list/discuss/rate - your recently watched movies

The T wrote: From what I've read, it's not worthy. But I've read some great comments about the remake you mention, some even putting it above the original one. I'll take a look soon.   Tonight was "The Day The Earth stood still". Why don't they make them like that no more? Why can't we mix CGI and explosions with a story? I've heard there will be a remake.. i can only expect an atrocity...

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0970416/
Atrocity confirmed,
although it might be a nice film, but in now way as close to the original.

Revolver- a philosophical film cleverly disguised as an action epic.  excellent yarn, which is really just a tangent that spins an intricate web wherein the viewer is asked to contemplate the nature of consciousness and it's dichotomous autonomy (beautiful parts that rhetorically act out morally ambiguous parts- a hitman is strangely the most "morally sound" individual in the film).....f**king brilliant!    9/10   (will probably buy a copy)

Comme Un Image

A rather typical French drama about people who strive to be noticed and acknowledged by their loved ones, though rarely succeeding. Good acting, realistic, if unpleasant characters, interesting developments. Hardly exceptional, but I'm glad I watched it. 7 / 10

The Dark Knight

The hype surrounding this movie is so huge that there's hardly anything left to say. Heath Ledger as the Joker is superb, but the movie suffers slightly whenever he's not on screen. Christian Bale has done some amazing performances in the past (The Machinist springs to mind), but this time he seems rather one-dimensional. I suppose in an action-based movie there's not much room for character development. Beats Tobey Maguire and the likes any day of the week though. I loved the fact that things aren't as black and white as they usually are in hollywood flicks, but rather different shades of grey. Probably the best superhero movie out there, but worthy of 9.4 on the imdb website? Not so sure about that... 8 / 10

Frailty

A rather bizarre thriller about a father of two boys who suddenly gets a visit from an angel telling him about the presence of demons in our world and his role as their slayer. ~ 20 years later, the story follows the older boy as he starts to reveal his family's dark past to an FBI agent. It's all a bit on the silly side, but entertaining enough to keep me awake until the end of it. 5 / 10

el böthy wrote: keiser willhelm wrote: keeanu reeves is the worlds greatest actor.  No, that´s Hayden Christensen!

The Haunting(1963) - I had to see this one again since it's been a while, of course I loved it, harkens back to a time when directors actually took the challenge of making horror unique, great crude sound effects, house was set up brilliantly, also a nice find and use of those creepy looking statues, if there's any problem I have it's just a tad long, ...every fan of horror should give this one a shot at least once in their lives - 7/10

Rubber's Lover - I actually went into this thinking I was going to hate it (being I didn't care for 964 Pinocchio), well surprise surprise I loved it! so much more visual stimuli going on in than 964 Pinocchio...slightly more coherent too. Just about every scene had something absurd and visceral to absorb; not to mention a ton of cool looking robotic torture machinery and neat little cyber tools and gizmos-all swirled together with a nonstop plot of screaming, convulsions, disease, splatter and perversion. At the end of the movie I had squeeze my eyes shut and rub them for a while to get my senses back in order, it's quite an experience. The best way to describe it is if Dr Frankenstein set up a some callous medical research corporation in The Sprawl using human guinea pigs for their experiments (including their own employees), excellent film of Avant-CyberPower Violence! - 8/10

The War Zone - eh, this could have been better, a movie about a family with a dark secret [spoiler]father sexes daughter[/spoiler] really not revealing much since that arc to the story is introduced early on, I liked the viewings of the English country and rocky ocean side. but what really pissed me off about this movie is that there seemed to be a lack of communication with the characters, I know they the main character (the brother) to be sort of an awkward dorky teenager, but the guy doesn't talk! you ask him question and he just stares at you, same with the sister too, you just want to smack them, really just an annoying pack of characters - 3.5/10

Bad Boy Bubby - the first part when he trapped in the house was excellent, the first half hour block when he finally got out of the house and started exploring the world was pretty cool too, after that it sort of leveled out and towards the end when he starting singing for that band and got involved with retarded hospital I pretty much lost interest and was waiting for it to end, if they shaved off about 20 minutes it would have been better, I'm not quite sure what I think of Bubby himself, sometimes he was amusing, at others he was downright annoying - 6/10

C.S. Lewis: Through the Shadowlands - about Lewis and and his wife Joy whom he met later in his life, she soon died of cancer after they married, one of those BBC made programs that was probably aired on PBS, depressing but too dry for my tastes - 3/10

