ABCs at the Movies: The Doubles Round!

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Mala leads a contented life as the best hunter in his Canadian Arctic tribe, providing meat, fish and birds with his great skill. When another tribe member returns from trading furs with the white men for items such as a gun and an iron needle, Mala's wife, Aba, urges him to make the 500-mile trek across the frozen tundra to do the same. After the long night of winter, Mala does go with his family to the white man's "floating house" in Tjarnak. The friendly captain makes trade for Mala's excellent furs, but upsets Mala when he insists that Aba sleep with him that night. "He didn't even ask me!" Mala complains. Afterwards, the captain suggests that Mala go whale hunting and promises not to touch his wife, so Mala agrees. But news of a successful catch spurs a celebration on board ship, and the captain has Aba forcibly removed from her tent, plied with liquor, and then he rapes her. In the morning, the still-drunk Aba staggers from the ship, but collapses in the snow, where she is mistaken for an animal by a hunter and shot and killed. When Mala returns from the whaling expedition, he learns that Aba "has swallowed sleep." He is so enraged he harpoons the captain, packs up his dog sled team and leaves with the rest of his family. It takes some time to recover from his grief and take on two new wives including Iva, who has loved him all along. The newly formed Royal Canadian Mounted Police learns of the murder and dispatches two mounties to arrest Mala. Ironically, Mala finds them frozen in the snow, near death, and saves their lives reluctantly, since he now trusts no white man. But they convince him they are his friends and must go back with them or else they may starve. So he goes, leaving his family behind. At the RCMP base, Mala learns from a translator he may hang. With great effort, he slips out of his shackled wrist, injuring his hand, steals food and a dog sled team and heads back to his land. In the morning, the two mounties go after him.

An interesting article on the movie's lead Ray Mala "Hollywood's first native American star":

http://www.amoeba.com/blog/2010/11/eric-s-blog/-ray-mala-hollywood-s-first-native-american-star.html

[Fran]

Also known as:  Family

From IMDb:  Mother is dying and invites her family to spend a few days in a chalet in Austria. In the isolation of the snow-covered mountains, old wounds are reopened and the family ties crumble steadily through quarrels and irritations.

[memento]

From IMdb: a snow-covered creep-fest, 21 December 2005
Ghostkeeper probably has one of the best horror movie settings ever, in my opinion. It takes place in an isolated old lodge (Deer Lodge, an actual functioning resort)amid the snowy Canadian Rockies, surrounded by huge snow-covered mountains and towering evergreen trees. The outdoor scenes alone make the film worth seeing. Once we get inside the lodge, we start running into some lighting issues. In some cases, the overly dark scenes are effective, especially when all you can really see are the character's piercing eyes. Also effective are the shots of the wendigo's basement enclosure, which is made out of blocks of ice, emitting an eerie blue light. Very cool. I also thought Paul Zaza's score worked well for the film. In particular, there is a strange synthesizer part that sounds like distorted wind or maybe a train...whatever it is, it's spooky as hell. The acting, unfortunately, is mediocre with the notable exception of Georgie Collins, who plays the "ghostkeeper". Her performance, especially in her last scene, is really disturbing and frightening. I recommend Ghostkeeper to any serious horror fan who likes creepy, atmospheric films.

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In feudal China, the King of Qin is waging a bloody campaign to conquer the entire land. He has been made a target of three dangerous assassins: spear-wielding Sky, and the lovers Broken Sword and Flying Snow. One day word comes that he has nothing left to fear; a prefect known only as Nameless has killed all three assassins. Nameless is called to the palace and asked to recount the tale of how he accomplished this amazing feat. After he tells his story, however, the King notices some flaws in it...

[Front-Ranger]

One of my favorite films!! Have you seen it?

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One of my favorite films!! Have you seen it?

no i haven't seen it. I'll look for it.

[Fran]

From Warner Brothers:  Dom Cobb is a skilled thief, the absolute best in the dangerous art of extraction, stealing valuable secrets from deep within the subconscious during the dream state, when the mind is at its most vulnerable. Cobb's rare ability has made him a coveted player in this treacherous new world of corporate espionage, but it has also made him an international fugitive and cost him everything he has ever loved. Now Cobb is being offered a chance at redemption. One last job could give him his life back but only if he can accomplish the impossible -- inception. Instead of the perfect heist, Cobb and his team of specialists have to pull off the reverse: their task is not to steal an idea but to plant one. If they succeed, it could be the perfect crime. But no amount of careful planning or expertise can prepare the team for the dangerous enemy that seems to predict their every move. An enemy that only Cobb could have seen coming.

