Mini Movie Reviews 2 - The Reviewening

[sigur]

A Christmas Carol

It was good. Surprisingly good. I watched it in IMAX and in 3d which costs a fortune but I'd even say it's worth it. This 3d stuff....they've been doing it since the 40s or something and all of a sudden, it works! And it works well. But anyway, I digress. Everyone knows the story. Scrooge is played by Jim Carrey who does a good job as always when he portraits cartoony characters. Gary Oldman plays Bob Cratchit. I hadn't known he'd be in the movie until I saw his name in the credits and I'm always pleased to see his name in movie credits. And I'd say that Bob Cratchit is the scariest character in the whole movie. He has this really round, partly-bold head and really big/strong cheekbones and I guess having the face of someone on a head of which we know that it doesn't belong to the person is kind of freaky.

The story seems to be very true to the book and has no self-referencial, tongue-in-cheek or ironic moments which is good for this film. It really wants to be a new interpretation of the christmas carol. And I liked it. First of all, there is NO SINGING. Whenever I hear about Disney movies, I get afraid of singing. So be assured, there is none. Just some stock christmas singers standing by a street corner as we pass by, and that's it.

The only thing I critisize about the whole film is that they fell too much in love with the technical possibilities of their brand new software. They just had too many scenes which included rapid tracking shots through landscapes or the city. Other than that, the graphics were fine. Jacob Marley's Ghost looked a bit cheap but also okay.

The ending was good. It was overacted and WAY too cheery and jolly for a nurmal human mind but this is how disney works I guess. They throw so much jolliness at you until you sit there, paralyzed, with your eyes widened in terror of all the cheeriness and with an unbelieving grin on your face.

To come to a conclusion: It's good. Go watch it at the cinema, in 3d if possible (because it's really impressive). Don't buy the DVD when it comes out because it wouldn't make any sense. Nobody needs to have a christmas movie other than Santa Clause conquers the Martians on DVD. Rent it if you like. One word if you go there with your kids... there are a few scary parts. Around here, it's rated for kids 8+ and I'm pretty sure that kinds that age can stomach it.

[Easy E]

A Christmas Carol
Nobody needs to have a christmas movie other than Santa Clause conquers the Martians on DVD.

This man speaks the TRUTH!

[Hellebore]

Sword of the Stranger

Breathtaking animation and excellent music. I found it rather interesting that the main antagonist and protagonist were neither Japanese or Chinese though.

Hellebore

[Thud]

Bande à Part
A narrated French, black and white film about two guys, a girl and a robbery from the sixties. You'd expect it to be pretentious and dull, wouldn't you? Well, at least I did. It's not, though. It's actually a very charming film and the first film I've seen where the inclusion of a narrator isn't annoying. There's a lot of weird stuff going on all the time, but it's all weird in a good way.

Buy

[Codsticker]

The Great Buck Howard- I expected great things from a movie with both Tom Hanks and John Malkovich in it but this one doesn't deliver.

Pass

[The Dude]

Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist - Quite a nice love story. I was worried it was going to be a "music snob" movie, but it didn't turn out that way. Thoroughly enjoyed it.

Rent it

[Condottiere]

Storm Warriors

Just released Chinese martial arts film, I went to watch it with great expectations.

Which were fulfilled, if you judge the film on it's merits, that being almost exclusively special effects. You might even say that it is the Chinese equivalent of 300, except there are only 2 (Cloud and Wind), inclusive Ninja/Persian Immortals assassins, but I may have said too much.

The cinematic style does resemble 300, which isn't too surprising, since the film is based on a Chinese comic series, but whereas 300 comes across like a graphic novel, Storm Riders seems like a dozen episodes of an anime arc. The little story it has is usurped by the special effects, and the ending is pretty much begging for a sequel.

It's entertaining on the big screen, but without the ability to enjoy the grandiousity of the special effects in the cinema, I'd give it a pass for renting it.

[Burnthem]

Ip Man

It's a semi-biographical film that shows some of the life of Ip Man (Yip Man according to some sources), a practitioner of Wing Chun Kung Fu. Much in the vein of Jet Li's film Fearless, although i found this much better. The story is concise and well told, without any excess padding, and the fights scenes are well choreographed and with a refeshing lack of much obvious wire-fu.

According to Wikipedia ( ) some liberties have been taken with the facts in order to make a good film, but if you're not familiar with the story already there are few bits that stick out as obviously untrue.

