Finding Neverland

 Released Year: 2004

Directed by Marc Forster

Casted by:

Johnny Depp as J. M. Barrie

Kate Winslet as Sylvia Llewelyn Davies

Dustin Hoffman as Charles Frohman

Julie Christie as Mrs. Emma du Maurier

Radha Mitchell as Mary Ansell Barrie

Freddie Highmore as Peter Llewelyn Davies

 Story:

The story focuses on Scottish writer J. M. Barrie, his platonic relationship with Sylvia Llewelyn Davies, and his close friendship with her sons, who inspire the classic play Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Never Grew Up.

Following the dismal reception of his latest play, Little Mary, Barrie meets the widowed Sylvia and her four young sons in Kensington Gardens, and a strong friendship develops between them. He proves to be a great playmate and surrogate father figure for the boys, and their imaginative antics give him ideas which he incorporates into a play about boys who do not want to grow up, especially one named after troubled young Peter Llewelyn Davies. Barrie's wife Mary, who eventually divorces him, and Sylvia's mother Emma du Maurier, object to the amount of time Barrie spends with the Llewelyn Davies family. Emma also seeks to control her daughter and grandsons, especially as Sylvia becomes increasingly weak from an unidentified illness.

Producer Charles Frohman skeptically agrees to mount Peter Pan despite his belief it holds no appeal for upper-class theatergoers. Barrie peppers the opening night audience with children from a nearby orphanage, and the adults present react to their infectious delight with an appreciation of their own. The play proves to be a huge success.

Because Sylvia is too ill to attend the production, Barrie arranges to have an abridged production of it performed in her home. She dies shortly afterward, and Barrie finds that her will is to have him and her mother look after the boys, an arrangement agreeable to both.

  L² Scored: 7/10 

L² Comment:

Multiples awards nomination film, this movie is something like a biography-kinda film of the playwright Mr Barrie, who created Peter Pan. I was amazed of how this guy can have such good imagination to creae a wonderful story like Peter Pan, as it has always been my dream to look for a neverland too :) 

Overall the storyline is just ok for me, some part is a bit dull but luckily the talented actors and actress make this movie sparks ~

Flushed Away

 Released Year: 2006

Directed by David Bowers & Sam Fell

 

Voiced by:

Hugh Jackman as Roderick "Roddy" St. James
 Kate Winslet as Rita Malone
 Ian McKellen as The Toad
 Jean Reno as Le Frog

 Story:

Roddy St. James is a decidedly upper crust pet rat who makes his home in a posh Kensington flat. While his owners are away on holiday Roddy plays around the house. A common sewer rat named Sid comes spewing out of the sink and decides to stay, especially as England are playing against Germany in the World Cup final. Roddy schemes to get rid of Sid by luring him into the "jacuzzi", which is actually the toilet. Sid isn't fooled at all and instead pushes Roddy in and flushes him away into the sewer. There, Roddy discovers a city resembling London made out of various bits of junk, and meets Rita Malone, an enterprising scavenger rat who works the drains in her faithful boat, the Jammy Dodger. Rita does not like Roddy initially, but ends up taking him along, while her arch enemy The Toad sends his rat henchmen, Spike and Whitey, after her because she had stolen back her father's prized ruby a long time ago. The Toad despises all rodents to the point of hateful obsession. He plans to have them frozen with liquid nitrogen inside an icemaker. The pair escape, and Rita takes a unique electrical cable that, unknown to everyone but the Toad, is required to control the floodgates.

Roddy finds that the ruby is a fake and breaks it in front of Rita, enraging her, for she can now not get the money she needs for her large family. Roddy offers her a real ruby if she takes him back to Kensington. Accepting the offer, the pair first stop to visit her family before setting off. During Roddy's stay, he overhears a conversation that causes him to think that Rita had double-crossed him, so he steals the Jammy Dodger. When Rita catches up to him, she is able to clear up the misunderstanding. The pair evade Spike and Whitey pursuing in a remote-controlled toy boat, with Thimblenose Ted and others on eggbeater jet skis. During this scene, Roddy and Rita share a quick love moment. Incensed at his minions’ repeated failures, The Toad sends for his French cousin; an infamous, if somewhat laid back, mercenary known as Le Frog. During this scene, it is revealed that The Toad was once Prince Charles' pet, but was replaced by a pet rat, and subsequently flushed down a toilet. Le Frog and his subordinates intercept the duo and retrieve the cable, but Roddy and Rita use a plastic bag to lift themselves out of the sewer (snatching away the cable during the ascent) and get Roddy home, though the Jammy Dodger is destroyed.

