Matt Damon and director Paul Greengrass (The Bourne Supremacy, The Bourne Ultimatum, United 93) re-team for their latest electrifying thriller in Green Zone, a film set in the chaotic early days of the Iraqi War when no one could be trusted and every decision could detonate unforeseen consequences.
During the U.S.-led occupation of Baghdad in 2003, Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller (Damon) and his team of Army inspectors were dispatched to find weapons of mass destruction believed to be stockpiled in the Iraqi desert. Rocketing from one booby-trapped and treacherous site to the next, the men search for deadly chemical agents but stumble instead upon an elaborate cover-up that inverts the purpose of their mission.
Spun by operatives with intersecting agendas, Miller must hunt through covert and faulty intelligence hidden on foreign soil for answers that will either clear a rogue regime or escalate a war in an unstable region. And at this blistering time and in this combustible place, he will find the most elusive weapon of all is the truth.
Starring: Matt Damon, Greg Kinnear, Amy Ryan, Brendan Gleeson, Jason Isaacs, Khalid Abdalla
Directed by: Paul Greengrass
"Grown Ups" is about five men who were best friends when they were young kids and now are getting together for the Fourth of July weekend to meet each others' families for the first time. Picking up where they left off, they discover why growing older doesn't mean growing up
Cast: Adam Sandler, Salma Hayek, Kevin James, Chris Rock, David Spade, Rob Schneider
Director: Dennis Dugan
Producer: Adam Sandler
Based on the classic novel by Oscar Wilde, DORIAN GRAY tells the story of a strikingly beautiful young man named Dorian (Ben Barnes - THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA).He arrives in Victorian London and is swept into a social whirlwind by the charismatic Henry Wotton (Colin Firth - MAMMA MIA), who introduces Dorian to the hedonistic pleasures of the city. When a portrait of Dorian is unveiled, such is its beauty that he makes a pledge: he would give anything to stay as he is in the picture - even his soul. DORIAN GRAY examines the destructive power of beauty, the blind pursuit of pleasure and the darkness that can result.
Oscar Wilde's Picture of Dorian Gray has been adapted for the cinema a number of times before, most memorably in 1945 with the wonderfully machiavellian George Sanders as the seductive Lord Henry Wotton, who teaches Dorian his pernicious creed and creates a monster. The story of the boy who sells his soul to stay young and beautiful seems particularly relevant to our own youth and beauty obsessed age, and is no doubt why director Oliver Parker was happy to tackle a third Wilde adaptation (he and producer Barnaby Thompson were behind adaptations of An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest).
Cast: Ben Barnes, Colin Firth, Rebecca Hall, Ben Chaplin
Directed by Oliver Parker
Scriptwriter: Toby Finlay
2009 biopic about the early life of Coco Chanel. Several years after leaving the orphanage, to which her father never returned for her, Gabrielle Chanel finds herself working in a provincial bar both. She's both a seamstress for the performers and a singer, earning the nickname Coco from the song she sings nightly with her sister. A liaison with Baron Balsan gives her an entree into French society and a chance to develop her gift for designing.
Closing Film of the 2009 Cannes Film Festival
They both desired something entirely new, they had to be experts on the world of feelings. They both had only a one-year age difference and they died in the same year. The black and white keys on piano... And the constant play of black and white in Chanel's dresses. The passion of Stravinsky was music, but Chanel's – perfume. Dutch-born French film director and producer Jan Kounen translated all of this in the language of cinematography and every scene in his work tends to be perfect.
Cast: Mads Mikkelsen, Anna Mouglalis, Anatole Taubman, Yelena Morozova, Erick Desmarestz
Director: Jan Kounen
Movie and French with subtitles in Latvian and Russian.
Catherine and David, she a doctor, he a professor, are at first glance the perfect couple. Happily married with a talented teenage son, they appear to have an idyllic life. But when David misses a flight and his surprise birthday party, Catherine's long simmering suspicions rise to the surface. Suspecting infidelity, she decides to hire an escort to seduce her husband and test his loyalty. Catherine finds herself 'directing' Chloe's encounters with David, and Chloe's end of the bargain is to report back, the descriptions becoming increasingly graphic as the meetings multiply.
