Pasha's Film Reviews Etc.

* * * * * Reclusive Martin lives a life that consists of work, playing games, sleep and rare meetings with his two neighbours-friends. He is going through a divorce and doesn’t seem to enjoy his life very much. That is before he buys an operating system assistant (an OS). She calls herself Sam and turns his world upside down. Thus begins an unusual love affair,   strange but possible in a world very much like our own. HER is a satirical love story placed in not so distant future. The unsettling part is how possible it all looks. Does your partner think that you are having a love affair with your new ipad? When did you last leave home without your mobile phone? And what about SIRI? In HER devices infiltrated everything, this world has accepted them as a part of life and even a love affair with and OS system seems like a normal thing. In modern movie making to have a high concept is not enough to make an exceptional film. What makes HER exceptional is tightly written

* * *  JACK RYAN: SHADOW RECRUIT is an attempt to invigorate Tom Clancy’s legacy. A best selling author who has died sadly last year left many books that could become great films.   SHADOW RECRUIT re-invents the saga of JACK RYAN, placing him into 21st century and giving him new enemy - the war on terror. The first forty minutes of the film establish the reasons why Jack joined CIA, the origins of his relationship with his glamorous girlfriend (Keira Nightly) and why being a simple analyst he can fight and kill like 007. Then we go straight to Moscow where action begins. Little surprise there, with all conventional kidnappings, car chases and face off with the psychotic russian villain   (Kenneth Branagh). While many characters of the film speak absolutely incomprehensible fake Russian, Branagh is pretty good (I am Russian myself so I can judge), but when he speaks English his fake accent is terrible. Being from aristocratic family this Russian villain could speak pure Oxford

*  *  *  * AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY refers to the month and the place - a rural area in Oklahoma. Here three sisters arrive to support her strong willed, but cancer ridden, drug addict mother when her husband, their father, disappears from home. Then a tragedy strikes, old wounds are opened and demons are unleashed. Maryl Strip in the role of the cruel family matriarch Violet has outdone herself. Stripped of all glamour (pardon the punt) she is an unstoppable carriage heading for derail. She is incredible to watch, but so is Julia Roberts, who plays the oldest of the sisters - Barbara. The “Barbara - Violet” stand against each other is the core of the movie. AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY may be intimidating to watch. The power play of so many good actors in one film can be a little overwhelming but too much of good acting cannot be bad, right? OUSAGE COUNTY has been pushed to the heights of the blockbuster because of all the famous people involved. An intimate play at heart it seem

* * * * * Martin is a journo down on his luck. Freshly fired and depressed he is on the crossroad of whether to pursue the writing career or become a freelance journalist. Philomena is a woman of certain age who has finally decided to reveal the secret of her youth - fifty years ago she gave birth to a child who had been taken away from her. Martin’s and Philomena’s chance encounter takes them on a journey to find Philomena’s son and discovering much more than they bargained for. However there’s no gain where there’s no loss… A simple premise of Philomena proves that simple can be deep. With many undertones it brushes on the themes of love and friendship, faith and religion, good and evil and the thin line between them. Above all it is about destiny. While the quirky humour of the protagonists will make you laugh PHILOMENA will also catch you off guard revealing raw emotion underneath without being overly sentimental. Director Stephen Frears is a movie making vet

* * * * There is hardly another movie that had been been waited on by the fans so diligently as the next instalment of THE HOBBIT. The questions of whether Peter Jackson will manage to pull off a stunt of telling a three hundred pages book in three by three hour long movies doesn't rise eyebrows no more. Jackson has proved his ability adding characters, story lines and battles without compromising the original work. All his additional material is focused on closer "tie on" to the LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy. It is known that Tolkien himself had re-written a few of THE HOBBIT chapters to have more distinguished ties to the story of the ring so no great crime committed.  Among the material that had not been in the original book THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG produces the Dwarf plus Elves love triangle storyline, a bunch of human folk characters and  an introduction to SARUMAN himself - all I am sure will be highly praised by the fans. The spectacular barrel riding escape fro