Movie Review Thread

[Prussian to the Iron]

damint now youve ruined it for me!

I challenge you to a duel on the Field of Honor! Bring snacks!

[Scienter]

Crazy Heart. Jeff Bridges was amazing as a washed up, alcoholic country singer who used to be quite successful. He did all of his own singing, which was quite impressive. Colin Farrel as a country singer was surprisingly believable, which I attribute to him being a good actor. He did his own singing, too.

Louis, I love this picture so much I might make it my wallpaper.

Hah! A sight for sore eyes.

[Prussian to the Iron]

Inception.

Great movie, everyone should see it. It seemed, to be honest, a little too much like Shutter Island though. The whole 2-way ending, homicidal/suicidal wife who gets killed, complicated story. Still great though.



Se7en, on TV.

crazy movie, definitely worth buying. Interestingly (and I think intentionally), the most emotional and disturbing part of the whole movie was not any of the horrible murder scenes, but the last scene, where it is revealed that

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Brad Pitts' characters' wife, with child, was beheaded by the villain, and put in a box.

Incredible how much was conveyed without even showing it.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

BTW: I knew she was gonna die the whole movie, as soon as we saw her I literally said "She's gonna die." I was right.

[Hax]

Se7en, on TV.

crazy movie, definitely worth buying.

Please don't spoil it for other people like this. You're just being a meanie now.

Also,

[Prussian to the Iron]

Please don't spoil it for other people like this. You're just being a meanie now.

Also,

spoiler'd just for you Hax.

also: i love that series of vids!

[Jolt]

Inception

The solution to the problem everyone forgot about.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[Decker]

Well then such an awesome movie would not have happened...

also: i love that series of vids!

The Lord of the Rings one was probably the best ... next to Star Trek's one as well...

[Crazed Rabbit]

I just saw The Chaser, the English name of a South Korean thriller (Chugyeogja) from 2008.

The protagonist is a pimp who forces his prostitutes to work in the middle of the night when they're sick. He used to be a cop before he got fired for corruption. Some of his prostitutes, whom he paid large cash advances to, have disappeared and he suspects a rival pimp is headhunting his employees.

He starts trying to track down the person doing this and finds his girls are getting killed. He races against time to save one as he fights the killer and the police bureaucracy.

This is a top notch thriller, one of the best I've ever seen. For two hours the tension is high, the performances great, the images haunting, the fights realistic and brutal.

And - good grief - it's all based on a true story.

CR

[naut]

Inception. Boring as . Walked out after an hour. Biggest waste of my time ever. Skips around so much. Yes I get that that relates to "you never know how you get somewhere in a dream, you always end up in the middle of it". But in the sense of a story that doesn't work, it just jumbles everything and makes it look like they couldn't be bothered to actually edit properly. It's trying to be a mix between Memento and the Matrix and falls flat on it's pretentious face.

[Ronin]

Inception

The solution to the problem everyone forgot about.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

here is the movie explained.




saw The Expendables,

Big disapointment, bad plot, no good one-liners....choppy anoying editing...

Only good for the cast and a couple of explosions.

6.5/10

P.S. I wrote a full, spoilers included review in my livejournal if anyone is interested.
http://n0odles.livejournal.com/434569.html

[Major Robert Dump]

I recently watched Brick, which is basically an old style noir movie set among highschoolers. Pretty darn good.

It isn't a high school movie; the characters just happen to be high school students. We don't see any teachers or classrooms or homework worries.

CR

I liked Brick. Far underrated. The male lead reminds me of ledger, and how I would love to be that theatre hot chicks "personal assistant", doing whatever it was they were doing down there

Phsycho: Memento wasn't confusing. He was Sammy Jenkis, and he killed his own wife by overdosing her unintentionally. He created his own never-ending msytery with his tatoos, knwing full well what he was doing but forgetting 5 minutes later

I get lots of movie from the Afghans shops, pirates obviously. Was very surprised at Kick-Ass, was expecting it to be terrible and was quite impressed. Loved the kid assassin.

Hot Tub Time Machine was very, very funny.

Predators is kind of blah. Nothing new really, but the sword fight was pretty cool.

Henry Lee Lucas: Serial Killer really sucked, and the killings were lame and unrealistic, as in people getting stabbed in the stomach and dying immediately.

The Seamstress was terrible in every way

Falling to Peices was a low budget, zombie comedy that had a lot of potential, but was still pretty funny. Basically, they didn't know they were zombies because they could all talk to one another (and drunk people) but everyone else saw them as zombies

[Major Robert Dump]

Wife and I watched a film that managed to make Vikings boring. No small trick! Here's the trailer, which contains almost everything of interest from the flick, except for one spectacular disemboweling.

That was definitely one hell of a disembowelment, also a good bludgeoning Some of the fights were cool, too, but all very short. In all, the movie was dark, confusing and had far too much foreshadowing for my taste.

