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 

Junebug (2005) - it's self consciously indie and also a little bit heavy handed, but otherwise it's very well written particularly in relation to character nuance and interaction. It's helped by 2 very good performances by Embeth Davidtz and Amy Adams, both of whom manage to play their characters really well when there was big scope for caricature.

The story's nothing to write home about, a big city businesswoman takes the opportunity to turn a business trip into a visit to her boyfriend's small town family, all of whom represent clich� characters. But, like I said before, the writing in the interactions of the character is first rate, and coupled with the performances by Davidtz who plays the businesswoman and Adams who plays the pregnant sister in law, actually makes this dramedy quite a good watch.

7/10 

RIP Deadwood

What pisses me off is that Season 3 _is_ such a slow burn, they clearly had to keep putting off the war with Hearst (awesome performance by McRaney), which was set up and could have happened anytime during the season (right after ep 5 for example, even after episode 1!). They spent all that time avoiding the climatic battle, for the reason that it very likely would have killed off most of the major characters and left very little story to tell afterwards - and now, it won't happen at all.

I can understand that HBO cancels stuff, but if only they had known that while Season 3 was still filming, the entire thing could have been wrapped up within season 3. 

City Hunter
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103950/
I'll just be lazy and quote from imdb:

Extremely silly comedy about a self-indulgent private investigator who winds up on a cruise ship full of rich patrons, gorgeous women, murderous terrorists, and scarce food.
-----
Jackie Chan plays a womanizing private eye known as City Hunter in this Wong Jing directed movie. The movie is played for surreal laughs part of the time. But with Wong Jing at the helm of this comic strip of a movie, that is no surprise. When you watch this movie, you realize that Jackie Chan knows how to pick stories and direct himself better than anyone else.

Perfect fun for a sunday with headache. A quite awesome martial arts fight at the end and that famous Street Fighter scene for fans of that. And Jackie Chan's silly acting is great. A bit like japanese Austin Powers with less "hollywood-professionalism" and an extra portion silly.
*Ciiity Hunter* 

To Kill a Mockingbird - had been putting this off for a while because, well, the accents annoyed me whenever I tried to watch it :)

This time I wasn�t so bothered, maybe because I watched The Grapes of Wrath recently, or maybe because I was in a more forgiving mood. Anyway, this rightly deserves its reputation, its definitely a classic piece of moviemaking that hits all the right notes. I don�t really care for Gregory Peck but this is a tremendous performance and although I was more interested in the children's actions than the trial, Peck ensured those scenes were still worthwhile.

Other memorable things were the very well integrated score from Elmer Bernstien and Robert Duvall in his cameo as Boo Radley.

8.5/10


Mysterious Skin (2004) - hmm, it's not a bad movie by any means, but there is something definitely missing from Greg Arrakis' movie about the effects and trauma of uncle stevie behaviour on two kids from the same baseball team. There's a lot to like, the performances are very good, particularly Joseph-Gordon Levitt (who between this, Brick and The Lookout has all but erased his 3rd rock from the sun image) as the older version of one of the kids who becomes some sort of disconnected g@y hustler. Then there's the side characters, who are quite well defined despite not really having any story arcs of their own, and are still quite important to the overall context of the story.

But to counter all that, the tone seems completely off and I think the biggest problem is that even though Arrakis lingers unflinchingly on the horrors of his subject matter, it seems to be the only way that he can make an impact on the viewer because at all times the movie seems more concerned with the characters' actions rather than with the characters themselves. So while it's not a bad film, it's not a particularly good one either.

5.5-6/10



The Lookout (2007) - fairly decent crime drama/thriller by Scott Frank, the writer of Get Shorty and Out of Sight. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is again very good as a mentally impaired janitor at a small time bank who unwittingly becomes involved in a heist plan by some local criminals. Jeff Daniels is also quite good as his blind roommate, even though his role is underwritten.

Frank's script is quite slick and smooth but importantly spends a lot of time in getting us to sympathise with Gordon-Levitt's character, which is a good thing because otherwise the general plot's fairly derivative and unoriginal (in fact there's more than a couple of occasions where it's very similar to Memento).

7/10



The Palm Beach Story (1944) - again, not a bad film, but not a particularly good one either. I liked the central concept but felt that Preston Sturges could have extracted a lot more humour from it than he did. I also found the slapstick and zany support characters to not work and whilst Claudette Colbert and Joel McCrea did well with what they had, the script lacked bite. And the ending's a serious copout and felt extremely tacked on.

