to go see Iron Man??? YEAH!!!!! 

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Juno - its pretty obvious within the first 5 min that there's going to be a rhythm of speech that's just not normal and/or realistic. It doesn’t take long to get used to it, but I still found that in this particular case, it was unnecessary, try hard clever and distracting.

Luckily, the longer the movie goes on the less it features and it also helps that the movie works, not as a comedy but as a lightweight drama. Most of that is down to good characterisations and strong performances all around which help paper over the showy, pretend cool dialogue that plagues most of the first half hour of the movie.

7/10


Marathon Man (1976) - surely one of the greatest thrillers ever? It fires in pretty much every department and the only weak link is the slightly convoluted plot but there is so much attention to little details and the way Conrad Hall's camerawork and William Goldman's script combine in establishing character is quite remarkable. J

ohn Scheslinger amps up the suspense beautifully and Hoffman, Olivier, Scheider and co put in great work.

8.5/10


The Taste of Cherry (1997) - Abbas Kiarostami's movie is fairly basic in plot, a middle aged man drives around Tehran looking for a man who will do a 'job for him', and even more basic in style. But amongst all that simplicity, he has quite a number of involving characters to introduce and quite a few interesting turns to make.

It all happens slowly, taking 20 min or so to reveal the 'job' and another 40 min or so till the main character finds someone to do it, but interspersed between all those plot revelations are conversations that appear to be banal but are rich in ideas.

But then there's the ending. Kiarostami builds to an extraordinary climax and then does something that is likely to catch most people off guard, and I'm guessing slightly annoyed. I cant say I understand the need for the last sequence, I personally think the movie would have been better off leaving it out as it distracts rather than adds to the penultimate sequence which is brilliantly executed.

7/10


Blow Out (1981) - Brian De Palma has a habit of taking A grade material from elsewhere and making entertaining B movies out of them. Sometimes though, like in Dressed to Kill, the A grade material he 'borrows' is outright classic stuff and an entertaining B movie in the same vein is just not enough (it was Psycho in that particular case).

For this one, he combines two great films, Coppola's The Conversation and Antonioni's Blow Up, and the result is the same, a mildly entertaining movie with some great camerawork (there's two scenes near the end that are equally as good as anything in both the original films) but with a poor script and patchy performances.

A pity, because when he gets it right, he's a very talented filmmaker.

5.5/10 

Cheesy, lots of continuity problems, really stupid things (the outside is full of snipers, so naturally all the characters hang out at the door windows and stick their neck out every now and then, the baddies are just ultra evil with no reason etc etc...

But it has some charm too... It avoids the over-emotionalism and screaming that plagues many tense enclosed movies and plays in general.

The theme is so extremely familiar, I'm thinking some C64 game, but couldn't find it in my sids. Anybody know? This one recycles the melody too (fast forward a bit)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayV5xzUAalw
so you can hear it. Carpenter was multi-talented as he made that himself. 

Heh, this was both parody and madness. Much better than what I expected it to be. I still can't judge Bale. He might have potential, I say. I don't really know - it's either hard to pull this kind of (weird) movie off well (just the freaking business cards ffs) or then it was just usual but sleek.
Is it resting on Bale or the usual "everything just works" smoothness? Or both? Or what? The message?
I guess I suck at understanding movies. Not having slept last night might have something to do with it.

If you remember yuppies from the late eighties, even vaguely, then this movie is definitely worth watching. 

but bale's a gun. His recent string of movies is a quite a good track record. 

I've been way more impressed by what Bale's done post-American Psycho, but to me it is a great movie. The sarcastic (but not overly so) attitude is what gives it its awesome mood, I mean when he pronounces lines like "And Less Materialism!" it's hard to tell if he means it and he's exposing their hypocrisy (and wants to kill them), or if he is just joking and is totally beyond the pale (and wants to kill them). Hell, if they hadn't cast Bale as Batman because of that movie they could have cast him as the Joker. There was a lot of shallow bullshit in the 80s; the movie seems faithful to the book's idea that the overload of pleasure could lead to lethal boredom. 

read the book? 

So John Carpenter's self-made synth theme from The Attack on Precinct 13 from the seventies ended up in ... Xenon 2 megablast! I wondered where it was familiar from! Kickass tune. I remember it from the pc speaker before I had a soundcard.
The original Amiga version seems to be best on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6jNosHmHG8 

yeah, but to be honest, I didnt care much for the book either so that probably explains my reaction. 

Perfume

Very, very odd. Good in parts, but mostly odd (not least being made by Germans, set in Paris with a more or less entirely British cast). I'd rate this the canonical surrealistic fish out of 10.

