Harry Potter: The Deathly Hallows, part I and 2.

dr wu23 wrote: Harry Potter: The Deathly Hallows, part I and 2.   Slow night at home on the tv so...watched the last 2 installments of the Potter series. Do I need to review them..?

yes

I recently watched Apocalypse Now, after postponing it for years. Next up is 'the making of' for that one, which is apparently just as good.

My wife and I were recently doing movie nights each Saturday out on the back porch, until we finally hit 100 degree days this past Saturday. Now it's back inside.

We've been going through 80s thrillers, movies she hadn't seen and that I've forgotten.

So far we've watched:

"Jagged Edge" from 1986. I'd give this one a 5/10. It seemed better in my memory than in actuality. Bridges gave a great performance, but it was just too easy and unrealistic that staying in the story was hard. The drive by studios to make the next great thriller of the decade was high and so many were churned out that even great casts couldn't make them shine.

"The Mean Season" from 1985. This is a solid 8/10. Kurt Russell did very well, and Mariel Hemingway was also good. I appreciated the fair, but not heavy-handed, commentary on the sometimes-blurred line by journalists between reporting the news and making the news. Great tension and atmosphere built to a satisfying conclusion.

"The Hitcher" from 1986. 10/10 One of my all-time favorites, starring the guy in my avatar, and some kid from "The Outsiders". John Ryder is one of the most menacing and relentless bad guys in film history. He makes the Terminator look like a pussycat. Such great intensity and building towards the finale. What a fun ride.

"Cruising" from 1980. I'm still undecided on this one. But I give it a tentative 7/10. Stars Pacino as a young cop sent undercover to find a serial killer who finds his prey among the seedy gay and leather stud bars and public meeting places. The transition Pacino's character goes through is very nicely portrayed, and there are some memorable characters. The ending, however, leaves you with some pretty major questions. Particularly about if what you've just watched is actually what happened. By that I mean, the way it ends makes you wonder exactly who Pacino really was the whole time.

"Blow Out" from 1981. Easy 10/10. Travolta's performance is one of the greatest of his career. It's a shame to think that, after seeing this movie, how he phoned it in in so many later movies. He's got talent. Has great character development and a gripping story. And the last 15 minutes or so just leaves you feeling cold.

Terminator Salvation

After the mostly forgettable Rise of the Machines it was a pleasure to get a competent and well-scripted final episode in the series.   Even Christian Bale keeps his profile low so as to highlight the story which moves along with keen sci-fi skills and affection for the series without losing its own identity.   In fact this one emulates the first film more than the other two sequels and though finishes a bit weak, is intelligent, original, and doesn't take anything for granted.   We'll see how the reboot is later this year, though I don't expect much from anything that features Schwarzenegger for more than a few minutes.
 




Edited by Atavachron - June 07 2015 at 01:19

Shutter Island

Scorsese's jumbled but ultimately effective old fashioned mystery based on the novel improves as it goes with Ben Kingsley and Mark Ruffalo making up for DiCaprio's ham-fisted presence as a U.S. Marshal looking into strange events at an island mental facility.

^ One of my favourite Roy Scheider films along with 52 Pick Up and 2010

Sorcerer 1977 (aka The Wages of Fear remake) I'll be watching the original 1953 one shortly.
I have had the soundtrack LP (Tangerine dream) for this for decades so I decided it was time to watch the flick. Once the transition to the jungles is made this film is full of tension. It's typical production for a 70's flick so I may find that the original is better as is sometimes the case.

Not really a movie, but a Netflix produced series, I am just finnished with the Daredevil series.

This was a really intence trip of a series, April 10, 2015, and I saw it all in 2-3 days, and it was an intence moment. Series is really dark and gritty, but also got humor, and witty dialoge, drama, suspence and neusiating scenes. Splendid fight scenes, brutal vissual violence, insane scenes sometimes, that will shake you to the core. Matt Murdock is a very complex character with lots of mysticisme surrounding him, hes quest to save "HIS" city, "HIS" Hells Kitchen, is very captivating and intence ride. Wilson Fisks thinks hes doing the good work in building upp his nighbour hood without realising hes the cause of all the toxity in Hells Kitchen, hes twisted personality, is so nervthrilling and hes monumentual size and brutal outbursts, will shake your inner core, to rubbel.  Very good sidecharacters, and the plot is ever so captivating and intruiging as it could be, crime, gore, pulp-fiction, vigialnte; all the good stuff goes hand in hand with an overall atmospher that have so many facetts you sit on the tip of your chair in exietment, waiting for season 2.

its a strong 9/10

So what is it exactly with French people and underwater documentaries? This is a very interesting take on the format, being more about the almost transcendental spiritual experience of descending into the deeps from which life sprang originally. Not really a documentary as we know it, but a nice way to unwind and even be disturbed a bit. (man, octopi are weird... as are sea snakes in motion) Though there are times where Eric Serra's music soundtrack doesn't quite fit the images on screen.



The occasional dodgy special effects shot aside, this is every bit as effective as back in 1954 because of how serious it takes the entire atomic monster concept. Like I say there seem to be a good deal of repressed collective guilt and trauma about WW2 informing Japanese exploitation film, which you can see here in one of the most famous manifestations. Not just is the monster an obvious allegory for the nuclear bomb, but you can see that in how the monster is defeated with a biological weapon designed by a guilt-wracked WW2 veteran while it's peacefully asleep. For those who don't know their Asian history, Japanese war crimes during WW2 include the use of biochemical weapons on the Chinese (including on civilians). Notice that director Ishiro Honda served with the Imperial Japanese Army during the occupation of China...


Interesting to watch the film so short after reading the book. It's curious how well French filmmakers took to American hard-boiled crime fiction, treating the genre with way more respect than it received in its country of origin... perhaps on account of there being a strong spiritual kinship between French existentialist authors like Albert Camus and US crime novelists like Cornell Woolrich? It's curious to see how many scenes from the book are there almost verbatim, but in a different order. The narrative structure also spends more time getting inside the title character's head, and adds a distinctly Roman Catholic obsession with guilt and justice to the story's central themes. (something there wasn't in the book) As usual for Francois Truffaut, there is of course some of the best use of visual/music synchronisation and grammatical structuring of camera movement and editing I've ever seen. The way he structures picture composition around architecture is also a sublime sight to behold.

"Maggie"