Kerry and I saw this one this afternoon in celebration of LSS Incorporation Day (2-year anniversary).
It had us from the start - we didn't look at the clock once. Not a weak performance amongst the sizable cast. Notable performances by Christian Bale in the lead role, Peter Fonda, and Ben Foster .
NetFlix Rental (borrowed from Lou) Leighton & Sabine: ***
Hot Fuzz is a comedy buddy-cop action movie from the team that brought you the comedy zombie horror movie, Shawn of the Dead. Simon Pegg plays Nicholas Angel, a no-nonsense cop from the London Metropolitan Police Force, who's reassigned to the quiet village of Sandford for being too good and making everyone else look bad. His new partner, played by Nick Frost, is more a bumbling twit who loves action movies. It's a goofy send up of most of the Hollywood buddy-cop action movies of the last decade. If you've seen any of them, you should appreciate it. The citizens of Sandford are played by some top British talent including former James Bond Timothy Dalton, Jim Broadbent (Bridget Jones's Diary), and Paul Freeman (Raider's of the Lost Ark).
The Lives of Others NetFlix Rental Leighton & Sabine: ****
This was the German movie that won the most recent best foreign film Oscar. It takes place in East Germany during the 1980s. A Stasi (the East German secret police) officer, played by Ulrich Mühe, is assigned to monitor two artists, a playwrite and an actress. Their whole house is bugged and he listens in for twelve hours at a time. The more he listens, the more he is drawn into their lives, and he eventually starts to secretly help them. In addition to the Oscar, it won seven of the German film awards, including Best Film, Best Supporting Actor, and Best Actor for Mühe, who sadly passed away this year. His performance as the Stasi officer is even more impressive when you know that, as a young actor in East Germany in the 1980s, he was the artist being monitored by the government. NPR's Fresh Air interviewed the director, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, earlier this year, and the interview is available to listen to online.
