What Did You Watch Today?

[Summers]

Vacancy.

It was good, a 6.5. One of the better horror movies I've seen lately. Thought it was well written, and well directed. Luke was very good, Beckinsale less-so but still entertaining.

[ROC]

Good Luck Chuck - 3/10

Ick. You can't make a tender rom-com and an icky gross out comedy at once nor can you justify lots of sex as a "noble deed" when clearly it's just a lot of sex. That and it's just not funny. The gross out gags fall towards the lowest common denominator and the romance feels faked and towards the end, very creepy. I didn't mind Dane and Alba's acting but if Dane really wants to be the poor man's Ryan Reynolds so much, maybe he should play up the asshole variant a lot more next time.

[Doc Funky]

Blades of Glory: 7/10

Didn't hold up as well on the second viewing. Loved the gag reel and alternate takes on the DVD, though.

Next: 7.5/10

I wasn't expecting much out of this one, so it was a pleasant surprise. I'm a big fan of Cage and Biel, but I had a hard time buying skinny little Julianne Moore as some hardass government agent. Seeing her next to big, beefy SWAT guys was a little silly.

Wild Hogs: 8/10

Like with Next, all I'd ever heard was how bad this movie was, so I was surprised with how much I enjoyed it. Kinda cheesy, kinda predictable, but fun. Pretty good performances by all four guys, and the Peter Fonda cameo earns it a bonus point.

[DMN in the House]

Didn't watch it today, but meh...

Good Luck Chuck 5/10

Good enough for what it was. I like Dane Cook, but he really needs to get over the whole thing where his acting feels like watching his stand-up. Some good lines, and the credit sequence with him eating out a plush penguin saved it for me.

[ROC]

Didn't watch it today, but meh...

Good Luck Chuck 5/10

Good enough for what it was. I like Dane Cook, but he really needs to get over the whole thing where his acting feels like watching his stand-up. Some good lines, and the credit sequence with him eating out a plush penguin saved it for me.

[Baddar]

28 Weeks Later - 8/10

Really good zombie horror movie. It's open for yet another movie and I wouldn't mind seeing another.

[Timmoru Suzuki]

The Long Good Friday 8.5/10

A sodding great British gangster flick. The Long Good Friday has a simply fantastic script, is well directed and has some great scenes, and has moments of uncomfortable violence. Aside from all this, it is very well acted from everyone, including a good performance from Helen Mirren, but the main piece of acting praise goes to Bob Hoskins to his beyond awesome performance as London crime boss Harold Shand. While the great script no doubt helped, he adds so much human depth to basically a crime boss, and is excellent throughout.

On a side note, there are millions of examples of "oh look it's that guy from....." in the movie (mostly for us Brits I guess, they were mainly guys that went on to do prominent UK TV work), including a co-star sort of role for the guy that plays Charlie in Casualty, and a three-scene one line extra role from some guy called Pierce Broznan. I wonder whatever happened to that guy?

Long Good Friday is a fucking superb film (Empire declare it to be the best British film ever, take that for whatever you think it's worth) and for a bargain £3 on DVD (Thanks to WHSmith) its a bloody bargain.

[Doc Funky]

The Kumite (aka Star Runner): 2/10

Just terrible. More than half the movie centers around this god-awful love story, and the few fight scenes that you get are plagued with absolutely awful choreography, editing, and camerawork. Combine all that with a cast made up primarily of pop stars and/or male models whose only expression is "staring blankly" and you've got a terrible movie. It really reminded me of The Calamari Wrestler...but instead of being an absurd comedy, they shoehorned in a bunch of pop stars and tried to play it straight.

The only bright spot is that you get to see a ton of old kung-fu stars as the trainers of the fighters (Gordon Liu, Ken Lo, Ti Lung, and others), who even now look a hundred times more badass than the leads. It made me want to see them all get together for one last big brawl.

Edit:

Hell, this article puts it even better than I can.

Edited October 10, 2007 by Doc Funky

[Summers]

1408.

Really good movie, had some 'scare' moments which made the girlfriend jump, and Cusack pulls out a brilliant one-man-show performance. 7/10. At times it seemed slow, but I think that's because I'm insanely tired, hungover and ill. I imagine a wide awake alert Summers would have rated it a point highe.

[GA!]

Grand Hotel (1932)

Grand Hotel is a real slow-starter saved by an excellent swerve in the final twenty minutes or so, one of the best twists I've seen. Not only that but the sudden turn of events kills every mini-storyline dead, which is a neat touch. However there were maybe two or three too many main characters for what they were going for, and the final sequence was incredibly cheesy due to the golden age of Hollywood's good old happy ending policy. Overall I'd say the film is average.

