This new version of the brilliant Charles Bronson original has some of that movie's scenes more or less copied into its plot, but without knowing its a remake, you'd be forgiven for thinking you were watching Transporter 4.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0472399/
Jason Statham is Arthur Bishop, a cold blooded hit-man who makes assassination attempts look like accidents and circumstance. But to look at Statham strutting around fit and tough as nails, he could be playing Frank Martin or Chev Chelios. As far as Action Movie Star is concerned, Hollywood belongs to Statham. But the plot doesn't offer anything new, and Ben Foster struggles to make something of his psycho role despite being great in movies like Hostage and the recent remake of The 3:10 To Yuma.

what is good about The Mechanic remake is the action and fight sequences, they are entertaining and thrilling, but afterwards you come away from the cinema with a kind of Seen It All Before attitude. Would Hollywood please stop making rehashes of classic originals?

28 January 2011 | by CalDexter (scotland) 

Hours of intense drama

The first frames of Danny Boyle's new film 127 Hours are frenetic montages of colour and movement and people and energy. You're not immediately sure why you're being fed these energy bars of high-voltage action, but you acknowledge, man, it's a rush.

It clicks into place when we're introduced to the movie's protagonist, outdoorsman/engineer Aron Ralston (James Franco), who is raring to go trekking in the Blue John Canyon in Utah. Climbing a mountain, rappelling through vertiginous gorges, cycling in uninhabited landscapes – these are solitary activities that inject pure adrenalin into the veins. It's an abstract high, but director Danny Boyle sets the tone via the opening imagery, which captures that buzz.

In a career-defining performance, Franco conveys it all — the addiction to this buzz; the truckloads of youthful charm, energy and verve; as well as its corollary, a careless selfishness and belief in his own invulnerability.

So Aron goes off on his hike, and along the way meets Kristi (Kate Mara) and Megan (Amber Tamblyn), two young women who are lost. They have a great together, and when they part ways, the girls invite him to a party. But his careless bonhomie makes them remark, “I don't think we figured in his day at all.”

Franco plays Aron with a cheerful, almost dizzying kinetic energy, that's all the more effective when put to an abrupt stop by the boulder that wedges his arm against the rock wall. Boyle — aided by directors of photography, Anthony Dod Mantle and Enrique Chediak — determinedly keeps us in the canyon with Aron. Yet he also leads us out of it by getting into Aron's head and his memories/hallucinations about his former girlfriend (Clémence Poésy) and his parents (Kate Burton and Treat Williams).

A particularly effective sequence, poignant yet funny, has Aron tape his plight on his video camera, in the format of a talk show. He comes to the inescapable question that he alone is responsible for his present situation, chiefly by not telling anyone where he was going — a screw-up that he succinctly sums up with the single sound: “Oops.”

Thus Aron's ultimate insight is not only the terrible steps he must take to survive, but also the recognition of a grown-up version of himself that understands accountability.

The name of the movie tells you the length of the ordeal, and as everyone knows — specially after the Oscar buzz — the movie is based on the real-life Aron Ralston's experiences in April 2003, chronicled in his memoir “Between a Rock and a Hard Place”. A special point of interest for us in Tamil Nadu is the double Oscar nomination scored again by A. R. Rahman for his work on the film — for best original score and best original song, ‘If I Rise'.

As with Slumdog Millionaire and Trainspotting, Boyle creates in 127 Hours, a movie that is almost too harrowing to watch in parts, but peculiarly enough, winds up being an intensely life-affirming experience.

127 Hours

Genre: Drama

Director: Danny Boyle

Cast: James Franco

Storyline: When an accident traps outdoorsman Aron Ralston under a boulder in the uninhabited Utah canyons, he must figure out a way to survive.

