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I would agree on those last 3 ratings. I hated The Transporter, Runaway Train is a very solid forgotten movie, and Mary and Max is one of the best animations I've seen.



??? Okay. It's a pretty standard length for an animated film.
I guess it's been too long.
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"Well, at least your intentions behind the UTTERLY DEVASTATING FAULTS IN YOUR LOGIC are good." - Captain Steel



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I think I'd be tempted to swap the rating for The Transporter and Runaway Train. The former isn't that good and the latter not that bad, but it's closer than the way you see them.
Perhaps. I originally had Transporter at
, but I decided to dock half a box anyway. I seem to have painted myself into something of a corner when it comes to ratings because
is a real no-man's-land kind of rating where you can easily knock it down to
because, hell, you already don't like the movie so what difference is a half-box going to make? Also, it's hard not to mentally compare it to other films that you've given the same rating to and find yourself wondering if it deserves to be changed. Starts to devalue your ratings a bit when you give out too many super-low ratings, so maybe I'll lighten up a bit at some point and try to seriously grade on a curve.

Of course I hold Mary & Max in higher esteem than you, but it's good to see that there's a movie we can agree on for a change.
Aw, you ruined it now.

I still like The Transporter for all its campy cheesy glory, but it's a little bit too "off" at times, with a dumb and silly story with equally dumb and silly characters. Also, the romance feels like a softcore porno at times. The music doesn't help much either.

Glad you like a few of the action scenes though, which is also the main reason I want to watch this - and then Statham as The Driver, which is probably his most iconic and career-defining role. But yeah, the opening car chase is good and everything that happens in that bus garage is freaking awesome. Great cheography and inventive action. Love the tight-spaced fight in and between the bus and of course the oil fight.
It's hard to think of The Transporter as especially campy or cheesy, though. You compare it to something like Double Team or Commando, it comes up very short - almost like if Taken didn't, well, take itself so seriously. It does feel incredibly dated and not necessarily in a charming way. Also, "two" is not "a few", and even then it's easy to think of them as little more than tiny islands of amusement in an ocean of bland early-2000s action that isn't really up to scratch.

I thought it was funny how the expert driver suddenly turned into Tony Jaa half way through.
Was it really that sudden? That might make sense if Statham looked like some kind of out-of-shape goon who is amazing behind the wheel but can't do jack when he's not in a driver's seat, but instead he looks like Jason Statham so you can safely assume that he can and will kick some proverbial ass before the credits roll.

That being said, the shot of a random goon looking through a front door's peephole to see Statham running up and doing a flying kick is a good way to introduce such talents.
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Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0



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#71 - The New World
Terrence Malick, 2006



During a British expedition to colonise North America in the early-1600s, an Irish soldier is captured by a tribe of Native Americans.

What could have been yet another adaptation of the story of Pocahontas and the first British explorers to discover America becomes something very different in the hands of Terrence Malick. All his usual trademarks are on display - extremely flexible approach to development of narrative, exquisite camerawork that is used to capture mostly natural settings, quasi-philosophical narration and dialogue - and he's got some very good collaborators to make it worth one's attention for two whole hours. The New World marks his first collaboration with renowned cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki; such a combination yields the kind of amazing imagery veteran moviegoers have come to associate with these two men. That is the most obvious attraction; the plot and characters, less so. The New World is an absolutely gorgeous film, though its loose storytelling occasionally comes across as meandering and I'm hesitant to think of it as being anything like the mesmerising experience of watching most of Malick's other films.




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#72 - To the Wonder
Terrence Malick, 2012



An American man falls for a French woman in Paris, but problems arise after the couple relocates to Oklahoma.

