Movie Reviews 2.0

i saw 18 films at TIFF ( http://tiff.net/ ) this year. my favourites include:

A Brand New Life http://tiff.net/filmsandschedules/films/brandnewlife
Creation http://tiff.net/filmsandschedules/films/creation
Mother http://tiff.net/filmsandschedules/films/mother

 

So I had my first 3D movie experience today, a Dolby system with THX Surround Sound as well. The movie was Up, and picture quality was just amazing, couldn't believe how good it is already! By the time they get to 'Kevin' I was reminded of this wonderful Italian cartoon painter, hopefully I can figure it out sometime, but it was beautiful!

I wouldn't mind a video game that starred this bird exclusively. Brilliant.

Anyway, came away hugely impressed with the state of 3D viewing technology. I had no complaints at all, it just looked fantastic. And the movie itself was Pixar in great form, too. Amazing idea that in 3-4 years time, we can probably have this at home.

 

i remember seeing a preview of a film something about a war between angels or against angels
anyone know what it is ?

 

Legion, Davros.

Saw Paranormal Activity with a few friends last night. It was utterly predictable and had one, maybe two, genuinely scary moments. If shaky cam isn't your thing, avoid this movie. . .it's almost as bad as Blair Witch.

 

Just spent a lot of time on planes to a from Asia...

Transformers 2: 3/10 (3 only owing to MF otherwise 1)
Terminator (latest): 3/10
Benjamin Button: 5/10 (what a crap ending)
Dirty Pretty Things: 9/10 (amazingly acted)

 

You just forfeited all rights to criticize movies.

 

It was too long and the turning into a baby thing was just too much. The best movies require suspension of disbelief and I could handle the kid but then the frickin infant? Sorry. It was an 8 until then.

 

I happened to enjoy Paranormal Activity quite a bit. I didn't go into it believing the hype that it was genuinely scary and would have the whole theater scared shitless. I enjoyed it from a cinematic aspect and can appreciate what the crew did with a low budget. The effects were freaking good for the money spent and the acting wasn't horrible either. It might have been predictable to an extent but then again what movies aren't these days? A whole lot of people got scared in the theater while a bunch others started laughing randomly. I thought the acting was decent enough.

Saw "Where the Wild Things Are" in IMAX 3D and it was bad ass. It was a lot darker than I anticipated but I guess that's because I purposefully didn't read a single review.

 

When I saw it in the movie theatre I didn't like it. I recently rewatched it on BluRay - I thought maybe I just didn't get it the first time. Guess what, I liked it even less. Oh, wait, I actually watched it for the third time now (second time was on DVD), and I still don't get it.

It's boring, mind-numbing, too fucking long and the Joker is pissing me off. He rants like an angry teenager and never has anything meaningful to say. The way Ledger portrays his character isn't good, it's just god damn fucking annoying.

The story sucks and makes no sense, it's such a mess that the glaring inconsistencies don't even enter the conscious mind. They just get drowned out by the tsunami of diarrhea that is the story. Look, bad nonsense is cool when it's done by David Lynch but if you're not David Lynch, then bad nonsense is just bad nonsense. I think the visual spectacle that is TDK has dumbfounded people to a degree that they simply didn't notice the severe story flaws.

And yes, I still think that Batman Begins is at least 10000x more entertaining, even with Katie Holmes in it. Not a great movie by any means but I can at least sit through it and be reasonably entertained. Hell, I even kinda sorta liked it despite the whole camp factor that comes with a story line that involves a rich asshole in a bat costume being trained by Tibetan ninjas.

What a piece of shit The Dark Knight is. It's right down in the shitter with Joel Schumacher's turds, it's just a different kind of turd. With different texture and consistency or whatever. Maybe with more fibre in it. But it smells every bit as bad.

tl;dr version: TDK sucks.

 

Ledger's performance was so off-the-charts good that I can no longer watch Nicholson's Joker in Burton's 1989 Batman. And I used to like that movie, despite its many flaws.

 

Terminator: Salvation. 7/10. Likely because I was expecting it to be Wolverine bad but it actually was pretty entertaining.

The New Moon. 2/10. GF owes me a guy movie viewing for sitting through this crap. Even she agreed it was crap.

 

I would really like to know about the glaring inconsistencies in TDK because I thought that movie was awesome. And the joker rocked.

Watched Layer Cake 8.5/10

Watched Rock n Rolla 9/10

Re-Watched Tropic Thunder 8/10

 

You're gonna waste a New Moon viewing on another "guy movie"? I'd be demanding a month of unedited filthy sex from my woman. Thankfully, she's not a girly girl, and prefers District 9 over Teen Angst.

And, like L233, I thought TDK was utter shite. Batman Begins was a far superior movie, both in a "superhero" vibe, and entertainment overall.

Things that were (very) wrong with TDK include:

• The awesome gothic Gotham setting of BB was totally discarded for "faceless city inc."
• Batman used even less of his toys than in the first movie.
• The Batmobile which was pimp in BB, was made of papier mache and the Batbike looked ass and defied the laws of physics
• New Rachel was 100x worse than old Rachel.
• Suffered from Spiderman 3s trouble of having too many baddies. It didn't make a complex storyline, it made too much of it unfocused.
• The "Bat Voice".
• Introduced nonsense technology at the end to make the end of the Joker a complete "WTF" moment. He'd have been better off from the get go using HIS OWN EYES.

