Round up one: This past week I ran through a pile of movies, so here is the GBU* (again an aside, if you find any music by "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly", give it a listen, smooth groovy driving progessive psy trance from Serge, Fred, and Dmitri, you can decide who is who).

The Bridesmaid: A chance meeting at his sister's wedding leads the main character into a rapid spiral of obsession and madness, not that the madness was a new thing for him, it just had a torch lit under it and they dive headlong into it. It is a French film so there is plenty of obligatory nudity. Not a terrible film, but also not subject matter that is very uplifting or inspirational. Stay away from crazy people.

Two Family House: A true story of the director's uncle, a mixed race baby born to a married Irish woman (whoops!) in New York in the 50's. The story starts with a hard luck Italian buying a house with plans to convert the downstairs into a local pub. First he has to get rid of the family upstairs: the Irish O'Leary's, a drunk in his 60's and his "child bride" Mary, who is about twenty at the time of the film, very pregnant, and played by Kelly MacDonald (an actress I've really liked ever since her turn in Trainspotting). As there are legal "complications" with evicting the family, some of Buddy's Italian buddies' offer to help with the eviction if you know what I mean. During their attempt to motivate the Irish couple to leave, Mary goes into labor and has the baby, who is obviously not Mr. O'Leary's. Given this turn of events Mr. O'Leary abandons Mary and Buddy proceeds to evict her, but the guilt of doing so makes him second guess his decision. As truth is stranger than fiction, the story unfolds from there as Buddy and Mary provide each other with the impetus to chase their dreams.

Indiana Jones and the ..........: The newest installment of the Indiana Jones saga is certainly an action packed one and quite enjoyable if you look past the many plot holes and borderline absurd situations that come at Uncle Harry in nonstop fashion. I have a fairly low suspension of disbelief threshold and this tested it. I was able to let go and enjoy the ride, but as soon as it was over, I could not avoid dissecting the many problems that hovered just below the surface. My loss and everyone else's gain I suppose.

Irreversible: A French thriller told in reverse chronological order, is extremely stylish and that aspect I thoroughly enjoyed, but it is also graphic/brutal/unforgiving and left my soul aching. The camera work is frenetic and chaotic at the beginning as we see the violent revenge taken by two of the main characters and as we backtrack through the nights events we arrive at the end (or the beginning) to very placid cinematography, but we are still jacked up on adrenaline, knowing what devolved from what should have been a nice evening out. I really can not recommend this for anyone who has a low pain/violence tolerance. I'm still not sure how to process this myself as it is rather disturbing and will not likely leave my psyche soon.

13 Tzameti: This is a fantastic debut film, again a French thriller, again very violent. In the vein of Reservoir Dogs/Usual Suspects. A young man doing a roofing job for an older man who overdoses, decides to take the man's place at a high paying "job" about which he knows nothing. Once he is far enough along that he learns what is involved he cannot get out and the battle for survival is on both psychologically and physically. This is an extremely tense movie and the people that do these things in real life are monsters/deranged in their own way. Crazy and yet hard to look away from. You won't get a happy ending with this one, but it is certainly worth looking for and the director, Gela Babluani, is one to watch for. There was also a disturbing short in the special features called Sunday's Game that was worth a look.

Finally...

Russian Dolls: This is a sequel to "L'Auberge Espagnol" which was a fun film about an internationally varied group of students in Spain (in some ways like MTV's The Real World). This film catches up with the group five years later as they reassemble in Russia for a wedding. I like the visual style, it feels very much like the first film and this is a good thing, the characters are interesting, etc. I got this from Netflix and the disc was completely borked halfway through, so I do not know how it turns out. I was enjoying it and there was a sequence with Audrey Tautou that is absolutely hilarious, but I'll have to track down another copy to find out what happens. Disappointing, but this is really the first time since I started with Netflix that I have not been able to get a disc to play on one of my machines.

Off to watch "The Burmese Harp" now....