In deep space is an orbital space station shaped like a cross, which is a prison facility and psychiatric station for criminals who are the worst of their kind around the fiery planet of Dante 01. A new shuttle arrives with a Vietnamese scientist named Elisa (Linh Dan Pham) who has come with new techniques from the company to test on patients and also brought another patient. This is a strange man who the prisoners end up calling Saint Georges (Lambert Wilson). He was found on a ship with the rest of the crew dead, and completely covered in blood. He doesn’t talk and is pretty out of it. He meets the other prisoners. The leader César (the great Dominique Pinon), the viscous recluse Bouddha (Bruno Lochet), the large Moloch (Francois Hadji-Lazaro), César’s right hand Lazare (Francois Levantal), the computer hacker Attila (Yann Collette) and the religious Raspoutine (Lotfi Yahya Jedidi) who believes that the new patient is actually Saint Georges come to slay the dragon and set them free, and he just might be right. Elisa immediately buts heads with the station commander Perséphone (Simona Maicanescu) who objects to her nanotech experiments, but the other researcher Charon (Gérald Laroche) sides with Elisa and the company over her old boss, but not before setting Attila to start hacking to find out about Elisa and what is going on and he finds out that all the prisoners are expendable.

REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS…

Boudhha goes to strange George to supposedly alleviate his suffering, but César stops him, and the Warden uses gas to knock them all out. Elisa has the 2 security guards take Bouddha and they inject him with the nanotech designed to fix his problems, but which seems to only cause him great pain.

George goes towards Boudhha’s pain and when he comes in he sees what looks like a tentacled Alien creature in his chest which he eats, relieving Boudhaa’s pain, and stopping the nanites and creating a disciple.

Moloch attacks George, but Raspoutine jumps in and Moloch is accidentally sliced from ear to ear. Gas is poured in, but George runs to assist Moloch, and when the guards find him Moloch is fine. They leave, but first inject César with the nanotech, putting him into extreme pain.

Perséphone also believes Geoge is a miracle worker, but Elisa ignores it.

Moloch and César plot to take out George who they see as taking over in the prison. César though is incapacitated by the nanites, and so Moloch and Lazare go to take out George.

Attila who has taken Charon’s password contacts Charon to tell him he has taken over the computer system and set the station to crash into Dante 01.

Lazare gets to George and stabs him multiple times with a shiv. The dead George is taken by the Guards, but awakens, seemingly fine and takes Elisa as a hostage to get himself back into the prison quarters. George goes to César and sees the strange tentacled creature and eats it out of César, curing him and making him a friend as well.

Atilla tells the prisoners of his plans to kill them all, and he runs and hangs himself so that he can’t stop the process.

The scientists learn of the problem, but there is only a 2 person shuttle and the access to the actual bridge is through the prisoners section. The prisoners agree to help and lead them to the hatch, but Elisa activates the knock out gas, and preps the shuttle, but Lazarre grabs her, as he is able to hold his breath for 10 minutes to escape the gas. The two Launch, but Attila has reprogramed the shuttle and it crashes right into Dante 01.

THey get the panel open, but the the path has filled with super heated liquid from the coolant systems since the station is moving closer to the super hot Dante 01. César volunteers to go through the water and enter the code to save the station. They wrap him in insulation, but the water seeps in, and he makes it through only to die on the other side before entering the code.

Now this is where it gets weird. George then comes out of the station in a spacesuit and we can see the strange tentacled energy within him. He sees it also in the planet, and sucks it up from the planet, destroying himself along the way, but somehow the planet is transformed into a lush and verdant planet and the fall of the station is stopped.

•••

OK I didn’t say it wasn’t weird, I just said that I enjoyed it. And it is visually pretty cool, and enjoyable to watch until the way out there ending. Interesting to say the least, and I will certainly look for more Caro films should he make more.

