Is that the slot? No, it's the one below it. Just below physically painful, *almost* physically painful. That's watching "Curb your enthusiasm". What is it about this show that people actually find good? Is it Larry David? His observations are reminiscent of Seinfeld. You can clearly see that there is a strong similarity, but he's not funny. It's good they never put him on Seinfeld, cause he would ruin it. Larry David is not a funny person to watch, he doesn't tell jokes, he makes comments that are vaguely humorous but his persona is not funny.

Sadly, the only person who could be funny on this show is Larry. His wife, Cheryl Hines, whom is she supposed to be? All she does is agree to everything he says, never argue with him, never stand her ground, always just repeating what other people say. What is the point of that? Larry's buddy Jeff Garlin then. Again not funny. They exchange opinions but it never gets passionate, it never gets heated. And Jeff is never funny either. In fact, this whole show rides on Larry being the funny guy. And he's clearly not, so what is there to see?? It's a terribly bad copy of Seinfeld. Larry and Jeff, that's Jerry and George. But both Jerry and George are missing.

Total stinker.

Very cool stuff! :D I've been meaning to see it for a long time but never really felt like it. Erik assured me it's not a movie about love. Given the title, "Lost love", I was a tad skeptical ;) but I decided to give it the benefit of the doubt. Unfortunately, I don't speak a word of Spanish (actually that expression isn't a good one, I speak about 20 words of Spanish, maybe even 50), so without subtitless I was really concentrating to understand as much as I could of the dialogue.

With every movie like this which is any good (hear that Tarantino? :rolleyes:), it's the story that carries it. Otherwise a portrayal of human unhappiness, stupidity, desperation, lack of judgement and plain disregard. There are three stories linked together, but as good as independent of each other.

There is Octavio (only name I managed to pick up) living with his mother and some girl he's in love with, who's married to the guy with the shaved head who robs pharmacies and supermarkets for a living. She's a mother of one. Octavio and his buddy need cash so they find a dog and enter it into a dog fight. Since the dog is a beast, it continues to make them money as it wins every fight. Octavio gives most of his share of the money to that girl. He also pays the guy who sets up these dog fights to send a couple of his thugs and f up shaved head guy for beating his wife. One day, this other guy gets sick of seeing his dog lose and pay Octavio money so he just shoots the damn dog in the middle of the fight. That doesn't sit well with Octavio, who stabs him in the gut. A getaway ensues, which ends in a spectacular car crash, which also happens to be the opening scene. Shaved head guy tries to rob a bank and gets killed by the cops.

Then there is the model, who moves into a new apartment with her boyfriend, practically void of furniture so you get a good look at the parquet floor. On the wall of the building across the street is a bigass poster of the model in one of her photo shoots. Here's where the magic begins. Driving to work the next day, her car is the one hit by Octavio in the getaway. She is badly injured and from then on rolls around the spanking new apartment in a wheelchair with her leg in a cast and a neck brace. Sadly, this is where the realism goes off the rails. If you've ever hurt your neck you will know that it hurts like hell to move it. Yet in every movie we see them, people just carry on like normal. At one point she also dismounts the wheelchair to look for the ugly ass dog which is somewhere underneath the parquet. Not long after that, she has a big fight with the boyfriend, locks herself up in her room and presumably takes some pills or at least passes out. Next thing you know, her leg is amputated, so modelling career not so much anymore. To round off the story, the poster across the street (a perfume commercials I think) is taken down. Meanwhile the boyfriend/husband starts going at the parquet with a hammer in the hope of finding the dog. Eventually he does and it's been bitten all over by rats.

The third story is about a bum (gotta love this guy) who is a contracted killer. He used to have a family but walked out on them or something and starts off by killing the guy his ex-wife married. He gets another contract to kill some kind of a businessman but he takes his time with that one. His house is a total hell hole but he has about 5 dogs. When the car crash happens, he's nearby tracking his target so he goes up to the wrecked car looks around the scene. A passerby asks him for help to open the car door and get the two guys out of the car, instead the bum robs the guy in the car who may just be dead already (Octavio). That shit warms the heart. :D The dog in the back seat (the one that was shot) is tossed out in the street and the bum takes it with him, tries to nurse it back to health. In pure poetic justice, once the dog does get healthy, it kills all the other dogs because it's so used to killing dogs at those dog fights. The bum freaks out. He then kidnaps the target instead of killing him, collects the other half for the hit and sells the guy's Mercedes. The guy is still alive though and when his business partner or some such comes to pay the bum for the hit, he's invited inside and meets with the guy he paid to have killed. Very cool scene! :cool: The bum gives him the gun and tells him to kill the guy himself. The guy is a chicken, of course, so he doesn't do it. The bum beats him up. He then takes a shower (must be a first one for years) and grooms himself, doesn't look like a bum anymore. He throws on a suit, breaks into the house of the family of the guy he killed (his old family), stashes some cash under the pillow in the bedroom and replaces a family picture of the parents and daughter with one where he plays the role of the dad. He's clearly deranged.

