oliver9184

Splice (2009) 6/10 is a biological horror film set in the near-future world of genetic engineering. Hotshot bio-scientists Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley have had so much success as a husband and wife team that they've been given total freedom by their rather slack bosses to do whatever they like for their next project. The result is a quite remarkable human-animal crossbreed that grows very quickly and starts fucking everything up bigstyle while still seeming human enough (the creature was played by a real actor) that you don't just want it to be killed like any old moster. Sympathy for the thing is enhanced by the two arrogant scientists not being very likeable from the outset (he, because he's played by Brody, more than her).

Inglourious Basterds (2009) 8/10 is the best thing QT has done since Pulp Fiction but I found it a bit too talky and sometimes pretentious. The good bits are really good though and I wanted to like it more; the fact that I didn't has more to do with my own failings than the film's.

The Wind that Shakes the Barley (2006) 8/10 is a Ken Loach film about Republican paramilitary (and later political) action in Ireland in the 1920s. The British Empire at that time was in control of the entire island of Ireland and embittered English soldiers fresh from the savagery of First World War trenches brutally oppressed the Irish civilian population. In this completely one-sided but very enjoyable film a bunch of brave Irish young men join the IRA and start to fight back. The story combines shows the big, overall paramilitary and political machinations alongside the affecting personal story of a young man (Cillian Murphy) who was about to quit Ireland for London to become a doctor but changes his mind to fight for his country's cause, with shattering consequences.

Festen (aka The Celebration) (1998) 9/10 is a low budget Danish film, one that supposedlyadheres to the 'Dogme 95 Manifesto' which dictates that that films be as natural as possible in every way: handheld camera, available light, real sound etc. A wealthy patriarch is throwing a party to celebrate his 60th birthday at his large country house for all his family and friends. During the course of the celebrations and meal, dark, damaging secrets emerge and wayward family members, guests and even staff get totally out of control on drink and violence. This is filmmaking at its rawest and most riveting and it's surprisingly accessible so anyone half-tempted shouldn't let the film's avant-garde image and reputation (which is mostly bullshit) put them off.

Requiem for a Dream (2000) 9/10 is a tough watch but less so if you know what's coming, and it's totally worth it anyway. Ellen Burstyn's hallucination scene where the TV show comes into her apartment is magnificent.

The Time of the Wolf (2002) 7/10 is a post-apocalyptic drama set in France directed by Michael Haneke. So don't expect a barrell of laughs - or even a single one. There's some horrible stuff in here and not much relief - Haneke likes to really rub the abject misery he's created right into the face of his audience so, for example, there's one scene lasting minutes just of a wretched woman wailing and wailing in foreign over the tiny grave of her newly dead child. Surely one of the most grating sounds there is, and the director knows it and wants you to hear it for a long time. People fight, trick, betray and abuse each other constantly and from start to finish I had a clear sense that this is in all likelihood as accurate a representation of what the end of the world will be like as any I've seen.

Titan_Uranus

The fourth kind, 95 minutes I'm never gonna get back!

oliver9184

Casablanca (1942) 10/10
The Pledge (2001) 8/10
The House of the Devil (2008) 7/10
The Avengers (1998) 3/10
Gunfight at the OK Corral (1957) 7/10
Woodstock (1970) 7/10 (yes all THREE AND A HALF HOURS of it!)
House of Sand and Fog (2003) 6/10
17 Again (2009) 6/10
Home on the Range (2004) 8/10

KellyC

Despicable Me - 7/10
The Other Guys - 6/10
The Expendables - 8/10

__________________
Him: Ok, I have to ask, what do you believe?
Me: Shit happens.

Jove

Machete: 8.5/10

Based off a 10 second trailer within DeathProof, this movie lives up to the hype. If you are uncomfortable with large quantities of violence, nudity or body parts flying in different directions, then you might want to skip this film. Basically, Machete is about a super angry Hispanic Federale betrayed by the Mexican government now surviving in the United States where he gets into a difficult situation and initiates a revolution within Texas.

Side note: Jessica Alba and Lindsay Lohan get naked, not together, but in different scenes.

Titan_Uranus

Salt 7-10 ,EXPENDABLES 8-10!

Lucifer

The Graduate 4/10 - Maybe this was a big deal back in 1967 when it was produced, but now it's so dated, and Hoffman's character is so immature and whiny, that it's almost unwatchable. Halfway though, I turned to Seamaiden and asked if Hoffman goes insane at the end of the movie, and she replied to the effect that we might! It's hard to believe that his character was supposed to have graduated college, because he's such a little boy, someone tells him no, and the next five minutes are filled with him whining, "Why? Why not? Why can't I" However, it gets the 4 rating cause of one great scene in which Hoffman is lying on a raft in his pool, while his parents swim around him, bugging him to ask out his lover's daughter. Talk about suffocating!

__________________
I am a brother to dragons, and a companion to owls.
- Job 30:29

1123, 6536, 5321

Amaras

The Informant 8.5/10. Matt Damon plays a highly intelligent, very quirky con man.
Layers upon layers of story, I found the end to be very surprising (maybe I'm
slow).
Damon is hilarious in this role, as well. He's turning out to be an actor with a lot
of range (Bourne, Talented Mr. Ripley, Rounders, and now this).

__________________
Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.
-Noam Chomsky
Love is a verb, not a noun.
-My Mom
The function of genius is to furnish cretins with ideas twenty years later.
-Louis Aragon, "La Porte-plume," Traite du style, 1928

noodle

In the last 7 days...

RoboCop: 7/10
Really enjoyed it, silly older movie but entertaining.

The Running Man: 8/10
Even by today's standards, I enjoyed it. But, I loved the original book, too.

Commando: 7/10
Goofy as all hell... great one liners but Bennett's mustache brought it down a bit.

Beverly Hills Cop, I & II :7/10
Silly, entertaining, Judge-Reinholdy-goodness. Fun one-liners.

Resident Evil (original): 8/10
I have a girl crush on Milla. But, that said, the movie was still great. I judged this one by the graphics that were available at the time, so I liked it.

Resident Evil: Apocalypse: 7/10
I liked this one a little less. Max/Nemesis wasn't developed enough and some of the characters were highly annoying.

Resident Evil: Extinction: 8/10
This one was better again, in the character focus on Alice and her experiences. I liked it.

