valdemar3
http://www.flixster.com/user/valdemar3
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| Movie: | Lord of the Rings - Trilogy |
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| Actor: | Val Kilmer, Julia Roberts |
| Director: | |
| Quote: | "I'll Be Your Huckleberry" |
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I recommend you see...
The Blair Witch Project
by Tposted 2 days ago -
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I recommend you see...
Le Scaphandre et le Papillon (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly)
by BannanThis movie is probably one of the most stunning, inspirational, thought-provoking and beautiful stories I've ever watched. The history behind this movie itself, is just completely remarkable.
One thing one can tell as soon as the movie begins, your brain clicks off that this is a western-world piece. It's European from beginning to end, there's just something about the mystique in European movies...that bring about a je ne sais quoi...and this one certainly has it.
If you can sit through some subtitles, then do it...it's really, really worth it.
[review TBC]An amazing story that illustrates to which extent we can use our imaginations when we are at our most miserable.
Subtitles, if you don't mind...give this one a go..you'll be glad you did! :]posted 11 days ago -
I recommend you see...
Into the Wild
by BannanThere is something in this story that is intriguing, and yet when you watch it...you feel the desire that McCandless had for abandoning everything that made him a number in the population and then embracing the wild.
I don't know whether it is these moving passages from the book, I assume, or just the scenery of how much emotion goes through one when they are on their own for so long and get to experience the beauty of nature firsthand.
I must find this book and you must watch this film, this isn't a request...do it whilst I try to scrambe some kind of review for it deeming worthy of it.An amazing story that chronicles a young man disposing of almost all his worldly possessions and everything that identifies him as he is and welcoming with open arms what the world has in store for him.
posted 11 days ago -
I recommend you see...
Ginger Snaps
by THere we have a highly entertaining movie. I was never a werewolf movie fan, and I feel most of them are made for hardcore fans rather than to casual viewers. The thing is, in most of them, there's the obviously unrealistic main theme which is, on top of that, usually stretched, and as a result we have a genre I can't truly relate to. Furthermore, due to the unfortunate choice of title and poster, I wasn't exactly keep on giving this a go.
Glad I did, though.
Yes, it has its cliches, yes, it has its cheesiness, and no, it's not remarkably original.
Yet, it mixes all that in the right dosage, and by adding some great lines, nice visuals, a fair amount of realism (as much as you can within the subject, that is), an appropriate sense of humor, a properly chosen cast, and a certain amount of plot in-depth and symbolism, it certainly gives the viewer a flexibly enjoyable experience.
Plus, it features what has to be one of the best pair of sisters I've ever seen on screen. Although one was clearly more disturbed than the other.
Provided life doesn't get in the way, Katharine Isabelle just earned herself another stalker.
Sorry.
I meant another disturbed, sexually harassing perv.
Another positive note for the ending, which I felt was the right one, give or take, although in order for me to continue to keep feeling that way, I need to ignore that Ginger Snaps has a sequel.
If I do have to consider the sequel, then my opinion about it necessarily changes.
But one of the best things about writing your own review is that you don't have to do anything you don't feel like doing.
So there you go.
Highly recommendable if you're a fan of the genre, and worthy of a chance if you're not.
"I get this ache... And I, I thought it was for sex... but it's to tear everything to fucking pieces."
Ginger Snaps alright.posted 12 days ago -
I recommend you see...
Hush
by TOne thing I instinctively tend to hate is God.
As this has nothing to do with the subject, another thing I instinctively tend to hate is seeing my money spent in something I didn't sign up for.
And that was exactly what I got with Hush.
I went to see this movie at the Mayhem Horror Film Festival, which suposedly featured some upcoming horror masterpieces, along with some great cult classics. Amongst the first, Hush was being praised as an anguishing and genuinely terrifying experience which was bound to keep you on the edge of your seat.
The sad part is that it was actually able to do that during the first half an hour or so, just before blowing it all away with a mouthful of cliches and ridiculously over the top moments.
The screening was introduced by the movie's director, Mark Tonderai, and I should've known something was about to go incredibly wrong when I realized he looked like a hobo version of Tom Morello from Rage Against the Machine.
Unfortunately, I didn't pay much attention to the omen.
The good moments of the movie showed an incredibly realistic, slow-paced and growing uncomfortable atmosphere, which really made it look promising.
Then came the Hollywood part, delivering a poorly disguised lame love story, a fair number of scenes so far fetched that would make a Heroes' episode look like your regular day at the office, and a hero wannabe who suddenly became so amazingly skilled (although crying and drooling all the time, which leads me to conclude it's hard being a super man without losing a bit of control over your salivation process) that he could apparently spit right in the middle of Chuck Norris' forehead without fearing for his genitalia.
Too bad.
Watch the first 30/45 minutes, then stop immediately and make up your own movie.
