Just Watched Movies: 2007

[Pulpmariachi]

Heineken-- no! I forgot you posted a review. I'll have to look for it.

Just watched:

A Streetcar Named Desire -- great performances all around in a stunning ensemble that's very true to Tennesse Williams's original play (of course . . . adapting a play might be easier than adapting a novel), save for a few omissions (SPOILER: like the homosexual references of Blanche's husband) but it is still really well done and incredibly compelling. You're basically watching a person's mentality slip away for two hours and that's kind of hard along with abusive relationships and everything. I'm not exactly sure how I feel about Stella (STELLLAHHH!) leaving Stanley at the end . . . that seemed a little Hollywood to me. But still, great film. A-.

Hellboy -- Guillermo del Toro does a comic book film which I liked much more now than the first time I watched it. Like pretty much every del Toro film, it falls heavily into convention (sarcasm-spitting action hero, the old guy has to die, some ancient key thing...) but it's still really fun, though not scary or creepy like his Spanish-language films. Great visuals just wish that he would try something not entirely archetypal for once. B.


NOTE: actually Heineken, I couldn't find your review. I searched like four times but I keep missing it or something and the list doesn't seem to actually be up.

[frankenjohn]

slayrrr666 said:

Nightmares-Like most anthologies, half are good and half are downright troublesome, but it's still decent enough.
imdb.com/title/tt0086014/usercomments-28

Oh my God.

The Bishop of Battle.

Your head asplode.

[Heineken Skywalker]

pulpmariachi said:

Heineken-- no! I forgot you posted a review. I'll have to look for it.

NOTE: actually Heineken, I couldn't find your review. I searched like four times but I keep missing it or something and the list doesn't seem to actually be up.

Er, you're not looking in Review Hell, are you? My review of Hedwig is in the "Cult films" section, page 2.

[Pulpmariachi]

Yeah, I found it after all. Thanks to Phoenix for the help.

[ZapRowsdower]

The Color Purple

One of Spielberg's best films. How Whoopi and Oprah DIDN'T win the Oscar is beyond me. A+

[slayrrr666]

frankenjohn said:

slayrrr666 said:

Nightmares-Like most anthologies, half are good and half are downright troublesome, but it's still decent enough.
imdb.com/title/tt0086014/usercomments-28

Oh my God.

The Bishop of Battle.

Your head asplode.

So I take you remember it? I incidentally thought that one sucked the most.

[frankenjohn]

I loved the Bishop of Battle for its blatant 80s cheesiness.

[frankenjohn]

The New World- Malick's best film, a beautiful, stunning, epic romance. The voice-over narraration works better here than Thin Red Line, great cinematography (by Lubezki) and music. This should've been nominated for a lot mor Academy Awards. A+.

[Termination]

Nine Inch Nails: Beside You in Time (2006) (HD DVD)

HD Video - 10/10
HD Audio Dolby Digital Plus - 9/10
HD Audio Dolby TrueHD - 10/10

The Getaway (1972) (HD DVD)

HD Video - 9/10
HD Audio Dolby Digital Plus - 8/10

[Termination]

Stranger Than Fiction. (2006) (Blu-Ray)

HD Video - 10/10
HD Audio Dolby Digital - 8/10
HD Audio LPCM - 9/10

[ZapRowsdower]

300 - Review has been posted in Review Hell. A+

[Heineken Skywalker]

THE YAKUZA PAPERS: DEADLY FIGHT IN HIROSHIMA (1973)

Second chapter in the Japanese ganster saga. To quote A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, "A bit of the old ultra-violence."

7/10

POSEIDON (2006)

The original POSEIDON ADVENTURE isn't a masterpiece, but compared to this dreck, it's a classic. The original certainly has it's share of cheese and camp, but it also has actual character development and you end up caring about the small group of passengers that are trying to survive a capsized oceanliner. In this remake, characters are introduced and die so suddenly, they barely register as more than cardboard cut-outs on the screen. Seriously folks, it's so obvious who's going to live or die that the cast might as well be wearing nametags that say, "Hello, my name is Survivor" or "Hello, my name is Victim". Kevin Dillon's jerky, pencil-thin mustache wearing, asshole character comes immediately to mind. Director, Wolfgang Petersen must've told Dillon, "Play this character as snide, smug and weasely as you possibly can."
Watch the first twenty minutes so you can see the pretty cool effect of the tidal wave flip the ship and then change the channel. Nothing else to see here.

4/10

[slayrrr666]

frankenjohn said:

I loved the Bishop of Battle for its blatant 80s cheesiness.

It wasn't scary, the twist is known the moment the segment pops up, and it just wasn't that entertaining. There's a reason why those fashion styles have gone away, and this proves it.

[Pulpmariachi]

V for Vendetta -- probably one of the dumbest movies that I've seen in a long, long time. Nothing about it comes together, and frankly, it's just boring. Talk talk talk talk talk about blah blah blah blah revolution. There's really no focus as the Wachowski brothers and whoever they chose to direct it thought, "Hey, let's try to throw EVERYTHING that we possibly can in there" so in the end it feels that nothing really ever adds up. The chief inspector is a major character but we hardly get anything from him character-wise and it's never exactly clear what he's doing or why he's going against this whole thing. V is mysterious, I get that, but I think I prefer the mysterious woman whom is hardly present in Thomas Pynchon's "V." to this person. We only get a tidbit of Natalie Portman's character and really nothing else. The action sequences are boring too and there's no actual sense of tension. And, like I said before, there's just far too much going on. A complete failure of dystopian ideals. You wanna know why "Minority Report," "Children of Men," "Blade Runner," and "Brazil" worked? They focused upon one person amongst this huge wicked backdrop. You see society crumbling around them and you're rooted with the main character to see just what they can do. Take "Children of Men" for example, it's a very political movie, but the politics all take a backdrop to the characters and the story. Here, every single bit of poitical saying is shoved down your throat and that just doesn't work. Besides, for a movie that's supposedly filled with ideas, none of them are really new. George Orwell has been saying these things for ages, in pure dystopian styles, and there have been loads of people before him who say the same things. It's dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb. Good photography though. D+.

[Phoenix]

This Film is Not Yet Rated - Recommended to me over and over again by friends till I finally broke down and bumped it up on my Netflix list. I can see why it was so highly recommended - the MPAA are complete douche bags (something I already sort of knew). Still, very entertaining documentary - HIGHLY RECOMMEND to everyone here.