Spiderman 3 - plane impressions were pretty much right. Too long, too convoluted and with too many characters. But there are some great scenes and the action is fantastically shot, a rarity these days IMHO, and Thomas Hayden Church makes a good Sandman. Topher Grace is not so good (then again the whole Venom character looks out of place).

Same issues as before with Maguire and Dunst who vary wildly in quality from scene to scene but, on the whole, this was decent enough.

6.5/10


13 Tzameti (2005) - A twistedly cruel little french thriller that is extremely well made despite the thinness of the material. Gela Babluani's film is at its best in the first 30 min or so when the movie is simply oozing with tension and atmosphere as a poor young carpenter follows instructions meant for someone else in the hope for money.

Where it ends up after that is not as interesting but you still have to admire Babluani's skill at keeping things extremely tense for the entire duration, aided by some very precise and skilful camerawork and some excellent sound design. There are scenes in here that will literally make you squirm, and not because of gore but out of sheer anticipation.

Hollywood remake on the way too.

7/10


The Woman in the Window (1944) - Fritz Lang's well directed and acted film goes along beautifully for about 90 min or so, despite what seems to be odd logic gaps and bizzarre occurrences. Then it gets short cicruited by an ending that is very logical but also very undermining of the material.

Till then though, it's an atmospheric noir piece with Edward G Robinson turning in a very good performance and Lang in control of his material.

6.5/10


The Grapes of Wrath (1940) - I have never really warmed to John Ford's output but this is one of the great american films. It is surprisingly directed with minimum sentimentality by Ford, which is strange given how prone the material (John Steinbeck's original novel) would have been to such an approach.

There is still some unnecessary comedy sequences but they are kept near the start, and for the most part it is an exquisitely shot, written and acted piece. This is pretty much as good as cinematography gets and it is used to great effect to highlight the impact of every scene.

Henry Fonda is pivotally great in the central role of Tom Joad and he gets some very good support from John Carradine and Jane Darwell.

There is also a bit of abruptness about the ending but, overall, there is not much wrong with it.

8.5/10 

Seriously, what was going on there? So many different things and ideas randomly thrown together...
Either I'm just to blunt to get the gist of it, or this is a good example of vodka-affected scriptwriting.

No Nescafe this time. ;) 

the's the exact same reaction I had to Night Watch, the prequel. 

I thought nightwatch was just standard mishmash wannabe-badass generic balls, but most people think it's great... I get the feeling people think it's got some extra level of depth they should be appreciating because it's Russian trash as opposed to American or British trash. 

i hated night watch with a passion :) 

Though this one easily surpasses Night Watch by far. The theme had some potential but it wasn't properly executed. I usually like strange movies (or elements within movies) but there has to be at least some coherence. 

I seem to be the only person I know who watched that film and decided it was the best kung-fu movie I have ever seen. Im even willing to say its THE best kung-fu movie ever made. Tony Jaa (or whatever hes called) IS Bruce Lee. If you havent seen it, watch it, and agree. Or if you can honestly tell me that you've seen a better film that I haven't then I'm dieing to know what it is! 

I discovered the awesome http://cinemageddon.org/ recently (torrent site, but should be quite safe for its content). It's all about B-Movies and alike.

The first movie I watched from there was
For Y'ur Height Only
http://imdb.com/title/tt0200642/
http://www.youtube.com/v/M5KeUMxyAwM
http://www.youtube.com/v/eqh5O9LbjhY (so catchy!)

Mr. Giant has kidnapped the brilliant Dr. Van Kohler and is planning to use the Doctor's invention, the N-bomb, to hold the world hostage. The only one who can foil Mr. Giant's evil scheme is Agent 00, a 3-foot-tall filipino martial arts master, expert marksman, top-class romancer and all-around superspy. Can Agent 00 rescue Dr. Kohler before it's too late?

It's as awesome as it sounds. Really bad and really awesome. I am looking forward seeing the sequel.

