Full agreement with Daz and nitin about the fight scenes, they were the only obvious thing that didn't work, because you couldn't see what the hell was going on.

Another, more minor criticism, was that apart from The Narrows and the trains, Gotham was not as striking and dramatic as it could have been.

Oh P.S., Anyone else spot the cunning jibe at the previous Batman films?? 

I thought it was well done. Very blade runnerish but not too fantasy like, still grounded in reality. 

Yeah, I agree with all that's been said, good film, too bad they didn't get some crazy chinese dude to help out on the fight scenes, hehe.
I liked the whole nightmarish scenes caused by the drug, would have liked more of those.
Why didn't that microwave machine blow up humans though? I can't imagine all the water in my body vaporising without me noticing.

Oh, and the batmobile rocks. =) 

because in true comic book form, no one thinks those things through.

And the batmobile was perfect in action, even though it looked terrible in still shots. 

hi 

Tristana - Pretty good film by Luis Bunuel, not as surreal as some of his other stuff, but definitely featuring some of his favorite themes. Catherine Deneuve puts in a commanding performance that starts out looking like most her roles but by the end is something different. Plus she has never looked better.

If anyhting, the script could use more work, time periods jump too suddenly for my liking.


Million Dollar Baby - This is not best picture material. Having got that out of the way, its a very good film. The direction is very assured (the best direcotr oscar is actually well judged), confident and hides some script problems well. It's helped further by some nuanced performances although why Freeman won best supporting actor for this is also a wonder. He's put in decent work, but nothing remarkable compared to other work. S and Eastwood are pretty good and work well together.

The main issue is the script. Mostly very good, it has some glaring shrotcomings in relation to some very cliche one dimensional characters and also some situations. For what he had to work with, Eastwood did very well, helped ably by some fine acting.

PS - I think Sideways, this and Aviator are on the same level. All very good films but falling short of greatness due to some issues. My pick for Best Picture was Eternal Sunshine but thats not really Academy material.


The Machinist - Nifty little thriller with Christian Bale. Definitely employs Hitchcock flavour for most of its running time (especially the bernard hermann like score).

Some people, like I did through most the running time, may groan at the attempted twist and its predictability. However, the final few seconds make the film work not because of the twist reveal (which I now genuinely believe is deliberately signposted numerous times in a not so subtle manner) but because of the "why?" denouement.

And this film probably wasnt 'important' enough for Bale to undergo the physical transformation that he did, but if only every actor was as committed to roles as this. Another winner of a performance from him. 

Has to be one of the best movies ever! The acting, story and soundtrack and everythign else is excellent!

Before watching this movie I thought karate was the best form of martial arts and that ninjas were also very cool but know I know better - taekwando owns them all and I look foward to when I am a blackbelt so I can kick ass in the name of world peace! 

Saw this yesterday with Dranz, and I went in with no expectations having only seen 1 short trailer which didn't really show anything...

And I was pleasantly surprised! This is one gory sick film! Its about some thrill seekers who go caving in the USA for fun and everything turns to shit and they need to esacpe.

Its a real dark film, set about 90% underground with just headlamps and glowsticks etc, and it does get really tense at times. Fantastic directing throughout as well I thought, you really get the sense of claustraphobia and darkness.

The film does fall down in a few areas though. The first 45 mins - 1hr are absolutely fucking boring :( Its all about the people involved and not much happens at all, very dull. Some could argue that it is TOO DARK and u cant really see whats going on, but I found there was enough illumination to see whats happening, while still leave some blanks to keep u on the edge of your seat.

The other crit is that once you've worked out what is going on in the film with regard to the challenges the characters need to face then you can start working out what is gonna happen next without much difficulty.

That said, if you like gore, this must be one of the more bloodthirsty and downright sick at times film I have seen this year, if not in YEARS, and is genuinely disturbing at times.

Try it, you might like it. 

"set about 90% underground with just headlamps and glowsticks etc,"

NO IT IS NOT A RAVE, SHUTUP U RUSSIAN TWAT 

Desperado - Disappointing. I'd heard a lot about the action in this fim but there was nothing that was really that good here. I've seen much better and of course the rest of the plot was non-existant even though for some reason the director thought he was making some sort of epic.



