Movies I've Seen At The Pics This Year (2008)

It began so promisingly... and then there was the monsters. Will Smith plays Will Smith, an awesome dude with amazing guns and a lonely but still enviable life in NYC. So far, so Men In Black. But, apart from a very moving scene involving the dog, the second half is Resident Evil-calibre suckitude, and the ending is a schlocky Hollywoodized travesty of all that I hold dear. Or something.

The Coens strike again...

So completely, polarizingly insane that it seems a cop-out to give it neither no stars or five; but it's neither the travesty some made it out to be nor the masterpiece I'd like to hail it as. It's a total fucking mess, but will leave you scratching your head for days afterward.

The new Citizen Kane? Well, I don't know, because I haven't actually seen Citizen Kane. All I can say is, watch this movie. A lot.

The most underrated masterpiece of last year, which I was lucky enough to catch in its brief '08 run in my local indie. Slow, thoughtful, meandering, this is definitely the thinking man's neo-western. Not everyone will be riveted, but if the thought of a western whose outlaw hero quotes Catullus floats your boat as much as it does mine, then this is the film for you.

To quote Kevin Murphy: the only way this could get any worse is if there was a pod race.