The film starts with the ending of the last film, Leito (David Belle) the Banlieue 13 resident who fought back saying goodbye to his friend the cop Damien Tomaso (Cyril Raffaelli) talking about the government doing what it said and breaking down the wall holding in the getting B13, and putting money into education and parks. We cut to 3 years later and nothing has changed. The gangs still rule. And Leito is pissed off, and keeps planting bombs to blow up the wall, which neither the cops or the local gangs like. Damien is meanwhile undercover, breaking a chinese gang that is running drugs that are taken out from the district. He is dressed like a tranny, but manages to capture the Chinese boss, and all the other mob bosses who are there to meet to pick up their drugs. Damien can’t go out the escape tunnel though, as the Van Gogh Painting he has won’t fit, and he has to use it to fight his way out. Damien is a success, and is sent home to rest, but he wakes up to cops from the special edition breaking in and arresting him for drugs that they planted.

REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS…

Meanwhile some kids videotape soldiers from the special unit shooting 2 police officers and loading the car into a truck. They then drop the car in B13 and shoot at a local gang, so the gang fires back. They videotape this and put it on the news to allow their aggressive push into the District. The leader of the special unit Walter Gassman (Daniel Duval) is trying to push the President (Philippe Torreton) to destroy the district.

The kids who took the video are chased by special section, but manage to get the video to Leito. Leito watches it just before the special section shows up and gets a message from Damien telling him to come and get him out. The Special Section shows up, and Demian leads them on a merry chase, and manages to get away.

Demian heads to the police station and gets himself locked up so he can escape and gets Demien out. They head to Gassman’s office, and Demien holds off the cops while Leito steals Gassman’s hard drive.

The President has been convinced to evacuate the district, but the 5 gangs headquartered in the 5 towers have not left as of yet.

They got to Tao (Elodie Yung) the head of the Asian gang, and get the info on the hard drive, which shows that Gassman is getting kickbacks of Harriburton to rebuild B13, so he set up to destroy the district by making it look like it was a Civil War. They unite the 5 gangs, and get their best fighters to go sans guns, and head to the Presidential palace.

They fight their way and get to the President and show their evidence, and Gassman grabs the President and wants him to shoot the missiles into B13, but they manage to stop him.

The President agrees to put money and parks and schooling into the disctict, but they ask for a new district and get him to shoot the missiles and destroy the now empty district, and promise to rebuilt it.

•••

The ending could have been better, but the action is worth watching, and is in fact incredible!

REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS…

Interior Design

Directed by Michel Gondry.

A young couple moves to Tokyo with all their possessions in there beater of a car. This is Hiroko (Fujitani Ayako) and Akira (Kase Ryo) and they go to stay with their college friend Akemi (Ito Ayumi) in her microscopic apartment, promising to find their own place. Akira is a filmmaker, who makes really low budget, strange films, and his film is going to be screened at a local porn theater, and gets a job wrapping paper at a local store. Hiroko does not do much, sitting around and cutting out photos from magazines and making collages, and halfheartedly looking for an apartment, though there is nothing good that they can afford.

Akira shows his film, which gets some seemingly good response (though it seems that most people are just trying to be nice), and starts questioning if Hiroko has any drive.

Hiroko starts to question her relationship with Akira, and when out on a walk around the city, begins a literal transformation into a chair. First changing part by part, then fully into a chair, and changing back into her naked self, only to change again into a chair.

Hiroko as a chair gets taken to a cute guys apartment, and starts to live her life as his chair. Looking over his shoulder as he works. And his chair does keep moving, even being found in the bath.

Hiroko writes Akira a letter, telling him about how happy she is with her new life.

•••

So very very strange, but enjoyable, and the effects are great too. It seems like a normal story, then just goes nuts with her turning into a chair. Really fun.

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Merde
Directed by Léos Carax.

Tokyo is invaded by a strange sewer dwelling creature named Merde (Denis Lavante). He comes out of his sewer and causes mayhem, stealing money and eating it. Taking cigarettes and phones, and whatever he can. He licks women, and causes chaos before going back into the sewers. This causes an uproar in Tokyo, and they send police underground to find him.

Underground Merde finds a cache of grenades from World War 2 and comes up and starts throwing grenades everywhere, killing many innocent bystanders. Merde is finally captured and taken to prison, but no one can speak his strange language.

A lawyer from France named Maítre Voland (Jean-Francois Balmer) who has a very similar look to the sewer creature and seems to be able to speak the creatures language. He represents Merde in court.

The court obviously does not like Merde, and he tells them that he does not like them, and he always awakes living in the place with the people he hates he most. He is found guilty and set to be killed.