Bottomline: Boyle proves again his ability to find life-affirming poetry amid the more horrific aspects of life 

by

Parvathi Nayar

http://www.thehindu.com/arts/cinema/article1137160.ece 

Biutiful

Uxbal is a tough but loving single father of two young children, estranged from his unstable and self-destructive bi-polar wife, Marambra. He scrapes a living in the backstreet black economy of Barcelona, where he operates as a middleman for those who exploit illegal immigrant labor. In addition to his dubious worldly talents, Uxbal also has the psychic ability to convey messages from recently departed souls to their grieving relatives, for which he reluctantly accepts payment. Uxbal's chaotic life-style reflects his essential condition - he is trapped between the spiritual and material worlds - and when he learns that he is terminally ill with cancer, it seems as if his body must be rebelling against his conflicted way of living. After receiving news of his imminent death, Uxbal begins searching for a trustworthy person to raise his two children after he dies - and "Biutiful" tells of his struggle to put his life in order and accomplish this apparently impossible task while dark forces throw obstacles in his path. Those who remember Inarritu's previous film "Amores Perros" will find themselves in familiar territory as Uxbal weaves his way through a labyrinth of mean streets and desperate people battling for survival. On the surface there is only the callous selfishness and brutality of a dog-eat-dog world, alleviated by brief moments of tenderness and self-sacrifice - but hidden amongst the confusion there is the age-old journey of the immortal hero towards liberation. The film succeeds in creating something close to a modern myth - it is is a sublime epic, and possibly the best film of the year by a long way.

by tigerfish50 (Old London, New England)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1164999/

GLove

Acclaimed Korean director Kang Woo-seok’s first film based on a true story, “GLove,” tells the story of a baseball team whose members are all hearing-impaired.
Kim Sang-nam (Jeong Jae-yeong), a hot-tempered former professional baseball player, is sent to the countryside to coach a team of hearing-impaired players in order to avoid media coverage of his recent involvement in an assault case.
At first, Kim has a difficult time imagining how he can teach baseball to a group of boys who can’t hear, but as he spends time with them he starts to believe that they can play the game.
Motivated, Kim decides to help them prepare for the nationals.
But things don’t go the way Kim plans and their difficulties communicating with one another exacerbates the situation.
Kang, who is known for action and crime thrillers such as “Silmido” (2003) and “Public Enemy” (2002), said in a recent interview that he wanted to make a film that would make him happy during the production process.
Jeong won Best Actor for his performance in “Moss” (2010), which was also directed by Kang, at the 31st Blue Dragon Film Awards in November.

Akmareul boatda (2010)---I saw the devil

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1588170/

This movie is not for the squeamish, or the faint of heart. Censors claimed it was offensive to human dignity. These were the kinds of things they told the audience at the world premiere screening of the Uncut Version of I Saw the Devil at the Toronto International Film Festival last week. I had heard the movie was pretty graphic, but I never expected that it would push any boundaries. I turned out to be only half right.

After finding out his fiancée has been brutally murdered, secret agent Dae-hoon (Byung-hun Lee) is at a loss. With the help of his father-in-law, he sets out on a revenge plot to find the man who did it. He quickly finds the culprit, Kyung-chul (Min-sik Choi). He beats him pretty badly, but instead of killing him, he leaves him alive. He wants to stalk his prey, and exact his revenge slowly and increasingly more painfully.

Going in with very few ideas of what I was about to see, I was startled and thrilled at the tenacious audacity on display from the opening scene all the way until the final frames. The film is a gritty, merciless experience that could never be truly recreated in North America. This is the kind of hard-boiled revenge thriller you could only find in Korea. And to hear that even the censors there could not handle Kim Ji-woon's complete vision makes the film all the more uncompromising and astounding. It has taken me well over a week to try and come up with the words to describe and review the film, but never once have I forgotten anything I saw. It is quite simply, unforgettable.