Metropolis (1926)

A film I've been meaning to see, plus its a part of my research into silent films for a practical project. It is an important film for the science fiction genre, and some sequence definitely justify its (then) fucking enormous budget. As a man who has only seen one silent film in full before this (Nosferatu), sitting through well over two and a half hours is hard. Shots and text screen are dragged out as was the style in the pre-talkie era so patience is required. Overall its a good film and almost a warm-up as I'm watching the three hour Ku Klux Klan loving "Birth of a Nation" next week.

Edited October 10, 2007 by God-Awful

[Rashid]

The Blair Witch Project: 1/10

It really doesn't get much worse than this. It's boring, everything about it annoys me. Though I don't really know why. After 30 minutes, it really becomes an agonizing experience. I give it a 1 because of this awesome line, "We walked for 15 hours today! We ended up in the same place!". That had me cracking up. This is by no means a worthwhile experience. I don't know why I decided to rewatch it. If I thought it sucked bad at age 10, chances are I wouldn't like it now. Aw well, we all make mistakes.

Edit:

Bloodrayne 2: 1/10

I didn't want to give it a 1. I tried to find something I liked. Anything. But this movie has no likable qualities. Compared to Uwe's others, it's worse than Bloodrayne and Alone in the Dark, though still not as bad as House of the Dead.

I hope Postal is an improvement. I can't continue putting myself through the torture of watching his movies. Some people like his movies and still find them funny-bad. I don't. Bloodrayne 2 sucked my will to live.

Sucked...get it? Movie with vampires. Hehe.

Edited October 12, 2007 by Rashid

[Timmoru Suzuki]

The Kingdom 7/10

Perfectly decent political thriller thingy. Not a lot wrong, but there are a few scenes that aren't that well done and serve no point. It won't gte your pulse racing at all, and The Kingdom never really makes you care THAT much about the characters either, but as a whole, its a perfectly comeptant film with some good bits. I like the end.

[DFF]

The Kingdom 7/10

Perfectly decent political thriller thingy. Not a lot wrong, but there are a few scenes that aren't that well done and serve no point. It won't gte your pulse racing at all, and The Kingdom never really makes you care THAT much about the characters either, but as a whole, its a perfectly comeptant film with some good bits. I like the end.

The Kingdom 7.5/10

Almost a very good film. I disagree with Mike when he says you do not care about the characters. I thought that the policeman who was attached to the group was acted out admirably and I did care about him. I also thought the director made a good job of making us care about both Foxx and Cooper's characters too.

Jennifer Garner was decent and Jason Bateman was competent, but to me kind of came off like a poor man's Peter Sarsgaard. Not bad or anything though.

As for the film, I found it compelling; interesting even. I also disagree that it won't get your pulse going "at all". In fact, I found the final action scene(s) to be quite tense; especially when they are stalking the hallways.

All in all, much better than some reviewers made out (seriously how Metro could give it 1/5 I don't know), and is almost very good. Definitely worth checking out.

[Timmoru Suzuki]

OK, point taken on the cop with the group, he was good. I couldn't have given two shits about Foxx, and I only slightly cared for Chris Cooper because it was Chris Cooper, not because his character was actually good.

Every action scene was competant, but none were particularly exciting, or ya know, good. The entire film was perfectly fine without ever being exceptional in any way, shape or form. But I agree that * star reviews are MEGA harsh, Empire's *** is about right, maybe to use wrestling match star ratings, its a ***1/4 to an outside ***1/2

Edited October 14, 2007 by Mushiking timmayy

[FLiam]

Collatarel: 8/10.

I thought Tom Cruise was bad ass in this movie, and I don't usually like his films. I think Jamie Foxx plays his role well as well and is pretty convincing to be honest. And Jada Pinkett-Smith is hawt.

[MalaCloudy Black]

Transformers

6/10 - Needed more Transformers, less trying to "connect" with the audience, less Shia LeBouf sucking cock, and more Optimus Prime. All six points out of that 6/10 are attributed to Transformers.

Also, another way to sum it up would be this: every time Transformers are on screen, it's like waking up on your birthday to find that pony you always wanted. Every time the humans were on screen, it's like watching someone put a round of ammo into that pony's head.

[GA!]

I've seen five films since Wednesday, four of which were on Wednesday.

