Boiler Room (2000)

United States, 2000
Cast: Giovanni Ribisi, Vin Diesel, Ben Affleck, Jamie Kennedy, Scott Caan, Ron Rifkin, Nicky Katt, Nia Long, Taylor Nichols, Tom Everett Scott
Director: Ben Younger
My Rating: *** / ****

"Reco!"
For Seth Davis (Ribisi), a 19-years-old college-dropout, a job promising tons of cash would surely had its appeal. Seth had run an illegal casino in his house, and it makes profit but it has made the relationship between him and his father (Rifkin), an allegedly legal attache - which is bad already - worsened. And so, when Seth offered to become an on-job-training in a stock-consultant firm company, JT Marlin.

What he doesnt' know was that everybody who worked on JT Marlin were on a boiler-room. Usually, people who worked on such firm would work no less than 18 hours-a-day to boost their client's portfolios whilst in so called "Boiler Room", the employees work over the phone, promising an untold-riches, providing confidential "tips", and ultimately preying on the customer's greed and fear of missing one hell of a chance. In short, what they're doing is nothing more than just a scam.

Our hero, Seth, of course doesn't aware at first to the business-practical that the JT Marlin had done on a daily basis. All he ever knew was that whenever he found a potential stupid rich man who would blindly investing his money to something unknown and unheard of (they called him "pope"), he would scream out of his lunge "Reco!!!!!" and that's when every senior broker would run to his desk to made the final 'sell'.

Curiosity kills the Cat
A talented salesman to begin with, Seth was quickly raised the ladder. He made a good money, up to a point where he doesn't need to open his casino anymore (it loses money anyway), his relationship with his father was getting better, and to add more drama to it, a cupid had decided to come to his side. But that's when curiosity kills the cat.

At first, he's just simply curious as to how come the comission on JT Marlin was higher than those of the opposing firm. He only utters his curiosity to one fellow-worker who he trusts best Chris (Diesel), who happen to takes a liking to Seth. Well, he'd be more like a brother to Seth in the end. And then a series of unfortunate events follows. And the truth was emphasized by the fact that his father knows about JT Marlin and gave his son an ultimatum, "Dont talk to me again, ever!". And that's when the world crumbles beneath his feet.

Talk is Cheap
This movie involves two of my favourite things to happen on a movie. 1. It relies heavily on dialogue. I always love movie that relies heavily on talk, instead of explosions. And this movie owned a lot - since its frightening resemblance - to David Mamet, my second favourite screenwriter (only second to Charlie Kauffman). And that was all the reason it needs. 2. It's about scam. Nothing intrigues me more than to see people getting double-crossed, people getting scammed on the screen.

It also had an effective deliverance of the emotion that came to Seth. One particular shot was when Seth involved greatly on one customer he thought as a "pope" at first but it turns out to be just a regular poor-guy. We were brought to the poor-guy family, and how does the scam that had been done by Seth was literally took the family apart. So intense.

And on the end, the movie's conclusion was nothing sort of great.

Scene Stealer
I've got no problem whatsoever with the casts. Vin Diesel gave a more than decent performance here, as Seth's "big-brother". And Giovanni Ribisi thought that this movie was his first adult-performance, it delivers, even though it rather hard to accept Ribisi as JT Marlin's brightest star at the second-half of the movie. But, i've got to admit that the scene stealer on this movie was Ben Affleck. He took the role that Alec Baldwin's took in a David Mamet's Glengarry Glenn Ross. Ben was on screen for only two scenes. And he could really convince me on both scenes. And if i was on a Seth's shoe, i would definitely be moved on by his speech and took the opportunity to work on a scam JT Marlin blindfoldedly. Really, this is his best performance that i ever saw of him.

Happy New Year

My New Year's resolutions:
Watch more movies, Read more books (yeah, like that's a news), Really start my own business (i had an investor ready, the only question left would be wether i could make him really convinced of the prospect in the business i had been proposed to him, or not. And that would be decided by the time i took him to do some market-survey later this week. If everything goes as planned, in a two months or so, three tops, my so-called-and-hopefully new business would be up and walking - not yet running), and maybe, settling down.

All in all, Happy New Year, may it brings only good things.

Situs Review Film Indonesia

Situs Review Film Indonesia. Sebenernya lumayan lama gw tau situs ini, cuman sering lupa ngecek. Sekarang mumpung inget, gw taruh aja di sini.

