Movie mini reviews

Post by **Dog Pants** » October 4th, 2009, 10:20

Mr. Johnson wrote:I've seen faaabulous porn films that are more consistent than that.

Fix'd

Post by **FatherJack** » October 8th, 2009, 4:46

In the company of a fangirl who'd read all the books saw Twilight tonight.
Was okay from a vampire-flick level, but with a lot of the feelings of the main girl character omitted for the screen (books are from her PoV), felt more like a film just doing what the book told it, rather than a logical procession of story. Other concessions are made to the film-only viewer and the vampiry bits are visceral and entertaining, but without the insight into the characters thoughts a book can give, the principals seemed dull-witted and oblivious to the obvious. I suspect they'll not even try to please non-fans with the inevitable sequels. Vampire canon (mirrors, etc) are casually discarded, but I enjoyed it despite this, though welcomed the commentary of an expert of the texts.

Talking of "sequels" I saw Angels and Demons last week. Same star, director and author as the Da Vinci Code, but to my mind not a true sequel. Sure there's running around clue-solving with a bit of Templars and holiness sprinkled in, but its all rather forced and trite with no ambiguous "ultimate secret" as the pay-off. Ludicrous abilities and motivations combine to a easily-guessable ending, this is not what Along Came a Spider was to the Kiss The Girls.

Post by **Dog Pants** » October 8th, 2009, 9:31

FatherJack wrote:Talking of "sequels" I saw Angels and Demons last week. Same star, director and author as the Da Vinci Code, but to my mind not a true sequel. Sure there's running around clue-solving with a bit of Templars and holiness sprinkled in, but its all rather forced and trite with no ambiguous "ultimate secret" as the pay-off. Ludicrous abilities and motivations combine to a easily-guessable ending, this is not what Along Came a Spider was to the Kiss The Girls.

I'm actually reading the book at the moment. First off, the book is a prequel (and actually released before Da Vinci), so if the film's set as a sequel that might skew things a little. Secondly, it's not very good. It's similar in that it's kind of a treasure hunt to save the world, but it's not as well done and it has a particularly irritating way of suggesting that there's an organisation called Science which is the antithesis of Religion, like two sides in a war. In particular a bit where loads of guys at CERN are crowded round a TV cheering because someone's said they'll blow up the Vatican. I really couldn't see that, and a few other things like that (that really felt like anti-science Catholic propaganda) throughout the book just shattered my immersion and made me want to put it down.

Mr. Johnson · Post by **Mr. Johnson** » October 8th, 2009, 9:57

FatherJack wrote:In the company of a fangirl who'd read all the books saw Twilight tonight.

Oh no FJ, not you too.

Post by **Dr. kitteny berk** » October 16th, 2009, 10:31

Food, Inc. (2008)

Looks at massive food corporations, quite interesting, contains some hippy crap.

Worth watching if you eat food, moreso if you eat cheap crappy food.

Mr. Johnson · Post by **Mr. Johnson** » October 18th, 2009, 18:52

I've been watching pixar films, here are my thoughts.

Bolt (2008)

Animation film about a show dog that has to face the world outside his trailer and realizes that he doesn't have super powers, then teams up with a stray cat and a hamster to find his owner back, learning to act like a normal dog in the process.
Clearly aimed at younger children, but I still liked it because both the dog and the cat were rather adult characters, then they introduced that fucking hamster and it all went to shit.

Wall-E (2008)

Story about a robot left behind on earth to clean up after everyone went away to live in space for a while.
A massive let down, I expected fallout for kids and instead got 'An inconvenient truth' for kids. I couldn't warm up to any of the characters and found it massively lacking in the charm that pixar usually inserts in his films.
Technically it's a real gem however and the first half hour or so when they show the giant garbage towers is quite beautifully done.

Ratatouille (2007)

Film about a rat with amazing cooking talents that gets separated from his colony and ends up living with a clumsy youngster that is trying to make it into the culinary world.
I was pretty surprised at how good this film was to be honest, it's one of pixar's lesser advertised and therefore smaller productions, but the story is solid and good, the characters are simple and likeable and the outcome of the film was something a bit different then I was used to in Disney films.

Spoiler:

Up (2009)

Adventure story about a grumpy old man that decides to honour his late wife's wish and attaches hundreds of balloons to his house and uses it to fly to South America, but accidentally picks up a member of the local 'Wilderness explorers', which leads to the usual antics.
The sole contender to knock Ratatouille off of my 'favourite pixar films' list is this, a very charming tale for which I can really express little else then love.
It really managed to amuse me and in places even warmed up my cold black hart, I liked all of the characters (even the kid and the

Spoiler:

) the story and art was something truly original and it's the first film that managed to make me like 3D animation.
Furthermore it seemed to handle such rather adult concepts as

Spoiler:

, albeit very briefly.
I can recommend this to anyone that grew up on films like 'The Rescuers Down Under' and 'The Great Mouse Detective', but I'm sure you'll like it even if you didn't.