The Unknown (1927)

This is an great film everyone should check out. Lon Chaney stars as Alonzo the Armless, who wants a woman who happens to have a literal fear of arms. However it turns out he has arms, which he then cuts off so he isn't exposed as a fraud to her "their wedding night" (not to mention the several crimes he's committed - like killing the woman's father). But as he's having the operation done, her fear of arms is cleared and she gets engaged to another man. It continues on like that, getting better as it goes along with its surreal storyline in a circus setting. Simply brilliant. *****

Spite Marriage (1929)

Admittedly this is the first Buster Keaton film I've seen fully. From clips I've seen from his earlier work though, this is quite disappointing. There's no calculated stunts like his earlier stuff apparently has, and the narrative tries too hard to amuse, somehow transitioning from a theatre to a cruise ship in the space of ten minutes. It's not a bad film by any means though, there are great moments I can't be arsed to describe right now. I definitely want to check out his early films in full though to see if they're better or worse than this. ***

Spiderman 3 (2007)

I rewatched it after seeing it in the cinema earlier this year. On second viewing, its still not great. It's exactly like the WWE - too much soap opera, not enough action, and no character gets developed enough before getting defeated by the hero. **

The 40 Year Old Virgin (2005)

Personally, I didn't find this funny. I don't find American comedies that funny really. What it lacks in the funny, it makes up in Kimberly Page's boob. Didn't she quit WCW because she didn't want to show off her boobs? Oh well... Plot wise, it was good with no complaints. There was enough to develop most of the characters in some shape or form. My only complaint (beside the comedy thing obviously) was that the end was a bit boring, too many near misses before going into a sing-song. ***

Super Mario Bros (1993)

It was £5 in HMV. Wish I had saved the money. Everything was wrong with this film. Luigi's a fucking smug backwards-cap wearing, moustache-less cock. Luigi and Daisy are the item so to speak, making Mario's role useless. Nobody wore their game clothes, except for near the end where the Bros were suddenly wearing red and green for no reason. The other dimension was not connected by green pipes (did the fucking writers and/or director even play the games?!?). For some reason, the other world is some dystopian society where Koopa's a human and Yoshi's all green and scaly and nothing's bright and colourful. And to make things worse, the real bad guy of the piece was a... Woman.. Named Nina?! Fuck this film. *

Edited October 20, 2007 by God-Awful

[GoGo Yubari]

Like.. the brand name is "Epic"? >_>

... fuck, the Youtube video is gone. Basically, imagine the sequence near the end of the episode where Light is WRITING NAMES DRAMATICALLY in a manner that nobody in their right mind would ever do whilst EPIC MUSIC plays in the background.

And now add in Light eating potato chips at the same time that he does this.

[thatshortguy]

30 Days of Night -- 4/5

Ah, a vampire film where we're not dealing with pretentious faux-immortals. They're hungry, they're strong, they're fast, and they just do not fucking care.

Fans of the comic will dig it, but it's also a damn good stand-alone movie. Over-takes 1408 as my favorite "scary" movie of the year. Hartnett is good, if not a bit one-note, while there are some solid supporting actors (Danny Huston, Ben Foster.) It is an intense movie, mind you, so be forewarned. Some examples:

Spoiler: Click here to view

1. Little girl gets turned, feasts on a woman. Gets decapitated by Eben via ax.

2. In a top-down shot reminiscent of a RTS game, the leftover townspeople are shown getting slaughtered and vainly attempting to shoot the vampires as they attack. One of two scenes in the movie that will shake most everyone in the theater -- the second being where Eben and what's left of the survivors are holed up in the attic and are forced to listen to the leftover townspeople's screams.

3. A woman being used as bait by the vampires. The plan doesn't work, and you can guess what happens next.

4. A brain getting ripped out. I'll leave the 'how' and 'when' to you.

What really interested me in this movie was the same 'slow-build' aspect as seen in 1408. You know what is going on, but little is seen of the actual vampires until the second half of the movie, when things get completely ramped up. People who don't like quick cuts may get annoyed (as I slightly was), but you know what's going on...and there are enough scenes in the movie to spell out what they're capable of. Lastly, the vampires screech to signal one another, so be warned if you have pitch-sensitive ears.

[Rashid]

Slaughter High: 2.5/10

Bought this for $1 at a flea market. It's one of the many b-slashers from the 80's trying cash off the success of FT13 and NOES. The movie has just about every cliche imaginable (though the 'climax' of the sex scene I admit I wasn't expecting). It's about a teenage nerd named Marty. Everyone hates him and always plays pranks on him. One day as a prank they set the chemistry lab on fire (though I'm not sure if they knew Marty would be in the room. That kinda confused me. Were they actually trying to kill him? Or just fuck him up a little?) Well Marty was in the lab, and he caught on fire, and it disfigured him greatly. 10 years later, Marty wants revenge. He sets up a fake 10th year reunion at the high school and invites the people who used to bully him. He then proceeds to wipe them out, one by one. The ending was another thing I wasn't expecting. And a couple of the death scenes were amusing.

Planet Terror (Extended Cut): 8.5/10

John Carpenter's The Thing: 9/10