__________________

oliver9184

Captivity (2007) 3/10 - SPOILERS - is a limp horror with Elisha Cuthbert clearly trying to take advantage of the Saw series' surprisingly consistent popularity. Cuthbert plays Jennifer Tree which is an awful name for a main character. It's a joke name. Are real people called Tree? Anyway Jennifer Tree is some sort of model who is abducted in the film's first few minutes. Apparently a criminal baddie madman has seen her on television and wants to do ghastly things to her. So he kidnaps her ridiculously but with remarkable ease and takes her somewhere that's supposed to be a warehouse or a basement but it just looks like a generic film set. So far so good. As Ms Tree is a fairly nondescript, vapid and dislikeable character, we couldn't be blamed for expecting (hoping even) awful things to be done to her, just like in Saw or Hostel. But oh no - we have it wrong. Unfortunately Tree IS the hero, and we were supposed to like her and hope that she will get away. So she doesn't get hurt at all. The worst things that happen to her are that she blasts her horrible little dog with a shotgun and she gets forcefed some liquified human remains. Regardless of quality (which is universally poor) there is just not enough content here for a half hour TV show let a lone a proper feature film. Scenes take far longer than they need to and everything's done with such a slapdash lack of effort that it's not surprising to learn that the film was shot in Russia by a crew who spoke no English. What IS surprising though is the pedigree of its creators: director Roland Joffé, who twenty years prior was making films like The Killing Fields and The Mission; and writer Larry Cohen, for better or worse an absolute stalwart of maverick genre cinema for over forty years. How and why they came together to make this sorry sack of shit is anybody's guess.

Anchorman (2004) 4/10 is a purile and tedious, mostly unfunny comedy, quite the worst I've seen so far from Judd Apatow's (occasionally funny) comedy making machine. The setup sees a female news reporter (alarmingly unattractive Christina Applegate) trying to muscle in on the anchoring gig of legendary newsman Ron Burgundy (Will Ferrell). Almost all of the -intended- humour is based on Burgundy and his cronies (Steve Carrell and Paul Rudd and someone else) being OUTRAGEOUSLY sexist towards their new colleague. But because they are such brainless buffoons she generally gets the last laugh by doing nothing more than behaving like a normal rational human (albeit a frighteningly haggard one). The stuff being offered for laughs here is in the main a very broad, base and sometimes unbelievably obvious gutter-level humour: for British equivalents think Little Britain or Catherine Tate. The Hangover was a fairly broad and at times very base blokey comedy but it had some originality and a caper plot and a hint of cleverness that's completely missing from Anchorman. Observe and Report similarly features a deluded and crass idiot as its protagonist and is a film that does everything right that Anchorman does wrong. Apart from simply having an actor who can act, and is funny, playing a properly written character, Observe & Report has a wild dangerousness that's totally refreshing when you watch it. By comparison Anchorman's a cardboard cutout - all about boorish sex jokes, silly cameos from people who should know better, and a lot of baffling non sequiturs which were presumably once jokes of some sort but have long since had their meaning AND funnyness squashed out of them by larger-than-life Ferrell and his insufferable friends.

Just Cause (1995) 5/10 is a boring and silly legal drama with Sean Connery and Laurence Fishburne; the only reason for watching it is a frightening, hyperkinetic and frankly showboating bit part by Ed Harris.

The Illusionist (2010) 7/10. This film's lack of dialogue grated on me before long, as one has to guess and infer what's happening, but the animation style is nice to look at (except for where conspicuous and jarring 3D models are used).

Disclosure (1994) 7/10 - SPOILERS - is a preposterous drama/thriller with added sex and Michael Crichton techno trappings starring Michael Douglas and Demi Moore. She's his new boss at a high-tec computer firm and after a late-night fumble in which he doesn't finish what she starts, she alleges sexual harrassment. The allegations and corporate intrigue rumble back and forth via Donald Sutherland for the film's duration, until he finds out that the company intends to hang him out to dry because the controversy surrounding him is threatening a merger that's about to take place. Thankfully and brilliantly the story requires Douglas to access an actual real life virtual reality computer system in order to find some evidence that will exonerate him. Michael Douglas and the VR sequences are the reason for watching this film and they are totally worth the wait. His inevitable vindication and Demi Moore's spectacular fall from the top are the icing on the cake.

The Omen (1976) 8/10 gets busted down a point on latest viewing. It's a silly story well told but it's not at all scary and I really can't remember ever having been scared by it even as a child. When you think about The Shining or The Exorcist it seems pretty tame.

Gimme Shelter (1970) 7/10. Concert.

Hart's War (2002) 6/10. Earnest.

Inception (2010) 10/10. Cerebral.

Bolt (2008) 8/10. Charming.

Sky High (2005) 8/10. Gratifying.

Whisper of the Heart (1995) 8/10. Reticent.

Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005) 8/10. Cute.

Final Destination 3 (2006) 5/10. Dumb.

The Nanny Diaries (2007) 7/10. Sweet.

Barry Lyndon (1975) 8/10. Long.

To Kill a King (2003) 7/10. Worthy.

Jove

The American: 5/10

This film is not a typical super fast on the go assassin film like The Bourne Series, but an observation at the life of one assassin: isolated and friendless. Unable to trust anyone or get involved in serious intimate relationships (if it happens, the other party ends up dead), the main character receives instruction from head boss and follows through with the plan while traveling through Italy. Throughout the film, the audience will question every character’s motive and determine if the main character will live or be killed by another assassin.

Side note: The American is open to interpretation and has limited dialog while we view the Italian country side.

Lucifer

Centurion: 7.5/10.
The Atlantic Film Festival is on in Halifax at the moment, and this was our first of three this weekend. The synopsis is basically this (from the AFF website): We both liked it, it had a good story and the acting was good. Think of it as sort of a King Arthur (Clive Owen, Keira Knightly) meets Gladiator (Russel Crowe). Lots of shots of misty forests, and snow covered mountains, against which, the arching blood fountain from a decapitated head is caught in bleak contrast. Did I mention the decapitations? Heads go flying everywhere!

__________________
I am a brother to dragons, and a companion to owls.
- Job 30:29

1123, 6536, 5321

sweet release

the taking of pellam 123!

i don't know what made me watch that. it's not what i'd usually go for.



3/10

__________________
These Stories don't mean anything if you've got no-one to tell them to.


I know you feel like the walls are closing in on you, it's hard to find release and people can be so cold.

Frosstbyte

Easy "A": Emma Stone rocks (see also: Zombieland, Superbad) and I have every hope this movie will be the first of many solid efforts coming from her. I also hope that she doesn't pull a Lohan post Mean Girls...but that's another question entirely. This movie is funny, witty and engaging, especially so if you're a fan of John Hughs' 1980s efforts. Olive's parents are perfectly cast, get great lines and deliver on them 100%, and the supporting cast otherwise does a solid job. This one really rests on Stone's shoulders, though, and she pulls through with style.

My only real complaint about the movie is how tacky and one dimensional the "villains" are in the form of a gaggle of crazy fundamentalist Christians obsessed with virginity and piety. I like making fun of fundamentalists as much as anyone else, but for some reason by the end of the movie, I found myself getting increasingly irritated by the caricature instead of laughing at it. This is a fairly minor irritant, though, and your mileage may vary.

