Recent Movie Review Thread

Time for a good old PSA;

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (2010)-

Annoying, sissy hipster douchebag guy tries win to the love (fleeting interest) of annoying, bitchy hipster douchebag girl. Hilarity ensues.

I was recommended this movie by several people, and each time I wondered how could possibly be any good. The comic is fucking atrocious, and every time I see Michael Cera, I wonder how the hell anyone could employ him as an extra, let alone anything requiring speech or facial expression. Well, I got my answer. It isn't.

Cera is at his most brutal here, burying every single joke with a prayer of being funny, and totally sucking the life out of this film with his wooden attempts at being "awkward funny". Now, there are actors who can pull the latter off, like Woody Allen, Ricky Gervais, or Jesse Eisenberg. With Cera, part of the problem is how slow and mentally retarded he talks and looks at any given moment.

The lead female, played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead, also had me scratching me my head on how the hell she was cast. She's just utterly lifeless, providing zero amusement or interest at any point in the film. Adding insult to injruy, she's not even that hot, nor does she show any skin. What the fuck was this no-talent, ordinary-looking moron doing here?

This film's primary problem is how freaking BORING it is. Listen, I have played almost every single video game in the NES and SNES libraries on an emulator, and damn near every fighter ever made. However, putting video game music, graphical life bars, and injecting it into the fucking dialogue does NOT make a movie funny all by itself. It can ENHANCE scenes and gags that are already funny by themselves, but it cannot carry an entire film.

The first 30 minutes of the film show damn near nothing except supposedly hilarious moments with the characters of Scott's small town. Problem is, none of the jokes, most taken directly from the comic, are any good. They're lame, and so are the characters. Now, something like a gay roommate could be funny, if it's written properly.

But when we're expected to laugh by the mere existence of said gay roommate? That's fucking pathetic.

Even after the fights start, the film keeps reverting back to this, and that's when there aren't empty, static scenes of Scott moping alone on a swing. Riveting entertainment, no?

"But what about the fights? Aren't they fun?"

Sadly, they might have been the biggest disappointment of the entire film. The choreography and stunt work is pathetic. Anytime you can clearly see Michael Cera (he does a few of his own stunts), it looks more lame and limp-dicked than something from Dolemite.

The fights with the stunt doubles are routine and generic, a little bit worse than in the crappy knock-off US martial arts films of the early 90s. And just to utterly kill any possible amusement in them, they overuse smash cuts, so one often can't even see what is going on.

There are bright colors, sure, and a few cool animations. Overall, though?

It's an example of a decent director saddled with a horrendous cast and script, with neither the tools or know-how to film fight scenes.

Avoid this garbage like the plague, and if you're morbidly curious, download that shit.

32/100

 

Skyline

You can sum up this movie with two words: disappointingly mediocre.

The film starts out pretty slow, and that was okay because you're expecting it to pick up since it's about an alien invasion. Well if you were like me and thought that, you'd be wrong. It never picks up. In fact,

Spoiler

THEY NEVER LEAVE THE FUCKING APARTMENT BUILDING.

I don't quite understand what this film was trying to do, but it failed miserably at everything. I went in with very low exceptions, but I was still expecting too much in this case. Normally, I'd go on about what's wrong with it, but pretty much nothing really happens.

Spoiler

Okay, so basically aliens invade and use some sort of light to draw people to them so they can suck them up easily and turn them into more aliens and use them to regenerate their bio-mechanical population. What??? I wouldn't even care if something happened in this movie. Maybe if the group were trying to escape LA and got caught up between the Military and aliens battling it out. Even that wouldn't work I suppose when you consider that the aliens are invincible, regenerating themselves within minutes. I don't know what else to talk about since there was literally nothing that happened (according to Wikipedia, Skyline is the first film in the series). What's going to happen in part 2, is Jarrod going to turn into Superman and single-handedly destroy the alien menace?