The Golden Compass

Fuck me, this was bad. I really like the books, but the movie was very disappointing. It makes you realize how good the Lord of the Rings adaptations were, even with their flaws. Don't bother/10.

Iron Man

I really enjoyed this, despite or quite possibly because of the really stupid bits. Have a laugh/10.

I am Legend

It's hard to say what I'd have thought of this if I hadn't read the book. Probably: "This is pretty good, but wow is it a lot like 28 days later". Instead of: "Hm, I'd never really thought of how much 28 days later (and lots of other movies) ripped off I am Legend... WTF THEY DICKED WITH THE ENDING!". Probably worth the rental/10. 

Big Nothing (2006)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0488085/

Watched this for featuring Simon Pegg (not expecting much as it is not one of "his" movies though). It is less of a comedy than it is a black drama thriller something. Nothing that shifts up the mood. Very nice images, soundtrack, acting, etc. Really really dark (I underline this). David Schwimmer is kind of one of those hip "generic introvert noir" guys like Clive Owen, I like those!

Sure a recommendation if you like black humoured films or anything I just blabbered made you interested. 

The Wrong Man (1956) - Most people say Rebecca is the most unhitchcock Hitchcock film, but I put my hand up for this one. Sure, the plot is similar to numerous hitchcock films, Henry Fonda's character being incorrectly mistaken for a wanted man, but the verite approach taken here (with a supposed true story) is completely different to any other Hitch movie.

It's still a well polished affair, despite no real Hitchcockian moments, mainly due to Henry Fonda and Vera Miles putting in excellent performances.

7/10


Robocop - Hadnt fully seen this before, it's another sly litlle black humoured film from Paul Verhoeven that's a lot of fun. It also surprisingly works dramatically, quite a task when the most you can see of the main character is the bottom half of his face.

7/10


Pierrot Le Fou (1965) - I find Godard frustrating, even when he's at his best, and this is no exception. The first 50 min or so are close to some of the best cinema I have ever seen as Jean Paul Belmondo's character runs off with his babysitter (played by Anna Karina) and their subsequent road trip becomes Godard's mouthpiece for anything and everything he wants to say about life, war, politics, and even his failing relationship with his wife (also Anna Karina). It's bizarre, disjointed, fearless and utterly brilliant.

However, it just cant keep up with its own desire to burn through as many ideas as quickly as possible whilst breaking almost every rule of cinema. The second half is not quite as engrossing and that makes the pretentiousness all the more noticeable.

Karina and Belmondo are magnetic all the way through though and make sure it never sinks under its own weight.

7.5/10


Wings of Desire (1988) - The plot and central idea are quite simple, the film follows two angels, Damiel (Bruno Ganz) and Cassiel (Otto Sander) as they float over the skies of Berlin observing and listening in on the lives of the city�s inhabitants, with Damiel becoming convinced over the course of the movie that he has to experience human life rather than just observe it. The same idea was tackily remade as City of Angels.

But Wim Wenders' original is a much more meditative, improvisational film that lies somewhere between the works of Andrei Tarkovski (who is one of the people that movie's dedicated to) and Wong Kar Wai's recent stuff.

I dont think its entirely successful, it's a bit too disjointed and some scenes are grossly overlong, but its definitely ambitious, original and interesting and when it all clicks together, quite touching.

7-7.5/10


The Last Picture Show (1971) - brilliant movie set in a small town in Texas and focusing on the friendship between two young men (Timothy Bottoms and Jeff Bridges). In doing so, it manages to work in a number of well written characters and their relationships and is a showcase for what is possibly the best piece of ensemble acting I've come across. There is not one weak link here and everyone involved, even in the tiniest role, puts in a high class performance.

Its also beautifully written and shot and is one of the great debut films in history (from Peter Bogdanovich).

8.5/10


Cloverfield - pretty solid little movie even if its best moments are directly derivative of Alien/s. The camerawork is indeed quite annoying in places, its one thing to try and make a Blair Witch meets Godzilla movie, its another to have a character that is an uncoordinated lunatic behind the camera.

But on the whole, its not too bad, and is reasonably thrilling in a number of spots. More carnage next time please.

6.5/10 

Rec is a spanish zombie movie, where people get trapped in an apartment building which has... zombies. It's one of those movies where the whole movie is supposedly recovered footage from a camera that was used by the characters.

It's pretty good. Moves fast, well-edited, feels different than the usual "zombie siege" scenario (everyone's inside, zombies outside.) 

Well.
Scifi with serious attitude, been a long time since that.

