finally got to this, just amazed at the consistent quality of this show, probably the best season yet.

Breaking Bad s3 next. 

I don't watch a great deal of television, but season 3 of Breaking Bad is probably the finest season of any show I've ever seen. Quality from top to bottom. 

yeah I also just got done with s4. Really enjoyed it! I don't normally watch shows like this but I'm glad I stuck with it. 

I actually thought the first 5 eps were actually a step down from s2, mainly because the black humour was missing, but the last 2 eps almost gave me a heart attack.

Hope to finish it over the weekend. 

X-Men First Class
Plot moves way too fast to establish why I should care about these twats. Does a really bad job of explaining why Magneto went full dickhead. CGI apparently rendered in real-time on a Gamecube. Horrible foreshadowing of the other movies. "Professor X, I like the sound of that" VOMIT "I suppose that makes these kids my ""X-MEN""" DRY HEAVE, MINOR STROKE 

Black Swan
Fantastic. I liked this more than most reviews I've read. A lot of commentary on the film is painting it as overwhelming and confusing, but I thought it made complete sense and that it moved between phases very naturally. Swan Lake is infused into every inch of this film, down to the brilliant soundtrack. In contrast to some of the opinion I read here and elsewhere, I couldn't have imagined a better ending. Honestly I struggle to think of a film that ties itself up so satisfyingly and economically.

Also you get to see Natalie Portman having a crank, 5 stars. 

The First 30 minutes of 'The Green Lantern'
Probably wouldn't be any worse if the first scene was a sex-tape of your parents, and all the other scenes were of kittens getting hit with hammers. 

 

speaking of summer blockbusters;

the rise of the planet of the apes - a little predictable and often verging on ridiculous, but enjoyable nonetheless with decent pacing & performances (not to mention EPIC APE CITY ATTACK and draco malfoy getting punked). cgi mostly excellent. worth a look

cowboys and aliens on the other hand, urgh. not remotely fun enough to possess such a silly title; boring, utterly contrived and cliche-ridden with nondescript characters, weak plot and lacklustre fight scenes. i mean i wasn't expecting a huge amount of quality but it's a goddamn western with aliens starring james bond & indiana jones! from the director of iron man too, which i loved. but it tries too hard to be serious and fails spectacularly. avoid 

Thor
Odd decision to cast a 6 by 3 foot block of plywood in the leading actor role. Even more odd to see lovely lovely Natalie Portman rubbing herself against aforementioned plywood. She does a convincing portrayal of a astro-physicist though. NAAATTTT 

Rise of the Planet of the Apes
Ditto rj


Midnight in Paris
Owen Wilson stars as Owen Wilson in this whimsical manifestation of Woody Allen wanking himself with early 20th century american novels. The plot centres around Owen Wilson, who portrays a hollywood scriptwriter with a fetish for 1920s Paris. Unfortunately this boner is not indulged by Rachel McAdams in her dramatic turn as the insufferable cunt wife character.

The couple visit Paris, and their differences become increasingly apparent as by midnight Owen is transported into a magical 1920s dreamland where, nightly, he attempts to fingerbang Ernest Hemingway and write the next great American novel. Meanwhile McAdams stays home, charging items to Owen's credit card and entertaining the movie-going public by enacting a great range of cunty behaviours and actions.

But is his wife really Ms. Right? I mean really the girl for him? For a time it is hard for Wilson to see clearly, so drawn is he by her endearingly shitty demeanour, but time makes fools of us all. Like sands in the hourglass, so are the days of our lives.

The film dwells with the transience of being, the ebb and flow of time and self - the warm glow of nostalgia, and the dank afterglow of banging a french girl and then not calling her back because the phone hasn't been invented yet. Why do we look backwards, and what does it mean to be truly present? Was the director truly present for the filming of this feature, or was it outsourced to India?

What would we do if presented with an opportunity to live in a different time, a bygone age? Would we take a coathanger to Woody Allen's mother in a desperate attempt to prevent Midnight in Paris from ever existing? It's a difficult, intriguing question, with many different opinions in response, most of which being variations of "Yes we would".

