It stinks! (movie review thread)

[Reply #80 on:]

The dog barf is her totem.

In the post movie lols after Inception, me and my friends figured our dongs would be our totems, you start to windmill it and if it doesn't stop, you're dreaming.

Anyhoo,
Samurai Avenger: The Blind Wolf
Mix The Bride, Zatoichi and The Man With No Name and you get Blind Wolf!
Blinded by a sadistic mobster after his wife and daughter were raped and killed in front of him (just the wife, no kiddy rape fortunately), he trains as a samurai for the years the killer is in jail (imprisoned for a totally different crime oddly).
But he must battle 7 assassins to get to the jail where his target is being released: a young trucker guy, an old man with bikini samurai girl helpers, a hypnotist woman with magic boobs, a tough old guy, a pregnant witch that can raise zombie samurai from their coffins and a sniper and his cowboy buddies... and a surprise seventh guy.

Movie is ridiculously cheesy low budget  grindhouse, plenty of slow motion iaido shots with the sun in the background and guitar riffs wailing, hilariously good if you like this kind of thing (NSFW trailer)

C

[Reply #81 on:]

Inception and Toy Story

Both f'ing awesome. I'm glad I went to see TS3 at 21:50, no children in the whole theater, making noise and I could tear up by myself I will have to see them both a few more times.

[Reply #82 on:]

The Infidel

Rather nice little Omid Djalili vehicle about how to sort out the conflict between the Isrealis and the Palestinians...

...not really.  Omid is a British muslim who discovers he was adopted and born a Jew.  Hilarity does ensue.

8/10

[Reply #83 on:]

Time for some pointless One-Sentence Movie Reviews!


Inception

Awesome, a fourth Matrix movie!


The Vampire's Assistant

Nice to see a more amusing take on the dreadfully overdone vampire archetype, but this one doesn't seem to know if it's taking itself seriously or not.


Men Who Stare at Goats

Not bad but could have used more goats.


Gentlemen Broncos

A delightfully quirky pile of crap.


The Descent Part 2

Basically a remake of the first film, but without the suspense or the psychological element.


Universal Soldier: Regeneration

Confusingly ignoring the previous sequel attempts, this one actually manages to be a half-decent film - barebones and gritty.


Shutter Island

Killed off all of the naïve and optimistic expectations I once held about creepy island asylums.


A Perfect Getaway

There are few film 'twists' that manage to genuinely surprise me, and this wasn't one of them.


Percy Jackson & The Lightning Thief

Potentially fun premise utterly ruined by Hollywood's insistence on cramming everything full of teenagers and their insipid pop-culture references.


Alice in Wonderland

.............What the hell was that??


The Hurt Locker

Realistic, but not as utterly spectacular as everybody made it out to be (nothing ever is).


Edge of Darkness

Mel takes on a shadowy conspiracy of Jews.


Green Zone

A film that deftly paints the invention of fictional Weapons of Mass-Destruction in Iraq as being the result of one man's actions, rather than the knowing complicity of a government - nice job, arseholes.


Clash of the Titans

Misleading title - no actual Titans are depicted in this film.


Whiteout

Bleak, cold and featureless; and also set in Antarctica.

[Reply #84 on:]

Clash of the Titans

Misleading title - no actual Titans are depicted in this film.

Yes. That was annoying. Hopefully in the sequel...

[Reply #85 on:]

Inception

Awesome, a second Matrix movie!

Fixed that for you.

[Reply #86 on:]

Kakushi Ken: Oni no Tsume (The Hidden Blade)
Second film in The Twilight Samurai trilogy, and the plots seem fairly similar, both feature a lonely samurai who's ordered to kill a rebel by his clan, and then eventually reunites with an old love interest.
Both films have scenes of the new Western weapons (guns!) and samurai being trained to use them, and the bits with the frustrated Edo samurai who has to train the dopey country bumpkins are quite funny.
Like the 1st film it features very little fight scenes and the protagonist is reluctant to fight and prefers the simple life.
Good film.
A-

[Reply #87 on:]

Salt
Surprisingly didn't suck. It was pretty entertaining.

Inception
Oh my god it was so awesome. Awesome to the max!

[Reply #88 on:]

Inception

Awesome, a second Matrix movie!

Fixed that for you.

Ahhh... a Holocaust denier, are you?
Reloaded and Revolutions happened man. Face up to it.
And I don't think they're as terrible as everybody makes out.

[Reply #89 on:]

Stardust

Cute movie...let's move on.

C+

[Reply #90 on:]

Cats and Dogs 2: The Revenge of Kitty Galore

I was dragged to this movie with my younger cousin. Usually I like children's movies (and movies in general), but...

Never. Again.