Back home, Roddy pays Rita the promised ruby and an emerald, then proceeds to show her around his house. She at first believes he has family in the home, but noticing his cage, she realises he's a pet. Roddy tries to pass Sid off as his brother, but Sid and Rita know each other. Rita tries to persuade Roddy to come with her, but he is too proud to admit that he is lonely. By now, they have fallen in love but have not told each other their feelings. She departs, both of them broken-hearted, but is soon captured by The Toad. Talking to Sid about half-time, Roddy pieces together The Toad's plan: to open the gates during halftime of the World Cup, when all the humans will most likely be using their toilets, causing a great flood and drowning the rats and their underground city in sewage. He can then use the depopulated city as a home for his own tadpole offspring. He gives Sid his cushy position and has him flush him back to the sewers to find Rita and save the city. Together, they defeat The Toad and freeze the wave of sewage generated by the flushing of countless toilets during half-time with liquid nitrogen before it drowns the entire rat population.

Rita and Roddy build the Jammy Dodger Mark Two and set off in her with Rita's entire brood. A newspaper article reveals England had lost on penalties. Later while the credits start, Roddy's former owner Tabitha comes back with a new pet cat, which scares Sid.



 L² Scored: 9/10

 

L² Comment:

This is one of my favorite animation which makes me laugh no matter how many times i watch. The reason that i'm not scoring a 10/10 for this is i do hope the movie get more nasty... Ummm.... such as the Frog's babies managed to burst out from the bottles and become nasty monster :P hehehe

Contagion

 Released Year: 2011

Directed by Steven Soderbergh

Casted by: 

Matt Damon as Mitch Emhoff

Marion Cotillard as Dr. Leonora Orantes
Laurence Fishburne as Dr. Ellis Cheever
Kate Winslet as Dr. Erin Mears

Jude Law as Alan Krumwiede
Gwyneth Paltrow as Elizabeth "Beth" Emhoff

 Story:

 The film follows several interacting plotlines, with no single protagonist nor antagonist, over the course of several weeks from the initial outbreak and attempts to contain it, to panic and decay of social order, and, finally, to the introduction of a vaccine. It is revealed in the end of the movie how the virus began.

After a business trip to Hong Kong, businesswoman Beth Emhoff stops in Chicago for a dalliance with an old boyfriend before returning to her husband and family in suburban Minneapolis. At first she appears to have contracted a cold during her trip. Her son, Clark, also becomes symptomatic and is sent home from school. Beth's condition worsens and two days later she collapses with severe seizures in her home. Beth's husband, Mitch, rushes her to the hospital, but she continues to seize and dies of an unknown virus. Because it affects the brain and central nervous system, pathologists attribute it to a meningoencephalitis virus. Mitch returns home and finds that Clark has also died from a similar infection. Mitch is put in isolation but turns out to be genetically immune to the disease. He and his daughter attempt to flee the city, but a military quarantine has been imposed, and they are forced to return to their home to face decaying social order and rampant looting of stores and homes. Not knowing whether his daughter inherited his immunity, Mitch struggles to balance his teenage daughter's frustration with quarantine with his desire to protect her, while trying to come to terms with his own loss.

In Atlanta, representatives from the Department of Homeland Security meet with Dr. Ellis Cheever of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and express fears that the disease is a bioweapon intended to cause terror over the Thanksgiving weekend. Cheever sends Dr. Erin Mears, an Epidemic Intelligence Service officer, to Minneapolis to begin the investigation. In addition to tracing the outbreak back to Beth, Dr. Mears has to negotiate with local bureaucrats reluctant to commit resources. She later becomes infected with the disease after being in contact with contaminated fomites while staying at her hotel. The Minnesota National Guard arrives to quarantine the city, and a badly deteriorating Dr. Mears is moved to the field medical station she helped set up, where she later dies.

