HARD CANDY 10/10
Directed by David Slade, starring Patrick Wilson, Ellen Page, and Sandra Oh.
I will start off my review by recanting a few quotes about this film.
"Two Thumbs Up" -Ebert and Roeper
"Riveting and Terrifying" -Claudia Puig, USA Today
"The Performances are Extraordinary!" -Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal
"A Fiendish, Scalpep-Sharp Thriller..." -Dennis Demody, Paper
"Beyond Intense!.... It's 'Fatal Attraction' for a new generation." -Pete Hammond, Maxim
I'd like to expand on Pete Hammond's quote...
"Fatal Attraction meets Death Wish" - Me
I had heard of this film when it first came on DVD, but for some reason never got around to watching it until recently, last week. I put the DVD into my laptop, ready to watch it and fall asleep if it did not keep me entertained or engaged. The visual style took me in from the start, but it was not until Hayley (Ellen Page) started taking over the screen was I engulfed into this film, and HOOKED. To put it mildly, I barely blinked throughout the entire film. If I was a pedophile, this kind of film would scare the living bejezzus out of me. I am not a pedophile, yet this movie had me awake for a good hour after viewing. It is very thought provoking, and quite a marvelous film. A shaky camera is employed in scenes, and I usually do not like shaky cameras, buut it was VERY apprpropriate for this film, and the messages, feel it was trying to convey. David Slade did a remarkable job directing, setting everything up seamlessly, and Patrick Wilson and Ellen Page are eletricfying beyond believable in their roles. Don't expect much of Sandra Oh in this film, I don't think she even got five minutes screen time in this.
Paul Kersey (The character Charles Bronson plays in Death Wish) would be very proud of Hayley Stark (Ellen Page) in this film. Not very many men will be able to watch this film without cringing, and I can picture a number of women rooting for Hayley in this movie, and loving the film even more than a man could.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
Running With Sisscors 2/10
1 point for good and wacky characters, 1 point for, being laughably funny, but not comedically, for being laughably bad. This is based on the memoirs with the same name by Augusten Burroughs.
Not recommended, unless you are just instatisbly curious or incredibly bored.
Gunbuster 10/10
6 episode anime OVA (Original Video Animation) by Hideaki Anno, director of Neon Genesis Evangelion.
I like to dub this "The greatest sci-fi story ever told". It just is so many levels of awesome, and sheer numbers, sheer will. Noriko, a teeange pilot of the giant mecha Gunbuster goes up aganist billions of aliens, and the fate of humanity rests on her shoulders. Gunbuster also features one of the best, if not the best endings of ALL media, IMO.