Merde is hung, bu then the lights go out and when they come back on, Merde has escaped!

••••

Just plain weird, and not at all enjoyable. I am sure there was a message about media in there, but it was so covered, literally in Merde that I don’t even want to think about it.

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Shaking Tokyo

Directed by Bong Joon-ho

The story of a Tokyo shut-in or hikikomori (Kagawa Teruyuki) who has not left his apartment in a decade. He lives off of money sent by his father, and orders everything in, leaving stacks of his pizza boxes. He even falls asleep on the toilet next to the stack of toilet paper rolls. And he never watches TV, just reads and rereads old books.

Then one day is different when a beautiful young pizza deliver girl (Aoi Yu) with tattoos manages to catch his eye.

An Earthquake then happens and the girl faints into his apartment, and the hikikomori is stuck. He has to help her, but doesn’t want to touch her. He gets her water. Then sees that she has tattoos, and finds one for coma, and pushes it, and she instantly wakes up. Asking if he pushed the button. She walks around his apartment, declaring it perfect, except one of his stacked pizza boxes is upside down, which he fixes. She then leaves, but he is totally and utterly in love with her.

The hikikomori excited calls to get her to deliver pizza again, but finds a gruff older man (the great Takenaka Naoto) who barges in and uses the phone, scaring the man badly. It turns out he is the owner, and the girl just quit, leaving him to deliver Pizza by himself.

The hikikomori realizes that she is a new Hikikomori, and is becoming a shut in, and decides he must go see her, and save her from a life of lonliness.

The man slowly heads out across the city, scared of his own shadow and the sunlight, but he manages to find her place, just as another Earthquake hits.

He manages to get her to open the door, but she won’t come out, until he grabs her arm, and hits her tatoo for love. Leaving them both hopelessly in love.

•••

Very strange, but enjoyable. Amazing that people like this exist, and a cute love story using these trappings. fun.

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Overall a very strange set of films. You might want to see them, but don’t expect to be blown out of the water, and I would recommend skipping Merde all together!

Set during the first World War in France, Scottish Private Charles Plumpick (Alan Bates) is sent into a town that was known to be occupied by the retreating Germans. The German’s have set a large cache of explosives, and the Scots know about this because they had someone spying for them in town. What they do not know is that the entire Town has in fact run, and the German’s have left, but the door to the insane assylum has been left open, by Plumpick himself who was hiding from German’s, and the lunatics have taken over the town.

REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS…Plumpick wanders around the town, interacting with all the inmates, who he believes are the real people. As he searches for the German bombs which are hidden under a stage in the town center.

Eventually Plumpick finds love in a crazy high wire artist named Coquelicto (Genevieve Bujold), and is crowned the King of Hearts.

Plumpick does manage to disable the bombs, but the German’s return as the Scots also move into town, and they end up killing each other completely off.

The lunatics have meanwhile returned to the Asylum, not wanting to be part of this crazy world. Plumpick realizes that this must be the smarted thing to do, and shows up at the asylum doors totally naked, carrying a bird in a cage, and is welcomed by his friends with open arms.

•••

Really a lovely little film. Most worth watching.

Audrey Tatou plays Irène a young woman on a train, who works selling kitchen appliances, who gets chatted up by a woman doing a marketing survey, who when she hears her birthdate of March 22th, 1977 reads her her horoscope about her meeting her true love today, but being patient as it will take a while. When Irène leaves, the young man next to her Younès (Faudel) asks to hear the rest of the horoscope as that was his exact birthday as well. From here we jump to a series of seemingly unrelated events all happening around, and somehow connected to each other.

REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS….

We see an illegal immigrant sneaking into the country. A homeless man is sick and kicked from his sleeping place by a black woman. He then collapses in the subway, and one man does nothing, while a thief calls the cops, and ends up getting arrested for smoking in the subway. The young man shows up late for a job interview and lies about it, saying he saved the man, and tries to get a date with the woman, but she mixes up his name on a piece of paper and reads that he is an asshole.

