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Wrath of the Titans (2012) dir. Jonathan Liebesman -- Hard to believe, but this is even worse than the first one. The writers interpret the characters and their relationships so differently from how they were presented in the previous film that it's hard to swallow, and that's the least of the problems.
I couldn't believe how Hades went from being evil and a tad scary in the first one to a babbling weakling in the sequel. And it had so much ridiculous dialogue that it all somehow made the first film seem almost wonderful. That moment when Zeus says, "Let's have some fun!", I...I just couldn't believe how bad it all was. I had low expectations, but the filmmakers managed to dip far lower than I could have imagined. Dreadful score, too.
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Posted: |
Sep 1, 2012 - 11:59 AM
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By: |
Francis
(Member)
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Skyline
0/10
Utter dreck. How this ended up in the theater is beyond me, I lasted little over 5 minutes.
Insidious
9/10
This horror film starts with a family moving into a new house; strange things start to happen and one of the children, the elder boy, gets into a coma. While taking care of him, the mother starts seeing ghosts appear around the house and the parents suspect the house is haunted.
Now this premise isn't new if you've seen haunted horror movies, and the following checklist was met with;
-they call a priest (check)
-they call a university team with tech geeks who carry ghostbusters gear (check)
-the university team knows a medium, preferably a little person (check, well safe for the little person part)
This is all standard horror fare, and this movie plays like a tribute to the best of The Exorcist, Poltergeist, The Entity, The Shining, The Changeling, Twin Peaks... BUT where it manages to become its own is in the finale; I don't want to give it away, but safe to say if you like these type of movies, you will be satisfied.
For those who've seen it, Richard Edlund must be kicking himself in the nuts for doing all that work for a measly 3 minutes sequence in Poltergeist II when this movie manages to stage a whole finale in the other side (the "further" as they call it here); great payoff too.
Oh, and a special mention for Lin Shaye's performance as the medium, she played two small parts in the original Nightmare on Elm Street & New Nightmare, here she finally gets the part she deserves.
P.S. Also just read that the composer of the film, Joseph Bishara, plays the main 'ghost' in this movie! how EPIC is that? 
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Doctor Zhivago. (8/10)
Excellent film and excellent score although I fthink that as a dramatist Maurice Jarre is a mediocre one. IMHO of course.
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Posted: |
Sep 3, 2012 - 7:45 PM
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By: |
Sirusjr
(Member)
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Lawless (2012) - 9/10
The current debate about marijuana has made talk of how things were during Prohibition era America more popular. “Lawless” is based on the novel called “The Wettest County in the World,” which tells the story of the Bondurant family’s work bootlegging in Franklin County Virginia. In true American spirit, the bootleggers found a way to brew the high-alcohol-content moonshine so powerful that it made you hallucinate and was highly flammable. Because the liquid was illegal, it led to a lot of violence as various gangsters fought to control the source of money.
“Lawless” is a bleak look at the time period as the Bondurant family faces off against Special Agent Charlie Rakes (Guy Pearce) who comes into town intent on shutting down all the bootleggers using any means necessary. Like “The Assassination of Jessie James by the Coward Robert Ford” before it, “Lawless” is filmed in the old style and takes its time to provoke contemplation in the audience. The story blends reality with legend beautifully as we hear about how the Bondurant boys, Forrest (Tom Hardy), Howard (Jason Clarke) and Jack (Shia LaBeouf) are immortal and un-touchable. Much of this likely comes from the trance-like state that moonshine will put you in.
The acting of everyone involved is fabulous. Guy Pearce takes on his character completely and dominates the screen with his menacing grimace. Tom Hardy brings a cold, dispassionate, feel to Forrest, and yet you can always tell he means business. Shia LaBeouf gives the best performance I’ve seen from him yet. His character goes through a number of personality developments over the course of the picture that wouldn’t be possible without his powerful acting. The rest of the cast is quite good as well. Even the minor characters have unique personality.
