Category Archives: movies

an Israeli exercise in ‘horror’ movies (Film: Big Bad Wolves – Israel, 2013)

I must launch one of my rants about film titles translations. Usually my complains are about translating English titles to Hebrew or my mother-tongue Romanian – now it’s about the reverse translation. This film is titled in Hebrew ‘Who’s afraid … Continue reading

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horror is not lost in translation (Film: Stoker – Chan-wook Park, 2013)

I read that director Chan-wook Park decided to go into movies after seeing Hitchcock’s Vertigo. He grew up into becoming one of the most successful directors of horror movies in the Korean school of cinema and he now pays back … Continue reading

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theater behind the bars (Film: Cesare deve morire – brothers Taviani, 2012)

The Shakespearean ‘All the world’s a stage’ gets a new meaning with this very interesting and very different film made by the Taviani brother whose actors and heroes are individuals for which the world is  the high security prison where … Continue reading

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‘Nine’ gets a … 9 (Film: Nine – Rob Marshall, 2009)

There are many ways one can dislike Nine . For example trying to compare it with the films of Frederico Fellini, on whose figure the main character in the movie is based on. Or trying to compare it with Broadway … Continue reading

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revenge comes in unexpected ways (film: Revanche – Gotz Spielmann, 2008)

By the end of the opening scene of Revanche something falls (maybe it was thrown) in the quite water of a lake. Then we can see the idyllic landscape of a lawn with warm colors like from a Renoir painting … Continue reading

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soulless (Film: Zero Dark Thirty – Kathryn Bigelow, 2012)

What is surprising for this two and a half hours film depicting the search after Bin Laden, the planning and the execution of the action that killed him is how superficial it is in its approach. It may be that … Continue reading

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a thriller in the swamps (Film: In the Electric Mist – Tommy Lee Jones, 2009)

Some films deserve a better fate. This is in my opinion the case with ‘In the Electric Mist’ which is totally unknown to most of the cinema fans because it seems to not having been released in cinema theaters in … Continue reading

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chaotic (Film: Contagion – Steven Soderbergh, 2011)

Having seen a few weeks ago Side Effects I was reflecting that maybe Steven Soderbergh would not necessarily do a bad thing taking a break from directing. Well, I had not seen ‘Contagion’ yet, one of his previous movies. To … Continue reading

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the meaning of America (Film: ‘Killing Them Softly’ – Brad Pitt, 2012)

Here is one action movie that succeeds in a very original manner to say more about the America of today (or of a few years ago) than many other ‘serious’, ‘social’, ‘politically-engaged’ film. It does it so in a very … Continue reading

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out of focus (Film: Side Effects – Steven Soderbergh, 2013)

For us, folks living out of the United States there seem to be two institutions that govern strongly the lives of our American friends: the courts of law and the shrinks. While tribunals are institutions that for most people out … Continue reading

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