Captain Hindsight will no doubt save the day by informing The Brothers Strause that they shouldn't have made this movie. I'll end this post on a good note. It seems that what this movie failed to do, Battle: Los Angeles will do 1000x better. Spend your night watching this trailer instead of seeing Skyline. <a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORb3zC8z94w" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORb3zC8z94w</a>

 

Megamind:

I'd rate the movie a solid 7/10. It didn't really go how I expected it to, but that was alright, because I was just looking to see a solid 3D movie with a bunch of 1 liners. Those like "use the 'forget me' stick!" were pretty funny. Jonah Hill was his usual annoying self and Brad Pitt had an unusually small part. Will Ferrell was pretty decent especially since you don't have to see his stupid face, and Tina Fey was...well Tina Fey.

The whole movie plot was not what I was thought it was going to be, but it turned out alright and was entertaining. A kids movie it may have been, but there were the usual sexual jokes that popped up every now and then. Overall, the movie was pretty good and hit the spot for what it was meant to.

 

Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows Part 1.

If you've read the book, you seen the movie. I have never seen a movie that followed it's parent book so closely. Line for line, scene for scene. It was brought completely to life. They absolutely did the right thing making two movies. It could not have been as well done otherwise. They did a superb job capturing the feeling and the spirit of the book. Much darker and more emotionally intense than any of the other movies. 9/10 stars from me. And I am completely in love with Emma Watson. She is and will be a fine actress. Can't wait to see more from her.

 

I would say yea, it definately does a good job of following the mood of the book, and making two movies. But there were lots of instant's that changed they what happened or changed the ordered of what happened, and a few times where they really changed what happened. And a couple of things they left out which i would of loved to see. There were some changes that worked just as well as what happened in the book. I would give it a 7.5/10 just cause i hate needless fucking changes that they made. If you didn't read the book and just taking it for a movie then yea 9/10 would do.

 

What? I've read the book like 6-7 times and from what I can remember, they changed practically nothing. The changes made were mostly expositional, though it's possible I'm wrong because I have a tendency to overstate things some times. Can you give me an example of what was out of order/what you are referring to? PM me if you don't want to spoil or if spoiling is an issue.

 

NO SPOILERS, but I do mention the words "camping-sequence" and "listlessness",

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

I've read the book, albeit a long time ago, so I know the general gist of the story. I didn't go into the movie expecting a page-by-page recreation of it - I can just read the effin' book for that - I just wanted a faithful representation of the story (or the first half of the story) in movie form.

Movie form. As in: a film that has a general story that goes from A to Z. Intro to End. Climax, mise en scene, penultimate scene. Blah blah blah.

This movie had none of it. So I don't even considered it a full-movie. It literally had no ending to the plots which it started. WB took the lazy way out of a great set of plots by just crudely splicing the ultra-long HP:7 into two movies. Whatever, if you're a fan it doesn't really matter, you know the story anyway...

What does matter is how the material was presented. There is no V.O. narrator so there should be a lot of exposition through the scenes, the pacing, the flow and most especially the dialogue. Nope. There is very little dialogue in this movie. I'd be surprised if there's even a 100 pages worth, most of it being sharp, rigid conversations.

It's just a bunch of reaction shots and grumpy looking Britons.

The director spent 45 minutes on the camping-out sequence. Which, in the manner the director executed it, could've been done in 5, maybe 10 minutes at the very most. Before the camping sequence the movie was flowing, although it was very rigid and cold, and had a decent pace. Things were happening. Then they start the camping and the movie just unravels.

To convey the emotion the characters are presently feeling, the director tries makes the viewer feel that exact way. We're no longer watching a movie of them, we're a member of their group... Which would be excellent if it weren't that the emotions are: LISTLESSNESS, CONFUSION, DESPAIR, BOREDOM and CONSTIPATION.

It's Harry Potter not fucking Shindler's List. Even through the "dark" seventh book there was a sense of adventure and warmth in everything Harry and Co. did, this movie totally drops the ball in a very lazy attempt to immerse the audience into the world. There are no explanations or expositions, the viewer is just as lost as the character they're viewing, sometimes more so because we don't even know what the spells are or who some random character is or their backstory. Keeping your audience on their toes is fine if it weren't for the fact that the book and plot WERE NOT DESIGNED THAT WAY. It's just confusing and discouraging to anybody who's trying to keep up to this disjointed shit-show.

I don't like number scores but that's all you probably care about so...

3.1415/7.3890561 (pi on e²) or Don'tWatch

I hope someday, someone will re-imagine the entire series and do it justice. WB just wants to make a quick buck.