Cast: Julianne Moore, Liam Neeson, Amanda Seyfried
Directed by Atom Egoyan
Script: Erin Cressida Wilson, Anne Fontaine
Producer: Jeffrey Clifford
AD 117. The Roman Empire stretches from Egypt to Spain, and East as far as the Black Sea. But in northern Britain, the relentless onslaught of conquest has ground to a halt in face of the guerrilla tactics of an elusive enemy: the savage and terrifying Picts. Quintus Dias (Fassbender), sole survivor of a Pictish raid on a Roman frontier fort, marches north with General Virilus' (West) legendary Ninth Legion, under orders to wipe the Picts from the face of the earth and destroy their leader Gorlacon. But when the legion is ambushed on unfamiliar ground, and Virilus taken captive, Quintus faces a desperate struggle to keep his small platoon alive behind enemy lines. Enduring the harsh terrain and evading their remorseless Pict pursuers led by revenge-hungry Pict Warrior Etain (Kurylenko), the band of soldiers race to rescue their General and to reach the safety of the Roman frontier.
Casting: Michael Fassbender, Dominic West, Olga Kurylenko, Noel Clarke
Directed by Neil Marshall
Script: Neil Marshall
Producer: Christian Colson, Robert Jones
Can you imagine what a stoned cop can do?
The only criminal he can’t catch is ... himself.
This film is not just another “cop story”. There are rumours that Nicolas Cage used cocaine to make his role of hallucinating stoned cop working on homicide as realistic as possible. Scene: magical New Orleans right after the hurricane Catherine.
No one knows, whether the story with the cocaine is true: maybe exept the director of the film Werner Herzog who is known to be demanding maniac capable of taking his actors across the limits of their abilities. After playing at various film festivals, the film has, thus far, been awarded generally positive reviews by critics. The critics praise this film, compare it to the ones of Quentin Tarantino or Cohen brothers and acknowledge it to be the “film of the decade” for Nicolas Cage.
Nicolas Cage is Terrence McDonagh - a New Orleans Police Sergeant who has recently received a meda and a promotion to Lieutenant for his heroism. After he injured his back when saving a prosoner after the hurricane, he becomes addicted to prescription pain medication and quickly graduates to cocaine, heroin, crack and marijuana. The film follows McDonagh as he investigates the murder of a family of Senagalese immigrants while dealing with his drug addictions, gambling debts and other personal problems - passionate, yet twisted relationships with a high-class prostitute (Eva Mendes) among them - while routinely and flagrantly abusing his authority when his gun is being used more frequently then his badge.
The film is drenched in Werner Herzog’s unique perspective on reality (let’s not forget his huge experience in documentary) as well as sharp sarcasm and dark humour. The result of all these factors is an unforgetable story which is equally sad and playful.
Director: Werner Herzog
Cast: Nicolas Cage, Eva Mendes, Val Kilmer, Alvin “Xzibit” Joiner.
AMAYA– is a story about a romantic guy Paul (actor Andris Mamontovs), who wanders around the world after a dramatic divorce from his girlfriend Lori (actress Kristīne Nevarauska). The USA, Chile, Japan, India, Thailand... After three years Paul finds himself in Hong Kong. Here he meets Amaya (actress Kaori Momoi) and her comic family. This strange Western guy Paul applies to take massage courses organized by Amaya’s brother-in-law Tao (actor Lau Dan). In the saloon he meets Jasmine (actress Monie Tung). Prior feelings do not go away easily, and show up again in the least expected times and places. Three different women help Paul go through unexperienced feelings of “love”, “longing”, “joy”, “divorce” and find new meaning in life. The movie explores different types of relationships. It shows the differences between Eastern and Western cultures, and sometimes comic and even absurd situations that can occur in everyday lives.