Here's a snow scene from the film:

=aside=
I promise to update the Answer List very soon.

[southendmd]

IMDb review:  I really like western films but this one is absolutely insupportable. There's no story here, no acting, no directional touches. The cast is completely lost in a series of scenes that made no sense at all (like the showdown in the cave when Joshua killed the last outlaw). There's no dialogue here, too. Williamson develops a zombie-like performance all the time and that contributes to make this mess a complete waste of time and a great exercise of patience.

Keyword:  hide in snow

=aside= Players
I'll be away for a week.  No snow in the plans.

[oilgun]

Original title: Vinterkyss

IMDb: After her son is hospitalized, a doctor cheats on her husband with a snow plow driver who is a suspect in her investigation of the recent death of a young Arab boy.

An emotionally buttoned-up doctor flees home and husband after the death of her young son, trying to escape her grief by tending to the citizens of a small town. Instead, she becomes an amateur sleuth investigating the mysterious death of a young Muslim immigrant. Lean and precise, this melancholy film sneaks up on you with its insightful sketches of grief, loss and tearstained resolution. Annika Hallin is fantastic as the inwardly crumbling doctor, while director Sara Johnsen’s recurring use of Jeff Buckley’s version of “Hallelujah,” especially in the film’s closing moments, fuses music and image into a graceful poetry of spiritual ache and escape.
http://www.nfi.no/english/_nyheter/vis.html?id=1756

[Fran]

Nick Schager's review for Slant:

Like Dances with Wolves, another film about a disaffected 19th-century American soldier going native, Edward Zwick's tame The Last Samurai romanticizes an ancient culture as the pure and honorable adversary of the deviously amoral and bloodthirsty modern world epitomized by the United States and its allies. The film's dichotomous narrative is designed to engender audience sympathy for the fierce, noble samurai who, in their civil struggle against the emperor's nefarious Imperial court, represent the last vestiges of a supposedly more ethical era. The Americans are murderous boors, and the emperor's right-hand man Omura (Masato Harada) is a soulless creep more interested in howitzer machine guns than cultural history. All the while, the film conveniently (and, one might say, deceptively) sidesteps commenting on the dubious militaristic legacy of the samurai on Japan's modern history.

More problematic than the film's political shortsightedness is its obviousness and simplistic didacticism. A damp "epic" adventure about the value of multiculturalism, the film traces the path of washed-up drunken soldier Nathan Algren (Tom Cruise) to Japan to train the emperor's peasant army for battle against the rebellious samurais led by the imposing Katsumoto (Ken Watanabe). In battle, Algren is captured and brought back to the samurai enclave nestled deep within Japan's lush green countryside of rolling hills and snow-capped mountains. There, he slowly learns to embrace the samurai way of life (discipline, perseverance, spirituality) and, in the process, purge himself of the painful memory of an Indian massacre in which his repugnant commanding officer Colonel Bagley (Tony Goldwyn) forced him to participate. Algren slowly falls in love with Katsumoto's demure sister (Koyuji) -- wife of a man Algren killed in battle -- and, after a few nights of detox and a few strolls around the lovely village, discards his Western mentality for a life of Zen bliss.

Cruise convincingly brings Algren's metaphysical resurrection to life, smoothly masking the character's disarming fragility with defiant, devil-may-care courage. Still, the actor's palpable vanity -- playfully mocked by one samurai's comment that Cruise is "still so ugly!" -- periodically inhibits his performance. Cruise's likeably confrontational scenes with Watanabe soon give way to mushy man-love declarations of solidarity, and thus there's little surprise when Algren decides to take up arms with the samurais against his former comrades. There's a crisp, sinewy rhythm to Zwick's direction, and cinematographer-par-excellence John Toll ably captures the overpowering majesty of both the Japanese countryside and the regal samurai, such as when the fierce warriors, encased in spiked armor and ornate horned helmets, burst forth from the forest mist like rampaging specters on horseback. A spectacular battle between Katsumoto's tribe and a band of fearsome swordsmen gives the film a momentary jolt of combative excitement, but, by and large, The Last Samurai is content to be a squishy, serious-minded lesson about embracing one's heritage and cherishing the virtues of valor and respect. It could have used more edge.