I was right in assuming the film would not push the boundaries of what can be shown in regards to graphic violence and gore. But it comes really close. It makes Park Chan-Wook's entire Vengeance Trilogy look about as violent as the Toy Story Trilogy. Blood sprays, flies, drips, gushes – every verb or way blood can possibly flow out of the human body occurs over the course of the film. It relishes in it no matter if the shot is raw, unflinching and real, or hyper stylized and completely over-the-top. One sequence involving a brutal double murder as the camera swoops around the scene in a circle is simply magnificent to watch, both to see how much blood is spilt and for how wicked and incredible a shot it is.

The revenge tale at the core of I Saw the Devil is not all too original, but it is the story and idea around it that is. Very rarely do we see a film with two characters that start off completely different, but very slowly become all in the same. Dae-hoon and Kyung-chul are both very stubborn individuals, who will not back down from each other. They just keep at each other, and even as Kyung-chul is continually beaten, abused and victimized, he never once lets up. I keep coming back to a comparison with Batman and The Joker in The Dark Knight, and how those two menaces push each other to their physical limits, and that is exactly what happens in this film. While it was easy to pick sides in Dark Knight, Ji-woon makes it increasingly difficult for the audience to figure out who they should sympathize with here. It is a haunting and blatantly moral-defying story, and its raw and emotional undertones are more than difficult to swallow.

But the key problem I found with the film is Ji-woon's lack of ability to know when to cut. There are easily twenty minutes that could be chopped right out of the film, and none of its edge would be lost in the process. I was glued to the screen for the majority of the film, but found myself checking my watch more than once because I was totally baffled as to why it runs over 140 minutes. There is only so much revenge one can take and comprehend, and having the film run so long makes it all too easy to call out as being self-indulgent. I respect the film, and I respect Ji-woon as a filmmaker (I wanted to seek out the rest of his film catalogue immediately after the lights came up), but it just makes such an incredible movie feel a bit sloppy and weakened as a cohesive package.

Another inconsistent element is Lee's Dan-hoon. We never learn much about him outside of his being a secret agent and wanting to inflict as much pain as he can through his revenge scheme. So how are we to assume he was not a sick and twisted individual in the first place? How are we to know this is not his first time inflicting such a painful revenge? He rarely speaks, and his cold, calculating eyes never once give us a hint of any further development. It is a great performance by Lee, but it is one that feels very underdeveloped – outside of some rather obvious sequences.

But then, anyone would look underdeveloped when standing next to Choi. The man gives a performance that is the stuff of legend. He was incredible as the lead in Oldboy as the man who was wronged, and is even better as the wrongdoer here. He brings out the monster in Kyung-chul all too easily, and his riveting performance is unmissable. The transformation into this disgusting, psychopathic creature is nothing short of amazing. He chews up scenery at every turn, and is magnetic on screen. Nothing even comes close to equaling the power, intensity and dare I say authenticity he puts into this character. He is the stuff of nightmares.

I Saw the Devil is a great revenge thriller, but is far from perfect. Choi's electric performance alone should become required viewing for anyone with any interest in film.

Dhobi Ghat review

Irrespective of its genre, an Aamir Khan production is looked forward to with super-enthusiasm. Films like Lagaan, Taare Zameen Par, Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na and Peepli [Live] have redefined cinema and in their own small way prompted film-makers to think beyond the stereotype. That automatically raises the bar for AKP's new endeavor Dhobi Ghat.

Mumbai - this vivacious, lively and spirited city has inspired many a film-maker, novelist, writer, playwright, poet in the past. Kiran Rao's Dhobi Ghat takes a look at four different characters in this dynamic city. Interestingly, instead of opting for the usual candy floss entertainer in her directorial debut, Kiran chooses to make a film that's very real and also that comes across as personal memoirs that have found a place on celluloid. It's more of a video diary on the inhabitants of this bustling metropolis. More importantly, this is a story about four different people - all from diverse walks of life - and how their lives crisscross in this voyage and how they cope with yearning, solitude, affection, friendship and loss.

To me, Mumbai comes across as the fifth character in this film. The constant clamor of traffic, the sea of people, the energetic street life and the heavy and torrential rains dominate the goings-on from start to end. In fact, Mumbai comes across as a silent spectator here, watching each of those four characters mutely. Much like a septuagenarian [Aamir Khan's neighbor] in the film.


