Movie Review Thread

**Fragony** · 07-06-2008, 10:37

Atonement, uhm, wow. As in wow.

**seireikhaan** · 07-13-2008, 03:48

Hellboy II: The Golden Army
An extremely enjoyable fantasy movie. Had some truly great moments in it. Quality action, a couple surprises, some very good acting on most parts parts(its sorta tough to grade the acting of some, seeing as they weren't exactly human), and some very good humor as well, surprisingly enough. I'd heartily recommend it to anyone.

**Puzz3D** · 07-15-2008, 01:47

Wanted (2008) is an action picture starring James McAvoy and Angelina Jolie. The action is very over the top matrix style with quite a few bullet time sequences, and extremely frenetic jump cutting during the actions scenes to the point where you can't follow the action in some places. The action scenes are full of impossibilities, but that is apparently due to it being a film adaptation of a graphic novel where impossible things happen. In retrospect, apparently the action is supposed to be taken as humorous, but the actors play their parts dead seriously. Since the screenplay was mediocre, I didn't really like this film very much, although, I wanted to like it. The convoluted plot has a terrible flaw in it as well if you think about it. To top things off, Angelina Jolie did not look very good in her closeups. She looks underweight, and it makes her face seem older than she is. This film is based on a graphic novel with which I'm unfamiliar, and that may be why I couldn't get on track with this film. My friend was confused as well, but he did say it seemed as thought it was supposed to be humorous.

**Kralizec** · 07-16-2008, 14:27

Frank Herbert's Dune (2000; by John Harrison)
The only reason I didn't pick this one up as soon as it came out on DVD was because I thought I would probably dissapointed (I thought that David Lynch' take on the story was absolutely horrorible)

As it turns out though, I'm mostly pleased with it. It bent the original plot in several places and shuffled some of the lines from character to character, but justifyably in most cases and it didn't prevent me from enjoying it.
For people who haven't read Dune this miniseries should still be enjoyable, maybe moreso. A drawback is that it doesn't do a good job of showing how important the spice is and that the whole imperium is basicly a conservative feudal society with rigid, planet bound castes. Both are mentioned but not properly emphasized.
There are a few things from the novel that have been left out wich IMO shouldn't have been, but I'll not delve into that.
The acting is decent enough most of the time, a few quirky bits of overacting here and there though. The woman who played Mohiam was the only one I thought was really bad; while the Baron Harkonnen's portrayal was excellent.

Anyway, it's a miniseries with easily 4 hours of viewing so take that into account. I got my copy for 9 Euro so that shouldn't stop you.

**Kralizec** · 07-19-2008, 23:05

Yikes, double post!

This is England
Nice movie, something of a British parallel to American History X (though by no means a copy)
7.5/10

**Incongruous** · 07-20-2008, 00:43

Before The Devil Knows You're Dead

Great Movie, definatley up there with the directors earlier work such as Dog Day Afternoon, Seymore-Hoffman is my new favourite actor these days I love the way this ugly fat bloke completley wipes the floor with every other actor in the movie who are usually über hot people or big names. The guy is a genius.
The movie was predictably dark like most moivies in this thriller/crime genre but it had more of the gritty realism I have come to crave from actors in their depiction of normal people caught up in improbable stories. I am not going to give away any of it except that it was an amazing construction of family tragedy at the darker end of the scale.

9/10

**seireikhaan** · 07-20-2008, 01:39

The Dark Knight. I give it a 9/10. Well done by Christian Bale again, as Batman, and Heath Ledger, imo, deserves at least an Oscar nomination that the way he acted as the Joker. Absolutely brilliant. Only reason it gets a 9 instead of a 10 are due to some moments of utter incredulity that were utterly unbelievable.

**Geoffrey S** · 08-03-2008, 00:16

Just returned from The Dark Knight. Dear me, what a painfully average movie - rarely have I sat through a movie's last half hour impatiently waiting for the curtains to drop. For a large part the mediocre screenplay is to blame for this. There were plenty of great ideas in there. In fact, too many. There was enough material for at least two full length films; what was in there was rushed through and insufficiently developed, with much packed into the second half at a machine-gun rate and the first half padded out beyond reason with the worst material.

This wasn't helped by the outright poor script, riddled with cliches. More experienced actors such as Caine, Oldman and Freeman delivered their lines in the perfunctory manner they deserved; Bale struggled, yet was solid and suited the role well; and Gyllenhaal and Eckhart were outright poor in their flat performances. Only Ledger showed an ounce of originality, effort for his part - but, it pains me to say, the hype about his sensational performance is just that. Easily the star of the film, but mainly because his enthusiastic and colourful performance contrast strongly with his gray opposites. The script had pretensions. Yet rather than being subtle, it all had to be spelled out for the audience in po-faced dialogue.

How much the direction is to blame for the workman-like feel of the movie, I'm not certain. Technically it was in fine shape, with nice design, great lighting and very solid camerawork. Nothing stood out as magnificent, but there was certainly nothing wrong with the technical aspects. What did bother me was the flat presentation. Aside from the movie, Nolan did a poor job of build-up. The exception was the turning point halfway through, which was a fantastic sequence. But other moments were less impressive. An example is a scene near the start involving a pencil: what could have been a shocking, jarring moment did not achieve its full potential due to its short build-up and weak follow-up. Again, I think this has much to do with the weak screenplay and the amount of things it attempted to convey in its 150-odd minutes.

I re-iterate: what an average movie. It was certainly not bad. Much like X-Men 3, it left me disappointed and feeling like I had watched a cluttered and unfulfilling tribute. The only thing spectacular about the movie is the hype: every single press piece I have seen has been overwhelmingly positive. To be honest, I have yet to see anything negative about the movie. Hype is nothing wrong. Plenty of times, it has been more than justified. But this one? I'm half reminded of the story about the emperor's new cloths.

**Puzz3D** · 10-03-2008, 12:55

I saw Wanted back in July, and posted my review then. Here it is:

Originally Posted by Puzz3D

Wanted (2008) is an action picture starring James McAvoy and Angelina Jolie. The action is very over the top matrix style with quite a few bullet time sequences, and extremely frenetic jump cutting during the actions scenes to the point where you can't follow the action in some places. The action scenes are full of impossibilities, but that is apparently due to it being a film adaptation of a graphic novel where impossible things happen. In retrospect, apparently the action is supposed to be taken as humorous, but the actors play their parts dead seriously. Since the screenplay was mediocre, I didn't really like this film very much, although, I wanted to like it. The convoluted plot has a terrible flaw in it as well if you think about it. To top things off, Angelina Jolie did not look very good in her closeups. She looks underweight, and it makes her face seem older than she is. This film is based on a graphic novel with which I'm unfamiliar, and that may be why I couldn't get on track with this film. My friend was confused as well, but he did say it seemed as thought it was supposed to be humorous.

Originally Posted by Mouzafphaerre

.
I share your appreciation for Land of Plenty.

Will check the crime ones too. I'm not in the correct mood for romanticism or comedy though.

.

The comedy in Dot The I is dark irony not what is typical of a romantic comedy film. The specter of violence hangs very heavily over this film, so it does fit in that sense with the other films I watched that day. Think double double cross.

**Fragony** · 10-03-2008, 14:20

All valid critisism but the action scenes are simply breathtaking, best camarawork I saw since the dazzling final of I-Robot, it twists it curls, awesome. The shootings are bit like the hollywood answer to such carefully orchestrated whatsitcalledthedancestuff you see in asian movies like Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and Hero. I am not really an action-movie kind of guy so it is rare that I can apreciate one.