“Lawless” is at its core dark, violent, and gritty. The beatings the characters dish out and take are some of the most brutal I’ve seen on film. They pack a refreshingly realistic punch in an era where most film violence is so extreme it lacks realism. Nick Cave and Warren Ellis wrote a number of songs for the film as well as a small amount of score in their signature brooding Americana sound. “Lawless” is not an easy film to watch but it is impossible to look away because you don’t want to miss a second. If you liked “Jessie James”, don’t miss “Lawless.”
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Posted: |
Sep 4, 2012 - 4:57 AM
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By: |
Francis
(Member)
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The Cabin in the Woods 2011
4/10
I read a lot of praise for this 'reinvention' of the stereotypical model-teens-go-to-lake-cabin-to-get-killed premise so I was excited to see what they've come up with. I'm a horror film fan and this subgenre has always been the one I had the most problems sitting through; not because these type of movies are scary but because they are so predictable and been done to death.
The new twist that's suppose to stir things up is that the group of teens who go to the cabin to party are monitored by a huge big brother operation consisting of engineers, scientists and army personnel; I'm not giving anything away here as this is made clear from the get go; actually in the first scene we get to meet these people and see how their operation works. What we don't see is why the operation is there in the first place; human interaction psychology experiments? Are they doing tests for military purposes?
You obviously know that these teens are headed for a death trap orchestrated by these men, and hinted at by the loogy spitting redneck at the abandoned gas station.
The group of teens consists of a cliché of characters we've seen before; The two couples are textbook sleepover characters; take for instance Nightmare on Elm Street; you have the blonde and the hot shot jock (Tina and Todd), and the serious guy with his virgin girlfriend (Glen & Nancy). The former will have sex and die, the latter's chastity gives them a chance of survival. Added to the two couples is ... yes, you guessed it, the stoner weirdo who only exists to get killed and to give exposition. His name is Marty in this movie and he seems to know that he & his friends are being monitored well before this should be clear to them at all;
Actually by the events in this movie and the stupendous way that the characters pick up on the big picture (and don't seem to care about who is attacking them and how crazy that is lol), I'm not sure any 'real' person who'd underwent the same ordeal would even have a clue as to what is going on; Yet as in sped up 'Lost' fashion, the aim of the moviemakers is to fill them in as fast as possible, because they will eventually meet the people spying on them; Again, I'm not giving away anything here, you know how this movie turns out as you've seen it done on Star Trek, Outer Limits ... before (and better).
Aside from an unbelievable plot, and it gets much more preposterous the more you get in, this movie suffers from the "videogame complex". The first hour we, the viewers, see the teens go through the usual horror cabin fluff, and we see it alongside the team of scientists, engineers, etc. who orchestrate it. This is the same as all those crappy reality TV themed horror movies (Halloween Resurrection) where there is zero involvement because we are watching a controlled environment.
Only in the second hour the film turns literally into Resident Evil (to continue the videogame trend) and instead of seeing this 'setup' I wish I was playing it on a console. We are bombarded with a plethora of ideas and gimmicks that try to be clever and original, but only distract from the fact that I'm watching a badly scripted videogame with lame characters.
Roger Ebert said in his review that horror fans will love the 'layers' in this film; I'm sorry but this isn't Scream; there's no clever commentary on horror films or how they operate, 'Cabin in the woods' simply repeats you are watching a dumb horror movie instead of surpassing that level.
For those who've seen it, I know there are too many plotholes, but this one bugged me the most;
We know that the scientists and people monitoring have this elaborate setup and tracking station, they can even control the pheromone levels in the air, or influence the thought process of their subjects (very convenient). Yet they can't tell when someone is still alive? Didn't I spot on the monitors the health specs of every subject being measured and updated? So how is it that they could ever think 4 people are dead instead of 3? Something as important as that -to them- they overlook?