And you might be in for a treat.
Unless you're Hollywoodish, in which case I recommend you to do the exact opposite.posted 12 days ago -
I recommend you see...
Across the Universe
by Mary Mare ~ I was kinda iffy when I first heard about this movie, but then I started to see the trailers and I became more and more curious. And trust me, the trailers do not do it justice. It is by far one of the best films that I have seen this year. The stunning visuals that bring to life and give a new interpretation to the amazing lyrics of The Beatles, definitely earns this film a spot on my faves list. Love love love it. ♥
uberly fantabulous ♥
posted 13 days ago -
I recommend you see...
Children of the Grave
by TJudging by this sample, and considering I already had the pleasure (as in, a word for something that makes you feel like you're carrying a terminal illness) of watching Death Tunnel, it's safe to conclude that the Booth brothers should really stick to their good old porn years. That's the only movie industry where it's appropriate for one of the directors to wear a cowboy hat and for both of them to have no direction skills whatsoever. Let's face it, it's doesn't exactly require Polanski material to shout instructions like "Bring the camera here so we can see it from behind", or "Not to the floor, moron, to her face!", or even "Ehr, you guys can go home, I'll hum... I'll shoot this final scene with her."
Also, and if you're actively interested in these types of phenomena, it's not like you'll find anything tremendously new with this one either.
That being said - and since this was, in ALL other aspects, a nullity -, the reason why I gave 2 full stars to this waste of film has to do with some interesting footage they were able to gather in their investigation (that is, if you decide to trust it), and because it made me familiar with the Zombie Road case, which was something I had no knowledge of.
Although there is hardly any merit of the filmmakers in this - they just picked up some footage taken by another person -, it was in fact with Children of the Grave that I heard of it, which allowed me to research it further.
But, apart from that, zero with a capital "Fuck you for making me waste my time."
One final word for the soundtrack.
Made me feel a continuous urge to ripp my ears off with my canines.
That's how good it was.
Still, and amazingly enough, it's slightly better than Death Tunnel.Hey, you should really see this!
I really mean it!
Mainly because I'm a sadist.posted 19 days ago -
I recommend you see...
Dead Birds
by TFew days ago, a tasteful Flixster user told me that Dead Birds was somewhere described as "the most atmospheric horror movie".
So obviously, I had to give it a go.
Obviously, the above quote is an overstatement.
But that does not mean that this isn't clearly one of the most eerie atmospheric ones to come out in the past few years (Asian horror aside).
This movie can in fact raise some hairs in the back of your neck. You just need to create the right setting around you and you're set to go. This is clearly the best achievement of Dead Birds, along with the way the story unfolds until a particular moment.
The acting is uncompromising for the most of it, and that's good enough for such a story, which is not (let's face it) that original, though they surpass this detail with the way they chose to pick it up. It's not a fast paced movie by any means, so you're very likely to be disappointed if you watch it with such expectations. But its pace is another great accomplishment of it. It starts off slow, stays on slow and you don't even find it incredibly fast when the whole thing blows up in your face.
And that's where they mostly got it wrong, IMO.
Simply put, there are some movies which should only have the single purpose to suggest, rather than to show. This is one of those, as most atmospheric ones are.
It ends up showing too much, and telling too much, and that's its biggest flaw.
There's also some awkwardness felt when you hear suposedly XIX century's characters saying things like "No shit!", I suppose.
But you get over it quickly.
If you're a fan of horror atmospheres, then you should definitely give this one a go, even if the last half of it does not match the first one in terms of build up.posted 20 days ago -
I recommend you see...
The Midnight Meat Train
by T(Well B., you were right about the hesitant part, that's for sure.
Though my opinion about it doesn't exactly strike me as popular, so you might be in for a treat with this one.)
Midnight Meat Train is just one of those movies...
You know, one of those movies that suck.
I could, however, find some good things in it:
- Clive Barker's story. Most of it (ending included) is original and well thought;
- some (few) eerie atmospheric bits;
- one thing my grandmother taught me is that fair amounts of blood and guts are always enjoyable in any given situation.
Now let's see if I can somehow pack the bad things in a short statement:
- cliche acting, cliche dialogues;
- for some reason, it's very hard for me to look at Vinnie Jones' mug when he's trying to pull off that serious look and not laugh, with that kind of laughter that says, in a Homer tone, "He he he... he's such a bad actor";
- sadly, I still haven't read any of Barker's Books of Blood yet, so I don't know how faithful the movie is to the original story in all its aspects, but either they've changed it beyond tolerance, or that's one story that should've never been adapted to the big screen.
But somehow I doubt the story's characters talk like plain old Hollywood predictable pun throwers;
- everything else I forgot.
Which I undoubtly did.
So if you just feel like watching something where Vinnie Jones is being violent, simply try one of the soccer matches he played and was sent off from due to unprofessional conduct.
