Dr. Movie Reviews; Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Jason Isaacs

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Bringing Up Baby
"Donate a million dollars? Say, that's pretty white of Mr Peabody, isn't it?"

Nothing could be whiter.

B+

The Hidden

Pretty paint-in-the-numbers 80's sci-fi/horror/detective comedy that had a lot of shades of Terminator, but the alien was pretty creepy, especially at the start, and the hero was a proto-Keanu Reeves which I'm still not sure is a pro or a con. Also it ends with a Senator being roasted alive on stage so I guess all criticism should be kicked out while he's still struggling to pull his pants up.

B+

The Black Cauldron
I like parts of it, but it's not hard to see why it was such a failure! Generally the appeal of Disney animated movies are the colour and splendour of the rich fantasy lands, but this is a rare case where it actually appears to be even uglier and in even worse shape than ours. I liked some of the characters, like the Welsh minstrel, but the sidekicks on both sides of the alignment fence inspired George Lucas to make Jar Jar all those years later.

Earns distinction for featuring a villain that was simultaneously more malevolent and more outright moronic than this champ:



WHY WOULD YOU LEAVE THE ONLY PEOPLE WHO HAVE THE ABILITY AND WILL TO STOP YOU ALONE AND UNGUARDED IN A ROOM WITH THE UNSTOPPABLE YET FRAGILE SOURCE OF YOUR POWER. That is the first thing you learn in Cruelliard.

C-

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First one, then the others.


Inglourious Basterds
Oh my fucking Dalai Lama. This film was amazingly awesome.

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I loved that it was an alternate history, since the real history ending would've sucked. I mean, come on, you can't deny you loved seeing

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Hitler get annihilated by those guns.

.

It was all classic Tarantino. I can see Christoph Waltz being nominated for some awards for this, don't see Pitt so much. Kruger was pretty good in it, but not sure if award-worthy, and Mike Myers' and Samuel L. Jackson's parts were pretty funny. Mélanie Laurent could get some awards nods too. Speaking of which, she was pretty hot. Just saying, just saying. I'll give this an A, just behind District 9 and ahead of Up as the best film I've seen this year. Also my second favorite Tarantino, behind Reservoir Dogs.

Definitely. Christoph Waltz needs to be showered with Oscars and other lesser awards that he can throw away in disgust. Hans Landa is definitely the greatest character in any Tarantino movie and possibly in the history of cinema. So many different facets that are all neatly summed up with that one line, "I'm a detective."

But, yeah, Brad Pitt was wooden. Nice work on the arrivaderci line though. Mike Myers was surprisingly good. I expected him to be really out there and have a cartoonish accent but he played the role very well. B.J. Novak was good too. The ending was a surprise since I expected everyone to die.

any1else, I jumped at that bit too. Then pretended I didn't by fiddling with zips and buttons and scratching the back of my head.

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Like the time I pretended I lost my purse when I started crying in that Flipper movie with Elijah Wood.
I was only 8 or 9 at the time, shut up.

My Sister's Keeper
Before the movie started there was no sound to the preceding commercials but I could hear the music for the opening credits of Inglorious Basterds in the cinema next door, and then 'Papa!'.
I didn't know the chick from Medium was going to be in this. Movie wasn't too bad, apparenlty the book ends differently. I think I like how the movie ends better, but I would really have to read the book to pass judgement on that. I may or may not have gotten slighty teary at some point(s). But I didn't pretend to lose my purse this time.

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Recent movie excursions:

It Might Get Loud
Directed by the same guy who gave us the half-aborted hippie masterpiece, An Inconvenient Truth, this movie is 100% guitargasm in which Led Zeppelin mastermind Jimmy Page, Mr Overproduction: U2's The Edge, and garage rock god and heralded savior of rock music, Jack White of the White Stripes convene in an empty soundstage filled with guitars and amplifiers in what can only be described as musician's fanfiction or at least a wetdream. Best parts are definitely the mini jamsessions which pop up between the three and them discussing their playing styles, and describing in droolworthy detail, their famous guitars and other equipment. Edge is surprisingly funny, poking fun at the infantile simplicity of his songs, admitting that it's all in the myriad of effects that he trots out for every song. Page lives up to his reputation as being a quiet and mysterious figure, but shows his human side while listening to Link Wray’s Rumble.l And Mr White comes off as possibly the coolest man on the face of the planet, showcasing his multi-talents including upholstery and building a guitar in a gazebo from scratch using nothing but a 2x4, hammer & nails, and a coke bottle. Might bore some casual music fans, but it's like a slice of heaven for an avid musician like myself.