9/10, unless you hated Pretty in Pink, Sixteen Candles and Ferris Buelers Day Off, in which case, you may want to skip this one

oliver9184

Scott Pilgrim vs the World (2010) 9/10 is Michael Cera playing something close to his usual character in a fun and unreal video game inspired world, in which he must fight guys in the style of a Street Fighter fight in order to win the affections of a hot girl (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) he likes. After seeing the trailer I was sure I would hate the film, having found out that it's based on a comic and also being sick and tired of Cera. But I read some positive reviews and thought I'd give it a try. That was totally the right thing to do because it's a really silly and fun picture filled with little details and things and moments that are just right, and clever but are never too obvious or in your face. Hilarious performances by Brandon Routh, Chris Evans and Kieran Culkin.

The Town (2010) 8/10 is a Boston-set bank heist crime film starring Ben Affleck and Jeremy Renner. The gang grew up and live in what's said to be the bank robbery capital of the world, where the skills are passed down father to son like. Everything is solid: it successfully treads what seems like a tricky line between reasonably real-feeling blue collar drama and thrilling, unrealistic action spectacle. The characters aren't just there to push the story along and they are generally well acted - even Ben Affleck comes across reasonably. Please don't misunderstand: I didn't particularly like his performance - he isn't convincing - in this film but I didn't want harm to befall him either. The best scenes outside of the action are when he and Renner are bantering back and forth. Renner's character is such an asshole he makes Affleck look less bad by association, which I suspect was exactly the intention. The story is pretty compelling and throws up a few new tricks, and the action scenes are pretty well handled.

He's Just Not That Into You (2009) 5/10 is a safe, dumb romantic comedy with an ensemble cast comprising of Ben Affleck, Jennifer Aniston, Drew Barrymore, Jennifer Connelly, Kevin Connolly, Bradley Cooper, Ginnifer Goodwin, Scarlett Johansson and Justin Long. WHEW! What a long list of people! I expect the romantic entanglements between them all will turn out to be different than what they seem at first. This is well-made and has a reasonably capbably cast but it isn't a good movie - it's cynical and manipulative and aims at a pretty rotten and stagnant audience who will have presumably lapped this shit right up and felt very good about it afterwards. Sharp-featured married couple Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Connelly are having trouble 'cause HE'S met Scarlett and SHE'S a bitch and has found his cigarettes! Her DAD died of lung cancer! (what part of that didn't HE understand?) HE blamed the fag pack and ashtray on BUILDERS but when she questioned the foreman (Luis Guzman) HE DENIED IT TOO! Meanwhile Ginnifer Goodwin is having a string dates that all have had the gall not to call her afterwards. She needs help from womaniser Justin Long who can help her to decipher that tricky code male men use when they say and do EXACTLY what they mean. Jennifer Anniston and Ben Affleck are a couple and there's something about a boat. Drew Barrymore has the horriblest shittest storyline in which the only male contact she can get - other than from the fawning, simpering homosexuals at her work - is via phone, text, email, gooseberry, shitspace and shitbook and all the rest of that bullshit. (HER THING IS THAT ALL HER DATES ARE NOT FACE TO FACE BECAUSE HER LIFE IS SO BUSY AND MODERN). Ben Affleck's was the likeablest character in the film until the very end when he threw his long-held conviction out for no reason at all. Kris Kristofferson has a heart attack. The End.

Pi (1998) 7/10
The Night of the Hunter (1955) 9/10
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2009) 8/10
The Ring Two (2005) 5/10
Robocop (1987) 9/10
Monsters Inc (2001) 8/10

MoonDog

Going the Distance (2010)
Justin Long and Drew Barrymore star. A romantic comedy centered on a guy and a gal who try to keep their love alive as they shuttle back and forth between New York and San Francisco to see one another.

I saw this on a date night with the wife. I like Drew, and Justin is OK as well, so I went in open-minded. It was actually a pretty decent flick. I laughed in a number of different places, mostly due to supporting cast antics.

Overall, 7 out of 10.

dd3953

So I have been acting like a Will Smith fan.

I Am Legend - 9/10
The Pursuit of Happyness - 8/10

__________________
[Technically, I'm not possible, I'm made of exceptions. ]

Jove

Let Me In 8.5/10

Is a remake of the 2008 Swedish film, Let The Right One In, worth watching? Did they stick to the original story? I received my answers as I was watching the remake of a two-year-old film, which didn’t need to be remade, but since the original was barely seen by American audiences, they wanted to share their story with us. The remake follows the same format as the original, a boy is being bullied at school by a kid who is being bullied by his brother so he takes his anger out on the quietest kid in class, which happens to be Owen(in this version, Oskar in the original). A young “girl” and her “father” move into the apartment next door and an unusual friendship along with a series of events occur between the two 12 year olds that bond them for life.

This film does not include two sub stories, the first involving the middle aged drunks that hang out at the bar and his short stay at his father’s for the weekend.

oliver9184

The Social Network (2010) 9/10 is the film about Facebook. Thanks to its heavyweight writer and director, Aaron Sorkin and David Fincher, and a cast that can deliver Sorkin's hundred mile per hour conversations this is a film that's far cleverer, funnier and just better than any film about any technological or computer-based theme should be. There's a rowing race scene halfway through set to Trent Reznor's demented reworking of Greig's In the Hall of the Mountain King that I've heard critics wail about - don't listen to them. My eyes were out on stalks almost and it provides a welcome break from the nosebleed-fast dialogue. Main cast is supported brilliantly by Andrew Garfield as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg's buddy Eduardo Saverin; Justin Timberlake playing ambitious but hollow and insecure internet entrepreneur Sean Parker; Armie Hamer as both Winklevoss buffoons; and Max Minghella as their cohort Divya Narendra.

Easy A (2010) 9/10 is a high school movie that seemed to be better-received than they are usually so I checked it out, as I like high school movies that are both well-received and not so. If they are that's just icing on the cake. Whoever said that Easy A is good is bang right, it's the best high school movie since Clueless and that film is as old now as its protagonist Cher Horowitz was then. Part of what made Clueless wonderful was the fact that main character Cher Horowitz was instantly likeable even though she was a rich brat and went to a school full of vapid idiots, and was more or less one herself. It's a character we should have hated and wanted to see fail but because of the lines she got and the way Alicia Silverstone played it - warm and deceptively intelligent - we couldn't help liking her. The hero of Easy A is Olive Penderghast and she too goes to high school in California, but instead of a Beverly Hills school for the super-rich it's a state school in unglamorous Ojai, way out in Ventura County (this - thankfully - doesn't stop everyone from looking as attractive as we expect of an American high school movie). Olive's not a cheerleader and she's not a geek or some new girl from the east or any other cliche like that - she's just a girl who one day lies to her best friend about losing her virginity at the weekend, and things snowball. Soon she's labelled as the school harlot and everyone - boys and girls - is suddenly far more interested in her now than they were before. Thanks, one can presume, to a fantastically but not stupidly liberal California upbringing by her excellent and hilarious parents (Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson), Olive has a very relaxed, unselfconscious outlook on school life and takes everything with a pinch of salt. She She's pretty much bulletproof to the usual highschool nonsense, which is true to a large extent, which is why she doesn't really give a shit what the kids think about her. She knows how fickle high school is and she knows it won't last forever anyway. Such a constitution should make her a heronie/role model to real high school kids in the audience and will make her likeable to older people watching. This is the high school kid that's quickly matured past highschool bullshit but can still join in and have a laugh with it - mostly for her own amusement. Things only get a bit serious and out of hand once non-students start to be affected by the story's events. Emma Stone playing Olive is the tentpole of the film and makes the job look easy; the supporting cast has an easy time of it for the most part and do well and mostly convince, the writing's smart and funny and the direction's handled well. A lot of clever stuff is done with sound, music and background things that make me want to see it again already. There's a lot of irony/postmodernism and references to previous teen movies that might grate some people but not, of course, a fan of the genre.

Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole (2010) 8/10. A 3D CG film about owls that can speak, fight with WEAPONS and have their own hokey legends and lore? Count me in! This film overflows with light fantasy/scifi cliches, and the Australian accents are difficult to get used to, and the story's been done so many times I fell asleep in the middle, but you've never seen it done with OWLS before and slow-motion has rarely been so awe-inspiring.

Trainspotting (1996) 6/10
Street Trash (1987) 6/10
The Elite Squad (2007) 8/10
Hot Fuzz (2007) 6/10
The Navigators (2001) 8/10
Food Inc (2008) 9/10
Hunger (2008) 9/10
Knight and Day (2010) 6/10
Agora (2009) 8/10
Matilda (1996) 7/10

Sun Tzu

Paranormal Activity 2 Thumbs down (I'm glad I didnt pay to see it. A couple of scares due to loud bump noise to an otherwise bland movie filmed with security cameras.)


Frozen Thumbs up (I'm glad I did not see this in the cinema as it was one of the most disturbing movies I have ever seen. I had to watch it in segments due to the level of anxiety I felt from viewng it.



Case 39 Thumbs Up (Suspenceful, well done)


Ip Man Thumbs Up (The story of the founder of Win Chung -Spelled many ways-)


Devil Thumbs Down (I don't know why he keeps going with a character in the movie explaining the plot by telling a story from his grandmother)

__________________
To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit.- Stephen Hawking

silent_jay

La Rafle, a French film about the Vel' d'Hiv Roundup, it is an excellent film, based on the true story of a young Jewish boy, I'd easily give it a 10/10 or two thumbs up, it was hard to watch in places, and incredibly sad, but a movie everyone should see.

Nepenthes

Shaun of the Dead (2004) 9/10 zombie comedy

I just saw this movie for the first time.

Nepenthes

Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole (2010) 7/10

Not bad, but I would have deleted some scenes (e.g. comic relief) and added more (e.g. battles).

Jove

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: 8.5/10

Harry Potter is on a dangerous journey that will not end well for many people. His last remaining family member, Sirius Black, was killed by Bellatrix two years ago at the Ministry of Magic and Dumbledore met his end by the half blood prince and ex-Hogwarts professor Severus Snape. With Dumbledore out of the way, Lord Voldemort’s only mission is to kill Harry Potter while Harry’s mission is to locate and destroy 4 horcruxes, each containing a part of Lord Voldemort’s soul.

If this doesn’t clue you in by now, this is a dark film with a seriously bleak and depressing atmosphere since everyone around Harry is in danger of being tortured or killed just for being associated with him. Wizard and witches of muggle descent are being imprisoned or killed because of their status and worst of all The Ministry of Magic is now controlled by Lord Voldemort and his cronies, making Harry undesirable #1.

I think one of the best idea’s that was integrated into the film was when Hermione read the Deathly Hallows story out loud for everyone at Lovegood’s house, but instead of just watching her read a book, they made that sequence into a short Tim Burton-esqe animation involving the three brothers and their encounter with death while she narrated the story.

And for those of you who have read the last book will get the subtle reference mentioned by Hermione when they entered Godric’s Hallow where she states “I still think we should have used the polyjuice potion to disguise ourselves”, which is what they did in the book.

Have I mentioned the sweet chase scene yet? No? Well, imagine The Matrix highway chase scene where Neo is fighting the numerous Agent Smiths and replace that with Harry and Hagrid fighting against the death eaters while driving a modified super-fast flying motorcycle through traffic.

oliver9184

Hot Tub Time Machine (2010) 6/10 is a silly comedy for guys along the lines of The Hangover. Three old friends and one new one are unexpectedly reunited on a skiing trip and they take a dip in the hot tub. Something magic happens and they are sent back in time to the 1980s. The three old ones were at the same ski resort as young men, and they soon find out that they need to mess around with the course of past/present events to prevent the future from going bad. It's stupid but passable fun for a zero effort watch and John Cusack always brings good vibes to anything he's in. Interestingly Cusack made Better Off Dead, high school comedy set in and around a ski town, in 1985, one year before the events of Hot Tub Time Machine are set.

The Shawshank Redemption (1994) 9/10. Everyone knows and loves The Shawshank Redemption including me but it still vexes me that it should be the world's favourite movie. It's been at the top of IMDB's top 250 for as long as I can remember (though it was briefly displaced by The Dark Knight - which is now at #10. That THAT film should be anywhere near the top 250 is a whole other issue). That Shawshank is so popular shows how reactionary the public generally is when it comes to movies. The film's a good one - a solid 9 - that pushes the right buttons at the right times but it isn't at all groundbreaking. I think a large part of what makes it popular is a combination of Stephen King's hazy nostalgic storytelling and Morgan Freeman's unhurried voiceovers (of which there are a lot). The first time I saw this film I couldn't stand Tim Robbins in it. I warmed to him on subsequent viewings but he's still very blank and cold a lot of the time. What struck me about Shawshank this time, and this is a very minor criticism, was how uneven it sometimes feels: lurching from blunt, unflinching and surprisingly real violence one minute to sweet, decidedly unreal sentimentality the next. Everyone in the cast does well and my particular favourite is Bob Gunton as Warden Norris.

Slumdog Millionaire (2008) 8/10. Not sure how or why I missed this when it was new, wowing everyone who watched it and winning every single Oscar in the world. I suppose I was probably just being a Grinch, preferring to harrumph to myself about such gushing and unreserved praise rather than actually bothering to see the film: cheeky plucky little slum children up against tremendous odds that somehow manage to come out on top? No thanks! I hadn't been impressed by anything director Danny Boyle had done since Trainspotting. However I liked Slumdog a lot better than I expected to even though it's very contrived and manipulative (and as subtle in its storytelling as an enraged daddy elephant is in his stampede). By the end though the outrageous story has built up enough steam that everything that happens feels justified and fine and though the ending's pretty clear from early in the film, just how it happens isn't as predictable as I thought it would be.

