This is an absolutely beautiful film, gorgeously photographed, with sets and costumes too die for, perfectly acted, an impeccably well told piece of history. You really couldn't ask for a better made film. That said, I struggled getting through it. It's long, slow moving and very depressing.

(Maybe I felt this way, because I recently watched Paul Verhoeven's The Black Book, which tells a very similar tale, in a much more exciting, guns-a-blazing, breasts-a-popping fashion, with a much happier ending.)

Lust, Caution is so well done that I would call it a must watch for anyone with an interest in history, but don't tread into it lightly. I was enraptured by this glimpse at Chinese history during WWII; it was something I'd never seen before. I really felt for Wong Chia Chi as she infiltrates the Japanese army through the Chinese traitor Mr. Yee, played with tremendous grace by Tony Leung Chiu Wai as he must appear evil, but also sympathetic. Their love affair is the heart of the film; their sex scenes were widely discussed, but I thought they were tame compared to what I'd heard; it's the love that grows within Wong, that is truly painful. She knows that ultimately Yee must be killed for the good of her country, yet she falls in love with him anyways; and it betrays her better judgment.

Maybe this film will be a little less painful, if you don't expect a happy ending. I applaud films that don't paint the world as a perfect place, and this is how it ended for a lot of people during this turbulent time in history. But after all I had gone through with Wong and her group of supporters it was traumatic; obviously this is the point, it's a powerful ending and I'd never ask them to change it.

Lust, Caution might be Ang Lee's most brilliant film; it's nearly flawlessly captured from the smallest detail to the grand design. They could have sped the story up a bit, I did grow bored at times, but I think that Lee really wants you to live with these characters, feel their excitement, disappointments and pain. It's not the most pleasant experience to sit through, but it's worth going back over the film in your head after it's over. - Grade: B

You might think that a film about man who suffers a stroke and is forced to live out his life, unable to move, even unable to speak, would be depressing. That's what I figured going in to The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. I knew what it was about, but wanted to see it because it had been getting rave reviews and my wife, a lover of everything French, and I needed a night out together. The film begins with sadness, but after it's over you feel full of life, ready to face the world in a whole new light.

Right from the start, the film puts you into Jean-Dominique Bauby's head, the first scene is filmed completely from his perspective. You wake up in a hospital, you don't quite know what's going on. Your eyes won't focus, doctors and nurses stream in and out of the room, and when you talk to them, they don't hear you. They tell you that you've suffered a stroke, that they're not quite certain of the damage yet. But it is soon quite apparent that it is catastrophic; you have what they call "locked-in syndrome". Information comes in through your senses, but you are unable to communicate with the outside world.

Your eye is going septic, you watch as they sow it shut; an incredible scene. The only thing you can think about is dying. Because what good is life, if you can not travel through it, are only able to see it through one pathetic eye, and unable to tell anyone what you are feeling. What good could possibly come of it? The film does an impeccable job of putting you into Bauby's state-of-mind, gives you a slight feeling for what he must have gone through. You're left feeling hopeless as he is; but then it all begins to lighten up. Bauby meets a beautiful nurse who teaches him how to speak by blinking his eye. It's an incredibly torturous way to communicate, but when it's your only choice, you must make do.

That's the power of The Diving Bell and The Butterfly. That it makes you appreciate life, even from the perspective of someone who is almost completely unable to do so. He makes new friends, connects with his family and father in a way that he couldn't before, and learns more about who he is than anyone could probably imagine. If you're stuck in your head 24/7, than you fill your life with memories, good and bad; relive your childhood, correct mistakes, and become a better person. He has so much wanting to get out, that he decides to write an auto-biography, which he must do one slow letter at a time.

Director Julian Schnabel has crafted a true masterpiece out of real-life; gorgeously photographed, full of wonderful sights and sounds, and completely heart-warming, without ever being preachy or schmaltzy. I haven't seen a lot of them, but I imagine this will remain my favorite foreign film of 2007. It was a crime, that it was denied a slot in the Academy Awards Best Foreign Language; in all honesty it should have been up for Best Picture over the cutesy Juno. (But they needed at least one popular film in there.) Do yourself a favor and see this film when it's released on DVD, you'll be glad you did. - Grade: A

I wanted to watch the sequel to this film: Russian Dolls, but felt I should refresh myself with the original first. I originally saw it at the Seattle Film Festival about five years ago and really enjoyed it. As a film, but more so by living vicariously through the main character Xavier; spending a year in a European country, initially learning about and then living fully immersed in another culture is something I'd love to do. Xavier moves from France to Spain as a student, the film does a wonderful job of giving you an idea of what it’s like to move into Madrid as an outsider; the complication of the language differences, the confusion of the city’s design, the trouble in finding a place to live.

