Movie Tab II

High Tension (Aja, 2005)

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Sin City (Frank Miller & Robert Rodriguez, 2005)

6/10

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Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

The Man Who Would Be King (1975, John Houston)

4/5

Two ex-army chancers during The Raj decide to become rulers of an Afghan province and make some money.

Wonderful Kipling yarn (crappy action scenes, though I forgive it that) with Caine & Connery on top, shouty form.

Danny's just a man, not a god. He can break wind at both ends simultaneously - which is more than any god can do.

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"Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how the Tatty 100 is done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves." - Brendan Behan

Arizona Dream - Erm, anyone speak eskimo? Anyone speak Kusturica?
Not as good as i was hoping it'd be, but decent enough, in a quirky 'escapist' suicide-n-love-triangle kinda way.

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Virtual Reality chatter on a movie site? Got endless amounts of it here. Reviews over here

The Aviator (Scorcese, 2004)

Aprčs Vous (2003) ~ I liked this quirky little buddie/romantic comedy quite a bit. It wasn't as "funnier than hell" as it states on the back of the DVD jacket....but it definately lived up to it's tagline, "A very tasty comedy with a little French twist." I'd recommend it.

Se7en - sick, twisted and wonderful. This script is very theatrical and the acting is really solid. Pitt is a little stylized, but it works for the character, and Freeman is... well, he's him. He's always terriffic.


Koyaanisqatsi (1983 - Godfrey Reggia)
Whoa. Dude.
97 minute fusion of images and music, expressing the Hopi word meaning "life out of balance... life calling out for a new way of life". It's an experience.

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Review: Cabin in the Woods 8/10

That's exactly what I think of Pitt in Se7en as well. He has this thing he tries to do in many films, I don't know how to describe it... it's something about his body language. It just looks the same in every film, and it annoys me most of the times. But I think it suits the character he plays in Se7en. And, yeah, Freeman is always great to watch, probably one of my favourite actors. It's funny because it seems like he too is playing, if not the same character, then characters with similar personalities or mood, in film after film. But unlike Pitt, but like actors such as Nicholson, De Niro and Pacino, he gets away with it. He must be either a better actor than Pitt, or I simply like the man more than Pitt. Or very possibly both.

What the hell am I talking about here??? [/rant]

Anyway....

Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex, Drugs and Rock'n'Roll Generation Saved Hollywood (2003 - Kenneth Bowser)

A documentary based on the book by Peter Biskind. I allready knew most of it but it's still a nice lesson in film history with some fun old footage and interviews of and with some people that were important for that era.

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The novelist does not long to see the lion eat grass. He realizes that one and the same God created the wolf and the lamb, then smiled, "seeing that his work was good".

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They had temporarily escaped the factories, the warehouses, the slaughterhouses, the car washes - they'd be back in captivity the next day but now they were out - they were wild with freedom. They weren't thinking about the slavery of poverty. Or the slavery of welfare and food stamps. The rest of us would be all right until the poor learned how to make atom bombs in their basements.

Lords of Dogtown (Hardwicke, 2005) - Not directed very well, but I found the subject matter (somewhat) interesting. Probably wouldn't watch it again...

Great Balls of Fire! (1989) 3/5

"Well, if I'm going to hell, I'm going there playing the piano."...

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I think Freeman plays his characters straight and true, and that allows us to see him in the situation as a genuine entity. I think Pitt would like to be a character actor, but he has only a beginner's understanding of that job. He has learned a few gestures (playing with his hair, the pronounced hand movements) that are appliques on his characters, and like you say: it works once, maybe twice (I thought it worked really well for [i]12 Monkeys/[i]) but when he keeps doing it, it just reminds the viewer of the other times he's used those traits. He needs to hang out and people watch, and get some new moves if he wants to go the route of the character actor. [/over analysis]

Fantastic Four - Fun!

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"You, me, everyone...we are all made of star stuff." - Neil Degrasse Tyson

https://shawnsmovienight.blogspot.com/

The Hunt for Red October- Yup, IMO the best Tom Clancy book turned movie.

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"This is that human freedom, which all boast that they possess, and which consists solely in the fact, that men are conscious of their own desire, but are ignorant of the causes whereby that desire has been determined." -Baruch Spinoza

I couldn't agree more....

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005 - Garth Jennings)

I think I read 20 pages of the book before I decided I couldn't stand it. But the film was decent - a handfull of laughs spread out all through the film.

The Sea Inside (Mar Adentro) (2004) Alejandro Amenabar - Raised many interesting points for an hour long discussion afterwards....a lifetime discussion could follow.

Central Station (Central do Brasil) (1998) Walter Salles - Excellent performance by Fernanda Montenegro, beautiful story, ho-hum.

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Crash

and since I'm writing an article for the school newspaper about this year in movies, it counts as research (Yeah!)

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"Like all dreamers, Steven mistook disenchantment for truth."

Fight Club (David Fincher, 1999)

4/10 (I used to like it but now it's just not the same)

The Sound of Music (Robert Wise, 1965)

9/10 (better than I expected!)

Withnail & I (Bruce Robinson, 1987)

8/10 (still brilliant)

Charade (Stanley Donen, 1963)

6/10 (lacking in execution, but great plot)

The Tenant (1976, Roman Polanski)

4/5

Creepier in feel and, for me, more chilling than Polanski's better known apartment based psychological horror story, but not as polished.

Isabelle Adjani is the very epitome of '70s sexiness, huge Deidre Barlow-esque tortoiseshell specs and all...

Downfall - Youch. Powerful stuff. Pretty damn immersive. The running time sure does fly by, as people have said.

Dark Water (2005, Walter Salles)

2/5

Great cast (Jennifer Connelly, Pete Postelthwaite, Tim Roth, John Reilly), atmospheric camerawork and some strong(ish) performances can't hide an insipid remake of a far superior Nakata (I think his best) film. The scenes that work are the ones lifted in their entirety from the original, surprise surprise, but they're few and far between.

The denouement especially was so anaesthetised and telegraphed that it had me flicking V signs at the screen.



EDIT - I've just sat through the extras (yup, I'm tight like that) and the screenwriter had the brass neck to waffle on about his 'playing with ideas in my own mind to create a script about a woman in emotional jeapordy' with absolotely no reference to Taka Ichise's novel. Nakata's Dark Water doesn't even get a namecheck in passing by anyone. Not once.

Avoid this bloody film.