Minkwan

'Little Miss Sunshine' is the perfect antidote for all the homogenized films flooding the multiplexes at the moment. Directed by first-timers Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris and written by Michael Arndt, the film is constructed around Hollywood clichés, such as the underdog, road-movie, dysfunctional family, but remains fresh, honest and genuinely funny and touching. This is due, in no small part, to the fact happy endings and overt feel good statements are brushed aside for truth and awkwardness.

Toni Collette is perfect, as one would expect, but it is Steve Carell and Greg Kinnear who show acting talent beyond expectations. Alan Arkin provides another solid performance as the wise, hippie grandfather, but it is the new guard of actors Abigail Breslin and Paul Dano who shine in my opinion. Breslin brings raw emotional honesty to her role of Olive and one never forgets she is a child, unlike if Dakota Fanning had tackled this role.

'Little Miss Sunshine' is about family, identity, the search for meaning and purpose and how these fit into and relate to contemporary life. This is a film full of small detail which remembers to deal with the larger stuff. Unsentimental, but extremely moving, You'll leave the cinema feeling a little bit better.

This is Sam Mendes third feature and it is his third incredible film.

Jarhead is not so much a war film, but rather a film about war, the gulf war. A war which was fought in the air, rather than on the ground, face to face.

The film is about how war, whether or not you kill someone, destroys the souls of young men (and women, although there is little doubt that this film concerns itself with testosterone.) It is about how aimlessness, and remoteness will send someone insane. It is about the average man who is expected to be too much, be too good, too tough, too malleable and who expected to take commands without question. It is about how wars tear families apart, destroy relationships and ultimately affect the relationships one builds in the future.

This film is full of tension. Mendes gradually raises the feeling claustrophobia and of anxiety, which is met with devastating anti-climax.

The film is aware of its place among the great American war films of the seventies, utilising an intelligent quoting of Apocalypse Now. The Young soldiers, or Jarheads, triumphantly recite the Ride of the Valkeries without any irony. Although the scene is obviously ironic. The Deer Hunter is also quoted, both films being anti-war.

Roger Deakins brilliantly emphasises the malevolence through washed out looking scenes which cry with the hint of colour. The desert, the wide expanse of nothingness is filmed so accurately so that it becomes troubling.

Gyllanhaal is brilliant, two fine performances in one year, as too is Foxx and Sarsgaard and Cooper in a small part.

Not a perfect film by any means, but a film which has important things to say, which says them articulately.

As one of the first examples of Italian neo-realism, Open City is a perfect synergy of subject matter and aesthetic and technical choices. Utilising documentary style, objective cinematography, Rossellini portrays Rome as a politically turbulent city, put under immense strain. What makes this film so good is that he has given it heart.

An important time in Italy's history, and a subject matter which may have been approached too reverently, Rossellini understands that to make scenes inherently humorous is acceptable and even necessary to imbue the characters with humanity.

Anna Magnani is captivating as a put-upon mother trying to get by, and it is little surprise she became one of Italy's most revered and honored actresses.

Open City is at once funny, sensitive, sympathetic, blunt and quite shocking, especially in its confronting and matter of fact portrayal of death. A beautiful film, which hums with humanity.