Excellent sets. Just fabulous stuff. Who designed the space suits? Nothing felt cheap. Well perhaps there could have been more zero gravity.
Good casting.
Good direction in many senses, had both that realism and also those extreme effects and sense of awe. (A bit too much camera effects imo though.)

But what the fuck. Is there some line in movie director contracts that the scripts have to be fucking idiotic?

The following includes SPOILERS.

The elaborately built suspension of "this is really happening" breaks just too many times: Do we have itty bitty sized spacecraft flying into the sun and having some massive instant effect? Yes. Do we have only one man out of a big crew doing all the trajectory and guidance calculations, and then doing a trivial mistake, costing lives, with nobody checking the work? Yes. Do we run out of oxygen in a huge flying space station in a matter of few hours? Yes. Do we have a rogue leader with a god complex? Yes. Turned partially monster? Yes. Do the supposedly calm and professional very thoroughly picked crew members argue, fight (obligatory machos) and panic (obligatory frail girl) constantly? Well, not all the time, but still somewhat.

At least there were no space aliens or gun fights.

Probably this is as good as it can get as a modern scifi movie, and it still sucks compared to what it could be.

The script. The script. Please. What is it always preventing it from being even remotely sensible? All the countless millions and the innumerable work hours derailed for want of a reasonable even remotely plausible and un-cliched script.

Take for example Risto Isom�ki's "Pime�n pilven ritarit" Finnish novel. It has it's good and bad moments, but overall it is quite similar to Sunshine (predates it by quite a lot though). A crew is sent to deflect an asteroid that is going to hit earth. I can spoil it to you since it's never going to be translated anyway. The craft uses a solar sail and on the return trip they must pass close to the sun. The solar sails rip and the crew must repair them, resulting in quite similar scenes compared to Sunshine, except more believable.

All in all somewhat nice but can't they get a single engineer or physicist to read the script through? It boggles the mind. 

I watched this again the other day and loved it, like you say the sets are absolutely fantastic!

I loved the camera effects used, and the sound effects too are just brilliant.

Yes there are issues with the plot, but imo the film manages to deal with them very well 

I was constantly amazed at how good it looked, especially for a UK film. The spacesuits, yes! Fantastic visual style, they had a slight 1970s tinge I thought.

The thing that let it down for me was definitely the ridiculous space-danger twist at the end. Oh dear. 

its quite good isnt it, even though it rips the 3 big sci fi movies at every turn (Alien, 2001, Solaris). 

Do the Right Thing (1989) - pretty entertaining and amusing film from Spike Lee which centres on racial tensions in some Brooklyn suburb but works mainly because the characters and their interactions are interesting and because its visually inventive.

I don�t think its all that successful on a serious level, especially the last act, which seems not that well thought through. Still, kept me entertained throughout, john turturro and danny aiello are especially good value.

6.5-7/10


Tell No One (2006) - extremely disappointing french mystery/drama/thriller that is just plain silly, relies almost entirely on its plot (which is not very good) and is just poorly made.

Francois Cluzet plays a man who was the number one suspect in his wife's death and becomes the number one suspect again when similar deaths start happening 8 years later around the same place his wife was killed.

By the end, the plot folds back on itself so many times that you stop caring what little you did about the paper thin characters.

Having said all of that, I'm sure there will be an english remake at some point.

3.5-4/10


The Orphanage (2007) - its not only the americans who are currently highly unoriginal and derivative in the horror/thriller genre. This recent spanish offering, produced by Guillermo del Toro, borrows heavily from not only other recent spanish based movies in the genre (eg The Devil's Backbone, Pan's Labyrinth and The Others) but also from the recent asian horror wave (eg The Ring and Dark Water).

First time director Juan Antonio Bayone lacks the directorial skill of his producer and has no sense of storytelling and a very sloppy shooting style. Only the ending is well executed and even that, despite the good execution, does not deliver because its telegraphed far too early.

5/10


I Walked With a Zombie (1943) - firstly, quite possibly the worst title ever for what is actually a good film. Secondly, there is a kind of demented brilliance in taking the basic plot of Jane Eyre, transposing it to the Caribbean and mixing it with a bit of voodoo. The result is an impressive gothic drama made by Jacques Tourneur and produced by Val Lewton.

Tourneur was a master of using shadows and had a keen sense of ambience, atmosphere and otherworldly eeriness. He uses all those elements to make an ambiguous, interesting film that is quite entertaining.

7/10

Also, I believe the makers of the Saw movies are remaking this in the near future. Given what they have made so far, I'm sure the classiness will be replaced by an all out gorefest.