Michael Clayton (2007) 9/10. I started to watch this film thinking it was a period piece about Liam Neeson struggling for Ireland's struggling for independence. It wasn't that. That's Michael Collins. So I had no prior knowledge whatever of Michael Clayton. George Clooney is a fixer for a top law firm whose most senior partner (a brilliant Tom Wilkinson) has either gone quite insane or had a crisis of conscience at exactly the wrong moment. This felt a lot like one of the better John Grisham adaptations (The Firm, The Rainmaker, Runaway Jury) that don't seem to get made anymore and thanks to writer-director Tony Gilroy (writer of the Bourne movies) it's got a steely-cold life-or-death urgency usually missing from countroom thrillers. Plot ingredients bubble and some people die and eventually what results is a dénouement that some people have called a cheat. It seemed fine to me, rousing and satisfying and very VERY nicely handled by Clooney but perhaps I wasn't paying close enough attention to some previous important scene.

State of Play (2009) 8/10 is another thriller by Tony Gilroy, this time it's based around newspaper journalism and politics. Russell Crowe is the journalist and Ben Affleck is the politician. Rachel McAdams is a cub reporter at the paper! What was the last film to feature a cub reporter? The jaded newspaperman and the cub reporter is the sort of classic pairing we haven't seen since black and white days. These two make it work well in a modern way. Affleck is stiff and unsympathetic as the senator but he's sort of supposed to be. It's a pretty thankless role. There's a very good and funny turn from Jason Bateman playing some sort of witness. The plot has to do with modern-day conspiracies and some new military industrial complex and that works fine.

St Elmo's Fire (1985) 7/10. Gosh weren't the eighties funny! Look at their hair! Look at Rob Lowe's reckless earring, his saxophone and his devil-may-care attitude! Look at him fighting in the bar, look at him on the roof not caring about how high it is. Oh my god. This film is about some semi-rich fools who have graduated from a college supposedly realising that they can't dick around their whole lives. They each have to carve out credible careers in the eighties, they have to GET ON and figure out for themselves what it is they want, and they have go get it, goddammit! Can all of them figure out said BS before the film ends? Will Demi Moore survive being alone in a furnitureless apartment with the window WIDE open in wintertime before her friends (ALL her friends) can rescue her? Buhhhhhh...... ugk.

Rushmore (1998) 9/10. This is an ace film that everyone should already know about. It's set mostly at a prep school but if we're not being strict it can be called a high school comedy, I think. If so it's definitely in the top 5 high school movies. It's been a few years since I've seen it though and I managed to get through the whole thing thinking that Rachel Weisz was playing Miss Cross. It's not her. It's someone else. However, someone who IS in this film is child actor Mason Gamble, playing Fischer's best friend Dirk Calloway. Gamble starred with fellow child star Spencer Treat Clark in Arlington Road (1999). Treat Clark, of course, was Lucius in Gladiator (2000), asking what are the names of the horses on the armour. Lucious's mother in Gladiator was played by Connie Nielsen who also played Treat Clark's mother in Rushmore.

Ong-Bak (2003) 6/10. Do you like FIGHTING? You do? Then you'll just love Ong-Bak. This film is about 70% about fighting and about 30% chasing and stunts. The barest possible pretext for an excuse for some antagonism is set out at the start and then our hero Tony Jaa - a bit of a modern-day Bruce Lee - is off to the big city (Bangkok), to try to find something that was stolen from somewhere. The harvest rains will not fall until that artefact is returned to the village temple! The setup is barer than that of a computer game but that's fine. The fighting happens, the baddies are bad, and you can guess what happens in the end. I know this deal. I feel weary from having been here and done that. Where Ong-Bak falls down sideways is with the sidekick. I guess the thinking was maybe that Jaa didn't have enough charisma or star quality to carry off a big action movie by himself so a "comedy" sidekick was required. But WHAT an awful sidekick! There's no better way to say it: the guy's a c!!nt. He's hateful, abrasive, constantly deceitful and utterly craven. At no time is he funny or likeable. He's more like a bad guy's cringing henchman than the hero's ally. At times Jaa looks like he knows it too, and almost leaves the guy to whatever fate he definitely deserves. The action and stunts are impressive but before long I found myself longing for the light-hearted yet bruising silliness and large-scale destruction of a Jackie Chan film.

mixedmedia

Splice.
I can't remember seeing a film more stupid that didn't have Hercules in the title. ever.

Funny People.
Started out promising enough with a lot of dark, biting humor from a comedian who thinks he's going to die and then, much to my dismay, segues disastrously into a 'lost love' melodrama when he discovers he's going to live. Much like life, I suppose, but still a bummer.

Harry Brown.
A good film with a message I am more than a little ambivalent about - vigilantism. No doubt the folks being hunted are bad, bad people - remorseless fucks actually. There is a character named Stretch played by an actor I've never seen before named Sean Harris that is one of the scariest characters I've ever seen on screen. His part is small, but it is the most remarkable performance in the film. Which is something considering it stars Michael Caine. The plot gets a little slapdash at the end which I didn't think was necessary. Worth watching, but very bleak.

Other movies watched recently:
40 Year Old Virgin - eh, got tired of it
Dark City - pretty, but ultimately disappointing
Lions for Lambs - Robert Redford. preachy. but I'll watch Meryl Streep in anything.
Everybody's Fine - Robert De Niro is charming, but it's sappy.
Taking of Pelham 123 - is what it is.
Book of Eli - the Jesus Apocalypse. ripe with fodder for real time heckling. skinny jeans are still in.
Julia - drunk and mean for two hours.
Clash of the Titans - uh, yeah. already forgotten.
The Hangover - we really enjoyed this movie. it's fun.
The White Ribbon - exquisite black and white photography. creepy children. ambiguous ending. what's not to like?
It's Complicated - even though it's Hollywood yuppie fluff, I enjoyed this film.
In the Valley of Elah - very good.
The Wolfman - goofy, but kind of fun.

there are lots of others, but I grow tired now.
I guess I seem hard to please, lol.

__________________
Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats. - Diane Arbus
PESSIMISM, n. A philosophy forced upon the convictions of the observer by the disheartening prevalence of the optimist with his scarecrow hope and his unsightly smile. - Ambrose Bierce

dlish

RED (2010).

features an all star cast. Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich to name a few. Willis is an ex black ops agent who is now being hunted by the CIA. He gathers his old crew for some old time action.

good to watch, but predictable at times.

6.5/10

__________________
An injustice anywhere, is an injustice everywhere

I always sign my facebook comments with ()()===========(}. Does that make me gay?
- Filthy

Titan_Uranus

Splice 4-10 & Red 7-10

Titan_Uranus

The Losers .............sucked ,why can't one simply just stop watching a bad movie?

KellyC

Ocean Heaven - 10/10

This is Jet Li's first movie in which he didn't kick any ass, and not even a punch is thrown. Rather, Li plays a dad, Wang who's dying from terminal liver cancer. Li has a 21-year-old son, Dafu, who's autistic. The film revolves around Li trying to find a place that will take Dafu in after he dies. Also during this time, Wang tries to teach his son how to take care of himself after he dies. What is shown here is Wang's constant uphill battle with his disease and him trying to teach Dafu how to do simple daily tasks. Dafu autistic so every task is a challenge for him, even the simple act of communicating to people around him proves to be problematic. But Wang is ever-so-patient in dealing with Dafu. Every tasks he tries to teach Dafu, you see him meticulously repeating the instruction again and again, breaking down line by line, word by word to make sure Dafu gets it. The process is painfully slow, and some times the audience has doubts whether or not Dafu actually learns something.