 

Series like Harry Potter or Twilight have long since gone beyond the realm of being judged as actual movies. They're watched and appraised, by producers and audience alike, on an entirely different criteria. Namely, do they satisfy fans of the series enough so that, with the help of the lavish P&A, they will return for the sequel? That's it. Nothing else.

 

I find that when I watch the HP movies the first time, I am distracted by evaluating the similarities and differences from the book, both with how they move the story along and with how things are interpreted visually. I tend to like them a lot better on subsequent viewings when I don't have those other things cluttering my head.

 

It's funny you should mention that. There were many inferences in the movie to Nazi Germany.

Spoiler

-The persecution of muggles and mudbloods
-The statue in the ministry of them being crushed
-The references to a pureblood race of wizards
-The radio broadcasts of who had been captured
-The goon squads
-The cut on Hermione's arm (like a tattoo from a concentration camp)

 

The entire series is an allegory for solidarity and all that, I chose Shindler's list specifically. The point stands: this movie sucks as a film, a retelling of HP:7 part 1 AND as a form of brain-dead entertainment. Shit shit shit.

 

Restrepo

It's a documentary following a platoon of soldiers in Afghanistan's Korengal Valley for one year. Dubbed the "deadliest place on earth", it's the heaviest, most constant fighting any US troops have seen since Viet Nam. It's chilling. Just as much as Band of Brothers, if not moreso because this is real footage, not Hollywood magic. The firefights are caught up close with the camera man on point with the soldiers, not from a distance. The personal interviews are very very real.

10/10.

 

Faster

The Rock is back making movies again. I thought it was a solid movie, not amazing but it was decent for an action movie. He is out to extract revenge on people for killing his brother. It has a nice little plot twist at the end that I wasn't expecting. Plus, Maggie Grace is in it and that makes me happy in my pants.

 

Harry Potter 7

KImaster is exactly right this film was made just to satisfy the fans of the book. On that front they actually did a half decent job sticking to the story and the sequences of the book, considering how long and descriptive it is. It's always hard to watch the film and not constantly compare it to the book, but I enjoyed this movie.

Let it be known I'm a huge fan of the book and think WB did a good job of creating the world of Harry Potter, Hogwarts ect... However it would be tough to disagree with the previous post calling it "lazy." Almost no thought went into the screenplay, seeing they were so desperate to fit everything in and make sure it matched the book it had a forced feeling the entire movie.

Emma Watson has really gotten hot, if any of the three actually come away with a career after this it will be her. Especially since Daniel Radcliffe has steadily gotten worse over the years, honestly his best acting was probably the fourth film.

They did however resist making up scenes that never happened cue-Half Blood Prince and the attack on the Weasley's home at Christmas. Except for some lame dance scene in the middle of the movie that wasted six minuets that could have been used explaining the story a little better.

I'm giving this movie two scores; the first is comparing it to other movies, the second is comparing in to the other Harry Potter films.

4.5

6.25

 

Tron: Legacy

For what it was, it was very very good. The story is fast paced and action packed. The visuals (minus CLU/Young Flynn's face) are great, though a bit confusing at times if you see it in 3D. Olivia Wilde is not only friggin gorgeous in this movie, but she actually does a good job on the tough-but-naive archetype, giving what could have been a pretty one dimensional character some depth.

There were a couple things that were a little bit predictable, but as far as popcorn movies go, it was quite enjoyable. Of course, my perspective is that of someone who loved the original. I would imagine you'd have to at least see the first one to truly enjoy this one.

8.5/10

 

Black Swan (2010)-

A frigid, naive young ballerina gets the lead in a production of "Swan Lake", only she can't master the dark, sensual "black swan". As she loses herself in the role, and has to cope with Badgirl Ballerina Mila Kunis, Overbearing, Strict Mother, and Lecherous Asshole European Director, "psychological thrills" ensue.

I wanted to like this film, folks. I really fucking did.

I love fucked up fairy tales, disorientation, horror, everything. And I know most people watching "Black Swan" will piss themselves with how good and "terrifying" it is.

Here's the problem; it's the most predictable, routine film imaginable. Every smash cut, every horrifying vision in a mirror...it's so damn cliche, so easy to spot. "Black Swan" raises an awful lot of tension, but nowadays, that's so easy. All it uses are the same quick cuts, focus changes, and scary images of any two-bit, throwaway horror film.