Malick's fifth film is also the first one that takes place entirely in the present day; unfortunately, it is also the first one that didn't come anywhere close to enthralling me. It's not for a lack of trying; he reunites with Emmanuel Lubezki and, if nothing else, the film looks very good. However, that's about the nicest thing that I can say about To the Wonder as it sees Malick take all his directorial hallmarks and push them to borderline-unwatchable extremes. While it's one of his shortest films, it feels incredibly long as it floats around a couple (Ben Affleck and Olga Kurylenko) as they go through all manner of domestic situations of ever-increasing severity, at one point being tested by the return of Affleck's old flame (Rachel McAdams). Meanwhile, a local priest (Javier Bardem) has his own crisis of faith even as he does his best to help others. Seemingly solid stuff, but it is difficult to stay engaged with any of it as it consists of little more than frequently subtitled pondering over picturesque but mundane scenery in both Europe and America. Lubezki's camerawork may be a plus, but it's only one element and the actual storytelling - what storytelling there is, anyway - is weak enough to actually distract from that. I naturally wonder if there's some hidden depth in To the Wonder that I'm not liable to get on a single viewing, but the prospect of watching this a second time is an incredibly daunting one. It may look really good, but the film itself is such a mind-numbing dirge that it made me actively question how much credit a film deserves just because it has a good director of photography to dress it up nicely.




The New World is an absolutely gorgeous film, though its loose storytelling occasionally comes across as meandering and I'm hesitant to think of it as being anything like the mesmerising experience of watching most of Malick's other films.
Like what?



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Assuming you're asking about the other Malick films, I'm talking Days of Heaven, The Thin Red Line, and The Tree of Life (not counting Badlands because I haven't seen it from start to finish, but I have seen a large chunk of it). The New World was generally worth watching but didn't quite feel like it was up to the standard established in those other films - I liked it, but I didn't love it.

Still, at least it's better than To the Wonder. That was a chore (albeit a good-looking one).



The Thin Red Line, and The Tree of Life
I've been looking at The Thin Red Line, but all of the positivity I hear for Tree of Life is shoulder to shoulder with a just as much if not more negativity.

Some people HATE that movie. I've not seen it though.



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It is a fundamentally polarising film. The feeling I got from To the Wonder is what I imagine people who dislike The Tree of Life must feel.

Due for a re-watch of The Thin Red Line, though. I remember thinking it was really good, but that was years ago and things might have changed.



It's hard to think of The Transporter as especially campy or cheesy, though. You compare it to something like Double Team or Commando, it comes up very short - almost like if Taken didn't, well, take itself so seriously. It does feel incredibly dated and not necessarily in a charming way. Also, "two" is not "a few", and even then it's easy to think of them as little more than tiny islands of amusement in an ocean of bland early-2000s action that isn't really up to scratch.
whatever.

But I don't disagree. I guess I wasn't sure what words to use here. Guess early 2000-action is a good way to describe it, though I think I'm slightly more positive about that than you.

But yeah, I mean, I once liked this a lot, but now I'm at
, while leaning more towards down than up. The nostalgia and those few good things about it, like some action and Statham is enough for me to not hate it. But I was surprised to notice a lot more bad during my last rewatch.

You gonna go for the sequel(s) in the future?



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whatever.

But I don't disagree. I guess I wasn't sure what words to use here. Guess early 2000-action is a good way to describe it, though I think I'm slightly more positive about that than you.

But yeah, I mean, I once liked this a lot, but now I'm at
, while leaning more towards down than up. The nostalgia and those few good things about it, like some action and Statham is enough for me to not hate it. But I was surprised to notice a lot more bad during my last rewatch.

You gonna go for the sequel(s) in the future?
I'm struggling to think of any early-2000s action movies that I do have any significant appreciation for - looking through my film ratings from 2000-2003 yields a few answers, but they also tend to be buoyed by being genre works that involve martial arts, science-fiction, or high fantasy. Even so, I'd still say there's a fair distance between The Transporter and, say, Equilibrium. That being said, if I'd seen The Transporter when it first came out then who knows, maybe I'd also regard it as something of a nostalgic guilty pleasure. As for the sequels...it seems highly unlikely. They seem to be even worse than the original, so you're going to have to do quite a bit to convince me that they're worth it.



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#73 - Room
Lenny Abrahamson, 2015



A little boy who has spent his whole life thinking that the room he lives in with his mother is the entire world gradually learns the truth about his situation.

