein Company, 2007 By Jess Skinner Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There escapes down so many holes, and looks into so many cracks and crevices that it begs to be viewed multiple times, to reveal all it can about a layered life. Though it is apparently the life of Bob Dylan, it does not as much seem made for Dylan as he is made for it: no other pop artist of the past 50 years has displayed such an uncanny ability to morph his own persona whenever he sees fit. The film is as much a biopic as “Desolation Row” is a ballad – that is to say, close, but really not at all. There is little linear progression or cohesion to be found, and the six or so separate Dylan-personas (all with surrogate names) that get their own narrative often bleed into each other, at least once meeting each other in the same space. There’s the poser (Marcus Carl Franklin), the prophet (Richard Gere), the poet (Ben Whishaw), etc. Some are literal, like Christian Bale’s Jack Rollins, whose segment skirts closest to satire[...]