October 2005

The Ninth Gate

  • Title: The Ninth Gate
  • IMDb: link

Roman Polanski at his best gave us Chinatown and at his worst gave us PiratesThe Ninth Gate is a great suspenseful mystery as Johnny Depp is thrust into the world of the occult and dark knowledge.  One of Polanski’s, and Depp’s, best films.

The film opens with an older gentleman, Andrew Telfer (Willy Holt), just finishing his affairs one evening.  He then gets up from his desk and very matter of factly hangs himself from the chandelier of his study.  The camera pans to the books of his study for in this film knowledge can bring both power and death.

Dean Corso (Johnny Depp) deals in finding rare and expensive books, a book detective if you will.  His methods do not endear him to his competition as he will often sneak, lie, and trick his way into obtaining the object of his desire.  A very wealthy client Boris Balkan (Frank Langella) purchased Telfer’s copy of The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows which was written in 1666 by Aristede Torchia before he was killed during the Inquisition for heresy and almost every copy was burned.

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Saw & Saw II

  • Title: Saw
  • IMDb: link

I just saw Saw. I saw Saw II first, which prompted me to see Saw as a bit of “research” for what would hopefully be a “well-written” review of Saw’s sequel, Saw II. If you saw Saw, then you may or may not want to see Saw II too. Cos’ I just found out that Saw is much better than Saw II. Sorry to burst horror movie fans’ bubbles, but it’s what we do best here at Razorfine.

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The Weather Man

  • Title: The Weather Man
  • IMDb: link

The Weather Man is an intriguing little piece of cinema.  It has wondrous, hysterical, moving, and thought provoking moments and yet the film is somehow less than all the great pieces put together.  It’s a hard movie for me to review, because so much of it I enjoyed, and yet not all of it fits together as well as I’d like.  It’s definatly worth taking a look at, and it’s one of those movies that will become highly quotable, yet I left feeling like it was just slightly unfinished.

David Spritz (Nicholas Cage) is on the fast track to success.  He works as the weather man for a local Chicago affiliate and has a good chance to snag the national job on hugely popular morning program with Bryant Gumbel (playing himself).

Yet with all this success David is unhappy.  He is separated from his wife Noreen (Hope Davis), who is dating a dildo named Russ (Michael Rispoli), and alienated from his two kids, Mike (Nicholas Hoult) and Shelly (Gemmenne de la Pena), who are both sliding into unhappy lives of their own.  David is also dealing with the poor health of his father Robert (Michael Cane) who is the paragon of success that David has never been able to measure up to his entire life.

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Zorro Part Deux

  • Title: The Legend of Zorro
  • IMDb: link

Way back in 1998 Zorro, the sword wielding, bullwhip snappin’, hero to the downtrodden of California, returned to the big screen in The Mask of Zorro.  Now 7 years later a sequel has finally been made.  So how is it?  Well if you liked the first one you’ll probably enjoy this one as well.

Zorro (Antonio Banderas) has been swashbuckling his way through California as the champion of the people.  California is in the final stages of joining the United States of America, and as promised Zorro is looking to retire.  But wait, there is still evil afoot; despite the insistence of his wife Elena (Catherine Zeta-Jones) our hero cannot bring himself to hang up the mask.

The villains looking to stop California’s induction into the Union include a duke who is also a knight of a forgotten order and former flame of Elena’s Armand (Rufus Sewell), and dirty rotten good fer nuthin’ killer McGivens (Nick Chinlund) and his seemingly never ending posse of nameless thugs with guns and swords.  There’s also a Confederate officer and a plot to help the South win the Civil War, the Pinkertons, Elena as a spy….(yawn) um, never mind.

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