These are just a few of its crimes. But! The very worse crime it committed for me was the sound levels being utterly bollixed. I watched it at IMAX with a gazillion watt sound system that in TF1&2, during the shooting parts, knocked your ears off (in a good way). Now, the visually awesome chase scene in TDK, with guns, rocket launchers, cars exploding, helicopters crashing and a huge truck 180'ing... The sound at this point is so flat and weedy and unemotional, it completely robs the air of tension and excitement out of the scene. And I've watched the Bluray version at home, on my not-that-small sound system, and its still uber flat. I don't feel a part of the action, and it completely removes me from the film and it falls apart from there.

Batman Begins was on TV last night, and while it's a bit more camp than TDK, it's more than just a mafia film with a couple of people in costumes, which is all TDK really is. It's a real Batman film.

 

Finally got around to seeing some films courtesy of friends saying, "you've worked enough, we're forcing you to take a break..."

Star Trek - 4.0/10 (8.0/10 if it had been called anything other than Star Trek). So many inconsistencies, so much of it screams Teen Movie, so much of it makes no sense. And WTF is up with changing the entire principle of how Phasers work? This is most patently NOT a Star Trek movie... It's something else with the Star Trek franchise bastardized to to get a larger initial interest. Horrible horrible Star Trek film... Kirk was crap. Spock (new) was crap. Sulu (absolute worst casting in the history of films) was INCREDIBLY crap. Chekov was crap. McCoy was almost not crap. Scotty was the most tolerable of them all.

IF I could wipe the entire Star Trek name from this, as well as Star Trek characters, I probably would have found it an enjoyable, if entirely vapid, action flick. Something like calling it Space Opera or Teens in Space or anything other than Star Trek... How about scriptwriters and studios stop "re-inventing" good franchises and stop turning them into crap? And just make a new franchise with the material?

Transformers 2 - 2.0/10 (only because the robot fights were vaguely well done in an epileptic sorta way). There was a story? There was a plot? Certainly hard to tell. Along those lines, there was acting? Primes are now metaphysical, spirtual, everlasting entities? And somehow despite all the primes other than the big bad evil guy sacrificing themselves to prevent him from destroying the sun of a planet with sentient beings...somehow, Optimus Prime was sired from a line of Primes? Yeah, Swiss cheese doesn't have as many holes... Another horrible movie.

Up! - 9.5/10. If the first part of the movie with Ellie was released as a short and none of the other stuff that followed was ever made, I'd still give it a 9.5/10. Slowed down a bit after that, but the gradual buildup and eventual climax was well done, slowly getting the watcher involved with the characters. Odd sequence of getting to love the main character, then a bit of dislike seeing him turn sour, then back to loving the main character as they refound themselves. Dogs were well done and well acted. Bird had charming character. What's not to like?

Julie & Julia - 8.0/10. I'm thinking of picking up a Julia Childs cookbook now even though I'm not a fan of French cooking. The Julie character was a bit overdone and narcissistic at times, but was endearing over all. And the Julia character was absolutely fascinating. Amazing to think there's so many good movies involving cooking (Loved Ratatoille also).

Regards,
SB

 

Oh yeah District 9. That was an epic movie. 9/10 Not 10 ever because I dont think there is a perfect movie according to my revised standards.

 

Oh forgot about District 9. 8.0/10 for this one. Good flick, even if the main character was a whiney backstabbing bitch that through the hand of god suddenly found the goodness withing himself in time to save someone that was better than him. Other than the main character however, a pretty decent action flick that attempts (and mostly fails) to be something else. Or perhaps I'm just jaded and am just imagining that it's trying to preach a certain message. Either way, an overall enjoyable movie. And that combat suit at the end was badass...

Regards,
SB

 

The wrestler

7.5/10

500 days of summer

8.5/10

cute movie, nice time-pass, somewhat off the beaten track

 

I liked it in theatre, not that much on second viewing at home. Quite a lot of silliness in the plot, but that's pretty much inevitable given that this is supposed to be (1) Star Trek (2) for the masses.

I actually thought the Bana's villain was one of the worst aspects of the movie. Ledger's so called overacting was OK for me in TDK since Joker's supposed to be lunatic, but this badass-tattooed Romulan with vibrating nostrils and voice (badly) overdubbed was just accidental comedy. Right on par with the Mini-Me-Picard -villain of Nemesis, just played by a 'bigger' actor.

 

What bothered me most about Star Trek were the action scenes. They were cut in this utterly frantic and confusing style that seems to be so popular with action movies nowadays and it's pissing me off.

One thing I always thought was cool about (old) Star Trek was that space combat is shown in a way that you actually get an idea of what's going on. You see ships maneuvering, shooting at each other and so on. In the new Star Trek movie you see phaser turrets firing --cut--- some explosion ---cut--- some more turrets firing ---cut--- more explosions ---cut--- people yelling ---cut--- explosions- --cut-- and so on and I had no idea what was going on half the time.

That, plus the fact that Vulcan is destroyed? WTF? I can only hope that they pull some more time travel shenanigans in the next movie to undo it.

Also: more Trek Tech Babble pls.