IMO, this is Li's best performance of his career. His portrayal of a caring, but dying dad is spot on. Every thing he does is believable. From the way he talks, to his demeanor, his facial expression, and even down to his heavy trodden gait tells you this is a dad who's been through a lot trying to raise his son. The actor who plays Dafu also turns in a superb performance as an autistic man-child, and the same goes for the excellent supporting cast. It's a tear-jerker alright. But the film ends in a manner so satisfying you don't mind being drag along in this long emotional trail.

__________________
Him: Ok, I have to ask, what do you believe?
Me: Shit happens.

oliver9184

Recently I decided to try to find and watch as many animated shorts as possible. From the 30s to the 60s or later most of the big Hollywood studios made dozens of short cartoons every year and lots of them can be found on Youtube. I'm starting with Warner Bros, whose Merrie Melodies and Looney Tunes films are the most well known and best-loved shorts. Unfortunately Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig and all the rest weren't there from the start and there's an awful lot of uninspiring, music-based, B&W shorts to get through first. I'm going in chronological order starting from WB's first animation, Bosko the Talk-Ink Kid (1929) watching only those that are immediately available for viewing on Youtube or elsewhere.

I've watched 53 so far, out of a total of 75 that WB produced between 1929 and 1933. Most of these have featured Bosko, the first WB's cartoon star. He's a perpetually good-natured black boy who loves to sing and dance and woo his girlfriend Honey. Whether or not they feature Bosko (most do) the early Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies are generally a test of patience to watch because there's no plot, proper characters or drama. Except for the first film, which served to introduce Bosko, it's just animation set to popular songs of the time that Warners owned. Watching these cheery, quaint, humdrum films, however, does afford the odd glimpse of an idea here, a visual trope there- which slowly developed into some of the iconic staples that later came to define animation and especially WB animation: the falling anvil, the railroad handcar, a u-pipe used to send bullets back where they came from.

Most of these films have started to merge into each other already so I'll just pick some highlights that I can remember. Characters in The Booze Hangs High get drunk which is always a good thing in a cartoon; Bosko the Doughboy sees Bosko fighting in the trenches of WWI; Lady, Play Your Mandolin has a catchy song; You're Too Careless with Your Kisses features arguing man and wife insects; Three's a Crowd has characters from books coming to life and fighting, as does I Like Mountain Music; Wake Up the Gypsy in Me is about the end of the Russian empire and features the mad monk Rice Puddin' incorrectly completing a jigsaw puzzle and then fleeing the Revolution. The best of these films was Bosko's Mechanical Man in which Bosko makes a robot in his garage to help with the housework which then goes on a furious rampage.

Bosko the Talk-Ink Kid (1929) 6/10
The Booze Hangs High (1930) 7/10
Sinkin' in the Bathtub (1930) 6/10
Congo Jazz (1930) 7/10
Box Car Blues (1930) 6/10
Hold Anything (1930) 6/10
Bosko the Doughboy (1931) 6/10
One More Time (1931) 6/10
You Don't Know What You're Doin'! (1931) 6/10
Hittin' the Trail for Hallelujah Land (1931) 6/10
Lady, Play Your Mandolin! (1931) 6/10
Bosko's Soda Fountain (1931) 6/10
Bosko's Holiday (1931) 6/10
Ain't Nature Grand! (1931) 6/10
Dumb Patrol (1931) 6/10
Big Man from the North (1931) 6/10
Bosko Shipwrecked! (1931) 6/10
The Tree's Knees (1931) 6/10
Yodeling Yokels (1931) 6/10
Ups 'n Downs (1931) 6/10
I Love a Parade (1932) 6/10
Bosko and Honey (1932) 6/10
Moonlight for Two (1932) 6/10
It's Got Me Again (1932) 6/10
Crosby, Columbo and Vallee (1932) 6/10
Bosko at the Zoo (1932) 6/10
Bosko's Party (1932) 6/10
Bosko's Dog Race (1932) 6/10
Big-Hearted Bosko (1932) 6/10
Freddy the Freshman (1932) 6/10
Goopy Geer (1932) 6/10
A Great Big Bunch of You (1932) 6/10
The Queen Was in the Parlor (1932) 6/10
Bosko the Drawback (1932) 6/10
Bosko at the Beach (1932) 6/10
Bosko and Bruno (1932) 6/10
I Wish I Had Wings (1932) 6/10
Battling Bosko (1932) 6/10
You're Too Careless With Your Kisses (1932) 6/10
Bosko's Store (1932) 6/10
Bosko the Lumberjack (1932) 6/10
Bosko's Dizzy Date (1932) 6/10
Three's a Crowd (1932) 6/10
The Shanty Where Santy Claus Lives (1933) 6/10
Bosko's Picture Show (1933) 6/10
Bosko in Person (1933) 5/10
I Like Mountain Music (1933) 6/10
Bosko the Sheepherder (1933) 6/10
Bosko's Mechanical Man (1933) 7/10
Beau Bosko (1933) 6/10
Bosko in Dutch (1933) 6/10
Bosko the Speed King (1933) 6/10
Wake Up the Gypsy in Me (1933) 6/10

oliver9184

44 Minutes: The North Hollywood Shoot-Out (2003) (TVM) 5/10. It's a totally pedestrian account of the most massive shoot-out the cops have ever had with the robbers. In 1997 two guys robbed a bank and came out shooting AKs. At first the cops' bullets just bounced off of the bad guys because they had very strong armour. Then the cops stopped by at a local gun store and borrowed some bigger guns like M16s. The bad guys ended up dead and everyone else lived, just like in the movies.

The Motorcycle Diaries (2004) 7/10 is about Che Guevara and someone else riding around Argentina, Chile and all the rest in the 1940s. Their journey is only sometimes interesting but there are some wonderful landscapes.

Downfall (2004) 7/10 is a film about what happened in and around Hitler's bunker right at the end of WWII as the Russian forces massed at Berlin's doorstep before eventually bashing the door in with their huge shoulders and boots. All the performances (all German), especially Bruno Ganz as Hitler, are good and Ulrich Matthes, playing Joseph Goebbles, is on the one hand particularly odious and malignant in a way that immediately suggests OTT pantomime Nazis, but on the other is very credible and belivable. Maybe Nazis really were like that but because they were real, it wasn't such a joke. The top Nazis gradually coming round to the fact that they've definately lost - or else denying it almost to the end as Hitler does - isn't as fulfilling as I had hoped. Germans fuming and shouting at each other for hours gets wearing and grates on the ears; there's no relief, and you know everything's doomed anyway. The most memorable part of this film and the most galling scene I've seen all year was when Goebbles and his wife kill their six children so they won't have to grow up in a world without Nazis.

