i love you guys 

I fucking liked it. 

it's a popcorn chewing Saturday Matin�e flick. You are taking it way too seriously. It is not G�tterd�mmerung, the Apocalypse, and the Decline of Western Civilization all wrapped in to one 90 minute spectacle, and it's inaccurate portrayal of history are no more important or damaging than the fictions Puzo built around the Italian mob or
Shakespeare likewise wrote about the British Aristocracy. 

even if my well water is contaminated with lead chips. 

alright maybe I overreacted, but the point was not that it's historically inaccurate, I don't care about that, it's just that it was so fake and dumb. I'm complaining not that they're spreading ignorance so much as that they may be spreading stupidity itself.

the whole epic thing has been so overdone it's starting to be sickening. Of all the post-LOTR epics I think only Troy was in any way decent. 

till you brought up Troy :)

Although i do plan to watch the extended director's cut over the next week or so, hoping it's better.

For my money, and this will be very hard to believe if you've actually seen the theatrical version, but the director's cut of Kingdom of Heaven is actually very very good. The 50 min of extra footage shows how easy it is to completely butcher a good film. 

I saw that in a theatre when it came out, and I do find that hard to believe. That is surprising to hear, the theatrical cut seemed to meander around without a point and felt way too long.

well I will have to check it out some time. 

I thought the theatrical edition was a piece of crap, but the extended cut is excellent. 

I don't care if you overreacted, if it gets you to write awesome monologues like that! 

Deliverance (1973) - rewatch, I was a bit harsh on this last time I saw it, incorrectly labelling it a one scene movie. It's beautifully shot, well acted and the direction is tense and natural. But having said that, I still find something not quite right about the movie as a whole, just cant put my finger on it. Either way, it is, at the very least, quite a good film with some standout sequences.

7/10 

Had potential to be utterly fantastic, but ended up being just mediocre. Too many people dying in stupid ways.
However: Incredible cinematography and set design, and Underworld's soundtrack is brilliant. 

oh man, great, great fun. can't remember when i last had this much fun with a movie.

That said, i have three points to critisize:
1) There's a totally weird 'film roll missing' cut in the middle that totally stunk. It cuts off a sex scene and then starts with all previous characters united at one place (that's suddenly burning down). (esp. as the big cut makes all character introduction unnecessary anyways.)
2) It's a tad too long. Some 'shoot another few zombies down' scenes could've been left out imho - i wasn't exactly bored, but it felt lengthy
3) i wouldn't normally pick on logic flaws, but this one is more of an inner logic error: The chick with the machine gun leg suddenly is invincible when she attacks the helis with the soldiers, and all other (as well as herself in pervious scenes) are quite careful and in fear f getting shot. kind of a break of the own rules.

oh, and it receives -1 each brainlessness and no message at all penalties

8/10 

now that i read it again, the "(esp. as the big cut makes all character introduction unnecessary anyways.)" should be at the end of point 2) 

also: gravity in sunshine = what 

This is a sci-fi after all.
However from the airlock scene we are led to believe that presence of air = gravity, and that is a wtf. If they had like a small monitor that said "local gravity field enabled" or something to that effect I would have been happier.
Overall I thought this was going to be a nice hard sci-fi but it wasn't. Disappointed I am.

Also Cillian Murphy is sooooooo creeeepyyyy, zooomggggggg!!! 

In the Shadow of the Moon?
Supposedly rocks.
Only available in USA in theaters, except perhaps some small film festivals elsewhere. :((( 

Sunshine - well you guys are right but you have to have some admiration for a movie that manages to incorporate <a>Alien, Solaris and 2001 successfully without really feeling like a rip off. Of course, it's unfortunate that it also chose to incorporate Event Horizon in its last act and although the idea for that part was interesting, the execution was poorly judged.

And yes, the visuals are outstanding (especially for that budget), but no one's mentioned the sound design yet. I thought it was great and added a lot to the atmosphere.

6.5/10 

Pitfall (1962) - Hirsohi Teshigahara's debut film is one of the most oddly unpredictable movies I have seen. The director has described it as a documentary-fantasy, and that is certainly a very apt description as the movie is part socio-realist critique, part ghost story and part existential drama. Every time you think you have it pinned as to where it is going next, it goes in a completely different direction.

For me, this strange melding of genres and ideas, as a murdered japanese miner returns as a ghost determined to find out the reason for his death, did not quite work in an overall sense. However, its rhtyhm is definitely strangely compelling and that in itself puts it ahead of most movies.

6/10


Smokin Aces - Joe Carnahan's followup to Narc is a big, loud, blood soaked mess, but it is a good mess. The pulpy, convoluted "story" about a range of parties converging at a hotel in an attempt to claim the bounty on a wanted man is overwrought in cliches, has too many unnecessary characters and plotlines and is really a big excuse for an extended action scene. But its reasonably well made as a non-serious and over the top action film, and the carnage unleashed near the end is very impressive. Pity that the denoument after this scene goes into lengthy exposition that belongs in a completely different movie.

6/10 

Twin Peaks : Fire Walk With Me - I have a lot of time for David Lynch but this is absolutely disgraceful. Not only is it a terrible movie on its own, it does its best to destroy the memory of the show. Atrociously made from start to finish, it relegates the best characters from the show to the background and kills all the mystery surrounding the laura palmer character. Her last 7 days, which essentially takes most of the running time of the film, is nowhere near as interesting when depicted in the manner shown here, and was much better off when left to the imagination. The movie also introduces events that seem to contradict character behaviour in the tv series.

