but I would only put it in a top 10 if i was struggling, which is probably the case :) 

yeah, just had that "snakes on a plane" quote pop into my head when reading your reviews :)

JFK probably fits on there, though it takes place completely after the event.

There are probably some historical movies about the knifing of various Roman emperors that could fit on here, but I can't remember the good ones (Caligula is not a good one.) 

does stuff like Godfather, The Conversation or Munich count? or is that stretching too much? 

Though it didn't involve heads of states as the recepients, Munich should definitely make the list. The nude woman assassination was pretty brutal.

Not the Godfather, though. When a low life gangster gets murdered it is more properly called a hit.

As for The Conversation, I'll need my memory jumped started on that one, if I'm thinking of the right movie, the director who mostly does films on Baltimore, right? 

yeah fair enough, I cant think of 10 I would list so was going for everything :)

Conversation is a coppola classic with gene hackman back when he actually acted. :

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071360/ 

Oddly enough, I was thinking of Barry Levinson's The Diner. 

Mona Lisa (1986) - nothing to do with the painting, but (out of what I've seen) easily Neil Jordan's best movie, although the title probably refers to the mysterious, impenetrable and alluring nature of the main female character.

Bob Hoskins is excellent in the central role of a driver of an upper class prostitute in middle class London who gets drawn into events and dealings well above his head. Jordan quite quickly establishes some very likeable characters and an impending sense of gloom in the first 15 min and from then on, it unfolds quite beautifully through some excellent writing that is also quite frequently hilarious.

The supporting cast is great with Michael Caine in an impressive cameo and Robbie Coltrane a scene stealer as Bob Hoskins' friend who is an ornamental spaghetti artist that also moonlights as murder mystery writer.

7-7.5/10


There Will Be Blood - It's Paul Thomas Anderson's most assured film, everything is restrained rather than overly showy, but its probably also his least impressive overall.

For close to 2 1/2 hours, it�s a searing portrait of greed, manipulation and single mindedness building to what looks like Citizen Kane territory. But the last act is completely in the wrong tone and was also far too rushed compared to the rest of the film.

Daniel Day Lewis's John Huston impersonation is quite entertaining and pretty good, but its also surprisingly very one note.

Had greatness in its hands, but let it slip.

7.5/10


Ace in the Hole (1951) - Billy Wilder's black humoured movie about media glorification is a fairly biting, well written satire in which Kirk Douglas's Chuck Tatum paraphrases Gordon Gecko's "greed is good" motto some 36 years earlier.

The movie centres around Tatum's news reporter who goes to some length to make a media circus out of a small town miner who is trapped in a mine on an old indian burial ground, even making sure he stays down there long enough to get more mileage out of the story.

The dialogue is sharp as usual from Wilder, including yet another great finishing line, and the whole thing keeps up the farcical nature of the situation quite well without managing to stretch credulity.

7.5/10 

but being a fan of DDL I wanted to see it. In any case, it's kind of hard to say what situation could emerge which would end up being reasonable.

Anyway, the obvious fact is that situations are underestimated, even if they provide temporary happiness. 

it's well worth watching. 

I thought the total opposite of what Nitin said.

I liked the second half, but after watching the first half, I nearly turned it off in disgust. Good job I didnt though. I remember saying to my girlfriend "I think these girls will survive, cause, I dunno, they just seem a little bit more worldly than the last ones". I couldnt have been more right. I liked the way the film ended. Very quickly, almost as if to say "well? do you REALLY need any more? is it not PERFECT?"

The first half was nasty for me. I mean it was almost as if to make you think "why am I even bothering to watch this?" when they were in the bar. And then when the first killing occur, It was just a bit disgusting, and gratuatus. But I suppose thats Tarantinos style.

I give a similar mark to Nitin, maybe a bit higher, like a 6, but I liked the bits he didnt, and didnt like the bits he did. 

I see this more as Tarantino exploring different style, much like a more traditional artist. That's why I'd rate it on a totally different basis than most other movies.

That said, i did expect a more interesting and consequent handling of it; but maybe i'm missing some cheesy 70ies/80ies movies background. 

Tekkonkinkreet
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0831888/
The backgrounds are amazing but apart from that I hated pretty much everything: The story, the characters, the people's looks, the voices.

I found it very depressing and crazy. 

different style?

a bunch of (admittedly female) characters sit around for quite a while, all speaking like tarantino, interspersed with gory violence :)

ricky, a couple of my freinds had the same reaction as you actually. 

Gone Baby Gone - Ben Affleck makes a stunning debut as director with this excellent film that is dripping with character and mood.

