That moment was predictable (telegraphed?), but I didn't think it was unrealistic. So I can live with it.
Movies Seen in 2010 Duplicity - C- The Hurt Locker - A Moon - A I finally saw Moon tonight. What a change of pace this movie is compared to so many other Sci Fi films. There is always so much action and special effects, and in some films, like Avatar, those special effects take something away from the story. Not so with Moon. While I admit, it was a bit overhyped, what I liked about this one was there was no action, and it was an entire character peace dealing with human reaction more than anything else. Rockwell gave a powerful performence, and I have to say this movie is one of the better movies I've seen recently. It's too late to make a top 10 list, but this movie is the best I've seen in 2010.
A Serious Man (2009) [B+] Pretty good film... just way too many movies I liked for it to be one of my favorites from last year.
I just watched "Up" for the first time. Damn Pixar and their well written and animated films that convey so much sweet emotion that many times in the movie I teared up at particularly heartfelt scenes. Seriously, I was tearing up 5 minutes into the film, it was so sweet!
Starship Troopers - C+ District 9 - A Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince - B+ I had first seen Starship Troopers when it first came out, and at the time I was largely unaware of the concept of satire. As such that aspect of it flew right over my head. I watched it again recently, and it's true, it is a pretty good satire- most of the time. Other times it seems as though the ridiculous characters want us to take them seriously. The propoganda films are the best part of the movie. C+ District 9 was great. I didn't expect this kind of movie. It's really an adventure film with some political underpinnings, I was more expecting a direct allegory. Anyway, this is better than what I thought I was going to get. It's a lot of fun hating the main character and then growing to sympathize with him by the end. A I continue to like the Harry Potter films. Maybe I should give the books another chance. B+
4. Up In The Air Fairly decent, a rom-com with a bit of a difference. It was good, until about 30 minutes from the end then it became dull and predictable.
seen AVATAR, thinking its nice to start 2010 with that movie on a ecstatic note. don't have any clue how the rest of the months will fare....keeping fingers crossed...
Sherlock Holmes [B-] Men in Black [A] Up in the Air [A] Star Trek: The Motion Picture [D+] I'm Not There [A] Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (2009) [D-] American Violet Inglourious Basterds [A] Death at a Funeral [B ] A Serious Man [A] The Hurt Locker [A-] Mad Max 2 (AKA The Road Warrior) [C] The Book of Eli [C-] Elegy [B+] Close Encounters of the Third Kind [A] This movie, which I have only seen once before (I was much younger) was a gift for Xmas on Blu-Ray. I remembered it being slow, and John Scalzi managed to swiftly dismiss it despite including it on his list of 50 great science fiction films, so I wanted to see how it would hold up now that I am a little older. It didn't dissapoint. The film is probably one of Spielberg's best, if not the best film he's made. I'm amazed that he lets Richard Dreyfuss leave the earth (and his family) at the end. The film wouldn't have that ending today, so I'm glad he made it when he did. It really holds up (and looks beautiful in HD).
I have seen many movies already in 2010, most of them released in 2009 . They are "avatar", "The Blind side", "Sherlock Holmes", "Twilight Saga: The moon".
Sherlock Holmes [B-] Men in Black [A] Up in the Air [A] Star Trek: The Motion Picture [D+] I'm Not There [A] Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (2009) [D-] American Violet [B ] Inglourious Basterds [A] Death at a Funeral [B ] A Serious Man [A] The Hurt Locker [A-] Mad Max 2 (AKA The Road Warrior) [C] The Book of Eli [C-] Elegy [B+] Close Encounters of the Third Kind [A] The Invention of Lying [B-] A mostly amusing film, which has some wonderous fun at the expense of organized religion and the Christian faith. The pacing is a bit wonky (I'd say the idea is dragged out just a tad), however, and it's too bad the Patrick Stewart narrated prologue was cut. Plenty of amusing cameos to be found.
Movies Seen in 2010 Duplicity - C- The Hurt Locker - A Moon - A The Princess and the Frog - B Finally saw the first 2D animated Disney film in a while and liked it. It wasn't earth shattering or anything like Beauty and the Beast or The Lion King, but it was a good film with great music. I did feel though the pacing kind of slowed in the middle (When Tiana turned into a frog) but then it picked up and the ending was true to form with Disney.
Sherlock Holmes [C] I don't care what everyone says about this film... it's boring, boring, and... boring.
DVD review: 3-Iron (2004) Now this is the Ki-Duk Kim I love, the Kim of Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter...and Spring. Where there's still a bunch of weird shit, but the characters' core motivations and arc is transcendent and not bogged down in weird behaviours. And he's a master of basically silent movies; this is a romance where the male lead has no lines at all and the female lead has two, at the very end. Everybody else talks like normal around them, though. A
Well, the girlfriend and I went to Blockbuster last night. I picked The Hurt Locker, she picked The House Bunny. I watched my pick, we haven't watched her's yet...and, really, I don't see what the big deal was. Yeah, it was realistic enough, and all, but still...it wouldn't have been in my top ten for '09.