9/10

Inglourious Basterds
Now, I'm as big a Tarantino fan as just about anyone. I wasn't too high on the idea of this movie when I first heard the details, but all that ran away as soon as Hans Landa walked on the screen. My God, that man is like Darth Vader, Hannibal Lecter, and the Devil himself rolled into one, and just ooozes charisma. He made me want to be a Nazi. Easily up there with Pulp Fiction as one of Mr Tarantino's best works.

Bear Jew FTW!
10/10

District 9
Literally just got back from the theater. Not exactly what I was expecting, but stellar nonetheless. I really got a Cloverfield meets Battlestar Galactica vibe from the whole movie, and producer Peter Jackson doesn't disappoint with an inventive story, fantastic special effects, and great acting from that little alien kid. I did feel that the whole Mech battle thing dragged on a biiiit too long at the end, but I still laughed like an asshole every time a MNU grunt got vaporized. I will say, it's left totally open for a sequel, but I would really like to have the movie stand alone on it's very commendable efforts. No need to sully it with a "to be continued..."

8/10

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and building a guitar in a gazebo from scratch using nothing but a 2x4, hammer & nails, and a coke bottle.

What is he, the Professor from Gilligan's Island?


(Or MacGyver...)

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Definitely MacGyver.

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director Peter Jackson

Producer.

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director Peter JacksonNeil Blomkamp

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There. Edited for the fucknuggets.

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There. Edited for the fucknuggets people that were right.

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Final Destination 3D. Wow. What. A. Terrible. Film. But the 3D was excellent.

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fuck it, I'm pretty sure my own death will be in 3D, so I can skip this

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The Time Traveler's Wife

Okay, a brief disclaimer before the review: I didn't go to see this movie because I'm a stupid teenage girl with a streak of hopeless romanticism and the desire to see an ever-so-dreamy Eric Bana in the buff--although, to be sure, I am all those things. I went to see it because I've been waiting for this movie ever since I read the book in, I think, 2006. The book is brilliant: it's this weird amalgum of sci-fi and romance that's dark and sad and sweet and funny and about a thousand other contradictory things.

The movie is, well...not so much. See, it sucks that I'm such a huge fan of the book, because I literally sat in the theater the whole time whining about how they totally bastardized it for the sake of creating The Notebook: Part Two (much to the alternate amusement and annoyance of my two friends, who accompanied me...because it's not like I have, y'know, a boyfriend to go see mushy movies with). I expected it to pale in comparison to the book, but I at least expected better execution, seeing as how the story itself is so rich.

Anyway, review time: The concept of the movie is so weird (a guy time travels against his will as the result of a genetic disorder, which makes it hard to have sexy-time with his wife), and the producers don't do much to acclimate you to this. The characters blithely accept it (which worked in the book, to an extent, but just feels contrived and self-consciously "clever" in the movie), without elaborating much. It's just kind of like, "Oh, you travel through time; that's kind of neat. Instead of trying to develop how, exactly, this affects your relationship with your wife (seriously, we only need, like, two scenes of you dispassionately bickering to show that, hey, it puts stress on the marriage), let's instead show you two smooching a lot, because that'll tell the audience that you're in luuuuurve, and then it won't matter if we don't bother to develop you in any way that would make the audience remotely care about you. Seriously, who needs substance? Why can't we just see ridiculously attractive people exchanging various bodily fluids? What the hell is 'motivation', and why do our characters need it?"

