In the first episode, the three gear heads who host the show – Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May – gleefully try to show that the compact cars of their youth can be as exciting as the high performance cars they usually drive on the show by racing them through the aisles of a grocery store. In the next episode, they pay a heartfelt tribute to the British soldiers who gave their lives fighting in Afghanistan by showing how the army has improved their vehicles to make them safer over the course of the war. Those two episodes alone show why Top Gear has been on TV in England, America and around the world for so long: It’s a brilliant mix of hilarity and honest emotion. Sure, it’s hard to understand them when they start to talk too geeky about cars, but you can cut them some slack, especially when you see the joy on their faces when they get behind the wheel. As always, the guests stars taking a spin in their reasonably priced car is a who’s who list of showbiz celebrities, ranging from actor Tom Hiddleston (Thor) to musician James Blunt. They look as happy as the three hosts, living a dream of driving fast around a track.
Fabrice Luchini and Lambert Wilson star in this delightful tale of two estranged actors who get together to try and stage a new production of the Moliere classic play The Misanthrope. Gauthier Valence (Wilson), the far more successful of the two thanks to his fame for playing a doctor on a popular doctor drama, wants to hire his old friend Serge Tanneur (Luchini) to play his sidekick in the production, but Serge has different ideas, even though he hasn’t actually acted in decades. The two ultimately decide to swap roles during the actual run of the show, so they spend the rehearsal time they have trading lines – and criticisms – with each other. If you know the play, the film is probably a lot more satisfying since writer/director Philippe Le Guay simply assumes you know why every line the two actors read is important. If you aren’t familiar with Moliere, though, you can sit back and enjoy the two actors as they verbally fence with each other about the play, art, their lives and anything else they can imagine.
Somewhere in the not-too-distant future, according to his film from Spanish director Jorge Dorado, there will be a special squad of investigators known as memory detectives who can literally enter a person’s mind and witness whatever crime they committed or were a victim to. The price such an operative pays, though, can be steep as we learn when we meet a memory detective named John Washington (Mark Strong) who hasn’t fully recovered from the stroke he suffered from investigating a murder case. On the brink of financial ruin, Washington takes what is supposed to be an easy case – getting a teenage girl to eat – to try and get back on his feet. The case is far more complicated than anyone (especially the audience) imagined and the memory detective is soon fighting for his sanity and his life. The story is complex, but well told, and the acting top notch, especially Strong and young Taissa Farmiga as the girl who refuses to eat.
Lovely to look at, but a bit of a drag to sit through (thanks to the show’s glacial pacing), this anime from director Toshiya Shinohara is steeped in a general creepiness that makes even the dullest episodes captivating to watch. The story follows 15-year-old Izumiko Suzuhara, a shy high school student who has an extremely tough time fitting in with the modern world. It’s not just the fact that she was raised at a secluded monastery and has virtually no social skills; the modern world – cell phones, computers and the like, seems to blow a fuse whenever she goes near them. Luckily, there’s a young man named Miyuki Sagara, a former childhood friend, to help her make her way throughout the school day. The creepy factor cranks up as we learn that Izumiko is being groomed to become last vessel of the goddess Himegami.
Usually when a ‘family’ film tries to shoot for a wider audience, it either adds a bunch of ‘wink-wink’ jokes for the parents to enjoy (keeping fingers crossed that the kids in the audience don’t get it) or it tries to deliver a message so the adults won’t feel so bad about being dragged to it in the first place. The people responsible for The Lego Movie took a very different approach: they just made a movie that is truly fun to anybody of any age. In fact, it’s only towards the end when the movie breaks into the real world to tack on its message that it falls flat. When it stays in the rainbow colored world of little plastic bricks, it is, as the catchy song reminds you, awesome. Watching this story of an average guy finding away to save the world will also spark your imagination in unexpected ways. You may never actually get down on the floor and try an build something with a set of Legos, but you’ll walk away with a better sense of the joy Lego fans have when they do.
Nominated for a
2014 Best Animated Feature Film of the Year Academy Award, this delightful
story from directors Stéphane Aubier, Vincent Patar and Benjamin Renner tells
the story of an unlikely friendship that develops between a grumpy bear named
Ernest and a tiny mouse named Celestine. It’s based on a series of books by
Gabrielle Vincent, and its true weirdness is a fantastic reminder of how
children’s imaginations are far more fertile than we give them credit for. A
friendship between a bear and a mouse is almost ‘normal’ compared to the
subplot of why the mice need to steal the bears’ teeth in the first place. This
is that rare kind of film that is so enchanting to look at that you could
happily watch it with the sound off and still be entertained by the story. Of
course if you did that, then you’d miss the excellent voice work of the likes
of Forest Whitaker, Paul Giamatti, William H. Macy and the legendary Lauren
Bacall.
This Oscar-winning
documentary from director Peter Davis literally shook the world when it first
shown at the Cannes International Critics' Week in 1974, almost a full year
before the fall of Saigon and the end of the war it was investigating. Some of
the images in the film, like a young girl running naked down the street, her
body burned with napalm, or the graphic assassination of a man shot through
the head, have been with us for
generations and still have the ability to shock and appall the viewer. Watching
it now, though, some 40 years after its release, the experience feels a bit
watered down, especially if you were of an age to see it way back when. Sure,
it’s still disturbing to listen to a US Army General tell people that Asian
people value life less than Americans do (with the none-too-subtle subtext that
it’s OK to kill them), but today’s audience is far more cynical. They almost
expect their leaders to be corrupt, unfeeling jerks like General Westmoreland.
The fact that such cynicism is a direct result of our experience in Vietnam
echoes throughout your viewing.