Midnight Cowboy (1969) 8/10. Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman star for director John Schlesinger in the only X-rated film ever to win Best Picture. Voight is instantly likeable as Joe Buck, the naive happy-go-lucky Texan trying to make it as a gigolo in New York; Hoffman is instantly dislikeable as Ratso Rizzo, the degenerate heel Buck reluctantly shacks up with. The pair have good banter and both perform well but, as with so many of his other films, the earnestness and whining tone of Hoffman's delivery grates. There is a brilliant hippy party scene.

Apocalypse Now (1979) 7/10. People say this is the best war film so far. What a crock of shit. I only watched it again because I'm really in Saigon now and... shit. I'm still only in Saigon. It's an exercise in gross indulgence on the part of its director, Francis Ford Coppola, and its 'star', Marlon Brando. I can identify with weary, pissed-off Martin Sheen (Captain Willard) going on his bullshit mission because I'm equally weary and pissed-off trying to watch this film. I didn't even watch the extended Redux version yet there are still huge periods of time when nothing at all happens to drive the plot forwards. All of the characters are the merest sketches of characters with no backstory or reason for you to care about them. Dour and cranky Capt. Willard is the only link between the audience and the madness of the Vietnam War but you can scarcely identify with a man you know nothing about. Robert Duvall and Dennis Hopper both give pretty ripe performances in the first and last parts of the film respectively - Duvall comes off OK, Hopper comes off as a horrible man. He's not supposed to be a villain but he totally is one. But the worst is Brando. Look: this is what happens when you indulge such an ego as his. You end up with a huge empty box of nothing. Time seems to stand still during the last 30 minutes or so of this film - and I remember thinking exactly the same thing the other times I watched it. Apart from anything else it's completely uncinematic. Brando mumbling nonsense in the dark - well done everyone. Thanks. And yet it's all for nothing. Some people kill a cow? Good. If that's relevant or a metaphor I have no idea why or for what. I've seen this film, Redux and not, at least four times now and even still I don't know whether or not Brando gets killed by the end. I fucking hope so but I know I'm not ever going to watch it again to find out.

The Blue Max (1966) 8/10 is a WWI film on the side of the Germans starring George Peppard, stiff as a board, James Mason - unctuous! - and Ursula Andress (slinky). It's 1918 and the war is not going well for Germany. New fighter pilot and former infantryman Bruno Stachel (Peppard) is aggressively ambitious and cares only about winning the Pour le Mérite (AKA the Blue Max) - Germany's highest military order. His route to the medal is by shooting down twenty Allied planes. Things are complicated by devious General Count von Klugerman (Mason), his hot young wife (Andress) and his nephew, Bruno's main rival Willi von Klugerman (acted with excellent venom by Jeremy Kemp). I first watched this film by accident on TV one day when I had nothing to do and liked it for two reasons. Firstly its plot, which is a sort of rags to riches fantasy story about a naive young man realising his most heady dreams - but at the same time being manipulated by invisible forces. And the flying sequences totally blew me away. Before I watched it just now I hadn't seen it in a couple of years; watching it again, now I'm familiar with the plot, I found it a lot less engaging. Peppard's such a dull actor in this he cannot come close to making me really care about him so all that's left is Kemp and Mason - superbly realised but in the end they're two dimensional villains. (Even so, Mason is quite brilliant in the last scenes of the film.) The flying sequences are all brilliant - and they won't stop being brilliant even if you see this film a hundred times. There are no tricks: everything is real. Real pilots are flying those real bi-planes under really low bridges. Real sheep were placed in one scene purely to prove that there was no trickery: the plane really went under that bridge causing the sheep to scatter. Peppard's hollow acting and a rickety 1960s war film plot are a fair price to pay for some rousing arieal action and stunts, and brilliant villany by James Mason.

Home Alone (1990) 8/10. Kevin's mum (Katherine O'Hara) is an awful bitch. I hate the way she grabs the phone off of the French woman in Paris and shoves her away. "What? Why? Because you have a child at home in America that you forgot? Oh shit no, you go ahead and take the phone." And I think there are French cops standing by who do nothing. No wonder Americans have such a bad reputation overseas. In any real life situation she should shut up sit down and bite her thumb, and wait her turn for a flight back to Chicago on -Christmas Eve-, to go and see if Kevin's OK. Remember she doesn't know what's happened with Kevin. What happens only happens because it's a movie called Home Alone. She doesn't know it's a movie. BUT what happens is worse than her worse fears of what might happen to Kevin. After Kevin and the audience have had their fun in a torture-porn-tastic half hour of burnings, bruisings, maimings, spikings, crackings and bashings, beleagurered burglars Daniel Stern and Joe Pesci eventually catch up with Kevin, of course, and threaten him with the exact same damage he already did to them. An eye for an eye, etc. Pesci even wants to bite off every one of Kevin's fingers! UH-OH! I don't think Buzz's tarantula will save you from the biting, Kevin! OOUGH!

oliver9184

Piranha 3D (2010) 7/10
The Rainmaker (1997) 8/10
Pink Floyd The Wall (1982) 9/10
Notorious (1946) 7/10
The Boys from Brazil (1978) 7/10
Winter's Bone (2010) 8/10
Frozen (2010) 7/10
The Departed (2006) 8/10
The Other Guys (2010) 8/10
The Tortured (2010) 4/10
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 (2010) 8/10
Windtalkers (2002) 6/10
Throw Momma from the Train (1986) 7/10
American Pie (1999) 7/10
Road Trip (2000) 6/10
Letters from Iwo Jima (2006) 6/10
King Ralph (1991) 7/10
Gremlins (1984) 7/10
Hemo the Magnificent (TVM) (1957) 7/10
Shooter (2007) 6/10
A Time to Kill (1996) 7/10
My Little Pony: The Movie (1986) 6/10
American History X (1998) 8/10

oliver9184

Johnny Dangerously (1984) 6/10 is a crime comedy starring a cocky young Michael Keaton. Though still young, he's a retired mobster now running a pet store and via flashback he relates the farcial story of his life of crime to a young would-be shoplifter. It's very obvious lowbrow comedy of the sort that gets old quickly, but the prohibition-era setting puts one in mind of the old Warner Bros gangster films from the 30s and Johnny Dangerously shares a sort of quaint old-fashioned innocence with those films which is quite charming. Danny DeVito also stars, and as always he lights up every scene he's in.