Cast: Kaori Momoi, Kristine Nevarauska, Andrius Mamontovas, Laura Luize Dzenite, Lau Dan, Hui Shiu Hung, Monie Tung, Dexter Fletcher, camera man Gints Bērziņš, music Andrius Mamontovas
Directed by Maris Martinsons
Scriptwriter: Maris Martinsons
Producer: Linda Krukle, Maris Martinsons (Latvia), Chen On Chu(Honkong)
When asked in an interview whether he ever intended to return to his Motherland, Joseph Brodsky replied: “Such a journey could only take place anonymously...”. The creators of this film imagined that the journey in question was undertaken after all, selecting the genre of an ironic fairytale. The poet sails to the country of his childhood, and with him we traverse not only geographical expanses, but travel through time as well; stringing together a number of facts from the Nobel Prize Laureate's biography, we return to the USSR of the 50s and early 60s, soaking up the atmosphere of the “European” city of Petersburg, to this day Russia's cultural center. Along with live-action sequences, the film features animation, as well as documentary footage concerning Brodsky and his milieu.
– World premiere at Rotterdam IFF, 2009 (program “Spectrum”);
– Grand-Prix and Prize of the Russian Guild of Film Critics “White Elephant” at the IFF “Zerkalo”, 2009;
– Main East of the West Award at the IFF in Karlovy Vary, 2009.
Cast: Grigoriy Dityatkovskiy, Alisa Freyndlih, Sergei Yursky, Artem Smola, Evgeniy Ogandzhanyan
Directed by: Andrei Khrzhanovsky
Script: Yuri Arabov, Andrei Khrzhanovsky
Producer: Andrei Khrzhanovsky, Artem Vassiliev
Bolt, an American White Shepherd, has lived his whole life on the set of his action TV show, where he believes he has superpowers. When separated from the studio by accident, he meets a female alley cat named Mittens and a hamster named Rhino. Along the way, he learns that he doesn't have superpowers and that the show is not real.
In 1966 – British pop music’s finest era – the BBC played just 2 hours of rock and roll every week. But pirate radio played rock and pop from the high seas 24 hours a day. And 25 million people – over half the population of Britain – listened to the pirates every single day.
Recently expelled from school, Carl (Tom Sturridge) has been sent by his jet-set mother to find some direction in life by visiting his godfather Quentin (Bill Nighy). However, Quentin is the boss of Radio Rock, a pirate radio station in the middle of the North Sea, populated by an eclectic crew of rock ‘n’ roll DJ’s. They are led by The Count (Phillip Seymour Hoffman), big, brash, American, a god of the airwaves, and totally in love with the music. He’s faithfully backed up by his co-broadcasters Dave (Nick Frost) – ironic, intelligent and cruelly funny; Simon (Chris O’Dowd), super-nice and searching for true love; Midnight Mark (Tom Wisdom), enigmatic, handsome and possessing an almost uncanny ability to have sex with anything remotely resembling a woman; Wee Small Hours Bob, a hairy late night DJ, whose hobbies are folk music and drugs; Thick Kevin (Tom Brooke), possessor of the smallest intelligence known to mankind; On The Hour John, the newsreader and Angus ‘The Nut’ Nutsford, who may be the most annoying man in Britain. They set about helping Carl on his quest to find himself by, well, mostly trying to find him someone to have sex with.
Life on the North Sea is eventful. Simon finds the woman of his dreams and is married on the boat…only to be left by his bride 11 hours later. Greatest DJ in Britain, Gavin (Rhys Ifans) returns from his drug tour of America to his rightful position as greatest DJ in Britain – and clashes with the Count: A confrontation that ends in a dramatic and dangerous battle of nerve. And Carl discovers that his real father is one of the DJs. Tragically for him, it’s Wee Small Hours Bob, together with his beard.
Cast: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Bill Nighy, Rhys Ifans, Nick Frost and Kenneth Branagh
Directed by: Richard Curtis