cant be arsed with a proper review but this is the most impressed I've been with dialogue in a modern film for a very long time. 

i read somewhere the opening scene (where mark splits up with his girlfriend) took 99 takes to get right. i can believe it too 

Oh my word. Nothing about this film makes any sense on any level. I wasn't expecting it to be good, but I wasn't expecting it to be this bad. 

Also saw Black Swan. That was very much better. The last half hour is just crazy, everyone walks out of the cinema in a daze.

Kermode's instant reaction (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKROo2EALlM) was about how I felt (with less film references) 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKROo2EALlM 

I thought it made sense. 

the casting, the "3D", the plot, the dialogue, the character interactions, the fact that no-one apparently read the script and told them "this is garbage" - no really, nothing made sense.

I admit the end - where they were driving half a car around the top floor of an office block whilst being shot at with rocket launchers - was quite funny, but it didn't make sense. 

Superman didn't make sense either, but i don't hear anyone complaining about it. 

Enjoyed this movie. Fast paced and intelligent. Made me stay up till 4:00am, working on computer! ;) 

I watched Chinatown Nitin. Took me a fortnight over 3 sittings... I was a bit disappointed in it.

The soundtrack is great, Nicholson's acting is great; although he does come off as a bit of an arrogant slob with his low energy, but that's how he is in all his movies and he was at his best here.

Good cinematography and sets. I wish there was more of Chinatown... The ending scene as the camera moved up across the Chinatown street was awesome. Chinatown seemed to be an entire subplot with a lot of history that was never even explained. I was waiting the entire movie for the Chinatown plot to suddenly unveal. But it never did. What on earth was the movie named Chinatown for when it's an unimportant part of his past? Maybe I missed something...

The mystery and pacing of the story was all good. The thing I think I didn't really like was the plot just wasn't that epic. For one of the greatest Film Noir's of all time, I was expecting something better than "someones stealing water to make themselves rich... and a dude was killed to cover it up". And there was never really a proper conclusion to it... instead the cops are blaming the wrong person for the murder, ignore the water conspiracy completely, then shoot the wrong person in the fkn head. End story.

Is the sequel any good? 

Ok I get the Chinatown title now. Meant to suggest no matter what he does, he can't succeed in this case. Just like in Chinatown. meh. 

Double Indemnity is good (widely considered one of the best, though I prefer others) Great script, some fun lines in it ("I hired you because I thought you were smarter than the others...you're not smarter, just a little taller").

The Big Heat is a cracker (features a loathsome Lee Marvin)

But the two best are:

Sunset boulevard. Really creepy and weird. The female lead is mental.

Kiss Me Deadly. Brilliant film, very dark and dirty, which builds nicely on cold war paranoia resulting in a crazy ending. Oh and the main character is called Mike Hammer, how can you not watch it now?

Serious, watch those two films :p 

Sunset Boulevard is also the original source of a large amount of cliche lines "I'm ready for my close up now" for example. 

personally I consider Chinatown to have the greatest script of all time but it's not remotely because of the plot. Casablanca is probably a close second and the same applies to that.

I guess I dont rate plot/story as highly as a lot of people. To me its all about the details, characters and the interactions within the story/plot that makes things interesting. And Chinatown (and Casablanca) has plenty of that I think.

The sequel actually makes for a good comparison, it has a much better plot but the exectuion of the movie and the script is severely lacking (Nicholson is no Polanski and Robert Towne seems to be a one hit wonder). 

if you like Film Noirs, zqf has listed some essential ones (DI probably has one of the best dialogue scripts of all time IMHO).

Although I would replace The Big Heat with Out of the Past. Or The Killers. Or The Killing. 

I think Faye Dunaway's performance in Chinatown is quite unerrated. Although it takes a second viewing to fully appreciate it IMHO. 

When you say The Killers, do you mean the 60s version with Lee Marvin and Ronald Reagan? :p

Since I keep mentioning him, I'll also mention Point Blank, very stylish film with Marvin again, not quite a classic but good fun, and remade by Mel 'Stop Giving this man work' Gibson as Payback, which is fucking awful.

"Lawl if we desaturate it it'll be all colourless, like a noir, yeah!!!! Can we get on with my torture scene now... hurt me hurt me hurt me yeaaah"

He was in the remake of Edge of Darkness too. Bet that was fucking awful and missed the point as well...

/rant. 

nah the 1947 version with Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner. The 60's version is ok but the 47 one is a great film.

Point Blank is cool, I agree it's not a great film, but very entertaining. Havent seen Payback so cannot comment on that although I think a few people posted a while back and quite enjoyed it. 

Didn't realise Payback was a remake. I thought it was a great film for your violent crime-action. It's not what you'd consider a classic, but your typical 90s popcorn action for guys in their 20s. In fact it's one of my favourite Mel Gibson movies.

Apparently Sunset Blvd is on my seen list, but I don't think I have seen it so i'll have to give it a watch.

I've seen The Killing (in fact i've seen everything Kubrick) which was good. Great ending. Chinatown owned it though.

I'm not that big on film noir, but probably The Maltese Falcon is my fav of the ones i've seen. 

tyime to watch 'If...' 

Do not miss Key Largo! 

Although i'm one of the guys who loved payback ;-) 

not in the same league as No Country for Old Men, but its still blood good and the dialogue is killer. 

OK, I saw a review of this a while ago, and it basically made out that this sequel was stale and only for hard-core fans of the first film. Personally I found this film quite jarring. It scared the crap out of me. Paranormal Activity 2 is quite disturbing, but in a relatively sophisticated way. I love the way the film has zero music. The silence is just deafening. You can hear where they have purposefully increased the sound of the static to highlight weird noises, but on other occasions there are weird noises which have not had their volume increased. The effect of this is that you are never sure when something might happen which could be frightening. Swear to god this movie gave me chills. I have memories of nightmares I had when I was a small child, and the film has underlying themes which play on that. Haven't been this scared by a film for a long time. Very high marks/10