The Kingdom (2007)
Utter rubbish. Watch it if you consider modern Call of Duty to be the pinnacle of gaming. 

Lynch has more leeway than most for self indulgence with me, but this was utter shit. Utter shit that looked terrible and also didnt feature his trademark eerie sound desing.

Hopefully if he's going to stay digital, he at least shoots with the Red One camera from now on. 

one mid movie action scene aside, I though this was terrible. The long action sequence at the end was edited to oblivion and most of it just sucked. 

Just rewatching this, it really is a wonderful show. Loving attention to the characters, great dialogue. How did Joss Whedon do it? Why isn't there more of it? Why does my heart beat faster when Captain Mal comes on screen? Am I in love?

What is love? 

yeah Nitin I totally agree. My expectations were realistic but completely undershot. It's hard to like it as a big dum shooter: every scene drags on, full of blabbering dialogue that flails and desperately clasps at something that conveys actual human interaction. The plot is dull, the actors show zero charisma, and the fight scenes suck.

Stallone claimed he wrote 100 drafts of the script. Let's give him the benefit of the doubt and say he decided to film the last one. What a terrifying world we live in when there are 99 worse scripts out there. And how many more revisions would be needed before reading the script would be preferable to teabagging a blender? A thousand? Ten thousand? 

The narration and the slow beginning gave me a poor initial impression. Having the producer of the movie narrate just threw me out of the noir that I wanted to enjoy.

The movie does pick up near the end, and I did enjoy the hunt for Garza. It was interesting to see how he began making mistakes the tighter the noose around his neck got.

I probably ended up missing a lot of good scenes though, because I did get kind of bored with it and ended up working on some Quake mappery while the movie was on, just sort of glancing back every once in a while.

So while this review is kind of worthless, I will say that the beginning was kind of lame, but the end seemed to pick up the pace and set the tone better. 

Rubber
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joI-uU86NXw

Sadly they put in another "level" with a group of people who watch the story as a movie (with binoculars in the field), comment it and become part of the story. Overall that made it artsy and stupid. Bad choice with the girl with eastern accent, she sounded retarted (no offense) until I realised it was an accent and even then it was just dumb. Such a shame, it could have been a cool horror persiflage. 

but it has kind of dated.

Try out some of Jules Dassin's other noirs, especially Night and the City and Brute Force. 

Not as hard boiled as I would have liked, just a story about Jimmy Stewart, a newspaper journalist, who's out to prove the innocence of a supposed cop killer who's been in jail for 11 years. Mostly just a mystery, but I thought it was pretty intriguing throughout. Needless to say, in the end he proves the guy's innocence and everyone lives happily ever after (no surprise) but the movie itself kept my attention. 

but I thought it started dragging a bit when they went through the procedural stuff in too much deatil at the end. 

A little too clever for its own good. Its a smartass movie. Not really very entertaining. Its like scanners meets herbie. 

I'd seen a few silents so far but was still a little hesitant in approaching 2.5 hr german silent from 1927.

Didnt matter, brilliant stuff from start to finish. Easily Fritz Lang's best and that's saying a lot when you consider Scarlet Street. 

i've never watched a silent before (come to think of it i can probably count the number of B&W films i've seen on one hand too) but been interested in checking metropolis out. premise looks interesting.

anyway, recent musings...:-


on kaufman...

adaptation (2002) - brilliant. such a warped idea, executed to perfection with so many clever touches. one of those films i immediately wanted to re-watch just to take everything in again. some laugh-out-loud moments too. probably my favourite nick cage film

also tried re-watching eternal sunshine of the spotless mind (2004) to see if i could appreciate it more but it's still kinda lost on me. well written & performed with some touching moments, but joel's erasing process (which takes up the majority of the film) was just too disorientating for me to enjoy. it reminded me of being smashed out of my face on ketamine on a comedown a few years ago, getting lost in multiple realities where nothing quite made any sense (not always a pleasant experience, fyi). i might have better appreciated such headfuckery in a darker, more horror-orientated film (1408 springs to mind) but it felt out of place in what is essentially a romance drama


on cronenberg:

videodrome (1983) - another film that traverses multiple realities without always making apparent sense, but this one i liked. had a similar feel to existenz, albeit not as clear (in terms of both what was actually happening and the underlying messages) and rather more dark. ending was pretty harrowing

the fly (1986) - rather more straightforward... and gruesome! but decent enough. goldblum is superb. but yeah not one i'm in a hurry to watch again =)

have scanners & naked lunch still to watch.


on shit films:

fast 5 (2011) - shit in a fun way. there was enough ridiculously OTT action and comically wooden acting to make it semi-worthwhile. the third act car chase is completely stupid but brilliant at the same time

the green hornet (2011) - this was just shit in a shit way. stupid, unfunny & terribly written with characters ranging from pointless to highly irritating, and even the action scenes are spoilt with silly effects. avoid!

sucker punch (2011)...... okay i actually really enjoyed this. i know i shouldn't have. looked fantastic. action scenes felt like epic FPS boss battles! some great music too (that where is my mind cover nearly brought a tear to my eye...) some shades of poignancy in the end too. no really! agh who am i kidding, it has a average of 33% on metacritic, make your own mind up. i was on a hot date so that *MAY* have been a contributing factor... 

I didn't go away to masturbate over eternal sunshine of the spotless mind either. it was good, just not the cult classic everyone has made it out to be.

i've been watching the green hornet for a couple weeks now. that's how boring and shit it is. and i'm still only 3/4 through. seth rogen is terrible, playing the same old character as always, the only one he knows, but much more unlikable and just not funny. still not as bad as sandler though.

the asian dude looks like congs i shoot in video games, and it's completely unrealistic that they're superheros. bad movie. 

brilliant for about 70 min, then I found the usual smart arsery of Darren Arnofsky taking over and making it less moving and more tongue in cheek.

Still the first 70 min are tremendous.

7.5/10 

i thought the whole thing was strong... probably my favorite movie from him. 

i've been watching the green hornet for a couple weeks now. that's how boring and shit it is. and i'm still only 3/4 through. seth rogen is terrible, playing the same old character as always, the only one he knows, but much more unlikable and just not funny. still not as bad as sandler though.

i'm surprised you keep going back to it! honestly it's not worth finishing. i've tolerated him in his other movies (you generally go in knowing what to expect) but this was way below even his standards. like sandler with zohan 

omg this http://io9.com/#!animation/5798057

Goryish and violent. Thumbs up, and I'm half way through it. (you may have to remove the #! and change it with something else) 

links to that website never work for me. :S 

wow, fucked up. i clicked it a second time and it worked... heh 

I followed your link and got a video of a spider fighting with an ant. Then the spider gets attacked by another, bigger spider. Quite cool. Not sure thats what u intended? 

or at least not what i got. try copy and pasting the link instead of clicking it & you get something cheeseburger related 

between watching excellent movies and utter crap.

Get Him to the Greek definitely falls into the latter category. Initial 10 min are decent, than it's rubbish for about 90. 

I'm not a huge documentary person but the footage they have on this show is incredible! 

Pretty fucking amazing. Especially the deep sea episode.