He also does his brother Casey a big favour, giving him the meatiest role in the movie, and the younger Affleck does it full justice playing one half of a private detective team hired by the grandparents of a missing girl to 'augment' the police investigation into her disappearance.

From there on what follows is not only a superior police procedural but also an unflinching look at the nature of choices and their sometimes irreparable consequences, all presented in a very assured, restrained and subtle manner that is very rare to see these days.

It has a few flaws, the nature of the plot causes a few pacing issues near the middle of the movie and one of the seemingly main characters is only there to serve the plot but overall from out of what I've seen so far, this is the second best flm of last year behind No Country for Old Men.

7.5-8/10


La Silence de la Mer (1949) - a world apart from Melville's later films, this is almost a precursor to the films of Robert Bresson and those of the impending French New Wave.

Set during 1941 in occupied France, an old man and his niece are forced to provide billeted accomodation to german soldiers and resist in the only way they can, by refusing to say a single word during their stay. However. one such soldier continues to speak to them, admiring and understanding their silence, and the majority of the film looks at the relationship between the thre characters till the end of the officer's stay.

There are obvious limitations imposed on the film due to the plot, and its not helped by some of the acting, but the situation and teh characterisations are compelling.

6.5/10


We Own the Night - extremely predictable and generic crime drama that is well made but just cant overcome its unoriginal nature.

Joaquin Phoenix is very good at playing tortured and almost manages to raise this out of the average barrel, along with a fabulous rainstorm car chase, but the whole thing never really kicks outof second gear at any stage.

5.5-6/10 

I hate you, Tekkon Kinkreet rocks! 

well, not the story ;) 

Margot at the Wedding - Noah Baumbach's followup to The Squid and the Whale is not as frequently hilarious but is possibly even more brutal and bitter in its drama. Nicole Kidman has her best role in years (since Birth) and does a pretty good job as a neurotic writer who attends her sister's wedding, despite not having spoken to her for a a lengthy period of time.

Some of it is definitely laugh out loud funny, especially at the expense of Jack Black who plays the sister's fiance, and quite a lot of it is dramatically potent, but overall there are too many selfish and unsympathetic characters for it to be involving.

6.5/10 

Carnal Knowledge (1971) - Mike Nichols' recent Closer was really a more modern update of his earlier effort starring jack nicholson, art garfunkel, candice bergen and rita moreno.

It's understandably less frank in its language and exploration of sex but the dialogue is no less clever, biting or sharp and the performances are pretty engaging (even though nicholson occasionally goes too over the top).

The problem is that even though its only 97 min long, it starts to repeat itself by about the halfway mark. The characters never develop, because they refuse to change, and their lives gets stuck in a predictable cycle because of it.

Overall, though its still quite entertaining despite not really going anywhere.

6.5-7/10



The Libertine (2005) - entertaining period piece that is a fictionalised look at the life of John Wilmot, the 2nd earl of rochester and a libertine poet of satirical and bawdy poetry.

The narrative is fairly mundane and I'm sure its woefully inaccurate historically (I've never considered that a quality anyway), but when the performances are this good and entertaining, it really doesn�t matter.

Samantha Morton and John Malkovich provide good support but it's once again the Johnny Depp show as he goes about making a thoroughly unlikeable character likeable. It�s a performance that relishes the excesses of the character but also knows that it doesn�t have to delve into that same level of excess histrionically. The look and script are also well above average.

6.5/10


Odd Man Out (1947) - third film I've seen from Carol Reed and it makes it 3 great films out of 3. Its probably the best script I've seen in terms of characterisation, every character is very well drawn out and multidimensional no matter how small their role is. Add to that some top notch performances, a terrific mood and look and reasonably tight direction and you have a winner.

The only issue I had was that it goes a bit off tangent and deviates a bit in the middle but given that that section is still fairly entertaining, it's a minor quibble.

8/10



Blood and Sand (1941) - extremely corny but pretty well made version of a popular spanish story. The performances by tyrone power, linda darnell and rita hayworth are reasonably adequate and the techincolor cinematography is spectacular, but the main reason for it being worth watching is some nice scripting (despite the corny plotting).

6/10



I Confess (1953) - fairly straight drama from Hitchcock with an interesting if implausible premise of a priest hearing the confession of a crime and then struggling with the oath to keep it a secret when he becomes a suspect by circumstance.

Good performances by Anne Baxter and Montgomery Clift and it is quite well made till the compromised ending which hints at some interesting developments and then never follows through on them.