Investigations into cures via treatment protocols or vaccines initially prove fruitless as scientists cannot find a culture to grow the new virus, which has been named the Meningoencephalitis Virus One (MEV-1). Professor Ian Sussman violates orders from a CDC scientist, Dr. Ally Hextall, to destroy his samples and identifies a line of bat cells that will support research of a vaccine. At the CDC, Dr. Hextall uses this breakthrough to begin to characterize the properties of the virus, which turns out to have a mix of genetic material from bat, pig and human viruses and appears to spread via fomites with a basic reproduction number of two. This later goes up to four after the virus mutates.

A conspiratorially minded freelance internet blogger, Alan Krumwiede, posts videos about the disease, and in one of them appears sick and later claims that he recovered using a homeopathic cure called forsythia. Panicked people attempting to obtain forsythia overwhelm pharmacies, accelerating the contagion as infected and healthy people congregate. Krumwiede leaps to national attention and, during a television interview, accuses Dr. Cheever of informing friends and family to leave Chicago before a quarantine is imposed. It is later revealed Krumwiede was never sick with the virus, but was attempting to boost demand on behalf of investors in the companies producing and distributing the homeopathic treatment. He is arrested for conspiracy and fraud, but is soon released after his 12 million blog readers collect and pay his bail.

Dr. Hextall identifies a potential vaccine, using an attenuated (live) virus. Because of the difficulties of human subjects testing, she follows the precedent of other vaccine researchers and inoculates herself first. Hextall visits her gravely ill father in the hospital to expose herself to the virus and test the vaccine. Production of the vaccine is rapidly ramped up and the CDC awards vaccinations via a random lottery based on birth dates for one full year until every survivor is vaccinated. Dr. Cheever, feeling guilty for his past actions to protect those who are close to him, gives his fast-tracked MEV-1 vaccination to the son of a janitor he works with at the disease center. Dr. Hextall places the surviving samples of the MEV-1 virus in cryogenic storage with H1N1 and SARS.

Dr. Leonora Orantes, a World Health Organization epidemiologist, travels to Hong Kong to trace the origins of the infections. She collaborates with Sun Feng and other local Chinese epidemiologists and public health officials and they identify Emhoff as patient zero. As the virus spreads, Feng kidnaps Orantes to use her as leverage to obtain the first MEV-1 vaccines for his village. Orantes spends months living in rural China with the villagers until the vaccine is announced. Feng exchanges Orantes for the vaccines, which turn out to be placebos. Orantes rushes away when she is informed of this, presumably to warn the village.

The film concludes by tracing the origin of the virus from a bat nesting in a tree being cleared by Emhoff's mining corporation. The bat flies to a nearby pig sty and drops a banana where it is eaten by the pig, presumably transferring the bat virus into the pig. The pig is sold to and butchered by a chef in a Macau casino, who greets Beth Emhoff without washing his hands of the pig's blood, transferring the bat-pig hybrid to her and creating the MEV-1 human strain.

L² Scored: 10/10

L² Comment:

Oh fuck, this is an extremely good film. I love all those big casts and the storyline, there's almost flawless in this film~ excellent work and excellent cast :)

Holy Smoke !

Released Year: 1999
Directed by Jane Campion

Casted by:
Kate Winslet as Ruth Barron
Harvey Keitel as P.J. Waters
Julie Hamilton as Miriam Barron
Tim Robertson as Gilbert Barron
Story:

During a trip to India, Ruth Barron has a spiritual awakening and embraces the teachings of a guru named Baba. Back home in the Sydney suburb of Sans Souci, her parents are appalled to learn their daughter now answers to the name Nazni and has no intention of returning. They concoct a tale about her father Gilbert having had a stroke and being on the verge of death, and her mother Miriam travels to India in hopes of convincing her to come home, with no success until she suffers a serious asthma attack. Ruth agrees to accompany her on her return flight.

Miriam arranges a reunion with Gilbert, who supposedly is recuperating in the Outback, and this charade lands Ruth in the clutches of P.J. Waters, an American exit counselor who deprograms members of religious cults. In a remote cabin, he isolates Ruth, separates her from her sari and religious props, challenges her faith in Baba, and slowly wears her down. As she begins to weaken, Waters finds himself sexually attracted to her, and in time Ruth allows him to seduce her. She then turns the tables on him, as she discovers her sexuality allows her to make mincemeat of his machismo.