Next was Hardware I think, I posted #1981

Now I just watched Warlords of the 21st Century
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084887/
http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a91/Metalian/movies1/1-2.jpg
http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a91/Metalian/movies1/2-1.jpg
It was so-so. Some good acting, some great effects (explosions!), some cool dialogs. The story was very kitschy and shallow though. Not nearly as great as I hoped after seeing the pictures. The truck is damn cool for sure and some other vehicle later too. The "good guy" is too much of a smug(?) to like him, but the bad guys are great. 

but saw bits of The Protector and thought that it was nowhere near as good as Ong Bak in the action scenes. Everything looked and felt more slicker, less intense, and PG. Probably the effect of a hollywood backing and a bigger budget. 

Find it, watch it. I saw Ong Bak, and thought it was OK. In warrior king, I would like to add, there are no stunt-doubles, no wires, and no computer effects, except for in a couple of dreams that he has about elephants!

Really, you just re-itterated my point.

Also, I know a few people who say that they wouldnt watch it because it has sub titles. AAAAARRRRGGHH! Its a kung-fu movie, for goodness sake! You let your fists do all the talkin. Some of the best films I have ever seen had sub titles anyway. City of God?
Besides, Warrior King is half in english anyway, cause its mostly set in Sydney. Its a lot more grander and action packed than Ong Bak. Watch it people. 

actually The Protector and The Warrior King are the same movie, different tilte for different regions.

Anyway, I stand by my comments. I thought the action scenes were much poorer than ong bak in this. Personal taste I guess, but that's what I think.

No point talking about the rest of it really, because that's all there is to it. 

I thought Ong Bak was better too... Even though if I remember correctly, that scenes in Honour of the Dragon (aka The Protector, aka Warrior King, hehe) where he's going up the different floors in the restaurant is quite impressive, as it's all done in one take. The flashback with the elephant at the end was pretty lol. =) 

where he fights all of thos sk8er bois in the warehouse near the start? Theres a bit where he does a Neo-style backflip of a pane of glass which gets smashed up straight afterwards (all in slo mo), stuck in my mind. Ong bak just didnt romance me in the same way as Warrior King (or whatever you want to call it), the purity of the plot (WHERES MY ELEPHANT!!!) is fantastic. Much smaller body count in Ong Bak.

Also liked Unleashed. The moves in Warrior King were better though I guess.

Its like;

Enter the Dragon or Way of the Dragon? 

The Crying Game (1992) - well, I don�t really know what I actually thought of this as a whole to be honest. I found the first act which deals with the kidnapping of a british soldier by the IRA and the eventual bond that forms between one of the captors and the hostage to be poorly written, unconvincing and lazily made. Then the movie makes a complete right turn (and if you've seen it, you'll know what I'm talking about), becomes far more interesting with its characters, and the level of scripting improves drastically.

Its easily the strongest section of the film thanks to the acting and writing, which excels in its dialogue despite issues with pacing and flow. And then all of the good work is again undermined when the movie brings back the IRA subplot towards the end, leading to a very mundane and by the numbers conclusion.

There's definitely good stuff in here, it's just bookended with unconvincing material.

6.5/10 

http://imdb.com/title/tt0445336/

The latest movie from Swedish film maker Roy Andersson who makes movies his own way even if it means he has to take breaks in the production to do commercials in order to fund his projects.

It's very different from pretty much everything being shown on cinema today and I strongly recommend you go see it if you get the opportunity (I know it has some international distribution but I have no idea to what extent). 

300 - well I know a lot of people liked this but I thought it was an absolute disgrace of a movie. A complete and utter waste of time from start to finish.

Even the much touted style didnt impress, I thought it looked average at best and, quite frequently, just plain awful.

