Movie time.
Series 7: The Contenders, with Brooke Smith and Glenn Fitzgerald. What a disturbing film. I can see this actually happening in the not too distant future. Certainly the concept has been done before, (Running Man and Battle Royale) but this was different in that it was shot in the style of a reality TV show. The acting was quite believable, I gotta give them props for creating deep and believable characters, if it weren't for that the film wouldn't have had 1/10th the impact. Like my brother pointed out, it would've been so much cooler if the director had been able to make it an actual series. If they did do that I'm guessing they would try to make people think it was an actual reality show and end up tricking the audience like they've been known to do. It would be interesting to see if the public's moral outrage would outweigh their thirst for blood. I'm guessing not.

Never Say Never Again, with Sean Connery and Kim Basinger. Man, the Bond films ain't what they used to be. You need big scary superpowers and nuclear weapons to make a good secret agent flick, which is why the old James Bond movies are so good. Sean Connery is the best Bond. Period. Anyway, the thing that may make this movie so good is the moderation in the things that the franchise is (in)famous for. The gadgetry is kept to a minimum, the one-liners are appropriately spaced and the 007 charm is believable. Contrast with, say, Die Another Day which seemed to be more like Austin Powers than Austin Powers. The only thing I found fault with was a scene where Bond gets the crap kicked out of him by this giant henchman and doesn't get so much as a scratch. Especially when the doctor mentions earlier that he has "more scar tissue than an entire regiment."
Fun fact: Rowan Atkinson (aka Mr. Bean) is also in this movie and also in the James Bond spoof Johnny English.

Pane e Tulipani, with Licia Maglietta and Bruno Ganz. A nice, lighthearted movie. A house wife is left behind on a tour and decide to finish her vacation and continue it indefinitely. While she is away from home she discovers the joys of having a life outside of being a stay at home mom.
It's quite European, what with the visions that this perfectly sane woman has out of nowhere. I guess they needed a way to convey her inner thoughts clearly and a simple dream wasn't good enough. The characters in the story are really zany, at first I attributed this again to the fact that it's a European film but as I think about it, I've met some pretty weird people in Europe. I thought it was funny that there was a hyperemotional, easily angered Italian stereotype in an Italian movie. The ending kind of threw me, but I was expecting a different reaction from the family.