Ruth continue to play along with Waters and even make him wear a red woman dress and have sex with him. Waters has fall totally into Ruth and beg her to be with him forever. Ruth ran away and Waters try to catch her, but after several chase, Waters collapsed. Ruth and Waters were saved and brought back for medical health.

One year later, Ruth and Miriam both went to India to continue their life there after discovering Gilbert has an affair with his secretary. Waters in another hand healed and get married with 2 kids.

L² Scored: 6/10
L² Comment:

This film has went Venice film festival, New York film festival and Taipei Golden Horse film festival and managed to get a lot of applause. Ms Winslet, famous of her big tits fails no one by showing off her juicy big breast in the movie again.

But the movie was banned in India due to the negative issue of Hindu believes were shown in the movie. Think most of the Indian are pissed off on this.

Little Children

Released Year: 2006
Directed by Todd Field

Casted by:
Kate Winslet as Sarah Pierce
Patrick Wilson as Brad Adamson
Jennifer Connelly as Kathy Adamson
Jackie Earle Haley as Ronald James McGorvey
Noah Emmerich as Larry Hedges
Story:

Sarah Pierce is a reluctant housewife and mother in an upper-middle class suburb of Boston. She is married to Richard Pierce, a successful yet distant husband, who is secretly obsessed with an internet porn star. Sarah refers to her daughter Lucy as an "unknowable little person" and feels out of place around the other mothers at a local playground.

Brad Adamson is a former college football player who's married to Kathy, a documentary filmmaker, with a young son named Aaron. Brad is depressed and frustrated, as his wife is the breadwinner and he is a stay-at-home father who has failed the bar exam twice. Each day he leaves home with the pretense of going to the library to study, but spends the time watching skateboarders at the nearby park. He joins a policeman's touch football team at the urging of a friend, Larry Hedges, a disgraced former police officer.

Sarah and Brad meet on the school playground, where Sarah suggests they hug to shock the watching mothers nearby. Brad kisses her, and it quickly becomes apparent that the two are attracted to each other. Over the course of several visits to the local pool, Sarah and Brad get to know each other while their children also bond, which soon leads to an affair.

Meanwhile, Ronald "Ronnie" James McGorvey, who has served a prison sentence for indecent exposure to a minor, has moved back into the neighborhood to live with his mother. Larry launches a hate campaign against Ronnie, handing out posters, vandalizing his house, harassing and almost assaulting the man and his mother. Ronnie's mother tries to help by setting him up on a date, which ends badly with him masturbating in his date's car outside a children's playground.

Brad and Sarah finally see each other at a football game, where he asks her to run away with him; the two agree to meet up at a local park the next night. After the game a drunken Larry goes to McGorvey's house and further harasses him, using a megaphone to wake the entire neighborhood. When Mrs. McGorvey tries to stop him, Larry pushes her down. She has a heart attack and later dies in the hospital. Ronnie is devastated at losing the one person who loved him.

That evening Sarah packs a bag and takes Lucy to the playground to wait for Brad. On the way to the playground, Brad is again transfixed by the young skateboarders, who dare him to try one jump on a short stair rail. Brad can't resist and ends up injuring himself. Sarah is unexpectedly met at the playground by Ronnie instead and tries to comfort him, leaving Lucy to wander off by herself. This frightens Sarah into realizing that leaving Richard would be a terrible mistake. Once she finds Lucy, Sarah tearfully embraces her daughter and goes home. Brad is taken to the hospital and asks the police officer on the scene to call his wife.

Larry comes to the park to find Ronnie and apologize for harassing him. Noticing blood dripping off Ronnie, he is horrified to discover that Ronnie has castrated himself. Panicked, Larry picks Ronnie up and takes him to the hospital. They arrive just as Kathy meets Brad's ambulance at the emergency room doors. The film ends with an image of a remorseful Sarah sleeping alongside Lucy in their home.

L² Scored: 8/10

L² Comment:

From the novel of Tom Perrotta, director Todd Field simply created a marvelous film. Love the simpleness of this movie, the romance, the chemistry between a married man and a married woman. Both of them unable to get enough satisfaction from each partner, therefore, they are getting it from each of them they meet.

The film spice up by adding in a pedophile scenes/story acted by Jackie Earle Haley. And the final "self- castrate" part is definitely not a scene that you will enjoy. But overall this is a good film and Kate Winslet was nominated in a lots of awards for the best actress category :)