Archive for the 'Movies' Category

This isn’t one of those normal drawn-out movie reviews. A movie like Transformers doesn’t need it really. It’s a summer blockbuster that costs a lot to make in hopes of making a lot of money, which it probably will. Director Micheal Bay packs in a whole bunch of action sequences, enough to blow you away […]



In 2009’s “Lemon Tree”, Israeli Director Eran Riklis takes the story of a rather ordinary situation under occupation and turns it into a fairly extraordinary journey into life under occupation. Salma Zidane (portrayed by Hiam Abbass), a 45-year old Palestinian widow who spends her time tending to her family’s lemon grove finds herself living next […]



Garbage Warrior is a rather fascinating documentary centering around the life of Mike Reynolds - a 60-something year old architect who, with his long and gray hippie-like hair, has spent the better part of his career out in the New Mexico desert trying to create a different way to live. Nearly obsessed with the science […]



Likely one of the most interesting documentaries of 2009, “Tyson” is a fascinating elegy to one of the greatest heavy-weight boxers of all time. Once a vicious fighter in the ring, Mike Tyson is now a 42 year old man, still struggling with drug and alcohol addictions, still massively in debt, and a father. Director […]



The entertainment industry seems all abuzz about the online leaking of “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” - the set-to-be blockbuster of the upcoming summer season. The leak has now spread through the Internet in just a matter of hours. In fact, the long-awaited flick was unleashed on the Web on Tuesday. Earlier tonight (Wednesday) I almost passed […]



Remembering the shocking images of Abu Ghraib is not an easy thing to do. While it caught most of the world off guard, it came as something fairly expected of a US-invader. But for one of the few times in history, images and videos played such an essential role in documenting a horrific crime. To […]



Mad As Hell!

26Jan09

From one of the greatest films ever made…

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Seven Pounds is probably one of Will Smith’s more interesting dramatic roles, along the lines of “The Pursuit of Happyness” and 1993’s “Six Degrees Of Separation”. The story feels almost cut and presented in pieces so that you don’t know exactly what Will Smith’s character, Ben Thomas, is up to. All you can really tell […]



Without a doubt, Richard Nixon’s Watergate scandal and subsequent resignation as President, is one of the most interesting moments in US, if not world history. Frost/Nixon is a film, based on a play, that chronicles the famous post-resignation interview of Nixon by British interviewer David Frost. The former is portrayed (dead on) by Frank Langella […]



Let me be honest right off the bat. I have never been a Jean-Claude Van Damme fan nor a fan of the pseudo-action flicks genre in general. Nevertheless, the “Muscles From Brussels” is worshiped in Jordan and that’s the only way I would ever discover that Van Damme has actually continued to make movies after […]



On Storytellers

30Nov08

“The key to a healthy society, is a thriving community of storytellers…storytelling is a commodity, it’s a staple, there is no life without stories.” - Franco Sacchi, Italian filmmaker.
Check out his TED Talk, it really is inspiring. Who knew that Nigeria had the third largest film industry in the world; Nollywood? And it seems […]



Designed solely for movie buffs who also have very short attention spans, the Jordan Short Film Festival is taking place all this week at Muhtaraf Al-Remaal in Jabal Al-Weibda. If you don’t know where that is, don’t fret. The directions are rather easy if you actually follow them. And speaking of locations, what I find […]



First off, homosexuality is not a topic that I think I’ve ever discussed on this blog and mostly because it is a topic that people seem to be so opinionated about (not to mention preoccupied with) to the extent that every conversation about it seems destined to descend in to a spiral of insults and […]



Any movie that has Jordan as its stage has, by default, something interesting to offer me as a viewer. And if behind that movie sits Ridley Scott in the director’s chair, with Russell Crowe and Leonardo Dicaprio in front of the camera, well, suffice to say, this has to be one heck of a movie. […]



Back in 2004, during the US Presidential election, I think some might remember Micheal Moore’s “Slacker Uprising” tour, where he traveled around the US with various artists, giving speeches, rallying young Americans to vote, with the promise of ramen noodles and underwear for anyone willing to vote. This documentary essentially documents that tour and the […]



There haven’t been many political films coming out of these days, so I was pretty intrigued by the very story of Battle in Seattle, which details the rather infamous demonstrations during the World Trade Organization’s ministerial conference in Seattle, circa 1999. If you were alive in any shape or form and followed the news, these […]