Movie Reviews 2.0

Let Me In- 8/10

Well, I decided to watch it, last weekend. As a remake, it's faithful to the Swedish version, with only minor changes. The addition of a detective investigating the murders and Richard Jenkins' portrayal of Hakan (which was an outstanding case of acting on Jenkins' part) were what I admired most about the remake. As I suspected, Let Me In featured some scenes utilizing a lot of special effects. Granted, the original didn't have a huge budget nor did it necessarily need to use a boatload of CGI to retain it's value as a great movie. The remake was well acted, particularly on Jenkins' part, and faithful to the original screenplay without taking a ton of liberties. Provided I hadn't seen the original, prior to viewing the remake, I'd have nothing to compare it to and estimate my review would be a little higher. However, the original is amazing and very hard to overtake.
 
Just saw Precious. *expletive deleted*, that's a depressing movie. Easier to rate this in tears than in grades. It wasn't necessarily a great movie even, just really really depressing and some fine (and at times surprising, took a while before I recognised Carey for instance) acting.
 
Downloaded I spit on your Grave and also Last house on the Left for a Saturday matinee double bill.

Both are miss-named. She doesn't spit and there are no graves, the house is in the middle of nowhere, so it can be the last one on the house, it's in the middle of a wood for Christ sake. Actually it seems to be in the same place as the house of the woman who doesn't spit on the non existent graves. Although house prices in the USA are pretty high, I bet round there they are low low low.

So what did I think about the two films. Well I have to admit I think they had dated a bit. ISOYG had wooden acting, poor dialogue and obviously cost about $3 to make. It wasn't scary and it wasn't the so called modern torture porn, it didn't even make me feel uncomfortable, I think I may have had to see it at the time. Most horrific bit? The very hairy MUFF, thank heavens for girls getting rid of those, at least on film.

Now Last house on the left, some comedy in this one to take away the pain of watching the acting and script. The comedy culminated in the end credits, just after the blood dripping chainsaw is removed from the fathers hands, the theme from Benny Hill seems to be played, or something very similar.

Even funnier was the name of the actor who played the father, Gaylord St. James. What a cracking 1970's name, if only Mike Myers could have chosen that rather than Austin Powers.

He even has his own very funny blog

http://theworldofgaylordstjames.blogspot.com/

Cream cakes to Pakistan ... better than being a UN special celebrity representitive.

PS Just sent this to my mate who is having some dental work on the NHS... www.zen141854.zen.co.uk/dentist.mpg

best bit of the film :D
 
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RED: Good fun. Not too frenetic action pacing and the stlying and music kinda made me think of it as Oceans 11 with guns. Fun to watch Helen Miren as an assassin as well.
 
Paranormal Activity 2 :

Its hard to call it a prequel. It takes place before , during and after the first one. It was pretty good although after the first one I ha dtrouble sleeping for a few days , after this one I didn't but my good buddy ways scared a few times during it and had trouble sleeping that night. Seeing it on imax really helped set the mood , not because of the size of the screen but because the sound system that allowed the main character to shine.
 
The Rescuers Down Under - 10/10. Still one of my favorite movies of all time and LOVE its animation. Had to go into some old boxes of Laserdisc to find it, still superb as usual.
Click to expand...
yes that + the first rescuers film are two of the best disney films ever both 8/10
I saw anatasia (2/10) the other day http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118617/
disney at its worse

@dizietsma
yes I spit on your grave has dated very badly. One of the imfamous films when I was growing up. Still worthwhile (if you can handle rape, which I dont like seeing) for the movie history 4/10

OTOH last house on the left (9/10) which is a remake of the virgin spring (8/10) is a great film (yes its also dated) but contains one of the best pieces of music/cinema ever, david hess singing "now you're on your own" whilst the woman walks into the lake. I dont have too much of a problem with the keystone cops scenes, the music/chainsaw juxtaposition at the end? (doesnt tarintino do this all the time?)

I assume the last film is the dentist (6/10) actually reasonable comedy, they didnt really take it to extremes WRT gore as much as I thought they would.
 
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo - DVD (not sure why Lovefilm sent me the DVD, I asked for the Blu-ray!)

It took me three goes to watch it, but I guess it was worth it in the end. The first time I thought I'd try watching it dubbed, rather than subtitled, but I couldn't stop laughing, so I gave up. The second time I was too tired and had to keep rewinding it so I didn't miss dialogue, so I gave up.

