Meatwadsprite's Slow Review Thread

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Funny Games 2008



This is funny in all the worst ways. Two guys confront their newest neighbors and before long they have the family tied up, pawns in a twisted game. Seamlessly you're rooting for both sides, which is a pretty uncommon thing to say about a torture thriller.

Peter and Paul's entry to the residence is sudden, eerie, and all-around humorous. You can already imagine that they've played at this a couple times, coming up with awkward mannerisms and clever schemes on the fly. The tension is pure ingenuity, playing out almost completely in real time. Everything in the hands of the violent young men.

Michael Pitt's whimsical murderer is altogether alarming and enthralling. Naomi Watts starts off a little rude and irritated, but once hope is dimming, you're authentically sitting in her place. Tim Roth just watches really.

It fights against standard horror movie figure, but for the few times it does succumb, Funny Games takes a big hit. In a situation where every action should be criticized and meticulously calculated, the family sure doesn't ever cease to do the stupidest thing possible. So I found myself cheering for both teams. The family of three didn't do anything wrong, but they marginally deserve it, just for their mind numbingly dumb survivability skills. The young men are spontaneous as they are sadistic, they're the bad guys, but they cater to the audience.

Nerve racking, like it should be done.




Found this movie a bit pointless nice review meatface
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Toy Story 3 2010


I feel pretty safe saying no-one knows Toy Story like me. As a kid it was one of the few movies I watched, and I watched it again and again and again. Sometimes two to three times in a day. Going back to the original now I can direct sound queues with my hand and lip sync Randy Newman. Re-evaluating the Toy Story movies as an adult, it's too easy to criticize the go-for-joke, slapstick nature that shoves the stories from point A to B. In previous Toy Story movies, character intension's are buried, and the same goes for the third chapter.

Toy Story 3 fully recognizes the previous two with countless references and nods to it's predecessors. It even follows the same escape formula, although the stakes a lot higher now. Andy's long done playing with plastic toys and is heading off to college, so the few characters still remaining are looking at what's next. This is where motivations go from curious to muted. Woody is tirelessly devoted to Andy. Everyone else seems content with the day care which they arrive, without a single thought of that old stupid owner. Of course the day care is torture chamber where little kids destroy and pound the crap out of anything, with a new half-baked villain running things.

There's a lot of things it does right and an equal amount of wrong. It's too afraid to leave the formula of the last two, anyone sitting in the theater should see the ending coming before it starts. The relationship between Buzz and Woody which strung everything together, is not here at all. Through an ingenious reset button, Buzz is back to default space ranger mode. This should have been the heart of Toy Story 3. Woody knows Buzz a lot more than Andy, he's been through a lot more, and the friendship is obviously a lot stronger. So it's baffling how fast he leaves Buzz, possibly forever.

It's well worthy to enter as an equal, to the canon. More sophisticated in it's animation and themes than the first two, while sharing most of the same motions that we've seen.




Dogtooth 2010



Welcome to this warped vacuum of a family, whose children (of 20+ years) believe cats to be dangerous carnivorous animals and are afraid to step outside their gate in fear of whatever else may be out there. It's trick is to stun you with the absurdity of their lives and try to understand how this came to be.

The father in this family is some evil masterful maestro, controlling all around him. How does he do it ? We only get a glimpse and we never actually evaluate him and why he needs to control everything.

This is the essential problem with Dogtooth, we don't get to know the characters half as well as they deserve. It's part solitary examination and eruption, not a whole lot we haven't seen before.




Inception 2010


The most flawed and effective movie of the year yet. Nolan never allows the adrenaline to overflow as he did in The Dark Knight, which is probably the biggest shortcoming of Inception.

It's semi-crushing how not wide the action scenes in Inception are. For a movie about atmosphere and shooting, it isn't afraid to smash you over the head with close ups. Although I still wouldn't go out of the way to say these shootouts are poorly done. It's the momentum they carry that isn't strong enough. For the first hour we're taught how inception works, the time and physics within dreams. By the time the heist begins there shouldn't be a second of misunderstanding. Sadly, the exposition follows every recurring bit of shooting - constantly putting the brakes on.

The best part of this are the performances. Dicaprio is losing his already loosened grip on reality, Marion Cotillard (his wife) is ever convincing him to stay in dreams with her. Dicaprio flexed this muscle earlier in the year in Shutter Island, but it's a small price to pay for a performance so meticulously realized.




Scott Pilgrim vs The World 2010



Edgar Wright turns 6 long graphic novels into a less than two hour movie, with time to spare. While at blazing speeds it may feel hard to view the interior, it's indeed finely crafted, bursting with comedic wit and glorious showdowns.

The plot is a play on Super Mario Bros (and a million others). Beat the bosses, save the girl. With Jason Schwartzman as Bowser and Michael Cera as a lazy, sleazy Mario. All of which happens in this hybrid video-game / comic book world.

Cera is playing his usual role, but this one's more of an *******, and lazy, and a fighting master. I don't think the Cera in Juno was very likely to pull as many counter hits and combos as this one. This world is full of characters though and it would take me too long to evaluate all 100 performances, I'll just say whether they're a face or a big time character they get the job done. What may rub people the wrong way is how unappealing to the audience Scott's love Romana is. She's hot I guess. Even Scott has doubts.

This is over everything an action movie though and it delivers there. Each fight is vastly different than the last, with tons of stuff bound to get destroyed. Just when you think you've seen it all, a battle of the bands turns into a giant monster brawl. Even Tom Jane lends a hand in the ass kicking.

From the hyper 8 bit soundtrack to the black info box's, Wright is still a director who never leaves a frame behind. Like all of his work, Scott Pilgrim vs The World is hilare, detailed, brutal, and entertaining as hell.




Bright light. Bright light. Uh oh.
I've never mentioned this before at the site, nebs, but why do you call meaty "meatface"? Is it because when you look at his avatar you can't help but see a face? Or is it because wad means something different in Australia than it does in America?

Any other Australians can chime in if my question makes sense. I doubt it does though.
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I've never mentioned this before at the site, nebs, but why do you call meaty "meatface"? Is it because when you look at his avatar you can't help but see a face? Or is it because wad means something different in Australia than it does in America?
Its just my nickname for Meaty not that interesting



Four Lions 2010


A comedy about terrorists, what took them so long ? Four Lions is brainless, tasteless, and on the downside almost hollow. It paints a pretty accurate picture of the kind of people who will blow themselves up for a cause their not entirely sure about. The laughs are there, but it wants to connect you to these characters with only their retardation as a line.

It almost works, but the players are too repetitive and flat. One guy is always yelling, one guy is always doing this, each has an assigned job. Out of four lions, we barely get to know one. Omar the family man, whose wife is perfectly content with him dying whenever he chooses to bomb something. It clearly wants a grip on some realism, but it fails in all of these attempts.




2010 is coming to a strong close and I've still got a ton of movies from this year to see. Here's a list of stuff I'm interested in.

this year




next year




Four Lions 2010
A comedy about terrorists, what took them so long ? Four Lions is brainless, tasteless, and on the downside almost hollow. It paints a pretty accurate picture of the kind of people who will blow themselves up for a cause their not entirely sure about. The laughs are there, but it wants to connect you to these characters with only their retardation as a line.
It almost works, but the players are too repetitive and flat. One guy is always yelling, one guy is always doing this, each has an assigned job. Out of four lions, we barely get to know one. Omar the family man, whose wife is perfectly content with him dying whenever he chooses to bomb something. It clearly wants a grip on some realism, but it fails in all of these attempts.
Yet you gave it THREE popcorn boxes.

My interest is piqued. I think I shall watch this sometime.