Trying to come up with a brief logline for Room initially proved a little difficult, so I decided to actually do it in the same manner that the film tells its story; by framing it through the perspective of a five-year-old boy named Jack (Jacob Tremblay) who is the focal character in the film. The greater story that we the audience are able to recognise from the outset is that Jack and his "ma" (Brie Larson) are trapped in a tiny room and are dependent on Ma's deranged captor (Sean Bridgers) for survival. Jack has lived his entire life inside this room and sees it as an entire world full of wonder and detail, but much of that is an effort by Ma to help her son unknowingly cope with one objectively horrible situation. The film picks up shortly before she decides to tell Jack the truth about "Room" and launch a plan for the pair of them to escape. That's about as much plot as I feel like going into - if anything, Room definitely benefits from knowing as little about what happens as possible. Fortunately, it's still able to withstand spoilers and works really well with confronting material that could have easily resulted in overly manipulative tripe.

A lot of what makes Room work is how it really commits to showing what life seems like in the eyes of Jack, with everything from the frequently tight cinematography to reverberating voice-over immersing viewers in his perspective while still allowing them to piece together enough of what's actually happening in the background. Give such a responsibility, Tremblay performs admirably and gives a good performance that only grates when it is supposed to reflect the frustrations of not just his own experiences but also those of various adult characters who interact with him. Larson, who picked up an Oscar for her work here, is definitely capable of balancing a wide range of conflicting emotions as she embodies one especially troubled character who has already gone through a lot by the time the film starts and must weather even more hardships as the film progresses. They are aided by a good supporting cast where the most prominent performers are still on equal (or even lesser) footing with everyone else. Room aptly avoids descending into predictably maudlin melodrama and instead comes across as an intricately-crafted yet ultimately approachable arthouse drama.




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#74 - Brooklyn
John Crowley, 2015



In 1952, a young Irish woman emigrates to New York and has to deal with various situations as they arise.

Out of the most recent crop of nominees for the Best Picture Oscar, Brooklyn is probably the easiest one to write off. It's the exact same kind of milquetoast period piece that only ever seems to crop up in the lead-up to awards season and may not do anything to majorly offend but also manages to avoid distinguishing itself a whole lot in one way or another, which has the potential to be its own kind of boring. Even the plot sounds like it struggles to come up with any significant problems for its young heroine (Saoirse Ronan) to face as she makes one somewhat unpleasant boat trip from her small Irish hometown to the eponymous borough. The main conflict that she faces is less to do with any serious hardships that she encounters upon her arrival than it is to do with her pervasive homesickness that threatens to stop her from fully integrating into her new home, no matter how much of a support system she has in her fellow expatriates. There's a lot going on - or not going on, as the case may be - that unintentionally dares you to just say "whatever" and give up on Brooklyn.

Fortunately, Brooklyn manages to provide adequate compensation for its potentially alienating exterior. It's got some solid actors in the mix - Ronan makes for a good centre to the film as a woman who may start off as a naive doormat but manages to develop some serious confidence without breaking her generally genteel demeanour. There are a couple of recognisable British veterans like Julie Walters and Jim Broadbent who help to really drive home the film's prestige value, though the film is much more likely to be carried by its lesser-known performers. Emory Cohen and Domnhall Gleeson are given some rather thankless one-note roles as Ronan's suitors, though they do infuse them with some charming levels of vulnerability underneath their potentially stereotypical Fifties appearances and mannerisms. The story may lack for external action and doesn't go for grand emotion as often as you'd think, but there's a subtle warmth to the proceedings that is very capable of covering for any narrative shortcomings. The same goes for the technical side of things, which evokes old-fashioned melodramas in the best way through some vibrant use of colours to compensate for some fairly static camerawork. The music also balances the usual subtle yet stirring orchestras with the odd piece of Celtic folk to add to the film's ambience. So yeah, Brooklyn may not be full of excitement or boundary-pushing and that's why I don't consider it to be especially great, but I give it credit for actually being a surprisingly pleasant little movie that did actually manage to involve a fairly interesting conflict underneath its inert-looking surface.




Well... It's like you don't care if you're actually right when you say something. You just assert everything with such confidence, and some of it is a bit hard to endure when you harshly criticise something that other people love. It wouldn't be so hard to endure if you worded it more gently, or had a margin for error. Like I read the review and even if you rate it highly it feels like your saying the movie is crap.

Am I making any sense?