Post by **FatherJack** » October 18th, 2009, 19:40

I thought Wall-E was great. I loved the garbage-planet setting and the way he said "Eve-a" and may have even shed a little tear at the end. I found the "evolved" humans more silly and funny than a lecture, but it's more a robot love story than Fallout. I liked how much they did with virtually no spoken dialogue.

bomberesque · Post by **bomberesque** » October 23rd, 2009, 11:25

BUG

very stripped down play adaptation about 2 people going mad/being part of a government conspiracy. Good stuff, great dialogue. Quite Pinteresque in a PKD kind of way. Harry Connick Jnr is in it and completely fails to be as annoying as I have found him in the past. A treat all round

8.5/10

Burn after Reading

Latest Coen Brothers flick. Didn't like it, too goofy for me. but you know this because you read my review and (mostly) disagreed with it. Can't help you if you're all wrong once in a while.

Best thing that has been said of it IMO is that it's not as bad as the Lady Killers. Possibly not a *bad* movie per se but much less than I expect form the Coens

6/10

The Hurt Locker

Eye-rack action film about Bomb disposal guys on bomb disposal missions ... disposing of bombs whilst wearing the biggest fatguy suit known to man. Oddly paced at times and has no real plot arc, but a great character study of different approaches to war and shock. Includes scene of disarming and extracting a bomb that has been stitched into a dead body so extra points for that.

The disposal scenes include some superb visuals and are believably tense. Well constructed and shot while not being too introspective, fundamentally an action flick. Kind of like Speed only less goofy (good) and no Sandra Bullock (bad) and in Iraq (whatever). A mate of mine used to do that job in the RE as it happens, I'll have to ask him how accurate it was, I suspect I can guess what he'll say.

7.5/10

Post by **Dr. kitteny berk** » November 9th, 2009, 23:25

Black Dynamite

Action comedy blaxploitation spoof.

I quite enjoyed this, funny, stupid and oddly smart in places.

Watch it.

Post by **Dr. kitteny berk** » November 11th, 2009, 4:51

<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0870984/">Antichrist (2009)</a>

Umm, Lars Von Trier let his mental out again.

Mostly contains WTF and jesus fucking christ.

Very arty - looks, feels and sounds how it should. Lots of sex and nudity, but not in a porny way.

If you like Von Trier's stuff, it's worth watching, Just be warned it's nothing like standard torture porn a'la hostel, it's much more fucked up.

amblin · Post by **amblin** » November 11th, 2009, 9:37

Post by **Dr. kitteny berk** » November 11th, 2009, 9:43

amblin wrote:I watched this on ffwd, getting the basic plot but not the fucking nasty. I think it made it even more random. But it was a very good psychological thriller about the descent into madness through grief. Do not watch with you mum or missus. They'll freak out unless they're grief counsellors.

You missed the bit with the plank of wood then? and the scissors?

amblin · Post by **amblin** » November 11th, 2009, 9:45

Post by **Dr. kitteny berk** » November 11th, 2009, 10:29

Yep, hence the fucking nasty.

I think it had so few scenes of utter nasty that it worked well, rather than retarded nastiness all the way though that just gets boring.

Post by **HereComesPete** » November 11th, 2009, 11:53

The wanking him off to a bloodied end was fucked up, but for some reason I found it harder to watch him crawl through the forest with that bolt through him.

Post by **Roman Totale** » November 11th, 2009, 20:47

Just been to see The Men Who Stare At Goats. Very good film, very funny. If you want a more in depth review then fuck off to imdb!

Lateralus · Post by **Lateralus** » November 12th, 2009, 19:59

Roman Totale wrote:Just been to see The Men Who Stare At Goats. Very good film, very funny. If you want a more in depth review then fuck off to imdb!

I want to see that. I'm expecting it to be not too dissimilar to the Big Lebowski in general tone and humour. As a result, Mrs Lat is entirely not fussed about it and I'll have to find someone else to go with instead.

Lateralus · Post by **Lateralus** » November 12th, 2009, 20:02

Also, could you not at least post a link to its IMDB page? Christ, I'll probably have to copy and paste the film title into the search bar and everything. This internetting is hard work.

As an aside, IMDB really needs a mobile page version, as I often want to look up someone on the spur of the moment while watching a film or TV programme, but viewing it on a mobile screen is horrible.

However, as a result of this random browsing last night, I discovered that James Avery, who plays Phillip Banks in the Fresh Prince, also did the voice of Shredder in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoons! Awesome fact there, fact fans.

Stoat · Post by **Stoat** » November 12th, 2009, 20:49

Lateralus wrote:As an aside, IMDB really needs a mobile page version, as I often want to look up someone on the spur of the moment while watching a film or TV programme, but viewing it on a mobile screen is horrible

The readability bookmarklet works well on my ipod: http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/

alternatively, http://www.mdog.com/bookmarks/imdb/htmlsite/

Post by **HereComesPete** » November 12th, 2009, 22:02

Lateralus wrote:I'll have to find someone else to go with instead.

Gimme a shout if you want to go.