So the wife's name is Clare, and she's sort of an unknown quantity. She loves her husband, yeah, and she gets ticked when he randomly time travels for weeks at a time (and she has to, like, eat dinner alone and stuff), but her main purpose in the movie is to either bitch about life's injustices, cry about the various tragedies that strike her and her husband, or blankly profess her undying love for the aforementioned husband. I usually love Rachel McAdams, but she was so freaking bland (which, to be fair, was more a result of the screenplay than the actress). I felt nothing for the character, and so I felt nothing when all these shitty things happened to her.

And then there's Henry, the husband. He's developed a bit more (and he actually has several scenes separate from McAdams that manage to tug at the ol' heartstrings slightly), but he lacks any edge. The film claims he's been domesticated by Clare, but we never get to see the old Henry, so we have nothing to compare Super Husband to.

That said, I do respect the filmmakers for including a few of the darker aspects of the book (

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namely a series of miscarriages that befall Clare

) in the movie, but it's just so...meh. I know books and movies are two completely different formats, but there were plenty of seemingly arbitrary changes made during the transition--and some really lovely scenes from the book were, for some reason, omitted from the movie in favor of, well, stupid ones. However, there are a few scenes that manage to dramatize what was a mere throwaway in the book (

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mainly involving winning lottery numbers and house-huntin'

), so it's not like they didn't try to take advantage of the medium while still remaining true to the story. But moments like that--ones that actually made me kind of smile--were few and far between.

I guess it wasn't all horrible--the last act and a half of the movie followed the book a bit more closely, and thus earned my halfhearted, cautious approval--but the bad stuff far outweighed the good. My problem, really, was with the first act, which should've established the characters and developed their romance in a much more substantial way. The clumsiness of it kind of soured me on the rest of the movie, which at least attempted to develop conflict and propel the story.

So if I look at the movie as its own entity, and disregard the book, then it's better than a lot of other films of its ilk. At the very least, it's earnest; it means well. It's an unabashedly sentimental love story about two characters who I cared more about on a page than I did in motion, with a few hits and about a thousand misses, and a whole lotta half-naked Eric Bana. I suppose it could've been worse.

C

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Inglorious Basterds

Awesome. To the max. Some friends had seen it, and i'd heard QT messes with history a little bit, and i was worried, since i didn't do modern history beyond year 8, that it would be something small that i wouldn't pick up on, but yeah, i'm pretty sure that's not how the war ended... Heh.

Eli Roth was fucking awesome. As was Brad Pitt. Bon-Jor-No. Gratzee. Heee

9 Nazi Scalps out of 10

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Can you imagine if common French words were not included in our cultural backgrounds? I'd have been going "Oui?! What that hell is that?!"

Oh, when I went and saw it, the top and bottom of the screen had been cut off for some reason, probably because people who work in cinemas are still trying to get an education, and we were unable to see the subtitles for maybe 5 minutes. Did we miss out on anything overly exciting?

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Inglorious Basterds

Loved it. Though some parts were a bit gresome for me that I couldn't watch, like the scalping. The movie was funny though. The ending was good, I liked that it was alternate history. I freaking LOVED Aldo Raine trying to do an Italian accent.... It was so fail.

8/10

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Inglorioud basterds

by far the funnest movie I've seen this year.  I thought Brad Pitt was hilarious and Landa was such a great villain

9/10

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Antichrist:

Crazy! And pretty good too. Lars von Trier is like David Lynch on some kind of drug.

8.5

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Surveillance

Was good up on till you find out

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the 2 FBI people kill the people in the van. Then it sucked.

First half A last half F

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(500) Days of Summer
Best romcom ever (of 2009). It works because Zooey Deschanel is so girl next door and Joseph Gordon-Levitt is so ugly. Everything about this film was brilliant (apart from some of the musical montages). 9/10

Funny People
WTF? This film just seemed like it was never going to end. Leslie Mann and Eric Bana didn't come into it until about 3/4 of the way through (I might be wrong since I lost track of time in my coma the film induced) and their characters didn't seem to have any point. Seth Rogen's character was completely unlikeable and I'm not even sure why I was supposed to sympathise with Adam Sandler's. The only good thing about this film was the brief cameo by Bryan Batt from Mad Men. The rest was just nonsensical plotless drivel. 1/10 (I liked one of the jokes but can't remember which one).

