Review: Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence
Posted by: Mark McLeod • October 29, 2004 @ 11:59am
Japanese animation comes in many flavors: manga, anime, and now in recent years computer-generated. However, when looked back upon, there are a few distinct legendary animated films to come from the land of the Rising Sun. Akira, probably the best known anime of all time, and Ghost in the Shell, a film which has spawned numerous comic book series and television adaptations.
Anna (Nicole Kidman) and Sean are a happy couple. Anna has a good job at a New York City marketing firm and Sean is happy and enjoys spending most of his spare time jogging in Central Park. One winter's day, he collapses suddenly and without reason, and once the medical reports come in he has passed on, leaving Anna a widow in her mid thirties/early forties.
Sarah Michelle Gellar stars as Karen, a foreign exchange student working at a Tokyo medical clinic that provides palliative care for its patients.
One day, Karen hears that her co-worker Yoko hasn't shown up for work and is asked by her supervisor Alex (Ted Raimi) to cover for Yoko.
As far as Ben Affleck movies go, Surviving Christmas is pretty good.
VIFF: Long films, short films... why can't they all just get along?
Posted by: Mark McLeod • October 20, 2004 @ 12:00am
Short films are different than feature length movies in many ways. Throughout the year, the only real venue to see them is at various film festivals throughout the world or on specialty cable channels like Bravo or Showcase, who devote air time in between feature films and other television series to their airing.
The subways of Budapest harbor an elaborate network of tunnels and trains... and people. There is a ticket agent named Bulcsú who is so devoted to his job that he never goes to the surface of the real world. Or maybe, it's that he's avoiding his responsibilities up top.
Zano makes a proposition to his lover, Naïma, to travel from France to Algeria to discover the homeland of his parents who were killed early in his life. They set off walking across Europe, discovering new lands and themselves at the same time, until they finally reach their historic destination.
I like this film because it lets the music do the storytelling. More than that, in fact.
Walter was in jail for 12 years for child molestation. But that doesn't make him a bad guy, does it? Director Nicole Kassell explores the duality of the nature of a beast, a wolf in sheep's clothing.
Walter may have a compulsion, but the audience does feel sympathy for him. Kevin Bacon does a fair job of portraying a guy with demons that he tries to fight but can't win against.
John Wayne must be spinning in his cold, silent grave. What has his macho world come to when there are films like Ice Men being made studying the complex world of male emotion? The Duke spits black zombie chaw at us.
That being said, Ice Men is a study of the complex world of male emotion. Vaughn is distant and repressed after his father's death.
Albert Markovski (Jason Schwartzman) has a conundrum. He's the leader of the local chapter of the Open Spaces Coalition where he uses poetry to save the area from suburban sprawl. However, he has a problem. He continually and without warning runs into this tall African man and wants to know the meaning of why it keeps occurring.
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