What I really like about the story is the next thread picks up where the previous one ended, so you're going ahead in time all the while. A lot of stories like this simply start a few threads at the same point and give a common ending, but here you're moving along the whole time and that's much better cause you're still curious about the different stories and the movies shows quick flashes of them all every few minutes even though it's really following one thread.

Horale!

Really interesting movie. Viktor Burakov, a doctor of forensic medicine gets dropped into a murder case, chasing a serial killer. The story is genuine, based on events which took place in Rostov, southern USSR in 1982-1990. What's fascinating about this story is not the case of the murder case itself, rather the surrounding social/political landscape in which Lt. Burakov works. He reports at regular intervals to some sort of regional council of military/political superiors, who practically dictate his every move. Given that he has never worked as a detective before and has no experience, more importantly, no position, every request he makes for more men, computers, publicity, councel with the FBI is consistently rejected. More important than anything is to preserve the good name of the party and the country, that supersedes everything. When he does eventually arrest the killer (but without evidence), he is forced to let him go because the man is a member of the party.. over the course of 8 years, he kills 52 children, finally when the political climate changes, Burakov gets the resources to do his job without heavy restrictions.

Thanks for the heads up, Erik!

I didn't get this one at all. As far as I can tell, US bomber pilot Yossarian, flying missions in the south of Italy during WW2 is doing everything he can to be sent back home or in the least stop flying missions. Aside from that, the story has lots of repetition, linking of plot segments and so on, none of which seems particularly interesting or logical. For example, the opening scene is shown at the start, but also at the end, where the story comes full circle. I imagine one would read the novel to get a good grip on this one. It cuts from scene to scene, many of which seemingly completely unrelated.

A couple of humorous bits were thrown in as well. To start off, Yossarian's entire squadron gets killed or goes crazy sooner or later. One of the high rollers at the airbase (actually he may have just been a low rank to begin with) comes up with an idea to start trading goods instead of doing missions. So he trades the pilots' parashoots and a bunch of other stuff for whatever else he can get his hands on. He starts a company, gives all the pilots stocks in it with a promise that they'll all go home rich once the war is over. Trying to inject his dying co-pilot with morphine at one point, Yossarian is less than thrilled to find the medical cabinet has been traded for a share in the company. The business really comes alive as the trades grow in magnitude. Finally, they trade all their goods for cotton, to sell for a profit. Turns out cotton is not in demand, so they strike a deal with the Germans to sell them all the cotton, while the Americans bomb their own base. On another occasion, for some reason they get orders to bomb Ferrara, which has no strategic value whatsoever, so Yossarian makes them drop the bombs in the sea right before they get there. Because the bomb pattern turns out to be really nice, they all get medals for this.

Another pilot makes a name for himself crashing his plane into the sea time and again. Finally on the 5th occasion, he takes a raft and paddles to Sweden. 16 weeks out at sea without food apparently, that makes sense. Turns out he's been rehearsing those crashes all along. Upon hearing the story, Yossarian grabs a raft and runs out to the beach, starts paddling. The end.

Quite dull, rather pointless, annoying camera work. And they make a point out of making every scene noisy so it's hard to hear the dialogue. Anno 1970. Don't bother with it.

4/10

Oh yeah and you know what "Catch 22" means? It comes up about 4 times in similar circumstances. It means whatever you do, you can't win. The following quote explains it all. "Let me see if I've got this straight: in order to be grounded, I've got to be crazy and I must be crazy to keep flying. But if I ask to be grounded, that means I'm not crazy any more and I have to keep flying." As far as philosophy goes, this circular logic is rather trivial and tedious, so I doubt I'll be using the phrase much. Wasn't even worth watching the movie to find out what it means.

A terrible story, unfortunately it's historical and not of great distance. Set in 1994, Paul Rusesabagina works as a hotel manager at the Belgian four star "Les Milles Collines" hotel in Kigali. As the atrocities start with the uprising of the Hutu militia, Paul expects a Western invervention which never comes, he manages to save over a thousand refugees in the hotel before they are evacuated by the UN into Tanzania.

A very vivid story of human hatred and brutality, it is a greatly touching movie with a phenomenal performance by Don Cheadle. Don actually said that the producers wanted Will Smith for the lead, I can't imagine how that would have worked.

8/10