Ringu - Anyone that's seen the remake and this original and still claims that the japanese version is better and scarier is in denial that a US remake of a foreign film actually came out supeior.

The original, which lacks Gore Verbinski's visual flair from the remake, just accentuates just how silly the whole plot is. Sure, the remake had a few too neat explanatory scenes and some unecessary and unrelated subplots, but when the main concept is so silly, it doesnt really matter.

And Hideo Nakata did a better directing job with (regrettably even sillier material) Dark Water. 

I generally agree with you, but I remember Ringu having the nicer ending. (though I can't even remember how it ended, anymore!) 

Well, this is a totally non-objective way of comparing movies, but I prefered the Japanese version just cause it felt stranger, and sadako was alot creepier than samara (you never see her face, and they've got that nice freaky eye-through-hair thing going that they didn't keep in the american version).
The american version just felt alot less scarier (which doesn't mean it's not a better movie I suppose).
And yeah, I also prefered the ending to Ringu. 

really? See that's thing, I felt the remake felt stranger and creepier (minus the horse scene, that was just dumb).

The ending (assuming you mean driving to the grandfather to make him watch the tape) is better.

Maybe this is one of those that because it relies so much on strangeness, the version yo watch first will be better since you dont know the plot (well loosely anyway). 

Yeah, you're probably right, and I saw Ringu at least twice (along with Ringu 2 and Ringu 0) before seeing the american version, so I suppose the whole idea was already a bit stale to me by then. =\
The fact that I found it not bad is probably proof enough that it's a good adaptation. =) 

Knife in the Water - Early Roman Polanski film which demonstrates his ability to create tension even out of seemingly non-threatening situations. But the script and movie are pretty average on the whole.


The Letter - Pretty good noir/melodrama with bette davis. Has some strange characters and is pretty well acted. The direction by william wyler is also pretty impressive.


Mean Streets - Not as good as his masterworks, but this Scorcese film is still pretty good. Lacklustre script but strong performances by Harvey Keitel in particular and laso Rovert de niro. Direction by scorcese is very good.


To Live - Hero was good, House of Flying Daggers was not but this is in another league altogether. Apart from a slight drag in pacing in the last half hour, this is a pretty awesome film by Zhang Yimou. Everything just clicks and works perfectly together. And the acting by Ge You is one of the great performaces in the history of cinema. 

The visuals are very inventive and it's the most visually striking film in a while but I found it too sadistic and twisted to really enjoy. Marv storyline, as many people have said, was the best by far.

Also, being a film-noir fan, I was expecting much better dialog and use of narration.

So overall, I personally found it worth a watch but ultimately not all that satisfying/engaging. 

I'm not sure what drew me to watch this subtle comedy or whatever it is... maybe to see Bill Murray acting again.

It wasn't worth watching. It's just an eccentric little movie with a few mildly amusing dialogue bits but nothing more. I didn't catch it's motive. Maybe the entire movie was just an all-too-subtle story for me... 

Actually, The Life Aquatic was one of my favorite movies this year, it was just so weird and different (and the retro music when they are in the submarine rocks, hehe). 

when I watched The Life Aquatic, I dont trust my own opinion.

Like when I went to see Death to Smoochie after drinking a pitcher of beer and I laughed my ass off in the theater only to watch it on cable months later, wondering, 'what the hell was I thinking? This movie is awful.' 

Yeah it was cheesy fun. 

Constantine - Ponderous, overblown & silly. Keanu was woeful, rachel weisz was actually pretty decent given the role but this is one of the most stupidly scripted and directed films in a while. Visuals are ok, I wasnt all that impressed.

The most annoying thing is it takes itself so seriously.



Oldboy - Pretty impressive stuff. Even more so when you consider the script is a bit silly and as high concept as most US blockbusters. However, the direction is very well done and the main actor commands a lot of presence. The last half hour doesnt work as well as it should, probably because I thought the twist was telegraphed way too early and obviously.