Definitely a must see for fans of Martial Arts films, and recommended as a good film for everybody else.

Rent

As a side note, i never actually finished watching Jet Li's Fearless, even though it's the kind of film i usually enjoy i just found so dull i switched it off and never went back.

[TheBigBadWolf]

3 review will be winging it into this thread this weekend - Tales From Earthsea, Grave Of The Fireflies and JCVD (which I said I would review in the last thread)

[Condottiere]

NINJA ASSASSIN

It starred Rain (who I only know of because Stephen Colbert dislikes him) and Sho Kosugi. Rain was believable as a martial artist and Sho pulled a Pat Morita (basically phoning it in). On the other hand, the story was unbelievable (in the bad sense) and the plot (and dialogue) clichéed.

The martial art scenes and special effects were great and tended to get better towards the end. Only for true martial arts fanatics, who probably will wish to Rent it.

[Ozorik]

What did you expect from a film called Ninja Assassin?

[Lord Malorne]

Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist - Quite a nice love story. I was worried it was going to be a "music snob" movie, but it didn't turn out that way. Thoroughly enjoyed it.

Rent it

I also enjoyed that.

Juno

Loved this film, everything about it is just done right, the pacing the interaction, the jokes, superb.

Buy It

Lord Malornerik

[GuyLeCheval]

UP

This did not blow me away. It was nice to see some themes about older folks in our youth obsessed culture. I think Clark (Ed Asner) was pretty awesome. However, I found most of the story a bit boring. The only parts that really worked for me was when Clark was being absorbed by memory lane.

Rent

Edit: I also thought the singing in Repo was not great. However, the movie had some intereesting things to say about our celebrity obsessed, rich versus poor society. Way more than I (and possibly the film makers) expected it would.

I watched this too, and I must say, it was really moving. Not Pixars best film, like Wall-E, but it's one of their betters certainly.

BUY IT

[Easy E]

NINJA ASSASSIN

It starred Rain (who I only know of because Stephen Colbert dislikes him)

He was also in Speed Racer, playing the son of a Japanese industrialist who was a fellow race car driver. He is Korean, so it made no sense. On the other hand, it was a Speed racer movie so nothing made sense.

I love the Speed Racer movie.

Red Sonja

It is worse than Conan, but better than Conan the Destroyer. Not bad for another Conan movie, which was NOT a real Conan sequel. Arnold was a different character. I swear to Crom! It didn't make much sense, the sword fighting was appallingly bad, no one could act, and their was gratutious nudity via a dacing girl in a magic mirror. Really what isn't too like?

Pass- Catch it on cable if you can. It's a good time.

Krull

WTF? This movie is hip deep in ludicrous.

In the ancient tradition of screenwriter's everywhere, take existing popular stories, such as Arthurian legend; and change the places and character names. Instant script! That's writing folks.

All that being said. I of course enjoyed it. Take that John Boorman!

Pass- Catch it on cable, preferably after watching Red Sonja.

He-man and the Masters of the Universe

Sadly not the Dolph Lundgren movie. After Krull and Red Sonja it would have gone down easy. Tastes great and less filling.

Instead, this was a 2003 cartoon reboot. It had 10 episodes of the show, and who ever made it had seen too many wushu movies. Plus, the computer animation blended in with the traditional animation was pretty smooth in most places, which was a good thing. The cartoon aslo indulged in a bit of world building, which added to my interest.

One funny moment. Skeletor throws someone over a cliff to distract He-Man while he escapes. He-man obligingly dives after the falling man. He catches up to the falling man and grabs him. The man says, "He-man I didn't know you could fly?".... "I can't." Made me chuckle, since up to that point he had been doing all sorts of Superman style heroics.

Pass

[Dai-Mongar]

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story
Note to the ****** behind the Scary Movie style "spoofs": THIS is how you make a movie parody.
Obviously, this is a riff on Walk the Line. The biopic cliches are nicely skewered, particularly the obvious foreshadowing before some awful event ("This is gonna be the best day ever! Aint nothin' bad gonna happen today!"). There's plenty of absurd jokes, but not so much that it overpowers the rest of the story, and lots of cameos provide amusement of the "is that who I think it is" variety (creative casting choices for the Beatles in particular). The whole thing is really very funny.
I wasn't surprised to see Judd Apatow's name in the credits. The man knows comedy.
My verdict:
Watch It

[Hellebore]

Ninja assassin

Hilarious. The stupendous amount of gore and blood was a sight to behold. Special effects were pretty good. Basically live action 21st Century Ninja Scroll.

