BrAgG RePoRtS

“Even the Preacher knows you throw oranges at him”

The Fall

Director: Tarsem Singh

The Fall begins with a young girl Alexandria (Catinca Untaru) stuck in a hospital healing from a broken arm. She has many friends within the hospital which are all employees. She soon befriends a new patient Roy (Lee Pace) who his back is being treated from falling off of a bridge. To keep her occupied he begins to tell a story with made up characters from her everyday life. The story is of an evil king and the five very different men who want revenge on him. As the story telling goes on Roy gets even more depressed making the story grimmer as all of her favorite characters start to die off.

The first thing I have to compliment on this movie is the colors. They way they are used throughout the movie to imply the fantasy world versus the real world. While in story mode, the oranges, reds, blues, and whites are so primary and vibrant. Also Catinca was a great choice for a lead; she’s so believable to where you almost think she’s making it up without a script. I hope to see her in many films in the future as she gets older.

Rating- 4.5

WwWWWAAALLL-EE

WALL-E

Director: Andrew Stanton

Imagine, in the future the world is covered in garbage. Instead of taking care of it ourselves, technology takes over. So along comes WALL-E, robots specially made to pick up trash. While all of the humans are away on a space cruise, all of the WALL-E’s remain on Earth to clean up. As Mother Nature begins to take back the planet, many of the robots die off except one.

This is the most adorable movie I’ve seen in a while. The way they made an entire movie with almost no dialogue was amazing. I loved how they could just put simple noises, brilliant colors and cute characters to keep you entertained through the whole film. I think it’s definitely a movie that the whole family can enjoy and add to their movie collection.

Rating- 5

Right Before Your Very Eyes!

Death Defying Acts

Director: Jillian Armstrong

This is a film on the well-known mind blowing magician, Harry Houdini. It begins with a young girl and her mother who make a living on their trickery. Mary (Catherine Zeta Jones) and daughter Benji (Saoirse Ronan) perform in a psychic and sidekick show to make a living. They find on the news that Harry’s (Guy Pearce) mother recently passed away and will pay for a convincing psychic to contact her for him. The professional con- artists that they are, the girls jump at the offer. At the audition Harry finds Mary to be promising and almost a love interest. Things change as Harry’s manager, Mr. Sugarman (Timothy Spall) tries to pay off the couple with money as well as giving away information about Harry’s mother.

I enjoyed the film even though you didn’t see a lot of Houdini’s tricks. I also thought it was strange to hear Catherine Zeta Jones do a Scottish accent. But Guy Pearce was an awesome choice for the part of Harry. Just the way his body was built and the hair style was spot on. Even though I personally thought the movie seemed short, It worked for me.

Rating- 3

“You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s almost gone.”

Married Life

Director: Ira Sachs

This confusing plot was set back in the late forties era. To be married seemed like a robotic, typical thing to do at the time. The story starts off with Harry (Chris Cooper) who’s married but wants more out of his marriage other than the physical aspect. Instead of just working on his issues with his wife he finds someone else he believes “loves” him more. His best friend Rich (Pierce Brosnan) believes he’s crazy for not believing he has a perfect marriage with wife Pat (Patricia Clarkson).

So Harry introduces his mystery mistress Kay (Rachel McAdams) to Rich who realizes he’s actually jealous. Rich would rather help patch Harry’s relationship so he could have her for himself. Harry wants to be with Kay so bad but he notices he doesn’t want to hurt Pat. With the help of a hitch hiker he comes up with an idea to let Pat go without suffering. The plot thickens even more with Pat’s secret life and Rich’s outings with Kay.

This movie to me is like a curvy road in the dark. Just when you think you know what’s going to happen it changes. The characters where very well played out by the many stars they chose for the cast. They also did a really good job on costumes and music for that particular time period. I’m not usually into romantic movies, but this one kept me interested. It had a great suspense factor to it towards the end.

Rating – a 3

Justice vs. Revenge

Red

Director : Trygve Allister Diesen

This film starts out as a calm setting with an older man (Brian Cox) and his dog Red. There’s a definite long relationship between the two. An unsuspected twist arrives when some punk kid takes away the man’s only companion. The kind hearted man tried finding justice in the situation through the law. After finding out there wasn’t much they could do, he searched for an honest apology. He soon found out he was dealing with the most corrupted, uncooperative family alive. Back and forth he goes with this family and the situation gets worse and worse. The whole thing just about drives him insane and he quits being so nice.

Animal lovers I advise you avoid this movie. If it wasn’t for the festival I probably would’ve never seen this movie. I almost wish I didn’t because I don’t like movies that make me cry or portray animal cruelty. The rest of the film was intriguing because you want the good guy to win of course. It’s one of those movies you want to jump through the screen to help fight. Other than the beginning I would say it’s a pretty decent film.

Rating- I give it a 3