In another town a drunken man crashes into a ditch because of some vegetables in the road accidently dropped by the immigrant from a truck. A young boy sees the man and thinks him his head father, so the mother goes to London to see her husband. The man is having an affair, but can never make up his mind, and instead dreams of what he should do, but doesn’t do it.

We see the man who got a job go with his mother to see his granmother who has bought a coffee machine that doesn’t work, and she goes to try and return it, but has trouble and another man steals one for her, but doesn’t find her, and Irène gets fired for not catching the guy, and ends up having to head home, but gets in a car accident in the taxi and heads to the hospital.

Younès gets given a raincoat, which belonged to the thief, and gets attacked by Irène’s roomate whose bag was stolen and also ends up at the hospital for his nose.

The immegrant finds his family, and brought sand from home, which gets blown out the window and makes Irène and Younès meet each other.

•••

Cute, and a logistal nightmare to make. Certainly worth checking out this pain on Chaos theory and how everything effects all those around them.

In 19th Century France, the young Hervé (Michael Pitt) is a military officer, serving because it is what his father wishes. Hervé is dating a beautiful young woman named Hélene (the very underused Kiera Knightley), and is happy to leave the military and marry her, when a new business opportunity is presented to him. His town makes it’s money through silk, and the silkworms have been infected with a disease, so the local silk purveyor, Baldabiou (Alfred Molina) gets the heads of the town to put up money, and they send out young Hervé to get fresh eggs. First he quickly goes to Africa, and returns with eggs, but they are already infected, so the next time Hervé is sent across the continent to Japan, and blindfolded and snuck in country to a Japanese village lead by Hara Juberi (the great Yahusho Koji). While there Hervé falls for the mistress of Jubei’s (Ashina Sei), who touches him once, and he sees her breasts while she bathes in a hot spring. Hervé returns with the eggs and becomes a rich man, buying Hélene a lovely home, where she can build her dream garden.

REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS…

A couple, Marion (Julie Delpy) a French photography with a problem in her vision who lives in New York City and her American boyfriend Jack (Adam Goldberg who I saw in Mayfair last week) who is interior designer, are going to Paris after an awful European trip to visit her parents for the first time. Jack got sick in Italy, and has become obsessed with photography, photographing every minute of their trip, even though she is the photographer. They arrive at Marion’s house, and it is an apartment above that of her parents Anna (Marie Pillet actually Delpy’s mother) and Jeannot (Albert Delpy actually Delpy’s father) and her sister Rose (Aleksia Landeau), and chaos ensues.

REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS…

Adam speaks no French, and things with the family get off to a rocky start, and it doesn’t help when he learns she has sent nude photos of him to her sister who showed them to her father and mother. And then it seems all of Marion’s ex’s show up one after another, and all still love her, which really blows Jack’s mind. And it doesn’t help that he finds an earlier version of the same photo of him naked, but with a different guy.

So Jack goes into full freakout mode, while Marion just does her thing.

Jack tries to enjoy Paris, seeing the sights, and going to see Jim Morrison’s grave (and later learning Marrion’s mother had a fling with him), but when a particularly bad ex shows up, Marrion gets ugly, and gets them thrown from the restaurant.

Their relationship never really gels, but never ends either.

••••

Knowing that Goldbery was her ex, I hope he wasn’t quite so nuerotic, because if so I just don’t get why they would ever be together to begin with.

Jean (Gad Elmaleh) works at an expensive hotel in Paris, doing every duty imaginable from walking the guests dogs to working as bartender at the posh bar. At the hotel is a young and beautiful (if too skinny) gold-digger named Irène (Audrey Tautou), who’s “boyfriend” the old but rich Jacques (Vernon Dobtcheff) has fallen asleep on her, so she heads down to the hotel bar. Jean meanwhile has been forced to drink with and smoke a 100 Euros Cigar with a patron, so passed out on a couch, Irène mistakes him for a rich man. Jean pretends to sneak behind the bar and make her drinks, then takes her up to the nicest suite in the hotel and sleeps with her, but she is gone in the morning, having left with Jacques. A year later Irène and Jacques return to the hotel, and Jacques gives her an engagement ring. Jean is again in his tuxedo, waiting tables, but when he sees her, he pulls his tie, and plays the rich man, sneaking off, and once again sees her at the hotel bar and sleeps with her again. That morning Irène sneaks out, but Jacques is up, and he takes her engagement ring and kicks her out, so she returns to Jean, pretending she left Jacques for him, but they are quickly caught when a family is brought into the suite, and they are found in bed, and he is exposed as a hotel worker.

REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS…

Irène has lost everything, and leaves him Jean heading to a costal resort town, and going through her black book and trying to find a new mark, eventually making a date with the grandson of one her old marks, but the date is screwed up when Jean shows up to apologize. Having lost her best chance, she decides to take advantage of him, making him spend all of his money and investments buying her clothes and jewels and a room at the finest hotel, and when he runs out of money, she goes to leave, but he pulls out his last Euro to get an extra 10 seconds with her, but then she is gone.

Jean returns to the hotel and can’t afford his bill, and they are about to call the cops, when an older woman he accidently grabbed the bags of earlier (accidently slipping back into bell hop mode) names Agnès (Annelise Hesme) asks him to take her little bag, and take her to his room, and she covers the expenses, and suddenly he is just like Irène. And he is getting clothes bought for, and competing with Irène to get the better stuff, as he doesn’t get much, but when he uses what she taught him he gets a 30,000 Euro watch, and much more.

And we can see Irène getting jealous, though she tries to play it off, as she works on her new mark, and tries to get all she can.

Eventually her new mark catches her with Jean, and throws her out, so she is trapped waiting for Jean to fetch her bag from the train station so she can pay her bill, but instead he sells his watch and buys her a week in the hotel to get her back on her feet and molifies Agnès by giving her jewelry. She ends up giving him a bunch of new clothes, and even a scooter.

Jean then steals Agnès’ invite to a huge party so Irène can get a new mark, but at the party is Jacques with a new girl, so Irène gets Jean to help her, an tricks Jacques new girl into thinking he is a rich prince, so she can move in on Jacques, but when at the hotel she sees Jean with the other girl, she is jealous, and finally realizes her love. Irène leaves Jaques and goes to Jean and the two of them leave together on his scooter, hopefully to a happy, if not well off life together.

••••

A really cute movie, I laughed really hard, and really enjoyed it and the performances of Gad and Audrey and fantastic. This is what a romantic comedy should be instead of what it usually is. A great cast and a fun script, if only Audrey Tautou would go and eat something!!!!

Marion (Julie Delpy) and Jack (Adam Goldberg) are on a European Trip and heading to Paris before they return to New York to meet her family and for her to catch up with old friends, but things don’t go so well and start to draw them apart. She is a photographer, but on this vacation he annoyingly takes pictures of everything, and he seems to complain about everything. They meet her family, her mother Anna (Marie Pillet) who had a thing with Jim Morrison, Father Jeannot (Albert Delpy) and sister Rose (Aleksia Landeau), and things get off to a rocky start right away, especially when Jack learns she sent photos with him naked except a balloon tied to his genitals to the family, and it gets worse when he finds a similar photo of another guy in her apartment.

REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS….

And things get even rockier when all of Marion’s old ex’s show up, and are always texting her about sex, and seem to all want her back

•••.

They eventually come back together, but the 2 very different people never seemed like they should have been together to begin with. They just didn’t have enough in common to me it seems.

Paris, 2054, where the city is basically run by a huge corporation named Avalon, that basically attempts to bring youth and beauty to the world. A beautiful reasearch scientist for Avalon named Ilona (Romana Garai/Virginie Mery) is searching for something that she had a bartender steal, and runs into her sister Bislane (Catherine McCormack/Laura Blanc) who Ilona had recently gotten a job in records at Avalon. After she sees Bislane, Ilona goes missing, and a hard boiled cop named Barthélémy Karas (Daniel Craig/Patrick Floersheim) is brought on and is determined to solve the case, no matter what.

REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS…

Karas first has a run in with Paul Dellenbach who runs Avalon, and certainly has something at stake, from his super high tech security guards with invisibility shields to the way he handles things. And then with Bislane, who he eventually enlists to help him, and develops a relationship with. Karas realizes that something is going on with Jonas Muller (Ian Holm/Marc Cassot) a scientist who used to work for Avalon, but when his younger brother died, he quit and started working in a facility helping children, and Ilona was on her way to work with him when she disappeared.

