| Movie | Rating | Review | Date | Your Rating | Match | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Stepfather - R | December 21, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| The Messenger - R | December 21, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Dead Calm - R | December 21, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| H2: Halloween II - R |
In this movies defense, at least it manages to carve out it's own unique corner in the Halloween mythos instead of bumbling around John Carpenter's sandbox, knocking over his castles and leaving trails of dog shit everywhere, like Zombie's first attempt at putting his stamp on Halloween. Divorced from the constraints of retelling a familiar story, Zombie cuts loose and does away with next to all the iconography that has existed throughout all the Michael Myers Halloween pictures. We have no theme music. We have no boiler suit. The mask is half there, torn to reveal large chunks of face and barely masking a mammoth beard. Michael Myers is now a rough and tumble mountain man, traversing the wilds of outer Haddonfield like he's on a quest with the Fellowship of the Ring, occassionally running into strangers along the way and punching them to death with knives. The Michael Myers segments of the film could be described as The Littlest Hobo: Portrait of a Serial Killer. When not making merry with the stabs, Michael has conversations with clumsy symbolism, played by Sheri Moon Zombie, some long haired kid and a horse. Rob Zombie's Michael Myers has mommy issues. So why didn't you just ask to remake Friday the 13th? The rest of the film revolves around following the survivors of the last films (although didn't Loomis die in that movie?) and learning how they've all become horrible assholes. Laurie Strode is a grotty, vulgar ball of shrieking self-pity. Her constant attacks on her once close friend, Annie, are justified through a therapy session (featuring Margot Kidder, whose face has seen better days) where Laurie discusses how her friend is just a reminder of what happened to her. It's really not enough to make her likeable because Rob Zombie simply cannot write likeable characters - he could have held back in the scene where the drivers are delivering Michael's body to the morgue, there was no reason to have either character be vile fuckbags, but Zombie piles on the crudity with gusto making it positively delightful when damage is inflicted upon them. If he shows no restraint on throwaway characters, then why should we expect him to hold back on the ones he spends most of his time with? Loomis has become a money hungry shill, gone are even the faintest glimmers of that classic Donald Pleasance character that McDowell made (at least) a half hearted attempt at capturing in the first movie. Once again, surviving Michael Myers seems to mean you become a dick. Annie and her father Sheriff Brad Dourif (or whatever his name was) are the closest we get to likeable people, but that's largely in spite of Zombie's writing. Zombie can shoot a pretty picture, this film is filled with great frames, it's just a pity the things taking place with them don't always match up. I admire the weirdness brought to the table but too often Zombie will cram his usual schtick inbetween the unique ideas, the crude, flat dialogue and meaningless brutality. I can't criticize the violence, though, it's hard and fast and it works for this movie, complemented by a few cleverly staged kills. In a franchise that features Rob Zombie's remake, psychics and Busta Rhymes, it's hard to say this is the worst film of the series with a straight face. |
December 19, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans - R | December 19, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Avatar - PG-13 | Nice to look at, but utterly empty and uninvolving. Like a lethargic lapdance from a top shelf stripper. More thoughts to come eventually. | December 18, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Gamer - R | December 17, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Crazy Heart - R | December 17, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| The Hottie and the Nottie - PG-13 | December 13, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Southland Tales - R |
"It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." -Macbeth, Act V, Scene V. As always, the Bard puts it better than I ever could, but that isn't really enough for me. You know I can't just give a one line summation of any movie I see, even a really bad movie must receive a small essay from me, so here we go again... With Richard Kelly's debut cult hit, Donnie Darko, he juxtaposed the mundane with the fantastical and nightmarish to create something jarring but also familiar, an almost dream-like state of being. The end of the universe, time travel, ghosts from the future intertwined with suburban banality, middle class family dysfunction and teen angst. The opening sequence of Southland Tales illicits a similar feeling, the mundane and the nightmarish; a home video at a backyard birthday party, everything is seemingly normal, average but pleasant - a white flash - all eyes turn to the horizon, a mushroom cloud rises up. A chilling and powerful image, evoking all the right feelings of dread in the viewer and had this scene existed in a different movie it would be a potent sign of things to come, unfortunately this movie descends into a cartoonish, slapdash mess almost immediately after, squandering any good will generated by the preliminary minutes of the film. A montage begins detailing the events of WW3 with stills likely taken from Richard Kelly's Southland Tales prequel graphic novels, apparently vital in understanding the film. I can't comment on that, personally, but I found the use of comic art pretty cheap and lazy, and I also believe that if you are required to do research beyond the realm of the film in order to fully understand the piece then the writer and director have failed (Richard Kelly being both in this case). If you cannot communicate your ideas and establish a universe for the film to exist in within the film, then you have made a bad film. Supplemental material should complement the existing material, add depth and flavour to it, it should not be a necessity. I digress, and we rightfully return to the film itself. Justin Timberlake (a far cry from his rather entertaining and likable performance in Alpha Dog) narrates, telling us about the retaliatory nuclear strikes against the middle-east and North Korea, the struggle for oil, alternative fuel sources becoming a lucrative commodity in this bleak war-torn future. The Republicans win the '08 election. It is clear this is a movie with something to say, it strives to be the war cry of a generation, the great movie that defined the dissenting voice of our times. This generations Dr Strangelove, by way of Philip K Dick and David Lynch. Bold ambitions, but ambition does not equal quality. There is little point in explaining the story here, there is not much to comment on and simply putting it into words wouldn't make any sense. The scenes are all disjointed, characters arrive and instantly spout inane dialogue that feigns profundity or they just don't say anything interesting at all. Every scene is a Russian roulette of gibberish and banality. This is the case throughout every scene of the film, there is no break from it, it simply tries too hard to be weird and cryptic and profound and surreal. It just doesn't work. Lynch and Dick at their weirdest knew to keep the characters grounded in some level of reality, a sense of familiarity where you could believe that these characters could live in such a world. There is nothing like that here, none of the characters behave like real people, they are merely cyphers for Kelly's pseudo-intellectual ramblings, much like every single character encountered in the Matrix sequels. If I were to describe one scene from this film, you would ask yourself, "What kind of story could this possibly belong to?", and you would have to wonder at the kind of genius work where it could belong and could make sense and could be entertaining and you could buy into it entirely... This is not that movie. These scenes do not work. I get what he was trying to do, so it is not a case of me "not getting it" (a shield the film's baffling number of defenders will no doubt wield often), there is simply precious little to "get" and even less to find interesting about what is eventually "got." Or "gotten," I don't know. The storyline was a mess, while at its core there is an easy to understand storyline it is simply too ludicrous and ham-fisted to really find compelling and this petty, silly central storyline is surrounded by events and ideas and dialogue that all fail to make any sense on a quite monumental level. Richard Kelly seems like a man with grand ambitions and a vision that errs on the fantastic (fantastic in terms of tone and scope, not quality, as evidenced in this film) but he lacks the fundamentals necessary to put those ideas together into a coherent form, or to even structure those strong, sometimes confusing ideas within an entertaining experience; see Twelve Monkeys to see it done well. Richard Kelly can clearly shoot a great scene, he has a keen eye for a striking visual and the opening sequence is evidence of that and there are other examples throughout. Richard Kelly can also write good solid dialogue, but you will not see any of that here, see Donnie Darko for that. Richard Kelly can also work with actors, this is the man that turned Jake Gylenhaal into a movie star. He takes unconventional casting choices and squeezes out brave and interesting performances from them; The Rock (fuck what he says, he'll always be The Rock to me and there's nothing wrong with that!) and Sarah Michelle Gellar both give their best performances to date, not that this is saying much considering their respective career choices but they show the potential each actor possesses if they would just choose their acting gigs more wisely. Unfortunately despite great performances I still would struggle to call this one of those wise choice. Gellar is wonderful as porn star turned media icon, Krysta Now. Of all the characters and all the satirical barbs this film has to offer, hers is the most successful. It may be the only thing about the movie that works. Her character and her place in the world and what that says about society is close to the bone and therefore it is one of the few things that really succeeds in this film as a satire, or indeed as anything. I loved every scene she was in, it's probably her best role since Buffy. Unfortunately the film is full of these great little ideas and moments loaded with potential, the real problem is that these ideas are lost in a sea of other ideas. Ideas that just don't connect or don't feel complete or don't - fucking - work. As a result the good ideas simply cannot touch and are just floating around with the bad ideas. Richard Kelly has tried to do too much in one film and it falls flat. It's like he feared he was told he could only make one more film and he just rushed all the ideas in his head into one screenplay with no filter for quality control or relevance. Example: One of the most pointless and jarring sequences in the movie, the 'musical number' where Justin Timberlake mouths along to The Killers "All These Things That I Done" has absolutely no place in the movie, I fail to see how it fits in with the rest of the film thematically or even tonally. I am sure blood splattered, scarred Justin Timberlake mouthing along to a Killers song seemed really edgy and subversive at the time but that doesn't mean it should be in a film. Yet it is actually one of the least bizarre and most entertaining scenes in the film because on it's own merits, on some level, it makes sense. It just doesn't make sense in this movie. Nothing makes sense in this movie. All things considered: I still cannot wait to see Kelly's next project, The Box, based on a 1980s Twilight Zone episode "Button, Button". A linear, focused narrative is just what he needs right now because this movie is a clear sign of a rookie director who got drunk on his own hype. Nobody will let him have this much freedom again for a while, and I think for the time being that is probably a good thing, because I can't think of a director who hasn't totally fucked up before after being given too much freedom. If nothing else this film will be a strong lesson for Kelly to use his talents more sparingly. I can't imagine what a clusterfuck the original edit was that got booed at Cannes, but I can see Kelly has wasted way too much time and money trying to fix this absolute disaster. I'm just glad he has finally finished tooling around in the engine room of the Titanic because the man is clearly very talented, he has a great eye as a director and can write good dialogue, but there was just no saving Southland Tales. He tried something different and it didn't work, for that alone I admire him but it is hard to support the guy after wasting so much time, energy and resources on something that fails to work on almost every level. Donnie Darko, the theatrical cut, was more of a mood piece than an actual movie with solid, compelling ideas. It was a cinematic rorschach test. You watched it and took something personal away from it. Every person I spoke to would have a different sense of what the film was about and what it all meant, and that was the movies success, the sly, suggestive but witty and grounded dialogue and keen eye of the writer/director helped. Listening to the director commentary for Donnie Darko, Kelly struggled to articulate what the movie meant, he struggled to explain the details. Richard Kelly did not understand his own film, and as a result the Director's Cut was a monumental disaster. He attempted to explain something he didn't understand and as a result he struggled to put these ideas into the film in a way that was both logical and entertaining. It didn't work. The film feels much like that but lacking that heart, charm and sense of focus that Donnie Darko ultimately had. Despite the convoluted nature of its science fiction elements, it was a movie with a strong sense of direction and it arrived at its intended destination. Southland Tales feels like a movie with too much going on and not enough of it works to make the destination worth arriving at; there is a good, logical but weird movie hiding inside here somewhere but it's merely a slither. It's not enough to save with a director's cut, Kelly has had enough chances to re-cut this film and as my father would say, "You can't polish a turd," you can try but you'll just make a mess. The version of Southland Tales we find ourselves with is that mess. |
December 13, 2009 | N/A | |||
| The Room - R | December 13, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow - PG | December 13, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| The Royal Tenenbaums - R | December 13, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Hotel Chevalier - R | December 13, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou - R | December 13, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Rushmore - R | December 13, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Bottle Rocket - R | December 13, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Fantastic Mr. Fox - PG | December 13, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Terminator 2: Judgment Day - R | December 11, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Piranha Part Two: The Spawning (Piranha II: Flying Killers) - R | December 11, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Aliens - R |
Arguably one of the greatest sequels ever made. While Alien set the standard for not just sci-fi horror movies, but horror movies to follow, Aliens sets the precedent for the big, badass action movie. The big guns vs. big monsters genre. If that were even a genre? and it should be. This movie expands the Alien universe, continuing that worn down, "lived in", rough around the edges aesthetic that was established in Alien. It's set further along the timeline than the original (thanks to hypersleep) and so things are a little different, a little more advanced but things still feel like they exist on the same timeline. You can see where the seeds of Alien's tech and architecture have blossomed into something different. It advances and develops the universe of the human colonists in the universe in a natural way. It also explores the hierarchy of the xenomorphs in far more detail, creating something organized, logical and chilling. It may remove some of the mystique behind the creatures, but the idea that they have such a methodical power structure makes them disturbing in a different way, the different breeds of alien are visually fascinating with the Alien Queen being the boldest and most exciting design of the film. The world of the xenomorphs becomes something epic in this movie, it expands in the same way the human world has. Most importantly, however, the aliens are still terrifying creatures. Relentless, unstoppable weapons of destruction and what better way to show this than to have them square up against a collective of mankind?s own weapons of destruction; the Colonial Marines. These guys helped define many young boys childhoods during the late 80s and early 90s, I remember during breaks in the playground of primary school, me and my friends would play "Aliens" and at the time we would all fight over who got to be Hicks. It's understandable, Michael Biehn was a poster boy for the stoic action hero figure in the 80s (he banged Sarah Connor before she got all mannish, for instance), but he wasn't the only great iconic character on display within the Marines. The older I got the more I grew to love and appreciate Bill Paxton's Hudson. This man was a realist, he saw the situation they were in and he reacted like any rational human being would: He shat his pants to bursting point. Every line of dialogue that poured out of Paxton's mouth was pure quotable gold, every character got to utter at least one memorable quote during the movies runtime but Hudson got an entire scripts worth. Apone is the quintessential hardass Sarge, he became an archetype for all future sci-fi war movies and was probably responsible for any boosts in cigar sales during the last half of the 1980s. At the end of the day, though, whichever character you were allocated in the playground re-enactments of sci-fi cinema's greatest bloodbaths, you were still playing a legendary badass with a gun so large it would make Freud do a spittake. I say this because I would sometimes be made to play Vasquez. Hey, she had the biggest gun of them all, so fuck you. The Alien series is as much about Ripley as it is about the aliens and this movie gave Ripley more depth and more heart, it expanded her character and allowed her to grow and a big contribution to that was the presence of Newt. Newt was an emotional catalyst for Ripley, she was a surrogate daughter figure for Ripley who lived her life and died whilst Ripley was in hyper sleep, and Ripley transfers all her lost feelings and all the moments she could never have with her child onto Newt. Sigourney Weaver gave a great, visceral performance and one of the real highlight of the entire series. If you don't believe me then say hello to that Oscar nomination she received for this movie. An Oscar nomination for a sci-fi action sequel. Admit it, that's impressive. Ripley loved Newt and was drawn to protect her and this maternal instinct lead us to witness one of cinemas greatest face-offs: Ripley in the Cargo Loader Exoskeleton Vs. The Alien Queen. "Get away from her, you bitch." Fuck. Yes. Incidentally one of the reasons I resent Scream 2 is because Randy (our beloved film geek extraordinaire) has the audacity to correct another film student and say the real line is "Stay away from her, you bitch" and nobody calls him out on his fallacy. Randy, you broke my heart that day, I'm glad you got stabbed to death in a van. |
December 11, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Titanic - PG-13 | December 11, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Hard Eight (Sydney) - R | December 10, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| The Blind Side - PG-13 | While it might seem cliche, the film never hits a false note, being heartfelt, uplifting but never phoney. Sandra Bullock is firing on all cylinders, capping off her big comeback year with a touching, sweet and surprisingly funny crowd pleaser. It's 'out of nowhere' success story at the box office reflects the surprise success of it's gentle giant protagonist who turned into an unstoppable juggernaut, and in both cases it's a success that is well earned. | December 9, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Jackie Brown - R | December 9, 2009 | N/A |
3080 ratings
220 reviews