6.5/10



Extras Finale - disappointing end to the series. Too much (forced) sentimentality and not enough laughs. There's the odd moment of hilarity (the clive owen cameo being the best) but plods far too frequently during its 80 odd min running time.

5.5/10



Simpsons Movie - wasn�t expecting much given how terrible the simpsons has been for years but even with those low expectations, I thought it was pretty bad. Like most of the episodes in recent years, there's no real wit, imagination or focus for most of the running time.

4/10 

I am Legend
There's a lot and a lot bad about this. It's loosely based on Richard Matheson's 1954 novel of the same name, which also inspired 'The Omega Man' and 'The last man on earth'. The idea of the movie is that scientists attempt to cure cancer by retro-engineering the measles virus, and programming it to kill cancer. As you can expect, it doesn't work out well, and the virus rapidly infects the human population, killing 90%, leaving alone the 1% who are immune, and causing the other 9% to revert to a violent primal state.

The primal infected people end up feeding on the 1% of survivors, and when the film starts, Robert Neville (Will Smith) is seemingly the only man left, attempting to survive in L.A..

Will Smith's character is one of the strongest parts of the film. There's a reason he survived, and it's because he has meticulously prepared for every eventuality: he has systems and traps set up all over the city. In the day he goes to get fuel for his generators, retrieves canned foods from deserted apartments and presumably builds up his ridiculous arsenal of weapons.

The film also makes a good decision in not defining the infected as 'vampires' at any point, as they were described in the book, although they share characteristics, such as that UV radiation damages those infected with the virus, so they only come out at night, they've lost their hair for some reason, their skin is white, etc, etc.

That's about all they got right about the 'infected' though. The CGI used for them is truely horrible and it really takes away from the immersion of the film. The overall design of them is cliched and boring too: the virus for some reason turns almost everyone into an angry snarling 6ft tall bald guy.

Also, I think they made a big mistake in making the infected as fast, indestructible and powerful as they did. There's simply no way any virus could make everyone 10 times stronger than anyone in the world has ever been, able to climb a building in a couple of leaps and able to headbutt through walls and bulletproof glass hundreds of times, or get shot in the head without getting hurt. I know it's hollywood, but as a whole the film is pretty believable and the 'bad guys' completely ruin that.

The film builds really well in the first two-thirds i think, but in the final act it kind of falls to pieces as it tries to introduce the notion of a utopian survivors colony to the north, among other things. The film is at it's best when it's just Robert Neville and his dog against the world, gathering supplies, fighting to survive and trying to find a cure for the virus, but when most of that changes, it loses a lot of momentum. The ending seems a bit tacked-on too, and I've read about an alternate ending on the DVD which sounds much better.

All in all, I don't want to put anyone off seeing this too much. It looks amazing in parts and I really enjoyed much of the film early on. Probably about a 6.5-7/10 

it's nice to write a review.
I just don't like spoilers.
Imho reviews should not be about telling the movie's plot (or even half of it) but about what the movie is *like*. General style, is it good, what is good and what is bad.
I mean, the plot is what we find out if we go and watch it. It unfolds. It tickles your feelings. If we know it, it doesn't work the same way.

Reviewing is hard.

Of course, with the trailers and styles and all nowadays, everything is known about a movie from start to finish anyway before you even go see it. Hence (well, one of the multitude of reasons) why I don't go to movies anymore.

Have to use one ticket I have in a few months though.

Ok, enough complaining. 

apologies if I gave away too much there, though I think if you watch the film you'll find that most of the stuff I mentioned happens almost immediately. 

Agree totally with previous review;

I hear that if you live in Manhattan, the scenes of destroyed NYC are amazing to behold.

Also, for those who've seen it -- since when can a Mustang corner like that?? 

Saw it a few days ago, it was good but I couldn't help drawing comparisons to 28 days later (this was before I found out that I am legend was based on a book) and frankly 28 days later was much better than this.

The CGI totally destroyed the infected people, it was very badly done and I really wish they had used live actors for the infected.

And yeah, the first half of the film was actually very good, Neville vs the world, with his dog! Then it started falling apart sadly. 

apparently they were planning on using actors for the infected, but in the first weeks of filming the director decided he wasn't getting enough hyper-ventilating rabidness out of the real people, so they decided to just add them in post production. Not that you'd ever tell they did it at the last minute, oh no. 

but in the first weeks of filming the director decided he wasn't getting enough hyper-ventilating rabidness out of the real people, so they decided to just add them in post production.

I guess it's a problem when the vision in the director's head is actually a cartoon.