5/5 

Contagion

Well made film, not sure I've ever seen someone have "make the science look vaguely realistic" a bigger priority than "follow dramatic conventions" before. I went to see this with a bunch of people who work in emergency management and predictably enough loved it :)

Monsters

Fun film that did not look like it was made for about 5p -- although seeing the 'making of' explain how they made it by driving randomly around mexico finding locations and shooting scenes there did explain why some of it felt so disjointed... 

Excellent review :D 

is Midnight in Paris really that bad? 

funniest show since Arrested Development aired IMHO. A bit rough around the edges but loved most of the season. 

you can probably ignore that last paragraph, in all seriousness, it's a 3/5... not that smart but kinda silly and likeable. I have gone off Rachel McAdams though. I'm sure when she reads that she'll be very upset. 

I've gone off every single Woody Allen movie having the lead character act like a stuttering fuckwit just like every character Woody himself ever played. Which is basically himself.

Black Swan is indeed an awesome movie. 

I enjoyed it. Andrew Niccol (Gattaca, Truman Show) writes classic style 'what if' sci-fi (bit like Philip K Dick or Isaac Asimov). In this case, Time is literally money. Aging has been completely stopped, and everyone has a clock on their arm that starts ticking down from the age of 25. You can just hold hands and instantly trade units of time (and it is stolen equally easily, which is a bit silly!) If your time reaches zero, you die instantly. If you're rich, you can live forever. If you're poor, every day is a fight to add those precious minutes and hours to your clock.

No attempt is made to hide the comparison to modern capitalism and society (it's mentioned in dialogue repeatedly) so if you're more of a pro-market type then you'd probably want to watch this as much as I want to watch Atlas Shrugged.

It's interesting to see a sort of left-wing leaning action film though. And in a world where stuff as silly as the Dark Knight gets rave reviews I don't know why critics have such a problem with it.

It's simple, well made, doesn't outstay it's welcome, has some tense scenes and fun character exchanges and I think Niccol has a lot of fun with the world he creates... oh and I couldn't get over the fact that the main character looks like Cole from Infamous :p 

recent adaptations of "Jane Eyre" (8.5/10) and "Dorian Gray" (7.5/10) - both good! Jane Eyre was handled better, but I felt that the 42% on RT that Dorian Gray got was totally unjustified. There were a few bad choices but come on, look at the shit that gets squeezed through the hollywood system every day, Dorian Gray had good casting, good acting, a great score, and it captured the moral of the story.

"The Rise and Fall of the Russian Oligarchs" - well, what I DID appreciate was candid interviews with really rich, selfish men who were just like yeah, A was a logical chess move so I did A. America looks a little less corrupt in comparison - but it looks a lot more hypocritical! 

Haven't watched it, but it sounds a lot like Logan's Run, non? 

Yeah a friend of mine had the same thought. It's a chase movie, feels a bit like Minority Report in places too imo.

It ain't Stalker but it's a fun film :p 

the leads are actually watchable? I was interested but those three leads are pretty bland.

Tronyn, how good is Fassbender and shame he is wasted in crap like X Men First Class. 

I think it was fine if you compare it to other recent action films and not proper hard sci-fi. It's central idea is silly but it's heart is in the right place.

Main characters didn't bother me, but they are very stock and not at all memorable. I was more interested in where he was going with it. Certainly fine to say that the characters are dull.

It is a very silly idea but people don't have a problem with this in stuff like Inception so whatever.


America looks a little less corrupt in comparison - but it looks a lot more hypocritical!
You should watch The Trap documentary by Adam Curtis. It has a section on the fall of the soviet union and how the west moved in and by insane economic moves created the Oligarchs and in turn led the country to Putin.

In fact you should pretty much watch anything by Adam Curtis ever, it's all good :) 

will watch it. I just think Niccol is a better writer than director (Lord of War being a case in point). Whereas I rate Nolan as a better filmmaker than writer making plot silliness more forgivable. 

Yeah that's fair enough, it's very unremarkable in that way, and Niccol is a very samey director.
tbh a colaboration between them would be interesting. I think Nolan is losing his way a bit since the Prestiege :/