When he does find an apartment, it’s a total European hodge-podge; including a British girl, a Spanish girl, a German guy, a Dutch guy, an Italian guy and now a Frenchman. They bond in their love of foreign cultures, appreciating each others differences. Xavier begins to love the city, he quickly grows accustom to its differences. They show this comfortableness through his relationship with another French girl that he met when he first moved to the city, who he lived with for the first month. She’s barely traveled out of her comfort zone, doesn’t enjoy the difference in culture; but he shows her how to enjoy the city.

Things get complicated when they sleep together, she's married and he has a girlfriend, played by Amelie’s Audrey Tatou; the only recognizable face to the average American viewer. She remained in France and things are getting very strained between them. Besides his romantic troubles, there isn’t a ton of story to the film, it’s more of a glimpse into Xavier’s year in Spain, and the relationships he develops with the colorful characters that surround him; most of who are developed fairly nicely; so that you get a sense for their view of the world and that you feel a loss when he’s done with school, and has to move away from these strangers who’ve become great friends.

L’ Auberge Espanol isn’t for everyone, I think that you have to have an interest in traveling and/or appreciation for good filmmaking to really enjoy the film. There’s a beginning and an end, but not a lot happens in between, at least plot-wise, it’s more internal character development. If you don’t connect with Xavier and his friends you’ll quickly get bored. Me, I’m looking forward to another visit with the sequel Russian Dolls.

I heard about this film at one of my favorite new websites Head Injury Theater, where Jared von Hindman reviews a lot of cheesy horror films, most of which I’ve seen or at least known of. But this one was different, I didn’t know a single thing about it, and I always appreciate that in a film. All I needed was to read the first couple of sentences claiming this to be a well made horror flick, and I stuck it in my Netflix queue. I stopped there because I like going into films without someone else’s opinion stuck in my head (don’t let that stop you reading), so all I knew was that it was an Irish film about killer-mutant cows.

What I wasn’t expecting was a really well made little thriller; that happens to propose the preposterous idea of killer cows. The film starts with a woman with her arm half-way up a cow’s hoo-ha, checking on the progress of the calf growing inside. Suddenly the vet pulls her hand out, it’s bleeding, and she claims that the thing bit her. The farmer standing-by says that’s a ridiculous notion, she must have stuck it on something else. What, though?

A few days pass and the cow starts to go into labor. The farmer and another guy, who’s been illegally camping out on his property, go to the aid of the cow, because the little bugger doesn’t want to come out. Once they violently yank the thing into the world, the farmer goes to clean out the calf’s mouth; bad idea. Soon he’s skulking away with nine and a half fingers. Besides the nasty bite, the farmer knows there is something wrong with this calf, it’s just not normal. When he goes to put it out of its misery, the mother cow goes nuts, trying to jump over the fence between them, breaking her neck in the process. Soon, the vet shows up and she offs the little biter, but more so, she wants to know the truth.

She begins an autopsy on the mother and starts to reveal the full truth to the farmer and the audience. Apparently, they’ve been doing some genetic modification, and obviously it has gone wrong. Inside the mother cow, she finds a couple more things that appear to be cow fetuses, only horribly mutated, looking more like some sort of alien-insect. When one of them jumps to life, she smashes them to death; save for one that has wiggled its way off the table. And that’s when the cow shit truly hits the fan.

While things have seemingly returned to normalcy, a new breed of life is secretly growing to deadly proportions. What follows is sort of like Alien on the farm; the thing continues to grow, feeding on the cows, hiding in the dark-dank barns, striking out at the few humans that are unfortunately stuck there, because the doctor who originally altered the cow has determined that it’s highly contagious. The dread of the situation is built nicely and surprisingly realistically; the terror is treated with full seriousness and is told in a way that you can buy into the ridiculousness of a mutated cow killing everyone.

I was very surprised by how much I enjoyed Isolation, but even more surprised by how the film was built to be truly scary, without a hint of irony; which is a real rarity these days. The film is very nicely acted, good performances all around, with John Lynch from the wonderful film The Secret of Roan Inish playing the farmer. The film features some great dark photography that adds to the mood. Writer/director Billy O'Brien has crafted a horror film for this new age of genetic modification, that all at once is entertaining, terrifying and a damnation against tampering with animal DNA.