[Proletariat]

It's funny, I was in the mood and was looking for a decent Korean or even Chinese flick, and read CR's post and found this on netflix's instant watch. The movie delivered exactly what he mentions in his perfectly succinct write up. The way the lighting and shooting was done makes the gritty Seoul alleys look wonderful as well.

I just saw The Chaser, the English name of a South Korean thriller (Chugyeogja) from 2008.

The protagonist is a pimp who forces his prostitutes to work in the middle of the night when they're sick. He used to be a cop before he got fired for corruption. Some of his prostitutes, whom he paid large cash advances to, have disappeared and he suspects a rival pimp is headhunting his employees.

He starts trying to track down the person doing this and finds his girls are getting killed. He races against time to save one as he fights the killer and the police bureaucracy.

This is a top notch thriller, one of the best I've ever seen. For two hours the tension is high, the performances great, the images haunting, the fights realistic and brutal.

And - good grief - it's all based on a true story.

CR

[Crazed Rabbit]

It's funny, I was in the mood and was looking for a decent Korean or even Chinese flick, and read CR's post and found this on netflix's instant watch. The movie delivered exactly what he mentions in his perfectly succinct write up. The way the lighting and shooting was done makes the gritty Seoul alleys look wonderful as well.

I love Netflix instant watch.

Speaking of which - The Girl With The Dragon Tatoo is a great film.

CR

[Fragony]

That was definitely one hell of a disembowelment, also a good bludgeoning Some of the fights were cool, too, but all very short. In all, the movie was dark, confusing and had far too much foreshadowing for my taste.

But that looks incredibly awesome

'The Tudors' court wickedry for the win for good drama. King rocks, I want his fac- head that guy is too handsome for his own good.

[naut]

Psycho: Memento wasn't confusing. He was Sammy Jenkis, and he killed his own wife by overdosing her unintentionally. He created his own never-ending msytery with his tatoos, knwing full well what he was doing but forgetting 5 minutes later

That would invalidate the whole underlying concept though, would it not? Because the only way he would be able to remember if he as Sammy Jenkis killed his wife would be if he created new long-term memories. But, he can't. So he can't be Sammy.

[Major Robert Dump]

That would invalidate the whole underlying concept though, would it not? Because the only way he would be able to remember if he as Sammy Jenkis killed his wife would be if he created new long-term memories. But, he can't. So he can't be Sammy.

Not necessarily. Not saying he still knows he is Sammy. He has a tattoo that says "remember Sammy..." to keep him from forgetting who Sammy is. Or maybe he can make new memories, just like he accused Sammy of being able to do.

What I do know is that when he figured out the cop may have been using him, he intentionally used the cops personal info to make him a suspect, knowing full well that it would eventually lead him to killing the cop. That says an awful lot about a person's character.

In the final scene where he is talking to himself while driving, there is a shot of Sammy in the looney bin sitting in a chair as people walk by. In between two of the passers-by, Sammy changes to the the protagonist, then back to sammy. Lasts like 2 frames.

[Fragony]

Black Death, oh dear. Creepy medieval thriller set in during the great plague. Not only gives a nice (well not so nice) feeling for the the time but is also the most brooding movie since 'The Whicker Man'. A group of knights is send out to find a village where the plague has not struck yet, rumors are that there is a necromancer who brings people back from the dead, they must arrest him and bring him home. Half of the movie is the travel through plague ridden England, and than they find the idealic little village.

Watch this one if you can handle the violence.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

saw The Expendables,

Big disapointment, bad plot, no good one-liners....choppy anoying editing...

Only good for the cast and a couple of explosions.

6.5/10

P.S. I wrote a full, spoilers included review in my livejournal if anyone is interested.
http://n0odles.livejournal.com/434569.html

Sadly I have to agree with this. To be fair I thought some of the brief verbal sparring amongst Stallone, Willis, and Ahnold was a bit entertaining, but that's two minutes of film and nothing else to quote. There were also a couple of action bits that were really good, but it was balanced out by the flashy knife-action stuff, which is where the worst quick editing cuts happened, I think.

And there was just a lot of boring stuff trying to set up the plot and make us care about the hot but mostly inert senorita.

[Fragony]

'I am sorry, it's not blue'

The Road. excellent 'earth is screwed' drama, I love the genre so good times for me nowadays. This one is more serious than 'I am legend' the more recent and rather dumb 'The book of Eli', it's more in the vain of sledgehammer classics like 'Threats' or 'The Day After'. A boy and his father travel the burned earth, they need to go south, et presto we have a plot. Things aren't easy of course because people started eating eachother, it's pretty shocking from time to time because it's just believable that someone has a basement full of desperate people who's sole purpose is to be smoked and eaten. Less believable are the decisions the father makes from time to time but alas. Great fun if you like to be depressed.

[Major Robert Dump]

Apparently they are remaking "Let the right one in" for the US, with the adorable little girl from Kick Ass. Anyone know what country the original book was released in?

[Fragony]

Apparently they are remaking "Let the right one in" for the US, with the adorable little girl from Kick Ass. Anyone know what country the original book was released in?