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Terminator Salvation
Not as bad as I expected, Moon Bloodgoodoodgoo and Common were pretty useless, but Sam Worthington and Bale were ok.
Due to the different camera filter (brown) instead of what I remember as a mostly blue palette in Camerons films, it doesn't reaaaally feel like a Terminator movie, but it had cool 'splosions and action and robots and a CGI T800!

C+

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Dirty Harry: the Enforcer
Viscous gibbons! Another encounter with a character saying "that's very white of you" to mean generous! And Callahan was being deliberately ironic! It's like they saw my life and put it on screen and then replaced it with something more interesting.
A lot shorter than the first two, and the bad guys lacked the threat threshold they needed (militant or not, it's hard to take hippies seriously), but still just as good as the first two.

B+

Casino Royal (1967)
It's pretty hard to decide if I liked this, but I can probably be forgiven. The movie couldn't even decide who it wanted the main character to be. Loud and pretty stupid, but reasonably entertaining!
C

Papillon
Deserves to be far more well known than it actually is! Far, far more well know.
  Most people I know don't even seem to know about it, and I can't remember even seeing it in any prominent critic's list, but everything about it seemed just right: the length, the pace, the what I assume was the actual live disembowelment of a crocodile, the character interaction. The sweatiest (and logically best) Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman performances I've seen yet. Highly recommended if you haven't seen it.
A+

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One-Sentence Reviews.

Fast & Furious
Wooden cast pretends to drive cars through blatantly computer-animated settings while Steve McQueen turns in his grave.

The Sting
Ocean’s Eleven, if it had taken place in the 1930s.

The Trouble With Harry
The master of suspense tried his hand at comedy and failed.

Angels With Dirty Faces
This 1938 crime epic is starting to show its age.

The International
Besides the realistic theme and one pretty cool gunfight, there’s nothing much going for this one unless you’re a lady, in which case there’s Clive Owen brooding.

Ghostbusters
The perfect film for any occasion except perhaps a funeral.

Premonition
Fails to predict how shitty it’s going to be.

The Manchurian Candidate (new one)
A sparkling rarity in that it massively improves upon the original.

Carrie
It’s hard to believe that 33 years after the release of this harrowing cautionary tale, American teenagers are still choosing to bully unstable telekinetic outcasts.

Topaz
Exciting, suspenseful, and riveting are words one associates with most of Alfred Hitchcock’s works, but not this one.

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and a CGI T1000 T-800!

Fixed

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Hey that guy's right!

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Although I feel a bit silly for even knowing that.

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Kinsey Or at least the parts I could safely watch with my parents in the next room; stupid IFC only comes in on the downstairs TV

So I don't know a whole lot about the real Kinsey, seeing as how I'm a 17-year old girl living in the twenty-first century, but this movie was interesting enough, as bio-pics go. Liam Neeson was great, and I think Laura Linney deserved an Oscar for the weepy, awkward sex scene towards the beginning of the movie (dude, I learned waaaay more about the hymen than I ever cared to).

The movie's got a definite narrative arc, which I like; but, even though the subject matter kind of demands it, all the Frank, Open Sex Talk becomes a bit gratuitous. (Oh, and Peter Sarsgaard makin' out with Liam Neeson was also pretty unnecessary, in an oh-god-my-eyes sort of way.) At least they acknowledge it; a lot of the dialogue seems pretty tongue-in-cheek (and tongue-in-every-other-possible-orifice).

So...yeah. Amusing, well-written, educational movie. Me likey.

B

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District 9

Pretty awesome
9.2/10

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The Station Agent

Wonderful film about a dwarf trainspotter (Peter Dinkledge) inheriting a train depot in New Foundland and trying to get away from it all, only to engage with a mouthy snack truck owner, an artist greaving from the death of her son, and a librarian.   Lovely pace, innoffensive and warm hearted, I enjoyed it.
8/10

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St. Elmo's Fire
Ah, the 80's. Back when sex was always fantastic, even if it was your first time. That girl was in Boston Legal as a grown up! And so on. I wish I could have my own apartment
The ooga da boogada boogadah thing was weird, but I'm sure back when the movie came out people thought it was cool. I mean, they thought their hairstyles were cool.