1/10 

If you go in expecting a serious swords and sandals drama like Ben Hur or Gladiator and you get this movie instead I can see nailing it with a low score, but if your expectations are no more than you are going in to see a live action cartoon like the latest Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles than a more middle of the road rating would seem more appropriate in my humble estimation. 

but I just didnt like the 'style'. It looked shit IMHO and the action scenes were also pretty ordinary except maybe one or two. 

the militarism and fascism? the homo-erotic Xerxes in leather and a glistening bold head? the milfy tits in the solid R sex scene? the anachronistic heavy metal battle music? Oh, well.

My off the wall complaints about the movie. 1) The Persians didn't look like any Persians I know, many didn't look like any humans that I know (this does emphasize the cartoonish nature of the movie that makes it acceptable in some sense), and 2) the milf actress couldn't project her voice worth shit while the actor playing Leonidas screamed his head off the entire time (take an acting tip from Brando and Crowe dude, a confident whisper is much more intimidating than losing your cool). 

but I was going for 'bald'. 

You're not alone, i was actually another person who didn't like 300. I went in expecting something along the lines of Sin City, i.e. very stylized visuals and characters, and story/dialog that was enthusiastically cliched. And it was, yet I still hated it.

It troubled me how I could like one movie and dislike another, yet everything I could say about 300 is also true of sin city. They both have a 13-year-old boy sensibility. They were both violent and exploitative. Both had an interesting visual style that was pulled off fairly well.

Maybe the problem was that sin city was smart enough to know it was full of cliches and caricatures, but 300 seemed very earnest about its story and its dialog. The dialog in particular felt like it had been written by professional wrestlers, and was delivered as such.

Maybe the difference was all in the directing. Rodriguez knew he was directing an over-the-top parody of comic book noir, but Snyder thought he was filming ancient greek war propoganda. So, sin city was subtly ironic and smart enough to question its characters, while 300 really believes the good guys are just and the bad guys are wicked and evil. 

...and guess who's signed up to direct Watchmen? 

that pretty much nails the likeability factor of thw two, but I still think Sin City was miles ahead of 300 in the visuals department(really all it did was turn up the contrast and drain the blue from every image).

Sin City actually has interesting camerawork, 300 just overuses the matrix slow mo on top off its high contrast imagery. I personally didnt think it had not one actually interesting bit of camerawork in it. 

oh yeah, i was going to say that too. Sin City used visuals to tell a story, 300 used them like a club to beat the audience over the head.

I think 300 had some nice looking shots, but they were always recreating a pretty storyboard and were usually showing off the prettyness rather than using them for storytelling. (same way some sci fi movies use FX to tell a story, others spend a lot of time just showing off the expensive FX) 

Fuck 300, to me more than any other recent movie it marks the point of CGI overload. How can one derive entertainment from 1,000 people fighting, 10,000, 100,000, 1,000,000, or 1,000,000,000 if the whole thing is retarded and doesn't mean shit? Completely unconvincing, completely retarded, and having absolutely nothing to do with the source material (maybe a fault of Miller's, who knows).

An enlightening comparison to this movie I find, is Apocalypto: They actually went into the jungle and actually did the scenes and stunts, gravity behaves normally, people are sweaty and covered in muck as you'd expect, they even used subtitles, conveying willingness on the part of the director to make the audience compromise instead of compromising the material. Apocalypto may not have been historically accurate (I can't judge, knowing little about South American history), but compared to 300 it has such a different attitude towards filmmaking that I felt invested in the struggles of 10 people, wheras with 300 couldn't give a shit about the murder of millions.

Hollywood does a real disservice to humanity when it projects its tanned, oiled, hairless vision of reality onto any source material and one can't help but feel that the ignorance of the masses in general has been heaped upon by such profiteers. A certain amount of stupidity is going to be the standard, but it's decades of films exemplifying the tendencies that 300 gathers in one giant shitfest that are responsible for the ignorance of the average person, particularly in America. Unless it's something in the water, or the gene pool, one has to blame it on the culture.

Richard Dawkins (whom I previously didn't like, but am coming to appreciate more) commented on American stupidity, "These people have the vote and the rest of us must deal with the consequences."