Book? Movie is from Sweden. My favorite movie.

[Prussian to the Iron]

Kickass

Truly, an awesome movie. I don't know if the plot was great, but the action scenes were just so incredibly epic win I couldn't care less. Seriously, these are like the coolest action scenes I've seen in any movie for a long time.

Anyway, its sort of a comedy at the beginning, but more dark and action-focused at the end. I really liked it, though my mom was complaining about some of the more....bloody scenes. A small torture scene followed by an epic action scene, and a bit of beating the hell out of people, but I've seen worse in movies. It was still freaking awesome.


for 3 bucks to rent On Demand, certainly worth it. However, DO NOT let small children, as in under 13, watch. Some pretty seedy scenes at the start, though the only actual nudity was a second-long picture of boobs belonging to an african tribal lady on a webpage. Like what you could find on Wikipedia, not that I would know. Lots of cursing.

9/10, thoroughly enjoyed it.

[Martok]

I just finished watching The Young Victoria earlier this evening. I know it came out way last year, but I was so pleasantly surprised by this film that I had to comment on it.


I admit I was initially very reluctant to see this one. Even setting aside that the very notion of a young, pre-coronation Victoria struck me as faintly blasphemous -- I think there are times when I'm far too concerned with the dignity of other people -- I was even more worried the movie was going to adopt an overly-modern tone and/or turn her into some sort of party girl. In short, I feared something like Sofia Coppola's somewhat forgettable (and regrettable) Marie Antoinette.

Fortunately, that didn't happen here. I do feel the movie quite decently portrayed both Victoria and Albert as being very human, and at least partially stripped away the larger-than-life facades with which history has often saddled them; however, at no point did either of them seem to be (mis)characterized as stereotypical adolescents rebelling against society (which again, was something I had feared). The characters felt real, their growing feelings for each other felt real, and I think both Emily Blunt and Rupert Friend deserve major props for pulling off performances that were both subtle yet affecting.

Kudos also to the generally excellent supporting cast, including Miranda Richardson and Paul Bettany. Both played generally well-meaning characters who nonetheless sometimes acted (perhaps not intentionally) against the Queen's -- and/or Empire's -- best interests. In addition, I ended up liking Harriet Walter as Queen Adelaide quite a bit; she did a nice job of playing an understated character while simultaneously serving as the voice of sanity & reason throughout the film.


I'm afraid I can't comment on historical accuracy. I'm simply not enough a student of British history to be any judge of such things (especially during that time period). I know at least some liberties were taken -- [SPOILER!!] such as Albert being shot in the attempt on Victoria's life (when in reality, he was not injured) -- but given that the former Duchess of York is one of the producers, I (ever the optimist) like to think they kept things like that down to a minimum.


The one major beef I have with Young Victoria is that I'm not sure which was supposed to be the main focus of the story: Was it her and Albert's relationship? Or her dealing with her ascension to the throne (and all the political maneuvering that went on before, during, and after her coronation)? Or do the filmmakers consider the two threads to be too inextricably linked to be separated at all? Either way, some clarification would've been nice. (On the other hand, it's certainly possible there *was* clarification, and I was simply too dense to catch it. )

Still, it's a fairly minor complaint overall. I doubt I'd nominate this movie for a Golden Globe, but I did end up liking it far more than I'd imagined. The writing was decent, and Blunt & Friend do a very good job of portraying the royal couple in a way that's both believable and sympathetic. Yes, in some ways, they're just two kids in love, but neither are they babes in the woods; they still have an appreciation for the real world in which they live, and of the duties, responsibilities, & obligations they're expected to fulfill.


Final verdict: 4/5. It's almost certainly a "must-see" for anyone who's a sucker for costume period flicks like myself. Even for those are not, I'd say it's still worth watching if you're at all interested in the time period and/or the people involved.

[naut]

Godfather Pt. II. I'm glad I finally saw part II. It's quite good, I prefered the flashback scenes with de Niro, over the Pacino scenes. And the mirroring and contrasting of the two was brilliant. One starts with nothing and builds a family, the other has a family and through his poor actions he either loses, neglects or drives them away. The end scene with Michael not joining the surprise party was very clever. Good stuff.

[Major Robert Dump]

Wild Hunt. It's about LARPING gone wrong. Pretty funny, not exactly a happy movie by the end. Think its Canadian

[Hooahguy]

Book of Eli
An overall good movie, but very strange.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

The ending was spoiled by my stupid little brother who saw it a few months ago and revealed the ending in passing. Otherwise, Id never have guessed that he was blind. But I did like the theme of the movie, but thats more of a Backroom topic, Im afraid.

[SillySirius]

I want to see Restreppo but its not playing at any theaters around here and isn't available On Demand through cable..

[Decker]

I want to see Restreppo but its not playing at any theaters around here and isn't available On Demand through cable..

You and me both. I cant find this movie anywhere near me as well.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

Sherlock Holmes (the recent one with Robert Downy Jr) was fantastic. Even if Downy is getting typecast as eccentric genius.