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Posted: |
Jan 16, 2017 - 11:05 AM
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By: |
mastadge
(Member)
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Started the year with a Richard Kelly-thon: Donnie Darko, which just got a new BD transfer, Southland Tales, and The Box. The first remains wonderful. As for the others . . . someday, Kelly will make one of his fever dream films without the goofy vessel/portal psuedoscience rubbish and it will be a glorious thing.
Watched Pete's Dragon, which had a lot of heart, prolly 7 or 8 out of 10.
Suicide Squad, 1 out of 10.
Down with Love (2003), glorious, 8 or 9 out of 10 despite Renée Zellweger.
Ostwind - not sure why solium likes this so much. Very standard troubled teen horse whisperer stuff. Enjoyable, sure. Also, it weirdly sets up some conflict between old school gentle classical training and the newfangled rougher approach and then just drops or forgets about that element. Maybe 6/10 as these things go.
Happy-Go-Lucky (2008), another Mike Leigh masterpiece, 8 or 9 out of 10.
I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House, mostly excellent atmospheric ghost story. Recommended to fans of Lake Mungo. Has one subplot that fizzles but since the plot is not the point that's okay.
Cold Comes the Night (2013), crime drama that I watched because it was from the writer of I Am the Pretty Thing. . .. Uninspired stuff. Bryan Cranston transcends the material, as usual, and Alice Eve plays against type and does a better than usual job, but good performances and great cinematography can't save a nothing script here. 6/10
Time After Time (1979), decent time travel adventure, though Wells could have saved a lot of trouble if he'd just set the dial back one day.  Interesting watching sci-fi movies where what was the present is now the past, and so the movie's future is no longer unwritten as it was at the time the movie came out, and how that changes the implications of the events for me as a viewer. Does anyone else think about these things?
A Monster Calls, hard to rate because the book made me cry all those years ago. Addresses hard truths but maybe a little too sentimentally? Still, very powerful stuff. I'm waving between 6 and 9 out of 10 and not sure where I'll fall.
Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, the best X-Men film of the year, but still rubbish. The wettest of wet blankets finds his way into the X-Mansion, basically, and people like him for some reason, and even though all of these children are actually like 85 years old they still act like children, which to some extent is understandable given how the brain develops but which the movie never addresses at all, and then there's a shift for the goofy which is actually an improvement. A few very nice scenes can't salvage this, which is a lesser film even than the similar Dark Shadows from a few years back. Will Elfman ever make anything worthwhile again? 3 or 4 out of 10.
The Drop, which is a solid little thriller that gets by on the strength of Tom Hardy's performance and the beautiful cinematography. Decent but instantly forgettable stuff. I enjoyed it and would recommend it to fans of the genre but it's not one for the ages. Recommended also for fans of Noomi Rapace, and for those who wish to see James Gandolfini's final performance. 6 or 7 out of 10.
And those are the movies I've watched this year.
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Blackhat
cyber thriller. Hemsworth. Expected more from Michael Mann. 6.5 out of ten.
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What do you want, TG, a proper review? Anyway you got the message, though, right? Just from 13 words? Besides JK dont cut to the chase like me.
And, furthermore, i didnt attend the Bruce "El Bruco" Marshall's school for my $800 a day "Short, Sharp Make it Brief But Blunt Film Review" course without putting it to some use. 
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Avengers age of ultron
yet another forgettable blur-edited 2 hours of various superheroes punching and grappling each other whilst smashing buildings in the process with some explosions thrown in and humans diving for cover. How many films is it now? Seems like about 30?
5 out of ten. Yawn.
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Avengers age of ultron
yet another forgettable blur-edited 2 hours of various superheroes punching and grappling each other whilst smashing buildings in the process with some explosions thrown in and humans diving for cover. How many films is it now? Seems like about 30?
5 out of ten. Yawn.
Despite your terrible grammar, Bill, you have made some very cogent observations!
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... i didnt attend the Bruce "El Bruco" Marshall's school for my $800 a day "Short, Sharp Make it Brief But Blunt Film Review" course without putting it to some use.
If only Riotengine followed your example [sighs]
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Ooh scratch yer eyes out, ya bastard! Haha.
Yeh, it was brief. But brief about 4 times - thats why we missed the grammar module!
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She dumped me for Sven and Stan.
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Ice station zebra
1968. Proper cold war actioner, satellite crash, arctic ice pack, spies, nuclear sub, sabotage, russian paratroopers, double cross and a good main theme by Legrand. Alastair, McGoohan, Borgnine, Hudson and jim Brown. Dr Goodwin and our man Halliwell. Top elements for a classic. 8 out of ten.
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