DVD Collectors Online

El Orfanato, a review by Silence_of_Lambs

Summary:
A woman brings her family back to her childhood home, where she wants to open a boarding school for handicapped children. Before long, her son starts to communicate with an invisible new friend.

My Thoughts:
del Toro shows again that you don't need the budget of a medium sized country to produce a decent film.
This film virtuously handles all the elements needed for a scary, spooky ghost story and still isn't one, or is it?
The director leaves it to the audience to decide whether this is a ghost story, or a story about a mother losing her mind over the loss of her child, both is plausible and the conclusion you reach may change by a slight change of perspective.
It's great how the script fools us with our expectations and shows that ugly is not necessarily an equivalent for bad, not even in a ghost story.

One of the very rare movies you can watch over and over again and will always find new details, hints, ideas.

My rating (out of possible 5)
(Do not read if you haven't watched the movie yet!!)


(From Michael's random reviews on October 25th, 2010)

Ran, a review by Antares

Ran





Year: 1985
Film Studio: Herald Ace, Nippon Herald Films, Greenwich Film Production
Genre: Drama, Action
Length: 163 Min.

Director
Akira Kurosawa (1910)

Writing
Akira Kurosawa (1910)...Screenwriter
Hideo Oguni (1904)...Screenwriter
Masato Ide (1922)...Screenwriter

Producer
Katsumi Furukawa
Masato Hara
Serge Silberman (1917)

CinematographerMusicStarsReview
       Most directors in the twilight of their film careers tend to fall back on the tried and trued formulas that had been successful to them in their youth. John Ford, Howard Hawks and Alfred Hitchcock, names synonymous with the pinnacle of cinematic achievement, had virtually nothing left in the tank in terms of creativity in their later years. Such was not the case in the career of acclaimed Japanese director Akira Kurosawa. His career would rise as a Phoenix from the ashes of exiled obscurity in the late sixties and seventies at the hands of Toho studio executives who did not share in his artistic vision. This hiatus kept buried in his heart, the fire to create in the medium which he had been shutout for so long during those fifteen years.

       At the beginning of the eighties, with a little help from Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas, he returned to the silver screen with the ambitious jidai-geki Kagemusha. And although it was an international and critical success, Kurosawa still could not get funding for any future films from Toho executives. Finally in 1984, with the backing of a French production company, he secured the funds needed to complete his last great masterpiece, RanKing LearRanRatings Criterion
5 Stars - The pinnacle of film perfection and excellence.

(From Ran (Chaos) (1985) on February 18th, 2010)

Tom's Random Reviews, a review by Tom

Title: Welcome to the N.H.K.!: Collection Part One
Year: 2006
Director:
Rating: NR
Length: 300 Min.
Video: Anamorphic Widescreen 1.78
Audio: English: Dolby Digital Stereo, Japanese: Dolby Digital Stereo
Subtitles: English

Stars:


Plot:
Some people's lives get stuck in a rut and others go through a few rough patches. Sato's life, on the other hand, seems to be going to hell in a hand basket filled with cheap takeout dinners! Between dropping out of college, never going outside and living on a diet of internet porn, Sato's slowly turning into a human fungus. But what if it's not his fault? What if it's actually a dark and sinister conspiracy on the part of the television networks? And what if all those adorable images of cute anime girls are actually part of an insidious plan of brainwashing designed to turn viewers into jobless, social recluses? Can Sato overcome the horrible plot that has been hatched by the nefarious N-H-K? Will he fight for his future, get a job and even meet girls in order to counter this evil organization? The battle is on in Welcome to the N-H-K!

Extras:
Scene Access
Trailers

It started of really strange and I was not sure if I would like it, but it got better and better. Originally I had planned to only watch this first volume now and the second volume much later. But now I am really curious how it will continue, so I probably will watch the second volume soon.

#	Episode	Rating
01	Welcome to the Project!
02	Welcome to the Creator!
03	Welcome to the Beautiful Girls!
04	Welcome to the New World!
05	Welcome to Counseling!
06	Welcome to the Classroom!
07	Welcome to the Moratorium!
08	Welcome to Chinatown!
09	Welcome to a Summer Day!
10	Welcome to the Dark Side!
11	Welcome to the Conspiracy!
12	Welcome to the Off Meeting!

(From Tom's Random Reviews on January 13th, 2010)