What was the last movie you saw at the theaters?

V For Vendetta 10/10

Lonesome Jim (Steve Buscemi)

Nice enough little low-budget indie that has its charm but doesn't ultimately distinguish itself much. Casey Affleck stars as the title character, a twenty-seven-year-old who moved away to try and conquer New York City with dreams of being a writer but has returned home to his sleepy Indiana town and his parents' home so he can have his version of a nervous breakdown. Perpetually cheerful Mom (Mary Kay Place) and stoic Dad (Seymour Cassel) are already housing Jim's older brother, Tim (Kevin Corrigan), and make room for Jim as well.

Tim is divorced with two young girls who see him sporadically, and he's taken a job at the family business - a ladder company. He's living at home so he can make the child support payments. Not long after Jim's arrival, he confesses to Tim how incredibly down he is, "chronically depressed" is his self diagnosis, but points out that as low as he feels at least he hasn't hit the same kind of bottom Hell as his big brother, and wonders aloud how he hasn't killed himself yet. Tim agrees. So much so that he intenionally crashes his car into a tree in a suicide attempt. It doesn't wok, but leaves him in a coma. Wait, wait: this is a comedy, I promise. Given his guilt and the situation, Jim agrees to take over his brother's spot at the factory and coaching his nieces' pitiful basketball team, at least until his brother recovers.

He also meets a young nurse, Anika (Liv Tyler), who quickly beds him. But Jim is in no shape for and has no self confindence to engage in any kind of intimate relationship, so he avoids her...but she puruses him anyway. She has a young son of her own (Jack Rovello), who for some reason also likes the mopey Jim. Further complications arise from work where Jim's crazy half-Uncle (Mark Boone Junior) is a drug-dealing loser who is putting his family and their business in jeopardy, but due to a bit of initial complicity Jim feels unable to stand up and tell the truth.

Affleck plays the same sleepy, mumbling sad-sack he usually does, and by now he's more or less perfected it as far as it'll go. Liv plays a version of the sweet character she's done in movies like Jersey Girl and That Thing You Do, and she's likeable enough - though I don't think an audience is ever quite sure what it is that draws her to the depressed Jim. Mary Kay Place, Seymour Cassel and Kevin Corrigan too all play very similar characters to the ones they've portrayed in many other films. In that sense there are no surprises, though everybody can certainly inhabit their parts well enough. And the story doesn't go in any direction that will surprise you either.

This is Steve Buscemi's third feature as a director, and the first where he hasn't appeared on camera. He didn't write the script, that is first-time screenwriter James Strouse. The story is clearly very autobiographical for him and probably very true, but as a film there's nothing new there. It's watchable, quitely quirky and sweet in its way with a likeable cast, but when all is said and done not anything terribly special.

GRADE: C+

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"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra

The last movie that I saw in a theatre was "Red Eye", and that was a little while ago now.

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V for Vendetta

Took a while to get into (masked lead, Portman's 'accent') and when it did get going it was good but the pacing was way off, plenty of scenes should have been cut imo. Did love the portrayal of England (except overuse of 'bollocks') and Stephen Fry was great. Not to sure if i completely understood the plot though...

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Brick (Rain Johnson)

Overly stylized unholy mishmash of The Maltese Falcon, "Beverly Hills 90210", Blue Velvet and Encyclopedia Brown that holds your attention but doesn't add up to much. Set in a Los Angeles High School where apparently nobody ever has to go to class, Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Mysterious Skin, "3rd Rock from the Sun") is Brendan Frye, a moody, self-isolating kid who mopes around pining for Emily (Emilie de Ravin), the girl that dumped him a few months ago. She frantically calls him one day to say she's in trouble and has fallen in with the wrong crowd, but before he can ask for details they're cut off. She shows up two days later dead, and Brendan plays detective to infultrate the criminal element around the school, find some answers and scrape some knuckles. There's a young kingpin (Lukas Haas), his loose canon muscle (Noah Fleiss), a mysterious junior femme fatale (Nora Zehetner), a buddy called The Brain helping him gain the info (Matt O'Leary) and various other minor losers and druggies.

The dialogue is thick and stylized like a Dashiell Hammett novel. Everybody drops in bygone slang like "gat" and "yeg" and "hop" and "shamus" and uses "gum" and "heel" as verbs without batting an eyelash (as in sentences like 'That yeg's flashing a gat that's gonna gum up the works, let's heel it'). The best of these scenes is when Brendan is called in to the Vice Principal's (Richard Roundtree) office, and they have a fast-paced give-and-take that might just as well be Bogie trying to stall a Police Lieutenant while he conducts his investigation. But for every one of the few times this style works and is amusing, there are six or eight scenes where it is just extraneous and silly. But it's indicitive of what's right and wrong with Brick.