But the craftsmanship and storytelling skill are definitely of a very high quality.



A Letter to Three Wives - Felt very much like a warmup to All About Eve for Mankiewicz. Decent performances, assured direction and some clever dialogue make up for some unecessary and oveblown melodrama. Not as good as Eve but worth a watch. 

Batman Begins. Yeah, this was si teh rock - better than any of the last batch of batman films. Still had it's fair share of cliches though. I didn't like the way the nerdy guy gets to drive the batmobile at the end (cue shots of said nerdy guy going "whoah!" a lot as he struggles to control the batmobile). We also got the obligatory shot of random bystander staring into his drink in disbelief after seeing the batmobile whizz past, but apart from that the film kicked arse.

War of the Worlds. One of Spielberg's best, and my opinion of Tom Cruise as an actor has definately gone up after seeing this. Although it winds down towards the end, most of the film is just one spectacular Spielbergian set-piece after another. Watching the beautifully-shot, indiscriminate, and disturbingly cathartic mass extermination of the human race has never been so entertaining. It's also dark as fuck for a "summer blockbuster" but that's Spielberg's influence for you. 

My Sassy Girl - another pretty impressive korean film. For most of its running time, its likable, amusing, well made but ultimately disposable. However, the last 15 min take it up a few notches into the pretty good territory. In fact, I'd say the last 15 min is some of the best scripted and acted passages that I have seen in a film from this genre. And the lead actress is hot.



Picnic at Hanging Rock - Also a pretty good film. It has quite a few moments where there is some quite shoddy acting and the script's a bit thin, especially in the last half hour or so but the direction by Peter Weir is first rate. Combining excellent cinematography with some nifty music, he manages to create a lot of mood and atmosphere in a polanski mixed with some antoinini kind of way (in fact, it's hard not to thinkof L'Avventura when watching this). While the movie centers aroun Hanging Rock, its very very good, the rest of it is average to above average at best. 

Appleseed (2004) - Recentish anime made entirely in 3d with cel shaded characters to give them a 2d look. Comes complete with requisite ponderous, overblown, cliche sci-fi story. But in anime, I'm generally really attracted by the visuals.

In that department, this is a mixed bag. The characters look pretty good, and the 2d shading on 3d models works quite well. the backgrounds however were disappointing IMHO. They just looked like very dodgy CGI and the artwork/design just wasnt that attractive/memorable. As the story wasnt engaging either, I came out of it pretty underwhelmed.


L'Eclisse - Final part of Michaelangelo Antonioni's loose trilogy around the theme of alienation (the other two being L'Avventura and La Notte). While La Note's usually regarded as the weakest, I actually thought this was the toughest one to really get into.

It's beautfiully shot as usual by Antonioni (further enhancedby the absolutely magnificent video transfer by criterion) and Monica Vitti puts in a good perfromance but combined they only held my interest for the first hour or so. After that, I found it pretty tough to care. Most of that really stems from the fact that there's really no narrative whatsoever. Some films work with that element missing, and this worked for an hour like I said but in the end, it just didnt work out. 

Closer - Pretty good film with strong performances and good script. Nifty ending too, which ties most the themes in the film together quite well. Suffered a bit from not flowing all that well but a good film regardless. Clive Owen was easily the standout.


Finding Neverland - Self consciously happy and gentle, but Johnny Depp grabs it by the throat and single handedly lifts it into the pretty good territory. He handles many scenes with great subtlety where shouting/overacting could have been justified. Beautifully shot too, especially the pirate dream sequence with the funky water.


Queen Margot - Best way to describe the is some sort of french epic blockbuster. Its well shot, mostly well acted and has some great scenes. But it's hampered by some poor performances in key roles and also a very messy narrative (which admittedly might not be so distracting if you were familiar with the characters and the time period). In the end, it comes across as poorly as most recent US epics.


Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf - Brilliant! Awesome script, awesome acting, great direction. Easy to see the similarities between this and Closer even though they're almost 40 yrs apart. In fact, Closer almost comes across as a more modern sequel. But this is by far the superior film. Only flaw would be perhaps a *slightly* overlong running time.