What catches one's attention is the fact that Dhobi Ghat tells four different stories in those 95 minutes in the most pragmatic manner. The characters are real and so are their stories, their emotions, their relationships, their smiles, their tears, their dreams, their desires, their fears and their tragedies. It comes across as factual and authentic as your eyes would observe and witness in real life. Sure, we got a flash of the assorted people of this city in Slumdog Millionaire, but Dhobi Ghat doesn't follow the conventional route. It is far more subtle and restrained.

Dhobi Ghat [Mumbai Diaries] is the story of four people from very different backgrounds, whose worlds intersect and leave them forever altered. As they find themselves drawn into compelling relationships, the city finds its way into the crevices of their lives, separating them even as it brings them closer...

Fragments of their experience -- seen through a naive video diary, black and white photographic images and painting -- form a portrait of Mumbai and its people bound together as they journey through longing, loneliness, loss and love.

Like I pointed out earlier, Kiran Rao encompasses emotions, dreams and aspirations most convincingly. In fact, every sequence of Dhobi Ghat tells a story, every image matters and that, in my opinion, makes this first attempt by Kiran nothing short of an achievement. Filmed in guerrilla style, with hand-held cameras and moving shots, Dhobi Ghat captures the real flavor of this populous city. Generally, film-makers try to stick to the right frames and procure permissions for the most eye-catching location, but not here. From opulent and classy apartments to the slums, Dhobi Ghat is an authentic piece of work.

 Dhobi Ghat catapults Kiran Rao alongside the likes of accomplished storytellers like Mira Nair and Deepa Mehta with her intensely intelligent script. Besides throwing light on the daily routine of these characters, Dhobi Ghat juggles a recent past and the present time skillfully. Also, this one's a love story inherently; not a triangle, but a square. In fact, each of the characters is vividly sketched and each of them long or aspire for that someone special. Thanks to a watertight screenplay and eye for detail, Kiran's characters feel, look and sound genuine.

Cinematographer Tushar Kanti Ray shoots the film as if one were watching the story unspool live in front of one's own eyes. Academy Award winning Argentine composer Gustavo Santaolalla's [Brokeback Moutain, Babel] background score is captivating, also non-Indian, yet fits the varied moods, from melancholy to elation, admirably. The sole area where the film fumbles is its pacing at places. The results would've been even more impactful if the film was tightened a bit on the editing table.

The film marks the debut of Monica Dogra and Kriti Malhotra, who are exceptional and deliver natural performances. As for Prateik, the ease with which he speaks the slum lingo or converses with his pal or the gentle tone while speaking to the woman he loves [the urbane and classy Shai] proves what a dependable actor he is. The most memorable sequence for me is the concluding one when Prateik chases Shai's car. There's no doubt that he's a complete scene-stealer and a star in the making. His unconventional looks and captivating personality only adds to this performance.

Very much like his performance in Taare Zameen Par, Aamir Khan very willingly lets his co-actors eclipse him. Sure, he's super as a cloistered artist, but this film is not about Aamir Khan, the superstar. It's primarily about four stories, with Aamir merely enacting one of the four pivotal characters. In fact, he underplays his part magnificently and munificently allows his fellow cast to be conspicuous in their respective parts. In actuality, not many actors in moviedom would dare to even think that way!

Kittu Gidwani is alright. The actor enacting the role of Prateik's friend does a fine job.

On the whole, Dhobi Ghat is an imposing and vibrant cinematic portrait, appending itself to the new wave of independent Indian cinema which I am extremely pleased to applaud. It is art house cinema with European sensibilities, embellished with a well thought out story that's devoid of cliches. This ingenious motion picture caters more to the intelligentsia and connoisseurs of world cinema and will therefore garner more patronage and benefaction from the metropolitan audience in India chiefly and global spectators predominantly.