The mystery itself isn't especially compelling, and with only a few characters interacting with each other it's not difficult to figure out where the double crosses are coming from. Gordon-Levitt does have fun in the lead as the smart, cynical, deadpan, wisecracking teenage tough guy, Haas has turned from a cute child actor into an odd looking young adult which serves him well for the theatrical cape-wearing The Pin (short for Kingpin...get it?), and Zehetner is fine as the piano-playing dame with the smoky voice who is a dangerous beauty...even if she looks like she probably only has her learner's permit. But this is all style and no substance. The style carries it here and there, but it needed more grouding or at least something new to say instead of dressing up Hammett in a Tommy Hilfiger ad. The scene where the ominous interrogation of Brendan is interrupted by the Pin's "Leave it to Beaver" mother trying to offer the houseguest food and drink is the kind of comic self-aware mix that might have yielded better results. Instead most of the movie is just kids walking around pretending they're all in a Bogart movie without any of the characters or the filmmaker ever noting how absurd it is.

They simply don't pull it off enough...though something tells me this could very well become the next Donnie Darko. Or at least the next Boondock Saints. I have a feeling sixteen-year-olds who don't know a (Sam) Spade from a (Mike) Hammer are going to groove to the style and latch on to this one, regardless of how derivitive and hollow it really is. They'd be better served renting The Glass Key (1942), The Maltese Falcon (1941) and The Asphalt Jungle (1950) instead. Shane Black had much more fun and success with his playfully witty deconstruction of the genre in last year's Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. And take a look at River's Edge (1986) for a much more interesting and powerful look at a bunch of High Schoolers and a dead girl's body.

GRADE: C+

Match Point - Woody Allen

nice flick...however, Scarlett Johansson.......she was abismal...i have come to the conclusion she is not a very good actress...
also, through most of the film i felt it was too similar to The line of beauty by Hollinghurst, a book i loathe...but yes, the last 20 minutes definitely save the day.

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I think the last movie i seen was Spider-Man 2

Lucky Number Slevin

I was entertained. Gangsters, hit men, bosses and twists...oh my! There was enough mystery to keep you guessing but in case you didn't guess right, the movie spelled everything out for you in the end. At about the 1 1/2 hour point, the "we've got a secret" became a little annoying and I felt like "Just spill the beans already." And the movie did. And it was interesting, tho not surprising, how everything came together.

Josh Hartnett, Bruce Willis, Ben Kingsley, Morgan Freeman and Lucy Liu were all fine in their roles. This was old hat to Bruce, Ben and Morgan and they were their usual competent selves. But the lead was definitely Hartnett's and he did a good job. When Brad Pitt gets too old or Angelina wears him out, he can pass the baton to Josh.

Rating: B

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My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius, commander of the Armies of the North, General of the Felix Legions, loyal servant to the true emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife. And I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next.

Inside man.

Certainly different than regular Hollywood flicks. I liked it

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"Be it a rock or a grain of sand, in water they sink as the same."

Last Movie: The Benchwarmers.

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The last movie I watched in the cinema was Walk the Line.

Inside Man...great flick.

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I usually get kissed before I get f*cked.

Thank you for smoking ... really funny in a cynical way. Gotta see it ... 9/10

Cassavetes' Husbands (1970).
If you live in LA, you've gotta love the New Beverly.
Not really any point in reviewing it, except to say my disbelief was utterly suspended.

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"We'll hunt for a third tiger now, but like the others this one too will be a form of what I dream, a structure of words, and not the flesh and one tiger that beyond all myths paces the earth."

Inside Man

First, Clive Owen was cooler here than he was in Sin City. Nobody in that film topped Mickey Rourke in coolness. But in Inside Man, Owen had qualities (two in particular) that made him way cool.

The second cool thing about the film was the multi-dimensional characters. Were the bad guys bad, were the good guys good? Or were they both a little of both? Neither side received a stereotypical treatment. And that made it more real.

The third cool thing was the emphasis put on "smarts." The bank robbers were smart (one in particular) and the cops were smart (one in particular.)

The fourth cool thing was how much I wanted to wipe that smirk off of Jodie Foster's face. I think Denzel wanted to too. Ok, maybe that's not cool.

I wasn't entirely sure about Denzel's character for awhile. I half expected him to break into Training Day mode at any second. You know, the "I am King Kong" speech. That uncertainty kept up a level of tension and anticipation.

A very good movie and a nice change of pace. Plot, dialogue and the characters' wits were the focus; not car chases, explosions and splattering blood. Good job by all; the actors, the writer Russell Gewirtz and director Spike Lee.

Rating B+

Last movie: Scary Movie 4.

Very funny.

I saw Scary Movie 4 and Luck Number Slevin, both on Saturday.

Three Burials...-

Scary Movie 4-

Nothing fantastic but i thought the spoofs were competent enough. Shame Mr Nielson isn't given more screentime, thought a lot of the cameos could have been beefed up a bit.

War of the Worlds (not the old one, the one with Tom Cruise)