Pasha's Film Reviews Etc.

7/10 A car salesman is trapped inside a collapsed tunnel. As the team faces incredible odds to set him free time starts running out. Underground, our hero faces psychological torment, food and water deprivation. On the surface his wife and the team of rescuer s face incompetence from the officials, plus corruption and social injustice. What is the cost of one man’s life? And when is the right time to sacrifice it for the greater good? South Korean director Kim Seong-Hun is a master of genre blending (his prev ious thriller   HARD DAY   is the best example of that). Here he gives us a mix of a disaster movie, a thriller, a family drama and a social commentary on the modern lif e in South Korea. Every element is a perfect dose. We are given as much detail of the rescue mission, as the hero’s struggle in the tunnel, switching from time to time to the dramatic journey of his wife, who is under pressure to give up the search and let go of the idea of her husband’s r...

  6/10  Messala, the son of a Roman, is adopted by a Jewish noble family. His best friend and brother is Judah Ben-Hur, a good-hearted man, but naïve and unworldly. When Messala leaves to fight for Rome and then comes back three years later, he is a different man. When his adoptive family is falsely accused of treason he does not hesitate to order their execution. But against all odds Judah survives. Thinking about nothing but revenge, he returns to Jerusalem. Will his revenge consume him? Or will he let forgiveness into his heart? This year’s BEN-HUR is famously (or infamously) not a remake but a new cinematic adaptation of an original novel by Lew Wallace “BEN-HUR: THE TALE OF CHRIST”. But lets face it, the 1959   version was also a remake. In fact, the current film is the fifth (!!!) version of the book. One thing is clear – the BEN-HUR of 2016 will never get good reviews, because it is not even getting close to the 1959's movie with Charlton...

9/10 Jenny is a young doctor with a shiny bright future in front of her. Working at a local GP's practice, one night, she hears a buzz at the front door, but decides not to open because it was late. After all, her practice is not an ambulance service and the streets where her practice is, are full of shady characters… but the girl who had buzzed at her door has been brutally murdered minutes after. Unable to accept that her decision led to the girl’s death, Jenny becomes obsessed with it, and starts her own investigation. All she wants is to find the dead girl’s name, but unknowingly to herself she approaches too close to uncover the identity of the killer. The rising star of French cinema Adele Haenel is walking a tight rope in this measured performance of a woman with a strong sense of responsibility. The absence of a musical score adds a documentary touch to the film. The camera is sort of following Jenny around, making simple daily things, look unset...

7/10 Nancy (Blake Lively) travels to a secret beach, her mother’s favourite. Now with her mother gone Nancy seems to be looking for inspiration in life, unable to move on. As she drifts away from the shore, a malevolent giant shark begins stalking her. Stranded on a piece of rock, with the tide coming in, Nancy has to outsmart the predator, which is closing in on her. There is no other way but to face it off in a battle. Jaume Collet-Serra is good at turning the minimalistic setting into a spectacle. Here he's got a spectacular Mexican (shot in Australia) shore, but it feels as claustrophobic as the flight cabin does in his mystery thriller Non-Stop. Here we get the body of the dead whale, the piece of a rock and the buoy. Getting the best out of each of these elements and turning them into a clever battlefield, Serra structures it all around a centrepiece - a vulnerable young woman with a will of steel. Blake Lively is believable as Nancy, who is introduced ...

8/10 In 1930's Korea a young woman becomes a handmaiden for a wealthy Japanese lady. She is a con artist and a thief. Her main objective is to assist her accomplice, a fake count who wants to marry her lady and eventually obtain the inheritance. But unexpected complications occur. Will the young handmaiden betray her lady or will she……. fall in love? Cult South Korean director Park Chan-wook, the man behind famous  Oldboy , directs a period drama-mystery that may be his best film yet. Known around the world for grotesque violence in his films, he now gives us a sexually charged erotic thriller with many twists and turns and where the final truth is hidden until the very end.  However, THE HANDMAIDEN is not completely free of violence and gore, but it has a more suggestive value, that is ever the focus of this complicated story. It may not be a flattering comparison, but the film has a structure not unlike  Wild Things,  a 90's thriller with ...