I advise anyone who does not wish for their brain to ooze out of their skull from the sheer stupidity to stay at least 5000 kilometres from this movie.

F

[Reply #91 on:]

Impulse 1984

OK not great. It's one of those when small town gets crazy movies.

C

The Forgotten

A big fat bucket of meh! Too much like a lifetime channel movie.

C-

[Reply #92 on:]

I've been watching a lot of films lately, I'll do more reviews later, but I wanted to get this one out of the way first:

True Stories
This film was made by David Byrne of Talking Heads in 1986. I quite liked it, but I quite like quirky things. It has a great performance by John Goodman, David Byrne's usual oddness, and some hilarious lines. It also has great versions of Radio Head and People Like Us. If you like quirky movies, you'll love this. If not, you'll probably get bored.
B

[Reply #93 on:]

Centurion
Michael Fassbender plays Quintus Dias, Roman soldier captured by the Picts in Scotland, he escapes and meets the 9th Legion led by Dominic West (McNulty in The Wire) sent to destroy the Picts and their king, but they're betrayed by Pict tracker Etain (Olga Kurylenko, whose accent is hidden by playing a mute) and the whole legion is ambushed and decimated.
The small number of survivors must escape the Picts hunting them and get back to friendly territory.
Sort of Gladiator meets Apocalyto, simple story nothing fancy, but well shot and some good action.

B-

[Reply #94 on:]

The Land That Time Forgot (2009)

Why the fuck did the Nazis have American weapons?  Seriously.  There must be a dozen different Mauser variants they could have used and would have looked at least a little like K98ks, but they used M1 Garands and Carbines.  I'm less disappointed that the story of this movie was wildly different from Edgar Rice Burroughs' book than the fact that the Nazis have Garands and Carbines.  Another thing that bugs me is the dinosaur population.  There are also various scientific incongruities that drove me to distraction.

The story is stupid (did I mention the Nazis?) and could have been saved by more dinosaurs.  The characters are also stupid and should have been killed off more efficiently.

[Reply #95 on:]

Inception

Finally got around to seeing this, and honestly, it's just fantastic. Everything about it is fantastic... even how confusing it gets at times with the multiple things happening at once.

Some damn good acting in it as well.

Overall I'm completely made up and I would pay to see it again, and possibly again...

A

[Reply #96 on:]

Youth In Revolt
Another Michael Cera awkward-quiet-indie-guy-falls-in-love-with-cute-girl vehicle, only this time he gets a touch of Tyler Durden and gets a rebellious split personality with some humorous results!
Co stars Fred Willard, Zach Galafinitessimal, Justin Long and the posh Indian dude have some good moments too, decent.

B-

[Reply #97 on:]

The Land That Time Forgot (2009)

Agreed.  File this one under "Why was this film made?"

[Reply #98 on:]

Given the year of release, I'd guess it was because Land of the Lost was made.

Tidal Wave or Haeundae

Mega tsunami vs. Busan, South Korea.

Show spoiler

Mega tsunami wins!

Show spoiler

Twice!

It was actually not bad for a disaster film.  In much the same way that The Host or Cloverfield were "little people" movies, Tidal Wave dispenses with powerful decision-makers or people rushing in to stop the disaster and focuses on normal people with normal, albeit melodramatic, problems who happen to get swept up in the cataclysm.  It does not, however dispense with many other disaster movie cliches like the obsessive scientist whose ideas are not taken seriously because they are crazy, the reconciliation of romantic relationships in the face of the tragedy, and obnoxious children.  Actually the main child characters were not bad.  The adult males were far more hammy.

The special effects were pretty good too.  Only once or twice does the CGI on the wave look shoddy, and the Gwangan Bridge sequence were pretty clearly green screened, but it wasn't so bad as to detract greatly from the overall effect.   The practical effects were also fairly impressive.

Anyway, it's a good flick if you're into disaster movies and can stand waiting through 90 minutes of mildly confusing (thanks partly to the subtitles on my version being cut off) and obnoxious human drama.

[Reply #99 on:]

The Last Airbender: Just go watch the TV series.

F

[Reply #100 on:]

I heard the TV series sucks too.

[Reply #101 on:]

The TV series is good because it is entertaining, has character development, and they explain what is actually happening.
And I'm saying this as someone that doesn't normally like/watch anime style shows

[Reply #102 on:]

Flickan som lekte med elden (The Girl Who Played with Fire)
Part two of the Millennium Trilogy, this time social misfit hacker Lisbeth Salander is hiding by traveling around the world, and investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist is investigating sex trafficking with a new member of his team, but they get on the case when the new member and his girlfriend are murdered and evidence suggesting Lisbeth is the killer surfaces.
Good Swedish thriller.
B+

Now I bet Svip will come in and complain.