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Posted: |
Sep 4, 2012 - 7:03 AM
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By: |
mstrox
(Member)
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Chronicle - 7/10. Maybe a bit let down due to expectations raised by some reviews I've read. It was a pretty standard found-footage kind of movie. The effects were passable. The story and characters didn't do much for me, but it was an entertaining use of an hour and a half.
Conan O'Brien Can't Stop - 8.5/10. This was a fairly effective travelogue of Conan O'Brien's post-NBC road tour, which was at times very funny but always interesting. O'Brien comes off as a bit of a dick to his employees at times, but I guess the people who work for him are in tune with this sense of humor and "get it." I had seen a similar film of a David Cross tour fairly recently, and it did almost everything wrong - none of the behind the scenes footage was all that interesting and it made me wish it were a more standard stand-up special. This one never got that way.
Dawn of the Dead (Remake) - 8/10. This was good enough for a horror movie. Some likeable characters that make it to the end, some that don't, several unlikeable characters that get what's coming, etc. This makes Zack Snyder 2/4 for me (I liked this and Watchmen, did not care for 300 and hated Sucker Punch). He's due for a good one after Sucker Punch, so hopefully Superman is decent.
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Posted: |
Sep 4, 2012 - 11:58 AM
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By: |
Michaelware
(Member)
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Lawless- 1/10
More standard issue limbic brutality. zzzz. It's like watching endless reruns of Three's Co. only with bloody sex and nihilism each week at the movies.
Jaws 10/10 ****
Maybe 9 but it is a classic. What are we made of, intelligence, insanity, contradictions, not giving in, staying true to our selves. Facing down fears makes them go away or blow up so we can go home. Excellent on blu ray.
Round Midnight (1986) 8/10 ***.5
An ardent admirer of a great but dissipating jazz musician stalks and then makes the acquaintance of his hero, and makes his friendship count. The respect of time given, priceless thing. I liked the simple but accentuating photographic quality, and Tavernier's widescreen drama framing; the wide screen used to have compositional meaning, not just close up, close up, close up. Tavernier respects you for the time given to his film.
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Posted: |
Sep 4, 2012 - 3:40 PM
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By: |
mastadge
(Member)
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Lockout (2012) dir. by Stephen St. Leger and James Mather -- An awesomely bad and incompetently made Escape from New York ripoff. Nearly everything about this movie is bad -- it opens with one of the worst CG chases you'll ever see, its fight scenes and editing are often risible, most of the acting is awful, and most of what's going on makes no sense. The one thing this movie has going for it is Guy Pearce, who's much better than all this and, unlike the other decent actors here, strives to bring the whole thing to life. (Peter Stormare seems to be trying to deliver the worst performance of his career) Unfortunately, he's got very little to work with, and certainly not nearly enough traction to drag this movie out of the garbage and even to the level of a guilty pleasure.
Starship Troopers (1997) dir. Paul Verhoeven -- Watched this again since I plan to see its newest sequel soon. It's amazing how well it holds up -- the special effects still look fantastic, for the most part, and I really wish we had more directors with Verhoeven's balls and his sheer cinematic talent. I saw this one on BD and it looks great, very clean -- unfortunately Denise Richards appears to be an even worse actress in HD, and is utterly unconvincing in any capacity, let alone as the intelligent character she's supposed to be playing. Her and the occasional other less than stellar performance aside this is an excellent sci-fi actioner and a spot-on preposterous propaganda film. Still very watchable 15 years later.
Bad Ass (2012) dir. Craig Moss -- This is not a good movie. Moss is, to put it gently, not an actors' director, and the plot and pacing are clumsy. But Danny Trejo is as charismatic as usual and playing a much more down-to-earth character than he did in Machete. Don't really have much to say here. A good movie this is not, but it is roughly 8000 times better than the horrible Hobo with a Shotgun, and Trejo is likeable and, indeed, sufficiently Bad Ass to make this movie just about worth seeing.
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