Courage Under Fire (1996) 6/10 (SLIGHT SPOILERS) is a very serious mystery drama set in the military starring a stouter than usual Denzel Washington and Meg Ryan. I can't think of any female actor I like less than Meg Ryan. She's never failed to bring down and make worse any film I have seen her in. Here she plays a helicopter pilot in the US Army - Captain Karen Walden, who was killed in action during the Gulf War. With the war now over, Denzel Washington is the Colonel tasked with finding out if she should be awarded the Medal of Honor for saving the lives of her crew - which is a big deal because she'd be the first woman to get the medal. He spends most of the film tramping back and forth across America debriefing Walden's subordinates whose accounts of what happened are shown to us in flashback. Not all of them are reliable so we get differing versions of the same story, Rashomon style. It's not a very interesting story and the people in it are not likeable or engaging. I didn't care what really happened in Iraq - Meg Ryan was dead, thankfully - that much was clear - so it seemed an unnecessary and unfair imposition to have to watch her shitty acting again and again with slight differences. There was a glimmer of hope when a sergeant who was on the chopper (Lou Diamond Phillips) told his version of events, which had it that Walden was a coward and cried like a girl, and so didn't deserve the medal but - this being a large Hollywood war film made by Edward Zwick - that turned out to be a lie and the guilt of what really happened wracked Phillips' character so badly that he's driven - literally - to commit one of the most excellent suicides I've ever seen in a film. Not even Matt Damon, as a shifty Army medic, improves this painfully earnest but completely inconsequential film. Denzel Washington in the lead is pedantic and priggish and I found myself siding with his superior General Hershberg (Michael Moriarty), who tells him: stop beefing and muckraking and just finish the job already.

Valley Girl (1983) 7/10 is a high school comedy starring Nicolas Cage. He plays a boy from Hollywood who starts seeing a girl from the (San Fernando) Valley which is just over the hills from Hollywood but might as well be a whole other country. It seems that Valley girls go out with Valley boys (rich, vapid, preppy and blonde) or else risk ostracization by their friends. The Valley girl in question juggles Cage and Valley boy Tommy for a while before she must make a decision. The more I see Nicolas Cage the more I like him, especially in these early roles. In this film he's incredibly endearing: romantic, willful, compulsive but also vulnerable and wonderfully bashful at times. The film is showing its age much more than the contemporaneous Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982) (which Cage also appears in briefly) and won't stand as many repeat viewings as that film but it is a very good-natured, easy to watch fantastical teen romance along the lines of Say Anything (1989), Endless Love (1980) and Can't Buy Me Love (1987).

I Love You Beth Cooper (2009) 5/10. This, on the other hand, is how not to make a high school comedy. To make such a film you need endearing young actors. You need a story premise that doesn't feel fifteen years old and you need a script that's not full of lines that are unfunny and that make no sense in the context of the scene. This is a very poorly written film. The actors are all totally charmless: the protagonist, played by Paul Rust, has gone through high school being a geek and never daring to speak to the girl he's obsessed with (Hayden Panetierre). In a desperate last minute attempt to make her notice him, he declares his love for her in front of the whole school - as well as insulting her frowning gorilla of a boyfriend and a lot of his other classmates. Paul Rust is like an unfunny George McFly - a totally inept, useless damp squib with the aggravating tendency that such characters often have of always saying the most inappropriate thing at the worst possible time. Rust has not a single ounce of charm to counter his many shortcomings, and Panetierre is horrible: she's a non-character, a pretty exterior with nothing beneath it but a fake bad attitude and a moronic 'wild streak' which, I think, is supposed to make her more attractive. It doesn't! Rather it brings to mind the woman terminator out of Terminator 3 (2003). The two of them, accompanied by one of his friends and two of hers, spend the movie fleeing from the gorilla and his buddies. Chaos, destruction, stupidity and other predictable stuff happens but it's not ever funny enough to laugh out loud at. See The Girl Next Door (2004) for this sort of thing done properly: with some edge, and with the essential weight that a decent actor in the lead can bring.

Hotel Chevalier (2007) 8/10
The Darjeeling Limited (2007) 7/10
The Silence of the Lambs (1991) 9/10
The Hills Have Eyes (2006) 7/10
Kids (1995) 8/10
High Plains Drifter (1973) 6/10

Grasshopper Green

True Grit 4.5/5 - Generally speaking, I'm not a fan of the Coen Brothers but this movie was an exception. The acting was superb (by all involved, Matt Damon was hilarious), the story was engrossing, and the background was beautiful. If you like westerns, go see this. If you like Jeff Bridges or Matt Damon, go see this. If you don't care for the Coen Brothers, give this a chance anyway.

__________________
"They say that patriotism is the last refuge to which a scoundrel clings; steal a little and they throw you in jail, steal a lot and they make you king"

Formerly Medusa

jewels

Tron Legacy - 8/10

Adventure, fun, a slightly suspenseful and glossy story with Jeff Bridges and some pretty people along with a killer soundtrack from Daft Punk. What's not to enjoy? If you look for plot holes, you'll find plenty. But still one of those movie experiences that won't be the quite the same at home. Or maybe I just adore Jeff Bridges.

__________________
We are always more anxious to be distinguished for a talent which we do not possess, than to be praised for the fifteen which we do possess.
Mark Twain

Jove

Tron legacy: 4.5/10

I couldn’t connect with this film or any of the characters. If Flynn had the ability to destroy the virtual world, why didn’t he do this when Clu took over the city a 1000 cycles ago? Sure, it would have meant the end of his life and the virtual world he created, but it would have been better than sitting around his virtual apartment for twenty years doing absolutely nothing.

The idea of using a CGI Flynn for a younger version of Jeff Bridges may have been a good idea at the time, but the digital face couldn’t express emotion and it just looked out of place from the entire film.

And why was Jeff Bridges acting like, The Dude from The Big Lebowski? Through most of this film, Flynn was saying “Far Out” and “Totally Radical, man”, which is a major distraction from the stylish yet shallow film.

I enjoyed Tron (1982) because of the original story line and terrible special effects, but didn’t enjoy Tron Legacy because of the weak story, dialog, digital Jeff Bridges face and the conversion of a 2-D film into 3-D. They need to improve the glasses, otherwise I am going to wait until it is released on DVD.

jewels

That's the only one that makes sense to me. He'd been in the grid for over 20 years and was a techie genius hippie at that time.

The theater my daughter works at had all 3 options: IMax 3-D, 3-D and 2-D. 3-D is way too gimmicky and distracting for me so we saw it in 2-D. I highly recommend it.

__________________
We are always more anxious to be distinguished for a talent which we do not possess, than to be praised for the fifteen which we do possess.
Mark Twain

Jove

Black Swan: 8.5/10

If a movie or an actor/actress were nominated for an academy award then I generally go into the movie with super high expectation that it fails to meet. Now, I am a huge fan of Natalie Portman, so my viewpoint of a film will always be from a subjective viewpoint. However, this film grabbed my attention from the start where I was drawn to a super emotional and anxiety ridden ballerina, Nina, who is obsessed with getting the moves perfect to the point of no return. While events are unfolding on screen, the audience is left to question whether what is happening is actually happening or if it is all in Nina’s mind.

I think this is one of Natalie Portman’s best performances because she morphs or blends in with her character that I no longer see the actress, but the character she portrays. If a movie can accomplish this then it had done its job.

TheCrimsonGhost

Eastern Promises with viggo Mortensen - 9 out of 10, recommended if you haven't seen it, it's an older film, but great non the less