The third time....I'd read some reviews beforehand and quite a common theme was how it was pretty fast paced from the beginning. Maybe I watched the wrong movie, but it was slower than molasses at the start, and I found it really quite hard to warm to Lisbeth's character, and it felt like the film revolved around you being bought into feeling sorry for her so you urged her on to do what she was doing to help Mikael.

The last 90 mins were pretty good though, although the side story about Mikael's run-in with the big businessman was wasted time and just added to the needless 2.5 hour length. I liked the Vanger family character build-up, and I did feel for Lisbeth in the end.

Overall, I'm not really sure what the fuss was about. It was well acted and very well shot, but as a whole I didn't really take to it like I thought I would. I'll try the book. 6/10.
 
Slightly OT:
I have no idea why you guys are using the decimile or percentile rating scheme. Majority of films/music/games etc. reviewed that way end up in the upper part of the scale, in the 6 to 10 or 60 to 100 range, making the entire rating scheme pointless, don't you think? The only reasonable rating scale is the one out of three or five. Ask yourself, when you like a certain thing, you don't go and say 8.4 or 8.7 or 9.2. Or even worse, 9.42, 7.68 etc. After all, can you quantify your thoughts and feelings to such a "machine" degree?

So:
5 - highly recommended
4 - recommended
3 - good, but nothing special
2 - passable
1 - utter rubbish
 
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Paranormal Activity 2 - 6/10 The first was quite a bit better better, but in a way I enjoyed how the sequel was both that and a prequel to the first movie's events and it had a few good scares.
 
The Town: 7/10. It's a Heat wanna be. Does a enough job of it but still no where as good.

The Social Network: 9/10. Mostly good pacing. Good acting by the cast. Good laughs also. A nice mix of everything. Can feel a little drawn out at times.

Robin Hood (Crowe Edition) Directors Cut: 8/10. I'm a Crowe fan so him basically acting like it's another Gladiator is good enough for me! Nice take on the story. More action would have been nice.
 
zed said:
yes that + the first rescuers film are two of the best disney films ever both 8/10
I saw anatasia (2/10) the other day http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118617/
disney at its worse

@dizietsma
yes I spit on your grave has dated very badly. One of the imfamous films when I was growing up. Still worthwhile (if you can handle rape, which I dont like seeing) for the movie history 4/10

OTOH last house on the left (9/10) which is a remake of the virgin spring (8/10) is a great film (yes its also dated) but contains one of the best pieces of music/cinema ever, david hess singing "now you're on your own" whilst the woman walks into the lake. I dont have too much of a problem with the keystone cops scenes, the music/chainsaw juxtaposition at the end? (doesnt tarintino do this all the time?)

I assume the last film is the dentist (6/10) actually reasonable comedy, they didnt really take it to extremes WRT gore as much as I thought they would.
Click to expand...
Um last house on the left is a remake of last house on the left

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068833/

while the virgin spring shares some similaritys , Craven had never seen that movie
 
RobertR1 said:
Robin Hood (Crowe Edition) Directors Cut: 8/10. I'm a Crowe fan so him basically acting like it's another Gladiator is good enough for me! Nice take on the story. More action would have been nice.
Click to expand...

Well I watched this movie last night (probably not the Directors Cut but whatever). It was OK but I'd give it somewhere around about 6/10.

First off - in 12th century England, why is everyone talking with an Irish accent?

Second off - when the French baddies land, why are they landing in WW2 landing craft on a beach which looks suspiciously like Normandy on D-Day?

Other than that, with brain set to off, it passed an evening.
 
eastmen said:
Um last house on the left is a remake of last house on the left

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068833/

while the virgin spring shares some similaritys , Craven had never seen that movie
Click to expand...
yes theres a new version of last house of the left (2009) but dizietsma was talking about the 1972 version with gaylord saint james (not his real name)
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0820577/

I dont know if craven had seen virgin spring before but he has said in an interview his film was based/reworked on that tale

I have no idea why you guys are using the decimile or percentile rating scheme. Majority of films/music/games etc. reviewed that way end up in the upper part of the scale
Click to expand...
depends on who's doing the rating, me I use a bell curve 1-10 thus the majority are 4-7.
statiscially the average would be 5.5. Recently I checked the last couple of thousand films Ive rated in the last 5 years + my average rating was 5.4, which is bad when you think about it, cause hopefully I'ld be getting films out that I'ld like
 
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