Various aimless yet opinionated wander around early ’90s Austin, Texas, as we see short snippets of their lives. There’s no plot, and the camera follows characters seemingly at random, as soon as it’s done with one conversation, the speaker is abandoned and forgotten, never to be seen again as we track some other person go about their day.
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Category Archives: Choose Life
Before Sunrise and Before Sunset
Whilst on a train returning home from visiting her grandmother in Budapest, Céline (Julie Delpy) moves seats when her journey is interrupted by an arguing couple nearby. She impulsively sits across from Jesse (Ethan Hawke), and the two soon strike up a conversation. When they arrive at his stop in Vienna, he asks her to join him as he spends the night strolling around the town before his flight back to America in the morning. What begins as a moment of spontaneity slowly grows into a life-altering encounter. Nine years later, we revisit the pair in Paris, and catch up on where they are in their lives and their relationship.
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Movie 43
After Baxter (Devin Eash) plays a YouTube prank on his older brother Calvin (Mark L. Young) and his friend J.J. (Adam Cagley), Calvin decides to take revenge. He sends Baxter on an online mission to find the mythical – and apparently fictional – ‘Movie 43‘, a video so foul and depraved that it’s been banished to the furthest corners of the internet, whilst Calvin fills Baxter’s laptop with pornography and viruses. Apparently the video will, if seen, bring about the end of humanity, the destruction of the world, and will make him pull his own penis off, and we are treated to all the videos that Baxter encounters on his search.
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Death Game
Ten strangers, all in need of money for various reasons, all apply for the same mysterious job, paying ¥112,000 (£744) per hour, for seven days. Upon arriving at the remote location they are instructed to enter an underground facility, into which they will be locked with only some simple rules to live by. Firstly, they must be in bed with the lights off by 10:00pm, and secondly, any incidents that arise must be dealt with by voting, with the ‘detective’ and ‘criminal’ in each case being rewarded. The doors will open again week, or when there are only two inhabitants left alive. Oh, and there’s a ceiling-mounted robot that patrols the complex, that will enforce the rules if required.
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Man Of Steel
On the planet Krypton, the elders have disrupted the planet’s core and caused it to begin to erupt. Everyone on the planet is doomed, except for a small, barely explained plot contrivance that allows one newborn baby to be launched in a pod and sent to another planet that will be hospitable to him, but where the atmosphere and density are different enough to provide him with extraordinary powers. Krypton explodes, but the baby arrives safely on Earth, where he lives his life as a loner, the last of his kind, until General Zod, an exiled Kryptonian soldier, and his crew discovers the baby – now a man named Clark – on Earth. Look, it’s fucking Superman, alright? You know what happens. Alien baby, adopted by Ma and Pa Kent, Dad dies, kid can fly, run really damn fast, x-ray laser vision, falls in love, glowing green rock, Daily Planet, threat against the planet, saves the world. Yadda yadda yadda.
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Flushed Away
Pampered pet rat Roddy St. James (Hugh Jackman) may appear to live the life of luxury with his lavish Kensington home, gargantuan television and high class lifestyle, but his existence is lonely, and he craves companionship. When his owners leave him for a few days, his world is rocked by the arrival of loutish hooligan sewer rat Sid (Shane Richie), who takes over the house and ridicules Roddy’s way of life. Roddy’s plan to evict Sid – via the toilet bubble bath – goes awry, and results in Roddy being flushed instead, leaving him lost in the vast underworld of London’s sewage system, where he becomes intricated with Kate Winslet’s tomboyish Rita and a plot involving a royal ruby, a computer cable belt and a mysterious plot concocted by sewer mafia boss The Toad (Ian McKellen).
Kate Winslet: Naturist
Kate Winslet, it seems, is more than just a disembodied pair of breasts that sporadically unveil themselves at inopportune moments in movies. Apparently there is a voice associated with those mammaries (and therefore, one assumes, a mouth, tongue, trachea and who knows how many other body parts too), and it is a voice that has become familiar to the public at large. It was only natural then that the lady in question would use said voice within films, as is the case here with two semi-documentary dramas that focus heavily on nature: The Fox And The Child and Pride. After all, it’s no secret that voice acting is a great deal easier than full-body acting, as there’s no hours of make-up, preparation of scenes and lighting or extravagant costumes to put on (or take off, as the case may be). Unfortunately, the appeal of an easy job can cause a lull in judgement in choosing said work, as is the case with both of these films. Continue reading All the King’s Men
In 1950s Louisiana, door-to-door brush salesman and parish treasurer Willie Stark (Sean Penn) runs for Governor, under the eye of local politician Duffy (James Gandolfini). A local reporter (Jude Law) takes a personal interest in him, and ends up working for/with Stark, much to the disapproval of his stepfather (Anthony Hopkins) and his childhood companions (Kate Winslet and Mark Ruffalo).
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Hideous Kinky
Julia (Kate Winslet) has upped sticks from her one-bedroom London flat and moved to Marrakech after her partner cheated on her and left. Accompanying Julia are her two daughters, seven year old Bea (Bella Riza) and five year old Lucy (Carrie Mullan). Whilst in Morocco, Julia runs into financial difficulties and seeks romance, eventually finding it with street acrobat/quarry labourer Bilal (La Haine‘s Said Taghmaoui), before continuing to travel around the foreign lands with her children.
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The Skin Game
Mr. Hornblower (Edmund Gwenn) has just purchased a rented house from Mr. Hillcrist, under the circumstance that the former does not evict the long-standing tenants of the house, the Jacksons (Herbert Ross and Dora Gregory). However, as soon as Hornblower has bought the place the Jacksons find themselves homeless, which starts a familial war, or ‘skin game’ between the two families.