Situs ini bikin gw ngiri.. kenapa? 1. Reviewnya segar, dengan bahasa yg menarik dan ndak njlimet, jukstaposisinya juga sering kali bikin ketawa, tapi tanpa terkesan bodoh. Intinya sih, mereka nge-review film (Indonesia) apa adanya, dan sekaligus juga menghibur. 2. Mereka berani nonton setiap film Indonesia yg rilis, ndak peduli seberapa buruknya film tersebut dan seberapa mahalnya (baca: seberapa tidak sebandingnya duit yg dikeluarkan) untuk menonton film tersebut.

Well, tapi gw senang kok ada situs ini sehingga gw ga bakal salah pilih lagi dalam menonton film (Indonesia).. So far, pilihan mereka sejalan sama gw, i.e film Virgin yg justru gw bilang termasuk dari film Indonesia yg better (dan itu sedikit lho), juga dipuji di situs ini.

Le Grand Voyage (2004)

France, 2004
Cast: Nicolas Cazale, Mohamed Majd, Jacky Nercessian, Ghina Ognianova
Director: Ismaël Ferroukhi
My Rating: *** 1/2 / ****

A young French-Moroccan boy was unwillingly drove his father to a pligrimage to Mecca. A long trip, doesn't it?. Well, here's the thing, they hadn't been in a good relationship. A generation-gap as you might say. The father was a stubborn, a hard-headed old-man, but had his own wise-ness. The boy was a short-fused teenager, impatient, sees himself as the center of all thing, and everything was his father's fault. Plus, as the father himself put it, "Even if you know how to read and to write, you had a zero knowledge of life". Their voyage thus began in a non-communication term, as they both seem to talk in a different language, but as you can see for yourself, blood is always thicker than water as both father and son began to grow and learn to respect each other. It was a wonderful movie that kept me engaged for 100 minutes.

The premise is much alike to the more famous "Monsieur Ibrahim". But my take, this movie is way better than the previous movie. Even its rather slow pacing doesn't bother me a bit. From East-Europe to the Far-East, from the zero degree white snow blanket in Belgrade to the hot in the desert sand, we see these two people evolve, as the boy grew more mature, the father had also grew respect to the young. On their voyage, they met with various people, a strange woman that creeps the hell out of the son, a Turkish man that the boy likes but the father loathe, and of course they also met with fellow pilgrims. Anyway, if you think the son was Muslim, then you're wrong. Well, at least he doesn't pray while his father and the other pilgrims were praying in the middle of the desert, but instead wrote his girlfriend's name on the sand. Even when they got to Saudi Arabia, the son asked his father, "Why was it so important for you to go to Mecca?".

Here, Reda, the son, the obvious boy in orange, was sit among his father and the other pilgrims.


Apart of the relationship between father and son that grew ever interesting which was the best part of this movie, the movie also has greatness in breathtaking views, from the European village, to Mecca itself (which literally takes my breath away), and the score was a beautiful ringing to my ear even if it was emitting the sound of sadness, and longing. And dont even ask me about the ending. I wouldn't dare to talk to you about it, even though i really wanted to. All i can say is, that the ending was.... .... .....

In the end, even though the characters are great, they really are great, no flaw on the character whatsoever, i think the hero of this movie is Islam itself, at least in term of the director's goal of showing the peaceful majority rather than the radical minority the media has transformed into a worldwide terror. But if you aren't interested in the religion-related stuffs, it would be fair if i said that this movie was one of the best gap-generation movie that i ever saw. Oh, better yet, i think this movie is one of the best movie in 2004. Shame on me, i hadn't knew about it earlier. Watch it.

P.S: One of the memorable quotes from this movie...
Reda: Why didn't you fly to Mecca It's a lot simpler.
The Father: When the waters of the ocean rise to th heavens, they lose their bitterness to become pure again...
Reda: What?
The Father: The ocean waters evaporate as they rise to the clouds. And as they evaporate they become fresh. That's why it's better to go on your pilgrimage on foot than on horseback, better on horseback than by car, better by car than by boat, better by boat than by plane.