[Reply #103 on:]

The Lovely Bones

I tried to read the book several times but couldn't make it past the first twenty or so pages. The movie's not so bad--it's sad and touching and well-acted (Mark Wahlberg is pretty good, and I love me some Susan Sarandon--and Saoirse Ronan, though oddly-named, is a really awesome actress, and she carries the movie quite well), and it's visually kind of nifty. But there's not much plot, really, beyond figuring out who the murderer is. And that's kind of uninspired. I mean, watching the family come to terms with a sudden death, and the toll it takes on them, is interesting, but it's been done. The supernatural aspect works in some spots but not in others, and though, like I said, I wasn't able to make my way through the book, I have a feeling that narrating a story from heaven is a lot less cloying in novel-form than it is in movie-form.

B+, because it held my interest and the acting was good. The main hook of the book, though (a dead girl narrating from heaven) doesn't translate so well onto film--so I think, though the movie tries for a sense of wonderment and never wallows in the tragedy of its subject matter, it still doesn't quite captivate you.

[Reply #104 on:]

The Road

Based on the Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Cormac McCarthy, Viggo and his kid wander south scavenging through the remnants of the United States which is largely uninhabited and devastated by an ashen nuclear winter that has destroyed almost all life on Earth.  Along the way they do some father-son bonding, meet other desperate survivors and avoid cannibals.   Now when I watch movies, my favorite special effects are always the ones that the viewer takes for granted.  Did you know that Forrest Gump had three times the CGI special effects of it's blockbuster contemporary Jurassic park?  So when I see an action movie the like of Transformers that just wants to make CGI porn, I consider it nothing less than disengaging.  I like effects when they contribute to the storytelling and the realism, not the ones that are showy so I'm happy to say that this movie is filled with special effects that you just accept as the world that has been painted.  From the persistently gray ash choked sky to the sweeping landscapes of ruined crops and abandoned buildings.  The film totally soaks you in this bleak world of desperation and starvation.  The movie rolls along like a colossal, world-sized "Deliverance" road movie with some truly stellar performances from Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smitt-McPhee who never abandon either their strong father and son interactions nor their persistent dread of the world around them.   Charlize Theron also appears in flashback as the wife and mother in the family who had given up on living long before the events of the film.  In the travels of the father and son you can see why she might elect to surrender.  Every survivor they meet is a potential threat and a murderous one at that for it's set out right from the get go that if someone kills you in this world, you don't get buried, your murderers eat you.  Still, there are some left in this land who will not eat one another and are only trying to live to see tomorrow; willing to scrounge off the leftovers of civilization to do it.  Robert Duvall plays one such survivor in a brief, but very touching role.  For all the sad and wasted landscape this movie is beautifully shot with broad yet tragic views of a world in ruin, and several moments where the characters are framed at a distance and you can't do anything but soak in how bleak yet peaceful the dead world has become.   It's difficult to classify this movie, but I would have to categorize it as a thriller.  There's one scene in particular where the father and son come across a house, and find something particularly chilling inside which leads them into a fight for survival.

The last Book-to-movie that I saw where I read the book and then watched the movie was Sean Penn's brilliant adaptation of Into the Wild.  I thought it was one of the most brilliant and true renderings of print-to-screen I'd seen, and I'd have to say that The Road also ranks up there.  The hopelessness of the setting makes the hopefulness of the main characters all the more important, and the viewer is compelled to latch on to the pair as they forge on against impossible odds.

Another great showpiece to the film is the sometimes lovely and melodic and at times grating atonal score assembled by Nick Cave and musician Warren Ellis.  The instruments used for a minimalist ensemble that delivers both somber tunes of sad adventure and terse moments of horror.  It's a well made musical treat.

As said before, the production in this movie is very solid, but it's a bit unnerving when you find out that much of the derelict world was created by filming on location in the Katrina-hit sections of New Orleans.

Overall I'm going to have to give this a solid recommendation, and I really think that it was overlooked by the Oscars.

A

[Reply #105 on:]

Nuclear winter? I think it's kinda ambiguous, boats in the middle of highways and such suggest tidal events, the book never nailed it down anyhow.

The Expendables!
Leave your brain at the door, but bring your MASSIVE MAN BAWLS and love of action stars, you'll need them.
Small testicled sissyboys go and comb your golden curls at the ladies tea party, because if you don't have testosterone sweating out of your GIANT MAN BAWLS then GTFO before you get exploded by a helicopter with giant swords for rotor blades thrown at you!!
If you can't answer the following question right then this film isn't for you:
What do you do to a guy on fire who is trying to escape the fire?
1. Stop drop and roll him
2. Run and find an extinguisher
3. Flying punch him back into the goddamn fire!