Karas realizes that Muller must be involved and goes to get him ,but has a run in with Dellenbach’s invisible security guards, and finds that Ilona was certainly on to something that Muller had discovered just before quitting. Karas gets in trouble with the police for not following procedure, and must go underground, and ends up finding Muller’s old assistant, who tells him they were working on immortality, and Karas realizes this is what Ilona was working on when she disappeared, and he finds that Dellenbach is right on his tail, as he has the old research assistant killed as well.

Karas promises Bislane that he will save her sister no matter what, so he goes after Muller, and eventually finds him, trying to get Ilona, and finally gets the truth. It turns out that Muller in fact did find the secret of immortality, and saved his little brother, though the other children test subjects were killed, and they hid people, by using people’s identities who died at his clinic. He hid the secret because he didn’t want Avalon to get it, and kidnapped Ilona to stop her from giving it to Avalon, and stopping them from becoming all powerful. Mulller is killed by cops, and Karas is blamed.

Karas eventually tracks down Muller’s younger brother, who is still alive, but is an ancient small child, and who is holding Ilona. Karas lets her free, but Dellenbach’s men are going after them. Karas tries to stop Ilona from giving the secret to Avalon, but she is determined, so he shoots her in the head, to save the world from Avalon, and tells Bislane that her sister went into hiding for the good of mankind, even though she wants to find her, and he stays with her.

••••

An amazing computer animated film, really enjoyable, with incredible animation style. Well worth checking out, in fact a must see.

REVIEW CONTAIN SPOILERS…

On the German side a woman named Anna Sorenson (Diane Kruger) who was a famous opera singer convinces the German high command to let her get back together with her boyfriend and fellow singer, private Nikolaus Sprink (Benno Furmann) and Sprink refuses to stay and sing for the high command, so the 2 return to the front line to entertain the soldiers who have been given small Christmas Trees. Already the Scotts are playing their bagpipes, but then Spink sings and the Scotts acompany on their pipes. And to all of their surprise they all come out and call a cease fire and trade wine and talk, and even letters and info to be sent to their families on the other sides. And when the war is set to start again they help each other share the trenches away from shellings. Sprink and Anna end up staying with the French so they can be together, but the other sides return and are punished and sent elsewhere for their supposedly traitorous acts, which were only acts of kindness and friendship because these people did not have any personal anger against each other.

••••

An incredibly powerful and well done war film. In fact one of the better ones I have ever seen. I can’t believe I had not heard of this before. This is an aboslute must see film. I can’t recomend it more highly.

Now I have to admit that I am a huge Maggie Cheung Man Yuk fan, thinking she is one of the best actresses in the world, and I did not think that my opinion of her could approve, and after seeing this my opinion of her has improved. No wonder that she won best actress at Cannes for this film. Wow, what an incredible performance and what an incredible film. Assayas tailored this movie for his wife (now ex-wife since she singed her divorce papers on the set) and what an incredible role. Not only that, but her English is absolutely perfect, and I hope that she can become the biggest actress in the world.

REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS…

Hmm not sure what exactly happened to my review of this film, which I know I did, but it disappeared, so I will write a new one here. Of course I know of the films of Bertolucci, especially last Tango in Paris, but for some reason didn’t have any desire to see this film, but my girlfriend was instantly into the racy content so we watched it. I myself wasn’t too impressed. Sure it has sex and themes of incest going on here, and there is some political activism and unrest going on in the background, but really this film is just an excuse to show some racy scenes and make some controversy. I really was not impressed at all.

REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS…

I had read about this film and seen clips of David Belle in action thanks to Kung Fu Cinema and had showed it to my friend Ashanti, really wanting to see it. Well Ashanti picked it up, and we checked it out, and it is totally bad ass. And Cyril Raffaelli who was also in Jet Li’s KISS OF THE DRAGON is also in it, and is totally bad ass. I have to hope that Luc Besson keeps producing bad ass action films like this. And the sci-fi elements really work adding up to an in your face action film that brings back memories of Hong Kong in the 80′s, though now it is French and Thai films that are holding up the torch and making these action films. Lets hope it keeps up because I want to see more films like this if I can.

REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS…