| Movie | Rating | Review | Date | Your Rating | Match | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Macbeth - Unrated | A noble effort... that didn't really do it for me. Visually seems to want to be an action movie, but then the pacing plods so that doesn't really work. I couldn't get into it, really, as much as it tried. A shame. | October 6, 2008 | N/A | |||
| Donnie Darko - R | First watching it, all the way through, I thought it was just a collection of really great scenes that didn't entirely fit together, and then the ending comes and everything seems to fit... even though, even now, I'm still not one hundred percent sure. Such a great mindfuck, but also such a great watch. Often mindfucks have characters and scenes that, while watching them, are unrelatable or boring or seemingly meaningles, and it's a struggle to get to, and you only persevere so you can see what the movie is on about, but not here! It rules all the way through. If you don't think so, you can go suck a fuck. | August 31, 2008 | N/A | |||
| The X-Files: I Want to Believe (The X Files 2) - PG-13 |
It's nice to see Mulder and Scully again. It's also impressive that rather than tackling a) more alien conspiracy stuff or b) a simple Mulder and Scully investigation, Chris Carter made his film exploring the issues of faith and judgement and good and evil, as they are and as they affect the lives of these characters who have been in the public eye since the early nineties. But it's not done very well. The case is never involving, coincidences and convieniences that might be acceptable on TV are glaringly obvious on the cinema screen, and the medical sub-plot is heavy-handed in how it thematically figures into the main story. A TV movie or a miniseries, even with the same story, would have been a nice return, but this particular tale isn't one for the movies. |
August 5, 2008 | N/A | |||
| The Square - R | Very impressive; the kind of movie you can recommend to people who bitch and moan about Australian films not being entertaining enough. This twists and turns constantly, as characters make mistakes and dig themselves deeper into trouble, seeing rays of hope that are time and again cruelly snatched. And it's a ride. It's dark, and it's mean, but it's never less than thrilling. | August 5, 2008 | N/A | |||
| À l'intérieur (Inside) - R | European horror is my favourite thing right now. This movie is at once very gory and intensely creepy, and pretty unforgettable. Not for the faint of heart. | August 3, 2008 | N/A | |||
| The Dark Knight - PG-13 | Rewatching Batman Begins now reveals its flaws - the studio interference is clear, although it's still a fine film - and those are a complete non issue here. This is not a superhero movie, it's a crime drama. Whereas the majority of superhero movies tend to be driven by the action - you watch the plot to get to the next fight or chase or explosion - the plot is what you watch for here, even more than the big setpieces. And the acting. Oh, the acting. Ledger, of course, runs circles around Jack Nicholson's take on the Joker to such an extent that there's no point even arguing about it. Aaron Eckhart, too, is incredible, and Gary Oldman brings class. And Maggie Gyllenhaal is delightful. Bale, too, is good, although he's practically a supporting player here. Nolan's best film since Memento, and it possibly tops that one. | August 3, 2008 | N/A | |||
| Batman - PG-13 | This is just plain old... not very good. Perhaps seeing it for the first time after the two Christopher Nolan takes on the franchise didn't help things, but this is silly (and not in a hilarious way like Adam West's Batman) and so, so surface level. There's no subtext, no overarching themes of fear of the nature of evil, it's just The Joker is bad and Batman must stop him. And perhaps that would be okay were it more entertaining, but more than anything, it's just kind of irritating and there's no characters or anything of interest to latch onto. Burton's got an eye, I'll give him that, and the design's pretty fascinating, but this is not the recent classic that some may have you believe. | August 3, 2008 | N/A | |||
| Los Cronocrímenes (Timecrimes) - R | July 31, 2008 | N/A | ||||
| Låt den Rätte Komma In (Let the Right One in) - R | Creepy, dark and captivating, with an ending that gets sadder the more you think about it. | June 24, 2008 | N/A | |||
| This Is England - Unrated | June 24, 2008 | N/A | ||||
| Klass (The Class) - Unrated | A film that made me really, really angry; as angry as the characters in it. So it's effective on that level. The actors, too, all non-professionals, do fine work. I just don't know that I buy the story, the way it plays out, that people would be that stunningly heartless, that it would build so intensely over such a short amount of time. But, a well made horrible time at the cinema. | June 24, 2008 | N/A | |||
| El Orfanato (The Orphanage) - R | It's no Pan's Labyrinth, but it's creepy, sad and effective. If a little illogical. | June 24, 2008 | N/A | |||
| 30 Days of Night - R | Well made, not without moments, etc etc etc, but not nearly as intense as it could have been, and quite frankly, the vampires got a little silly over time. | June 24, 2008 | N/A | |||
| Funny Games - R | As good as the original. Obviously, because it's the same thing. Disturbing as anything. Try to watch it with a large audience, especially if they haven't seen the original. | June 24, 2008 | N/A | |||
| American Teen - PG-13 | A pretty charming little documentary. Not revelatory, but worth watching. | June 24, 2008 | N/A | |||
| Donkey Punch - R | Two or three drafts from being brilliant instead of merely decent. The pacing should have been upped, it should have been more instense. Nonetheless, it's a decent little slowburning survival horror piece; Mean Creek all grown up. | June 24, 2008 | N/A | |||
| A Complete History of My Sexual Failures - Unrated | Hilarious! Some of the events are a little doubtful... they'd likely not have taken place were the camera not there to film them... but this doesn't stop it from being a brave, extremely funny documentary. | June 24, 2008 | N/A | |||
| [Rec] - R | Brilliant. Breathes new life into a device that is running the risk of growing old, and at the same time, is genuinely very scary. | June 24, 2008 | N/A | |||
| Chelovek s kino-apparatom (Man with a Movie Camera) - Unrated | It's a seventy minute montage of sometimes related, sometimes unrelated things with no dialogue. It was essentially an experiment in camera use, so there's very little actual entertainment here. A part of cinematic history, but not one really worth sitting through. | May 21, 2008 | N/A | |||
| Oldboy - R | March 23, 2008 | N/A | ||||
| There Will Be Blood - R | DRAINAGE! | February 18, 2008 | N/A | |||
| Cloverfield - PG-13 |
Really, really impressive. Not without logic flaws, yes, and perhaps the our characters aren't the deepest creations to hit cinema screens, but it doesn't matter, really, because this movie is so well done. As a rule, these kinds of movies (by which I mean the faked 'found footage' genre that seems to be ever-increasing) tend to be such largely because of budget constraints. This story, with its studio backing, really could have had the same story told the same as every other monster movie, choosing the camcorder style to immerse the viewer as completely as possible into the experience. I also can't think of another movie of this type that exists on such a large scale. And it's a really intense, absorbing experience. Very, very impressive. |
February 18, 2008 | N/A | |||
| Vacancy - R | January 16, 2008 | N/A | ||||
| Hatchet - R | Clearly a lot of heart went into this. It's good that it's trying to move things away from tame, PG-13 horror, and, like the trailer tells us, it's not a remake, sequel, or "based on a Japanese one". But it still isn't all that successful. It's funny where it's meant to be and it does actually manage a couple of scares but it's too heavy on dialogue and light on atmosphere to be a successful horror piece. Severence and Shaun of the Dead prove that horror and comedy can be equally balanced, which seemed to be the aim here, but... no. Not quite. | January 16, 2008 | N/A | |||
| Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets - PG | Like the first, just with added LONG. | January 16, 2008 | N/A |
1088 ratings
340 reviews
