Finally watched Scott Pilgrim and loved it.

Also watched The Recruit, that one ultimately sucked. Which is sad because it had great moments. 

Meh... that looks quite poor, nothing like anything I ever imagined while reading HPL anyways, the acting feels quite wrong, and everything seems overdone. 

It is done by an amateur group of HPL enthusiasts with practically no budget. Their motto is 'we thought it would be fun' after all or something like that. 

Watched Monsters last night. Was okay - I liked the film sets and atmosphere, despite the screwed up geography. It's supposed to be a romance at heart, which it completed and utterly failed at because the 2 lead characters really aren't that likable and have fuck all backstory. The ending was a complete 'wtf, that's it?'
But the monsters were cool. 

So it was definitely a good film. Probably in the top 250 greatest films made, but definitely not in the top 250 films I actually enjoyed watching and would watch again. It feels too much like a documentary of events than a story.

The biggest problem is there is no backstory of characters (apart from the 2 mins spent running through the supposed leads life) or explanation on the war.

Halfway through the movie I had to wiki this war because I really didn't know what this civil war was about. Sure I've heard of France and Algeria... but what's the war? Why are Algiers fighting French? Why are French in their country? The movie doesn't explain any of this, I guess it's assuming Europeans are the target audience and they already have learnt about this in history class.

The other problem with the movie is it's more of a documentary film. It doesn't follow traditional storytelling methods of building up characters, with very little time spent on who Ali La Pointe and Col. Mathieu really are and their personalities. I also wonder how much of this is true, when all the characters in the movie are fictional. I didn't really care that much when Ali was blown up.

What it does well is documenting the war in fantastic detail. I liked how it ended as well. It would have been wrong if they ended it just with the death of Ali La Pointe. Showing the uproar 2 years and final success of the Algiers was a great ending to the movie. I just feel I would have learnt more from a modern documentary on the Algerian war and more touched watching a fictional film. 

Just remembered I saw True Grit as well! Great film. Fucked up ending. The girl was a bit of an annoying little bitch.

Probably Coens most accomplished film, though not their most enjoyable. 

 

are overrated IMHO. In fact, its one of my main scripting gripes with modern day attempts at characterisation.

Re: Battle of Algiers, it is a french film kona, an explanation of the war for its intended audience would seem a bit condescending and patronising IMHO.

As for the girl in True Grit, I thought she was great. 

Megamind - Better than expected, fantastic animation, cool bad guy vs bad guy storyline which I dig (I'm a big fan of bad guys.) Not a fan of the sound track, though I imagine Asaki might be, what with its AC/DC and whatnots. Pretty good, check it out.

My only 'complaint', which goes for a lot of animated cartoons nowadays, is that the female character is TOO GOD DAMN SEXY. I noticed this too in Batman The Animated Series, Animaniacs and especially Who Framed Roger Rabbit? - the females are too fucking sexy. These are cartoons, I'm unsure of the need to make the females unobtainably sexy. Probably the biggest factor in fucking up my sexual appetite is my childhood cartoons.

In Megamind, Tina Fey's character is thinly wasted, widely hipped, has a big bust and ass, looks great, and carries herself well. Too fucking hot. TOO HOT. Shame on you Dreamworks and other animation studios.

Anyway, its a good movie. Fun and whatnot.

Illusionist - My biggest complaints are related. The 'twist' is entirely predictable, not at all surprising. The explanation of said twist near the end doesn't explain the only thing I couldn't figure out for myself - mainly (spoiler!!!!!!) the summoning of the dead spirits. Explain that, and the movie is pretty good. Otherwise, I would consider it pretty cheap. Don't give me the excuse that they did explain it, because even when Paul Giamatti went on stage, he thought Eisenheim was real, when he wasn't. You don't get that with a film projector. I am awaiting the Prestige to compare how these films fair against each other. Not bad otherwise, but not amazing.

Also, not enough Biel boobery.

Charade - Kind of lame in the beginning, but picked up near the end. Still, not exactly what I was expecting. I wanted more noir The Killing kind of movie, but being a 60's noir movie it wasn't bad at all really.

Audrey Hepburn is indeed a fox. Walter Matthau is a good enough bad guy. Cary Grant makes a decent enough love interest/pseudo bad guy. Overall, not bad, but not as noirish as I wanted it to be. 

Prestige is much better IMHO.

And due, Charade is not a noir! Romantic comedy/thriller at best. 

Illusionist sucks. Prestige is pretty fucking good.

re sexy characters - totally! But nothing new.. look at pocahontas, beauty and the beast, cinderella, snow white, basically all disney heroines - all super feminine and big breasted. And most disney heroines have been questioned for the fucked up gender politics they express which they engrain into the little kid consciousness (though little kid is a narrow time now - did you know the 'tween' category is 6-12?)

look up Mickey Mouse Monopoly - pretty interesting, though slightly skewed, documentary on this shit. 

actually made sense though, given that was cartoon-noir. 

was gonna say that actually, takes it in a different direction. the problematic aspects of a femme fatale are pretty much her defining traits. 

Sometimes I worry that Finding Nemo and similar films give a very inaccurate image of nature (i.e. that animals would just get along in -- a possibly divinely designed -- harmony without man), and other times I worry about being a killjoy... 

I watched the Animals of Farthing Wood as a kid.

Was hilariously bleak looking back at it. Still had a kiddy story about animals working together but it has a hilariously high body count as creatures get picked off left and right.

Probably messed me up a bit at the time tbh :p 

Kids need to watch things like Animal Farm for an accurate representation of nature imo. 

Kids need not to sit infront of a screen but experience nature in reality imo. 

 

Dan in real life
Not a Steve Carell comedy as I expected it to be. Instead a very emotional sad happy love movie. It was quite nice! Music scenes were kinda annoying. Now where's that hanky. 

It's her pulling out threats of legal action and that sort of bullshit just because she isn't getting her way that made her a bit unlikable. And the whole negotiation with the horse trader was frustrating, I'd just tell her to get the fuck out of my store.

It was great acting though, the chick playing Mattie put in a great performance. I love the line at the end when she yells 'stand up tom chaney!' before she shoots him, you can hear the excitement in her voice. 

realisitic, probably not, but highly entertaining. 

that the original was much, much better? 

I wonder about that. Mostly because I can't stand coen pretentiounism but a friend wants to see it. I thought it had not much to do with the old movie, just nicked its name? 

The original version had more story at the beginning of it but tended toward the Disney side of things. The latest version had more story at the end of it and tended toward the darker side of things. I am not sure if the hanged man sequence was in the book but it felt very Coen ;) 

Bt then again, the jvalue judgements are highly subjective.