Planes, Trains and Automobiles
I had no idea what this was about before. It got kind of chick-flicky towards the end, didn't it? And that speech Candy gave in the hotel room only made me laugh because I realised that was what Family Guy made fun of once whenever it was. It was also predictable. But funny.

Misery
Well that was fun. I never want to become famous.

Children of Men
Wow. I'll have to watch that again on a non-rental-scratchless dvd. The parts I saw were edge-of-your-seatish.

Charlie and Boots
Paul Hogan has gotten old. This was also kind of chick flickish for a 'bro' movie. Some generic Aussie humour in it though. Not horrible. The kid at the immitation-Mexican restaurant was cute. "Garci-arse!"

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I finally got to see Up today (even though it doesn't come out till Thusday).

I really enjoyed it. It wasn't perfect but I'd still rate it above average (in comparison with Pixar's other movies). I intend to see it again next weekend (possibly several times) so maybe I'll have a better idea then but for now I can't decide if this is a movie to take your kids to or one to take your parents to.

I'd also like to compliment the trailer people for being so restrained when you consider what scenes they could have used from the movie. I didn't go in thinking that [thanks to the trailer(s)] I already knew what the movie was going to be about, nor did I come out thinking that all the best bits had been stolen by the trailer.

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Children of Men
Wow. I'll have to watch that again on a non-rental-scratchless dvd. The parts I saw were edge-of-your-seatish.

Said it before, but the final scenes of that movie are amazing.

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Said it before, but the final scenes of that movie are amazing.

I cried. I don't even know why, but I cried. Maybe it was unrelated to the film, or I had become so much more entangled in the events than I realised or wanted to. I tend to do that. It's kind of annoying.

I finally got to see Up today (even though it doesn't come out till Thusday).

Ooh, I want to see that. I was looking up movie times last Thurdsay and one website said it came out 3rd Sept so I got all excited, but then I found out it was this week. What a rip! Hopefully seeing it on Friday. I like this notion that the trailer doesn't have the best parts of the film in it. I hate when people do that.

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9

Kind of a disappointment but still ok.

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God is the Scientist and also 9 and 7 are Adam and Eve for some reason.

[Reply #274 on:]

So you only wanted to spoil it for your facebook friends, not PEEL?

[Reply #275 on:]

Quit stealing my opinion of 9, hojew.


For a movie as short as it was, it sure felt like a long freaking movie, which I'm pretty sure is a bad thing.

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Jacob's Ladder - 9/10
Changeling - I loved it actually, not really expecting to - 9/10
Waltz With Bashir - Conversely I thought I'd like this more, beautiful animation but the story fails to hold interest at times. 7/10

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Jacob's Ladder is a great movie. I never saw the other two.

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JCVD - Better if I had seen more JCVD films. I liked the middle-film monologue, though.

A Film With Me In It - I had my finger on the fast-forward button constantly. Didn't really get anywhere interesting.

Clerks 2 - J&SB are the only reason why I watched this. The two leads are the most annoying retards ever put to film. And that goatee? HAHA.

Zack & Miri Make A Porno - A shit-load of material was left out of this - you realise this when you watch the deleted scenes. Pretty funny overall. Their apartment reminded me of my first one.. but I used a toaster not a stove-top.

Choke - Chuck's a shit writer, and this is pretty much a soft-core porno with an artsy backstory.

Juno - Mouldy Peaches suck.

Sideways - Two emotionally-stunted idiots go on a week-long roadtrip before one of them gets married. Ends with me pressing the Stop button half-way through to take a shit and then forgetting to watch this DVD again until I had to return it to the video-store a few days later.

[Reply #279 on:]

Would one of you Aussie peeps please share A Film With Me In It through the magic of the internet plssssss?

Choke I saw a while ago, gotta hit up some sex addiction meetings.