Assault on Precinct 13 (2005)

United States, 2005
Cast: Ethan Hawke, Laurence Fishburne, Maria Bello, Drea DeMatteo
Director: Jean-François Richet
My Rating: *** / ****

Okay some words prior to the comment. This site haven't seen many updates these last couple of months. Well, my excuse is, i kept true to my words, if you see two new updates regarding of movie right here, then there were indeed only two movies that i saw during the time. I have tried to re-schedule my time-of-the-day. And believe me not, at least on a 7-day week, there were at least two days when i could get my schedule worked on me (i.e wake-up early in the morning, and went to bed rather early at night). Enough chit-chat, on to the movie.

I have seen the original 1976, John Carpenter's Assault on Precinct 13, and surely some of the old-school fan to the original cult, low-budget thriller that brought forth John Carpenter's reputation to its height (it was two years before "Halloween", arguably the most notable, popular movie made by him) would deem me as a heretic by saying that i liked this version more than the original.

What do you need in order to make a good - if not passable - action / adventure movie? For one, testosterone. Not that i'm into those gender-stuff, who favors one gender more than the other (well, some of my friend said that i'm an anti-feminist, but that was another story), but arguably, an action / adventure is always considered to be full of testosterone, an adreline pumper that sometimes made your heart beats at least twice as fast, or doesn't beat at all. Now, this movie, is full of testosterone. At least, it hooked me up to stay on screen on the last sixty-minutes of this movie.

There are many differences between this movie and the original. Mostly it was for the better, thankfully. Furthermore, the only thing that connect this movie with the original was (aside of the title of course) the premise. That is, a bunch of characters trapped inside a building, to be specific, a closing-down police station, against a bunch of other characters surrounded the building with guns, with intention of breaking inside and kill a certain man, and everybody else for being there. The plot was executed rather differently with several twists thrown in, and the characters were a little bit better developed (even though understandably, in an action / adventure movie, characater-developments are often left unattended) given the thirty minutes preambule before the action rushes in.

The movie starts strong.. i was totally unprepared because i was rather expecting something similar from the previous 1976 original version. The scene, even before the opening title rolls, build this center character, an undercover cop turns into a drug-and-alcohol-dependant desk Sergeant late in the movie. I was mumbling to myself, uh-oh, so they decided to build a character this time, at the time i'm not buying, and apparently my instinct proved correct since further into the movie, this central character (played by Ethan Hawke) was always under-the-radar, and most of the time over-shadowed by other strong perfomances.

The scene-stealer of this movie was Laurence Fishburne, who just like Mr.Hugo Weaving suffers from being labeled with the character he played on The Matrix. Ah, yes, the ever cool Morpheus. More often than not, i see a glimpse of Morpheus in his movement on every frame on this movie. I hate it at first, but then rather fell in love with it. I mean how could you not fell in love with his coolness when he pops somebody's head, or in-the-most-interesting-scene when he throws a couple of molotov bombs toward his attacker.

And the villain, ewww an ever irritating bastard, had the movie went a little bit longer, i would tempted to throw something to the screen whenever he makes his appearance. Damn. The guy (John Leguizamo) was a constant irritant, though he would only say a two-or-so line of words, his presence is just simply irritating, and you know you'll hate him even before he steps into the frame. Kudos to the casting director.

The action itself, which of course a main-course for such movie, was good. So good that it doesn't dragged away by overblowing things, or by overloading the volume. It even could pull you in into a horror that felt by the characters trapped in the closed-down Precinct where men with weapons lurking out there, with every intention to break in and shot you in the head.

As for the rest, i was rather disappointed with the absence of the little-girl-with-ice-cream-shot-in-the-chest scene as in the original version. But i was shocked when one of the lovable character shot mercilessly from a close-range.. damn! really i hadn't see it coming, i thought (yes, i was being cheesy) that there'd be a hero, a knight in a shining armor, galloping to the rescue on his blinding white horse. But no, it simply goes bang, and off the character go. And you'd see a lot of deaths here, even the 'good' ones, and obviously most of the 'bad' ones. One thing disturbed me though, this guy who direct this movie, had an obvious love for head-shots. If i hadn't wrong in numbers, i'm counting 6 head-shots (4 with bullet, two with knive), and almost 6 of them ended with the same scene (a camera trailing away from the scene, showing a hole right in the forehead, or the damage of the assault, with the snow beneath it slowly turns red). Two is good, but 6 are just too many. Even for an R-rated movie. But, all in all, i'm enjoying this movie a lot, and probably one of the underlooked, underachieved, and underrated action film in the 2005 (hey, it was even better than the Fantastic Four).