Also missing is the trademark Lynch command of visuals and sound design to generate the atmosphere that is usually present in everything he makes. The end result is an extremely emabrassing effort.

0.5/10 

Despite having never read the book, and this movie being really hyped up by most people I know, I was still impressed with this. It's set around the second world war, and a situation in the grounds of a family estate where a young girl misconstrues a situation which sends the hero (played to James McAvoy) to jail for rape, where he makes the decision to go to war instead of doing the rest of his time.

The film is partly about the exploits of Robbie, the James McAvoy character, and Cecelia his love interest (played better than average by Keira Knightley), and also about Briony, they girl who mistakenly sent him to jail and her desire for atonement (ooh!) for what she did.

The film looks amazing, and while I felt the early pre-war section of the film is slightly too self-indulgent and artsy looking for it's own good, this doesn't take anything away, and the 2nd half of the film during the war is shot amazingly. There's an extremely long single-shot take which focuses on soldiers waiting to be evacuated from the beaches in France which has got a lot of attention from critics, and you have to watch it to see why. The way the sound design comes together in that moment with the orchestral score in the background and soldiers singing in choirs on the beach is dischordant and harmonious at the same time and is really incredible, my favourite part of the film.

My major reservation about this film is that it seemed to drag on a bit in the first section (pre-war) and ended rather abruptly. Also there's a semi-twist which breaks the narrative at the end which seemed a bit tacked-on and probably came together a bit better in the book. Generally it's a bit depressing, but I was expecting full-on harrowing from what people told me before i went to see it, so that was okay. So yeah, go see this. 

It's a prologue to the next Wes Anderson film, and I love Wes Anderson, so I'm pretty excited about that. Not much happens in this, it's all set in a hotel room and stars only Jason Schwarzman and Natalie Portman. There's a lot of little details to notice but don't expect to learn too much about the 'Darjeeling limited' (the full film). Generally well worth a watch, especially if you're so shallow you want to see Natalie Portman (briefly) naked. Oh Natalie.

Oh you can download it for free if you've got an american iTunes account, or it's probably on torrent sites now if you don't. 

saw death proof last night, comments later. 

Death Proof - I've always found Tarantino to be overly self indulgent, but despite that, having made generally entertaining films. And for the first half of his latest, it's more of the same, a well made throwaway piece of entertainment in the grindhouse style. Then, the grindhouse sensibility disappears, a whole new level of self indulgence kicks in and, most importantly, it becomes more cringe inducing than entertaining.

I'm sure someone out there appreciates what he's doing in the second half and finds it funny apart from Tarantino himself, but it wasn�t me. I would have preferred it if he kept the whole movie in line with the first half.

5.5/10 

Yeah, irritatingly stupid.

Most of the irritating is because it in no way had to be so dumb. 

Running Scared (2006) - paul walker in semi decent performance in almost good movie shocker. This is junk, but it's classy junk. Wayne Kramer's film is an extremely over the top urban nightmare that keeps plumbing lower and lower depths of depravity in an effort to shock and entertain, and mostly it works.

Walker plays a low life criminal who basically stuffs up the hiding of a murder weapon and then has to retrieve it before he gets killed over it. Along the way, the movie runs into every clich� imaginable, backs up, and then runs into each one again at a higher speed. Walker is surprisngly watchable and Vera Farmiga is very good as his distraught wife that gets her own nice little subplot. It's not a great film by any means, but I did find all the excess surprisingly entertaining to a degree.

6/10


Troy (Director's cut) - With 30 min of extended footage, the new director's cut of Brad Pitt staring into the distance is an improvement, one that actually makes the film watchable if nothing more. The new footage cannot eradicate the bad dialogue or lack of any real substance in david benioff's script, but it does smooth out the some of the pacing and flow problems that were present in the orginal version. There is also noticeable changes in the visual and aural departments, both areas being improved. More screen time is also given to Peter O'Toole's character, which is a good thing because the great man outacts everything else on screen.

In short, it's not the drastic improvement over the original like the Kingdom of Heaven DC was, but it's noticeably better.

6/10 (compared to 4/10 for theatrical)



Exiles (2004) - An interesting, if not entirely successful, road movie by Tony Gatlif that has two characters embarking on what starts out to be a walking trip from France to Algeria in an effort to discover the country of their families' origin. Well shot, well acted and with an excellent music score that seems to combine techno, gypsy folk and algerian folk, Gatlif's movie is as meandering as most road films are, but also has a very strangely compelling last 10 min to finish off proceedings. There are a few issues along the way where scenes seem to go for longer than they should because of the lack of focus on narrative, but it's an interesting and unique watch on the whole.

6/10



Deadwood Season 3 - great finish to a great series, the 3rd season fixes the issues I had with (the still very very good) Season 2, and adds a couple of very interesting new characters. Most of the season is just a drawn out and slow burn exercise in suspense, but I found it fascinating, especially with the powerful George Hearst character being given centre stage and forcing memebers of the camp to think hard about how to combat his presence, whilst still maintaning or improving their own situations. The dialgoue is back to its glorious best, the acting is top notch as usual with the addition of Brian Cox a very welcome addition, and the finale is worth the wait. Too bad this is the end.

8.5/10