Birth - this wasn't too bad actually, I think it delivered, even when all was revealed at the end, the "twist" (if you might call it that) was actually quite engaging at somewhat sinister, Nicole Kidman is always a pleasure to watch and I think I've become somewhat of a fanboy of hers as of late, also Anne Heche (who I've always had a super crush on) plays a devious and wicked character which makes me want her all that much more! 6 or 7/10 (I dont know yet)

oh hell.. something this bad.. deserves a spotlight...  laugh at will hahahhahahahah

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRGUqd_M6Mg

Mongol- an excellent film about the upcoming of Genghis Khan.  exceptional story, great pacing, and amazing, epic battle scenes.  outstanding!  go see this!  9/10

The Last of the Mohicans (1992)
It's a pity this movie takes so many liberties with history, because I have seen few movies that so perfectly capture the intensity of a true turning point in history: Entire cultures dying out, leaders losing control over processes and mechanisms that they themselves have started, the heroes mainly trying to stay alive and make the best out of the chaos they find themselves in... all this in just 105 minutes, yet this movie is every bit as epic as an entire trilogy. This aspect of it, I think, is proof enough that Michael Mann understands the entire medium of film much better than most other directors active in Hollywood. That said, Mohicans '92 is not perfect. First there are the historical inaccuracies I mentioned before (the book Past Imperfect: History According to the Movies is quite harsh on it). Then, there's the fact that the approach of having most of the characterization come from the actors' performances rather than exposition is a bit of a double edged sword: While it keeps the pacing up, it also means that a handful of rather major characters get disappointingly little screentime.

Easy Rider
Ah yes, the movie that inspired the Deep Purple song Speed King and made Jack Nicholson famous. He gets an awesome scene where he expounds on how space aliens are more enlightened than us Earthlings! Seriously, this is a great movie - the cinematography is absolutely beautiful, as a cinematic time capsule of the era in which it was made you can't find a better example, the way that it stays concise as hell while allowing itself to truly sprawl and ramble as an existentialist voyage should, the goddamn soundtrack... conceptually there is just so much there beneath the surface here. Okay, that does make it easy to misunderstand if you don't look for nuances, for example I've read in reviews that many hippies who saw Easy Rider back in the day didn't get that the movie was also critical of their subculture, but I am coming more and more to think that movies (and art in general) is at its best when giving its content shape rather than spelling it out explicitly. (which is, when you think about it, rather un-artistic)

Hero
Talk about historical epics being unrealistic! Here, however, it works to the movie's favour because Hero not only is very honest about its mythologizing of the past but also has the subjectivity of historical narratives as a theme. Like the '92 Last of the Mohicans, this one looks is very much about capturing the feel rather than the details of being at a turning point in history... if in a very different way simply because the two movies are products of very different cultures. Everything that should sink this movie - the ridiculously stylized swordplay, the occasional thematical heavy-handedness - actually ends up strengthening Hero because of how it positions itself in this hazy border one between history and fantasy. That, in turn, does not seem like a cop-out because of how much thought there has been put into its construction beyond just the sheer craftsmanship. The fact that I wound up appreciating it for the complex plot more than the elaborate fighting scenes (which alone make it worth rewatching, my favourite aspect of them was how the characters' swordfighting styles reflected their respective personalities) is probably the biggest testament to how good a movie Hero is... it's the sort of thing that on paper shouldn't work but in practice somehow does.

Jurassic Park
Some of the dinosaur effects aren't quite as good as they were back in 1993, but all the big action scenes - especially those with the T-Rex - are every bit as exciting as they have always been. My favourite dinosaur attack scene, though, is actually the one with the Dilophosaur. With its spitting of corrosive venom, ridges on its head and fold-out neck collar thingy it looks like a dragon! That said, this movie is far from perfect and not just because of all the things it gets wrong about biology (why do they use frog DNA to fill the gaps in the dino DNA instead of bird DNA?). No, the biggest problem is that the script a couple of times relies on the main characters behaving rather stupidly in order to create drama: For example, the movie makes it clear that things would not have gone so horribly wrong had Hammond not undermanned the security system of the park and generally rushed everything (which made it easier for Nedry to sabotage things)... so it never seems inevitable that the dino rampaging would have happened, no matter how often Jeff Goldblum's character says so. In short, Jurassic Park is a story that fails to prove its own message.