Hellebore

[Condottiere]

The Princess And The Frog

Latest Disney animated film, it was surprisingly good flick with a tempo that never allowed the story to flag. The voices were perfect and the story never lost it's integrity, even in the darker aspects, such as voodoo and 1920s New Orleans.

This is a movie that can be seen by all the family, with dialogue that doesn't seem anachronistic, and some interesting advice.

Go see it.

[Thud]

Law Abiding Citizen
I was really looking forward to this one, but it was a bit of a let-down. Butler's character was psycho enough for the most part, but at times I got the feeling that some humanity had been pushed down his throat just to make him more acceptable to the audience. The ending was also a bit of a disappointment in the sense that it gave itself away too soon and sorta just teetered out into lameness.

Meh... Rent.

[Kiro]

Easy E, your comments on Red Sonja and Krull have saddened me

Law Abiding Citizen
The first thing to strike me, oddly enough, was how I kept fixating on how much Gerard Butler looks like a fat Tom Green in the movie. Shocking, but really, if you're going to see it, connect the dots...
This movie was the very definition of "ups and downs" for me. It started off not really capturing my imagination (oh, another 'wronged man gets his justice movie" yawn), then became interesting enough to drag me in, then....it seemed like they ran out of paper to write the script ¬_¬

A few things that bugged me most about the movie were...

1. The narrative jump - the skip to 'ten years later' seemed very abrupt, and jarred the flow of the movie for me. If it had been done earlier, or later, fine, but something about it's timing irked me.

2

the communication breakdown between who we're supposed to be sympathising with; 90% of the movie, we've got Butler as the hero we're supposed to feel for, but shortly before the ending we're given a bait-and-switch for Jamie Foxx, who because he said he's sorry, is now suddenly the hero. I didn't buy it, and I felt a little bit offended. It would have been better if Foxx had stayed as the repentant-but-has-to-do-what-he-has-to-do-because-theres-no-other-way morally ambiguous lawyer. There was no transition to being a hero, no exposition on his guilt and sorrow; just a re-labelling to 'hero'. Distinctly meh.

3

The murder of Butler's cell mate. It was completely random. For a guy so hell bent on justice and doing things the 'right' way, the killing seemed out of character. Sure he needed to do it to go into solitary, but I was sitting there for about half an hour waiting for an explanation on how the cellmate tied into his revenge plan. Even Butler explaining how the cellmates past crimes justified his being killed would have satisfied me (somewhat), but no, nothing!

That said, I still thought it was an enjoyable movie. The 'moral' of the story, if you could call it that, I simply threw out the window (deplorable as it was), and enjoyed the quirky way some of the victims were offed.

Verdict: get a contract with Orange, get on Orange Wednesdays, and enjoy it with a friend.

Twilight

It's best to say the various arguments (against) this movie on here pretty much sum up my feelings, so I'll skip the review and simply say I was creeped out by the way characters stared at each other in this movie.

Verdict: bomb it.

[Killmaimburn]

Krull
WTF? This movie is hip deep in ludicrous.

In the ancient tradition of screenwriter's everywhere, take existing popular stories, such as Arthurian legend; and change the places and character names. Instant script! That's writing folks.

[..]I of course enjoyed it. [..]

To say it lifted arthurian legend template misses so many key changes (said dripping with sarcasm) e.g. the baddy isn't a demon, (he just looks like one) and the baddies aren't zombies/tides of willing dark (they are some weird cyborg daleky things willed to the dark) and the bad castle is actually a morphing spaceship type thing..It tries to appeal to the sci fi (star wars 4) audience too. I love it (the same as 'battle beyond the stars' (seven samuri in space with the guy from 'the man from uncle' and hannibal from the 'a-team'))
I think after all that you need to watch 'legend' (yeah I mean the tim curry demon prince one,to de-conan slowly) but make sure you watch the right one..one has an awesome and tidal soundtrack and really flows.. the other is some terrible pap thing that dates it really badly.(I still can't really convey the difference adequately only that it is a significantly different viewing experience, and the dvd I bought had the wrong one on )