Super cheesy, but action...y and explode...y.
C+

[Reply #106 on:]

Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World

Greeeeeat fun. Not sure where to start really, i'll just list things. Good fight scenes. Wallace is great. The effects/lo-fi graphics are really cool. Like all the snappy editing. Good music.

Less good things. I still don't think Michael Cera was the right guy to play Scott, he's a little too Michael Cera-y. Scott should be a bit cooler and less awkward. The ending is a bit different to the Comics, and they have to cut out quite a bit. But they keep in enough great stuff, so it's all good.

7,000,000,000 Points

[Reply #107 on:]

Reign Over Me

John a dentist in NYC comes across his college roommate Charlie who has had a mental breakdown since the death of his family.  John attempts to move Charlie into therapy to some disastrous results.  Don Cheadle does his damnedest to keep this film afloat while Adam Sandler persistently tries to kick the chair out from under him.  Sandler's attempt at playing an emotionally unstable widower falls so flat if he attempts anything other than talking about music or video games.  Almost all of his emotional scenes come across as forced and unrealistic.  Even his big monologue in the doctors office was little more than Sandler telling a sad story with a sad face.  Cheadle on the other hand plays off on Sandlers botched performance and promptly steals the show.  He commands every scene he's in from diverting the come-ons of an unwanted seductress or trying to deal with Charlies tempered fits if there's anything worth seeing in this movie it's him.  For the record I think if you look up overrated actor in the dictionary there should be a picture of Adam Sandler.  The only movie he's ever been in that I have honestly liked was Happy Gilmore.  Still, even his performance holds up strong next to the laughably inept performance of Liv Tyler as a therapist trying to put Charlies head on straight.  I even gave up on the movie around the time of the trial scene just because I couldn't suffer it anymore.  No Mas.  No Mas.

Sorry, Don, it was a valiant effort.

D+

[Reply #108 on:]

I dislike Michael Cera.  I Scott Pilgrim.  Go see it now, it deserves better than 5th overall at the box office.

[Reply #109 on:]

Does anybody actually like Michael Cera?

[Reply #110 on:]

Apparently he's been anointed the spokesactor for all the awkward nerds in the world by Hollywood, so I suppose someone does.

[Reply #111 on:]

I like Michael Cera. A lot. I agree with 99% of everybody else that he needs to stop playing the same fucking role, but I do indeed like him as an actor.

[Reply #112 on:]

Pitt, I saw Reign Over Me, and I think you nailed it.  IMO Don Cheadle is a gifted actor; it makes sense that he could take Adam Sandler's lack of acting (the dude can't act to save his life; he's been playing the same SNL type character forever) & play off it exceptionally.

[Reply #113 on:]

I dislike Michael Cera.  I Scott Pilgrim.  Go see it now, it deserves better than 5th overall at the box office.

I don't think it has been advertised very well over here; I didn't even know it was out already when I saw Chay's post the other day. So I saw it today, in a near-empty cinema. Muchly enjoyed, I think I'll give it 7,000,000,001 points, mainly because I feel bad for Michael Cera. It'll be at least 10 years before his voice/body catch up to his age and therefore he won't be able to play a different type of role for a long time, with y'all ragging on him the whole way.

[Reply #114 on:]

Luftslottet som sprängdes (The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets Nest)
Final part of the Millennium trilogy, follows directly the events of the last part:
Misanthropic hacker Lisbeth Salander is in hospital and facing trial after the confrontation with the bad guys (no spoilers) and investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist is trying to reveal the truth about the bad guy/s and their evil shadowy doings.

A-

[Reply #115 on:]

I want to watch this Millennium Trilogy, it peaked my interest last night when I heard Rooney Mara is going to be playing Lisbeth Salander in the David Fincher version. Have you read the books Faze?

[Reply #116 on:]

I have done no such thing!
Thought I'd check em out before hollywood potentially ruins them.

[Reply #117 on:]

The literal translation of "Luftslottet som sprängdes" is "The Air Castle That Exploded". Heh.

[Reply #118 on:]

The Road

A

You know, that book was horrid to read for me. For one, I was forced to read it a couple of years ago by my professor, and secondly the grammar made my brain rot. I get that it was written in that format on purpose to convey the sense of choas and destruction and all but in the end it pissed me off. Had it been written in a more straightforawrd format I might've enjoyed it more. I am glad to hear the movie stays true to the book though. I wonder why more book-to-movie translations can't work nicely.

[Reply #119 on:]

Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World

Complete joygasm for anyone who grew up playing video games.  Groundbreaking visuals, very funny, amazing action scenes, and contains surprisingly insightful relationship advice. I'm still hyped after second viewing in a 48 hour time period.

PERFECT!!! /Street Fighter Announcer