EXACTLY!
Pretty much any soccer match he played in will do.
Final note goes to say that this can actually be interesting to watch if you have an almost sexual thing for late night deserted subway stations.
Though if you do, I'd probably advise you to become a subway ticket machine rather than watching this.
Ah, but I'm not militant about it.
To each his own.posted 20 days ago -
hey there :) I've been ok thankies, ups & downs as per usual, just like anyone else LOL How've you been? :)
posted 21 days ago -
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I recommend you see...
Juno
by Mary Mare ~ Wow... truly one of the best films that I have seen in a very long time. Heartbreaking and hilarious, Diablo Cody has definitely written one of the best stories to be put on film.
I had been a fan of Ellen Page since her performance in Hard Candy, but her portrayal of Juno has now made her one of my favorite actresses. Cannot wait to see what this talented individual chooses to do next.
And Jen Garner... I love Jen. Have ever since Alias... but oh my goodness. This film is her best to date. Such a beautiful and heartbreaking performance, love her!
The cast is great, the story is beautiful, it will make you laugh and then make you cry... everything that you want in a great film!
♥ZOMG... laughed my ass off and then cried like a big goob. If you haven't seen this film yet, you need to. Tis awesome! ♥
posted 31 days ago -
I recommend you see...
The Happening
by TThis is probably going to be a long one.
And a confusing one as well, as it's not easy to review this without revealing too much about it.
Let me start off by saying that I'm a fairly big Shyamalan fan. I felt The Sixth Sense was a powerful ground-breaking movie at several levels. Unbreakable was a good super-hero story told in a great unconventional manner. The Signs was presented in a frighteningly real way in all its aspects. The Village is, quite simply, his masterpiece in terms of atmosphere and twist meshing (although the latter does face the serious competition of The Sixth Sense). I still haven't seen Lady in the Water, but quite honestly, I can't say I'm looking forward to it, for several reasons.
And when you've seen enough of Shyamalan's work, it becomes apparent that this director is a master of the non-apparent, i.e. there's always some symbolic construction to be deconstructed, a set of thin layers to peel off until you get to the bottom of it, a fair amount of little details that are to be interpreted beyond their literal significance, and so on. With The Happening, he actually tries to raise the bar on that. And so what happens is that most people start watching this movie with a concept in mind and they end up getting something else, albeit this may not be easily perceived at first. Even if you're familiar with his previous movies. And, if you do surpass the obvious, doesn't matter if you feel like praising the movie or slagging it off, because both become an ungrateful task.
After I watched the movie, I read some of the director's interviews to make sure I understood the underlying meaning (the two main underlying meanings, that is), as I didn't actually believe I got them totally right, because if I had, then that meant Shyamalan had made a terrible job this time.
But I did.
And he has.
Because at the end of the day, and taking ALL its possible meanings into account, The Happening is, simply put, anything but.
Let's skip to what's obvious to EVERYONE, which is the amateur acting done by suposedly professional actors. More than that, it felt like an amateur casting from M. Night. At first I thought that Wahlberg in the main lead had been just a very unfortunate yet unintentional miscast from the director. Then I found out that Shyamalan intentionally chose him due to one of the underlying meanings presented in the movie. So no excuses here. EVERYONE did a terrible job. Shyamalan seemed to have chosen the entire cast out of a dice-rolling game, and the result is that you see a bunch of sleepwalkers on screen during the entire movie, but you rarely get to see some real acting skills. Whatever was "happening", it seemed to have already started happening to all characters since the very beginning. Give me a lobotomy and several botox shots, and I could still do much better.
Ridiculous.
Then there's the script. The actual, literal script. Which was a joke. Even if you want to add some thick layers of meaning underneath it, you can't just forget about the main plot. Shyamalan apparently became so excited with the idea that he was being as bold and as cryptic and as socially aware as he'd never been before that he was arrogant enough to forget about everything else, and the core of the story just falls apart completely after the first few minutes.
Again, an amateur's mistake.
My last remark regarding the negative aspects of this movie goes towards the dilemmas he meant to present. Alright (although not altogether original) in their very essence. Painfully terrible in their final outcome. For them to come out on a positive note, they needed an intense setting, a strong and coherent plot, a luring atmosphere, and some compelling acting.
They had none.
My 1.5 star goes to the first couple minutes (great and promising kick off), to some details and phrases throughout that make you start realizing the intended double meaning, to some visually intense scenes and to the benefit of the doubt I necessarily have to give to Shyamalan, with whom boldness usually means thinking outside the box instead of arrogance.
Not this time, though.
This time he only deserves a "Bad M. Night, THAT'S A BAD M. NIGHT!" kind of look.posted 42 days ago -
Hey - try this personality test and see how we compare
Which Classic HORROR Movie Killer Are You?posted 42 days ago
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