And what about the pay-off? The goddamn punch line to it? Nothing...just the simplest, most banal ending. Lots of cheap horror movie tension and little else.

The whole time I was watching the clichefest, I was remembering a movie called "Perfect Blue". It has virtually the exact same premise, and it's a cheap animated movie from the late 90s, not a star-studded Hollywood $13 million picture with a score by Clint Mansell.

But everything that "Black Swan" failed at, "Perfect Blue" succeeded in. Just do yourself a favor and watch the latter from start to finish. I even included a download link.

50/100

2010 continues to disappoint!

 

One of the parts that me and my date got the most kick out of was Daft Punk making a good cameo in the movie. Also, they did very good things with the score.

You're right as well, with the upgraded versions of the old Tron Vehicles.

You get the feeling that this is what they would have done in '82 if they could.

It's, overall, a realization of premise.


It's also the first thing I've seen that makes me consider buying a 3D TV, at some point.

 

The Fighter:

The story of young Irish Micky Ward coming off some tough loses and trying to get back into the ring to prove he is a somebody and not just a stepping stone in the boxing world. All the time he is doing this he has many struggles not just boxing but his family as well. His mother and brother try to manage and train him, but with loss after loss Micky realizes his mother and brother are not helping him for his best interest but their own.

I thoroughly enjoyed this movie and Christian Bale's portrayal as a Crack head was spot on (according to my ex druggie friend). After seeing the real Micky and Dicky during the credits I have to say Bale pulled him off nicely.

Mark Wahlberg does a nice job of creating a character you cant help but love. Throughout the whole movie your hoping he has the strength to stand up to his family and be his own man.

All in all this movie is more than just a boxing movie its about a young man being used by his family and the boxing world. We just hope by the end he asserts himself with his family and lives the way he wants too...and hopefully whens a title along the way.

8.5/10

 

127 Hours

Kinda shocked no one's reviewed this. Before I give my thoughts, I love Danny Boyle and I've been waiting for this movie to come out for months. Haven't read the book or anything but I remember reading all about this on the news seven years ago and being utterly shocked and inspired by this guy's will to live. So my perception is probably colored by the hype, but I thought the movie delivered. It was great and I definitely recommend it.

Best thing is no spoiler alert need be given, because we can all agree we know how it ends. So how do you maintain 93 minutes of footage of a guy with his arm trapped under a rock, thinking of ways to get out? THAT'S what you need to see for yourself, because as much as I'll try, I can't give an explanation that'll do it justice.

You've probably heard a lot about Franco and his performance. I personally was worried that it would become more about Franco and less about the story; that without the ability to do anything or go anywhere, we'd be regaled to several measures of flashbacks and filler just to keep the movie interesting. That was hardly the case. There's a cutesy beginning with two other female hikers, but about twenty minutes into the film Franco's character (Aron Ralston) is trapped. There follows a set of sequences, mostly consisting of close-ups, where he brainstorms as to how to free himself. With each failed effort, and the magnitude of the situation sinking in slowly, you as an audience member begin to feel the panic right along with him.

But that was the only thing, as part of the audience, that you share with him. The flashbacks the film employs are scarce and fleeting, sometimes just a few seconds at a time without explaining what exactly he's reminiscing about as he remains stuck beneath a rock and stares down his impending demise. You know he had a girlfriend, who stormed off on him at a basketball game once and declared that he'll be alone forever. You know he has loving parents and a sister, whom he begins to regret not loving back enough. There's evidence he's displayed a sense of hubris and selfishness throughout his life, yet the film spends precious little time revealing it in the face of a ticking clock. He makes confessions into a camera, which he uses to maintain a steady balance of humor and determination to motivate himself.

It's a clever, simple, and beautiful way to weave together a fantastic and inspiring story. I was a bit upset, in all actuality, that it didn't last longer; the film concludes itself and closes at a relatively quick pace, without leaving us the time to sink in what we just witnessed. All together it's worth seeing; beautiful scenery, great economy of writing, and a flawless performance by Franco. Kind of like Cast Away meets Into The Wild, with the same order of star power. I really enjoyed it, it's worth checking out.

***1/2 out of 4