5/10 

is pretty ridiculous even for an early(ish) Jackie Chan film. Doesn't he skateboard everywhere in it? Also, the real life street fighter fight of course. Wasn't Guile asian? 

State and Main (2000) - fairly entertaining but lightweight movie by David Mamet about the problems and impact a movie crew have while trying to shoot their movie in a small american town, after they are forced to go there due to a lack of money to shoot elsewhere.

It's very similar, but inferior, to Francois Truffaut's Day for Night, mainly because its too tongue in cheek for its own good. But the dialgoue is excellent and the ensemble cast including William H Macy, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Alec Baldwin and Sarah Jessica Parker lap it up to good effect.

6.5/10 

Michael Clayton - quite an impressive debut by Tony Gilroy, writer of the Bourne films, even though it's very obviously a writer's film rather than an experienced director's. It's a fairly densely plotted drama/thriller but thankfully most of it is quite intelligently written (there's a handful of plotting errors, nothing too glaring that detracts from the overall experience, but big enough to draw me out of the movie when they happened).

It's helped by some very fine acting, George Clooney does a reasonable job as the title character, a 'fixer' at a large law firm, but it's the supporting performances of Sydney Pollack and particularly Tom Wilkinson and Tilda Swinton that really make the movie. Both of them aren't on the screen for a whole lot of the time but they make quite an impact, in their own contrasting styles.

Definitely worth watching.

7.5/10


Far From Heaven (2002) - Todd Haynes' homage to Douglas Sirk goes beyond mere imitation and is quite a good movie in its own right. Its very confidently made, there's not one scene really out of place in this variation on the very 50's melodramatic story of a bored upper class housewife who has an affair with her gardener.

It's beautifully shot and features one amazing piece of acting from Julianne Moore which, unfortunately, is also the movie's weakness. Moore is so good that the other main actors (who do a reasonable job) never look like matching her and she completely dominates all her scenes with them, which is kind of out of place with her character. It's a strange nitpick, but it did distract me from an otherwise fine film.

7/10


Miracle on 34th Street (1947) - I was pleasantly surprised. I was expecting some sort of oversentimental and preachy movie about the spirit of christmas but instead got a reasonably amusing movie with good characterisations that doesn�t really get oversentimental till the very end. Its preposterously unbelievable in parts, but I think that's the point, the movie playing out like a fantasy that it wants its audience to go along with.

7/10


Noise (2007) - fairly decent aussie movie from earlier in the year that is pretty well made, with lots of emphasis on character. It has kind of a weird balance, emphasising scenes and plot points that are not taken anywhere whilst glossing over others even though the movie keeps returning to them.

The title refers to the constant ringing (Tinnitus) in the main character's ear, a policeman who is relegated to light night duty after his diagnosis. His story mixes with that of a witness to the murderer of 7 people on a local train who lives in the area that the policeman is appointed to for night duty. It shard to pin what this movie is about, but it works to an extent, although I have to say the ending just completely left me puzzled.

6.5/10 

I didn't have much expectations but it had rather good stuff. I could push aside a lot of the fantasy elements... maybe it has aged rather well? Think of the fall of the Berlin wall, the Ukrainian Orange Revolution etc... I think these are interesting themes to explore the power vs the people, perhaps someone could do a more serious fiction movie about this stuff.

The next paragraphs will contain spoilers.

I also noted how we were left in the shadow of what really was the truth, through the Finch police chief character. Everybody's trying to pull the wool over his eyes. In the end we don't know for sure if st Mary really was a government plot or not, for example...

I found some of the "you can die for your ideas" stuff pretty strong too. People have to some degree done that throughout history.

I don't know if any of you have been in any mass demonstrations. I've seen some small scale stuff from pretty close, with riot police etc. though no tear gas.

There were some small and medium stupidities here and there... (and btw is Stephen Fry limited to gay roles? :) )

Maybe it helped that I didn't have so much expectations for the movie, that usually tends to do them good. :)

I'd say it stands out from the mass of movies. It actually had some more interesting overarching themes and not the usual "baddies are threatening my family/the city/the country", although the execution was cheesy at times... 

I should really try that again, I absolutely hated it when I saw it :)