Sweeney Todd - I dont like musicals generally. My main issues with most musicals is that the songs don�t add to and break up the narrative too much and most of the musicals I like avoid this by integrating the songs into the narrative.

This one still has a few songs that seem fluffy but in general I had no problems. It also helps that the execution is of a very high standard and the lyrics and music are first rate too.

As for the rest of it, its one of Burton's most assured works and another of Depp's terrific performances (not that its Depp alone that works, Helena Bonham Carter and Alan Rickman are also excellent).

7.5/10 

I think the cameraman was a bit of a psycho. There was one section in particular where

[SPOILER]
they have to climb across from one apartment building into one that has fallen onto it. They are a few hundred feet up and the guy decides to turn off the camera as he climbs across the roof because it looks far to risky... only he turns it back on moments later whilst still not quite across the roof and with a bit of climbing to do. What a fucktard.

Also, what the hell happened to the monster at the end? It killed that guy and then it seemed to vanish and let the others escape. Maybe I passed out from fright and missed it?
[/SPOILER]

I enjoyed it though. Definitely go see it at the cinema I reckon... might be a bit late though. 

I think they were still dealing with the monster at the end. 

last sound clip is "It's Alive". 

saw a number of things over (my) long weekend, Friday inadvertently turned into zombie movie day :

Planet Terror (2007) - this is more like it, Robert Rodriguez's effort for the Grindhouse double is heaps better than Tarantino's Death Proof. Much more fun, much more extreme and more in line with the sleazy B movies they were trying to emulate.

7/10


28 Weeks Later (2007) - much better than its predecessor 28 Days Later, mainly because it doesn�t self destruct with a lame last act. Juan Carlos Fresnadillo's movie is tenser, directed far more tautly and manages to incorporate social commentary without beating you over the head with it. There is a couple of moments of dubious plotting but they are overshadowed by the terrifically mounted suspense moments, of which there are many.

7-7.5/10


30 Days of Night (2007) - good premise, bad film. It reaches levels of stupidity that are just hard to fathom. The only good thing it does is make a great case for never ever combining quick cutting/hand held cameras with open shutter photography. I'm sure the intention was to make the action look more exciting, instead its all just a blurry, sped up mess.

3/10


I am Legend (2007) - did they even have a script for this film? There is zero narrative flow in this, absolutely terrible. And where did all the money go? The CGI is atrocious. Total rubbish.

2/10


Blast of Silence (1963) - rough, experimental and tedious noir film from Allen Barron that is aiming to be gritty, existential and bleak. The basic plot of following around a lone hitman preparing for his latest hit was done much better by Jean Pierre Melville in his classic film starring Alain Delon, Le Samourai. This one has a couple of nice bits, mainly with well written side characters, but is pretty average otherwise.

5.5/10


Stardust (2007) - quite enjoyable tongue in cheek fantasy adventure in the same vein as The Princess Bride, but I enjoyed this a lot more than that one. It zips along and never drags and while it never really takes off to any great heights, it's quite entertaining for most its duration.

7/110


Death of a Cyclist (1955) - Juan Antonio Bardem's great film takes the small incident of an adulterous couple running over a cyclist and uses it to comment on everything from the spanish civil war, the moral decay of society and the fickleness of relationships. And it does all that while still managing to tighten the screws in a Hitchcockian fashion so that the narrative isnt put aside. Theres also a very noticeable F Scott Fitzgerald feel to the world portrayed in the movie which is interesting if you like The Great Gatsby.

8/10


Beowulf (2007) - on the right track, its about time there was an adult orientated animated film. The execution's not quite there, I havent read the source material but you can tell it�s a great story with interesting themes, not all of which are explored here due to the breezy running time. Still, it's a fairly entertaining movie, albeit a light one, that is much better than the trailers suggested and with some excellently orchestrated action and drama scenes in the second half.

6/10 

Watched this for the second time the other night, the first time I was in a cinema but I was too close to the screen to really do anything other than crane my neck and I couldnt see the movie properly.
I like the film for a few things: it's pretty gruesome, er, the special effects aren't too bad...
Meh. Nope, running out of things I liked about it.
I just think that they skimped out on script (again) and character development. And the monster FX seemed forced. The gory parts were often cut. I prefer the movies from the eighties. The effects are cooler and more believeable because they ARENT done with computers. Robocop, Terminator, Aliens (OK some FX are computers, but mostly just fine set-pieces, good acting and clever screen-play as well as cool props) all were cool.
I dont like so much this shiny over polished computer effects approach we have to movies like that these days. They're just not gritty and dark enough. I dont know...