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By Arty Chick, on February 6th, 2010
 The Hurt Locker is one of those films that came and went without much fanfare, and then when all the awards nominations began to come out, it was on just about everyone’s list as best film of the year. (It received 9 Oscar nominations.) Fortunately, it is now out on DVD.
What sets this movie apart from most other “war films” is the silence. Instead of loud testosterone-driven battle scenes, The Hurt Locker is about the quiet, intense moments that are the norm for an Explosive Ordnance Disposal unit (EOD), a squad charged [... Keep reading]
By Arty Chick, on January 4th, 2010
 I heard about Chéri when it was around, but being in small town USA, it was only here for an instant and I missed it. Fortunately, it is now on DVD and it is a great chick flick, especially for women over 35. 50+ and still ravishing, Michelle Pfeiffer is lovely playing Léa, a courtesan of a certain age in Belle Époque Paris. Rupert Friend (Albert in The Young Victoria) plays Chéri, the 19-year-old son of one of Léa’s old courtesan rivals (Kathy Bates). He has known and loved Léa since childhood, and [... Keep reading]
By Arty Chick, on October 11th, 2009
 What is it about Adrien Brody that is so attractive? He is not classically handsome. It’s the eyes. Those sad puppy eyes. In The Brothers Bloom he plays the younger brother named Bloom with Mark Ruffalo as older brother Stephen. (Strangely, they never explain why they are the Brothers Bloom and it is his first name.) The brothers are con men and have been at it since childhood. Now grown, Bloom has tired of always living “a scripted life” since Stephen comes up with all the cons and he just plays his part. Bloom has [... Keep reading]
By Arty Chick, on October 1st, 2009
 I heard about this film when it came out and was somewhat intrigued, but the reviews I read were cryptic about the story and I took that to mean it was deep or convoluted, so I put it off. In reality, it is hard to talk about it without giving away plot points that might take away the enjoyment of this wonderful drama. The basic set up is Jacob is running an orphanage in India. He is summoned to his home country of Denmark to meet with a very, very rich businessman, Jørgen, who is offering enough [... Keep reading]
By Arty Chick, on September 24th, 2009
 Every family has its secrets, its stories that only they can tell but frequently try to ignore. For filmmaker C.M. Hardt that story was about her grandfather. He lived in the small town of El Valle, Spain and following the Spanish Civil War, during the period of an unnamed secret war, he was arrested one night, then taken out and shot. The family home was burned to the ground and his wife thrown in jail. For C.M., the family story was never investigated or explained to her satisfaction and so she decided to go to Spain and [... Keep reading]
By Arty Chick, on August 28th, 2009
 This sweet coming of age story is almost worth seeing just for the scenery alone. Shot in southern China’s Yunnan province, When Ruo Ma was Seventeen uses the beautiful landscape of terraced paddy fields as a reminder that we are not in any place we know. It is far removed from our world. But Ruo Ma has lived here all her life with her old grandma, working these terraced fields with her fellow Hani (aka Xiani.) Now 17, she goes to town to make some money selling roasted corn on the street.
Tourists flock to this quaint [... Keep reading]
By Arty Chick, on August 25th, 2009
 The French make breezy little romantic comedies as easily as they do a good cup of coffee. Perhaps it is because it is a more romantic sensibility. Maybe it is just that the language sounds more romantic and the locations are so quaint. But I can enjoy absurd situations in a French film that I could never accept in an American movie. Case in point is Priceless, starring Audrey Tautou (Amelie, The Da Vinci Code) and Gad Elmaleh as Irène and Jean. Irène is a gold digger staying at a fancy hotel on the Riviera with her [... Keep reading]
By Arty Chick, on July 30th, 2009
 To really appreciate Lost in Austen, you must be a Jane Austen fan. Pride and Prejudice to be specific. And I am. I loved the BBC version and the latest with Keira Knightly is fun, as well. I rented this thinking it was a film, but at nearly 3 hours in, it finally dawned on me that it had been shot as a series. British ITV aired it in 2008 in four parts. That explains all those fades to black.
Amanda is a young woman living in London who would rather spend the night at [... Keep reading]
By Arty Chick, on June 27th, 2009
 If you’re looking for a good musical romance in Chinese, “Perhaps Love” is your movie. It stars Asian heart throb Takeshi Kaneshiro and Superstar singer Jacky Cheung in a love triangle with Zhou Xun. The movie opens with Lin Jiandong (Takeshi Kaneshiro) arriving in Shanghai to co-star in a musical film with his old flame Sun Na (Zhou Xun) who is in a relationship with the famous director Nie Wen (Jacky Cheung). The musical they are all making together is about a young woman who loses her memory and is taken under the wing of a circus owner [... Keep reading]
By Arty Chick, on June 19th, 2009
 “The Road Home” is a fantastic chick flick, a 3 hankie love story set in a small village in north China sometime during the Cultural Revolution though you’d never know that from the look of the village; it could be any time. It is the edge of nowhere, surrounded by stunning scenery, gorgeously shot by director Zhang Yimou. The film introduces the beautiful young Zhang Ziyi who lept on to stardom in “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon ” and “Memoirs of a Geisha,” here playing a village girl who falls for the new school teacher who comes to [... Keep reading]
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