Category: Reviews
Good Bye Lenin! – Film Review
Charming, moving and funny German film set in East Berlin around the time of Germany’s re-unification in 1989. Even if it wasn’t any good, you’d still have to admire the original premise.
The Bat by Jo Nesbo – Book Review
I wanted to take a short break from the Neapolitan Novels and read something less dense, so I read the first entry in the Norwegian crime series about Harry Hole, the hardboiled anti-heroic Oslo detective whose inner demons don’t stop him from having genius insights and solving cases by the end of the book.
The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante – Book Review
The second entry in Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels is just as good as the first one, if not better. It continues to chart the stories of Elena and Lila, the two young girls from Naples, as they enter adulthood, and the course of their relationship which is far too complicated to be referred to as friendship.
Melancholia – Film Review
I suffer from motion sickness and it’s a big compliment to the movie that I stuck with it till the end despite the nausea-inducing hand-held camerawork. It was like a film equivalent of driving down a winding mountain road – you get beautiful views but feel rather queasy by the end of it all. I coped by glancing away from the screen occasionally and silently praised the cameraman whenever he managed to hold the shot.
Delicatessen – Film Review
A delightfully zany French movie about love, dystopia… and cannibalism. It’s directed by Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet, who later made Amélie, so I kinda knew what to expect – beautifully textured and whimsical visuals, quirky and imaginative little details, eccentric characters – but even so this movie is quite out there.
Ghost World – Film Review
A quirky, affectionate, funny and poignant look at the outsiders and margin-dwellers, and easily one of the best movies about teenagers and coming-of-age.
The Grey – Film Review
I’m really glad that I caught up on this movie, which I actually had wanted to see at the time of its theatrical release, but never got around to. The back of the DVD describes it as “a gripping man-versus-nature action thriller”, and it does succeed on that front, but it also turned out to be much more thoughtful and philosophical than Liam Neeson vs. Wolves.
The Notebook – Film Review
This movie is supposed to be a modern holy grail of chick flicks, so I watched it because I love me a good romance. I’m sorry to say that it left me cold – I didn’t hate it but nothing about it tugged on my heart-strings. Nope, not even the Alzheimer’s storyline.
Raging Bull – Film Review
I went to the Martin Scorsese exhibition at ACMI last weekend, which inspired me to catch up on his filmography, starting with the movie often cited as his finest.