I've been catching up on my 2009 movies lately, seeing as the only new movie I saw all last year was probably Avatar. Oh, and Star Trek and The Time Traveler's Wife (which is like a cliff notes version of the book. Except without the plot and character development of cliff notes. ) Anyways, in 2010: District 9: I actually started this on a plane on the way home for Christmas, so my viewing experience was a little disjointed to say the least. However, it was good. I don't know if I would feel the need to watch it again, but I wouldn't complain if someone else put it on. It was pretty intense, with good action and story. I liked the ending too. The Hurt Locker: I think tomalak301 said what I thought much better than I could. It's intense, disturbing, and sticks in the brain. I couldn't get over how intense being stared at by Iraqi onlookers all the time during those bomb diffusion scenes would be. The scene where the soldier looks up to see someone videotaping them...terrifying, yet so simple. The Princess and the Frog: What can I say, I needed something light--very light--after the last two. It was fun, but more wacky than classic, as most recent Disney flicks have been (all the way back to Hercules). I was shocked when the side character died and stayed dead, but in an impressed sort of way. And the prince character made me laugh once or twice. So it entertained and surprised me; not a bad thing.
The Road It's not bad. The post-apocalyptic scenario doesn't bear much scrutiny (I scratched my head for a moment at the idea that something could kill all plant and animal life and yet leave humanity miraculously intact, but then opted to roll with it) and it doesn't seem to want to treat cannibalism as anything other than an eerie, unacceptable evil. I don't know, given that nothing is alive any more and the only food supply is a finite amount of canned goods, it'd seem to me that cannibalism is something that would have to become a norm for the species to survive. Any functioning society would need some sort of system in deciding who to eat and why, and ration the supplies. Maybe different groups of humans would go to war to increase their food supply. When Viggo tells his boy that under no means will they eat human flesh, the back of my mind was thinking: Well, what if he's already dead, for one thing? They take supplies from people who are already dead, it's just a minor variation. But no, in this film those who have resorted to cannibalism are those who have basically surrendered their humanity. Now I'm not actually complaining about that, that makes sense, and in a sense the society I suggested above would also lose its humanity - I guess maybe the inevitability of this is the film's fear, although the mythic way the Earth is dying implies that humanity may be slowly dying too. Spoiler: The Road Though by the end of the movie we see a living beetle and a dog, suggesting that not all animal life is dead, so I guess there are long term alternatives to cannibalism. The above rambling is based on the logic the film uses up to this point - of course add animals and all bets are off, but I thought it was more interesting to postulate about the scenario the film initially seems to support. I wasn't too happy with the treatment of the mother, but I guess that reflected the film's need to be poetic rather than rational Spoiler: The Road She doesn't kill herself, just walks off into the night one day. Alright. Nice moment. Doesn't make a lot of sense, but it's a nice moment. I'm not so boring a literalist as to not understand the logic, as also given with the mysterious ailment of our late, great mother Earth in the film, but for a character who was suggesting more sane things like killing herself this just struck me as abrupt. And the ending was, well. Spoiler: The ending very, very conveinent. I guess after the emotional torment of the film we needed an uplift, and the hope of humanity is in the child, like Children of Men, like the cosmic nature of the Earth's death and now the sudden suggestion of a hope for rebirth - the Earth was dying, the father was dying, but with the latter dead and that nascent community now perhaps the Earth will live. The son had an empathy and compassion that his father lacked, so monomaniacally was he fixated on his son's well-being. I get that, so there's hope for him. But you know I probably would have had the kid lose it and shoot himself after his father died so he could go join him and Momma. I'm a cruel bastard though. But look, The Road isn't about cannibalistic society or the logic of how the world ended or any of that stuff. It's about a man and his boy travelling through the ruined world, struggling with the loneliness and the bitterness and the lack of proper food and the fear of being eaten. his son keeps him alive and is his justification for everything he does, to keep the fire and so on. In this the film basically excells and is a watchable and very nicely shot film, with an excellent soundtrack and some pretty good writing (I'm guessing Mortensen's V.O. is verbatim from the novel as that has some of the best lines.) I think whether one likes or dislikes the film probably rests on what they think of Viggo Mortensen's performance, which I liked but I could understand others disliking. The boy is also good.
DVD Review: The Hurt Locker [A-] Finally saw this, since it's one of the Academy frontrunners this year. It's been tough slogging for people to make a good Iraq movie, both critically and commercially; not surprising, from an historical perspective. I mean, what great World War II movies were made during World War II? (you could make a case for Casablanca, I suppose, but that's not really a war movie, it's a more set during a war, and there is a difference) Same with Vietnam; heck, other conflicts and literature too. Generally, some passage of time is necessary for perspective for both the filmmakers and the audience. Bigelow pulls off a critically-successful one here (audience success was a lot more limited, though it'll be interesting to watch how it does on DVD). Strong performances from the cast and it avoids a lot of war movie cliches. I'd probably vote for Up in the Air over this, but it's a worthier winner than Avatar (a movie I liked but didn't love).
I liked Hangmen Also Die! I mean, Brecht plus Lang, how bad can it be? I'd like to say 'give me time and I'll think of a great WW2 movie', but surely the best should just roll off the tongue. Harumph. There are good movies about WW2 that aren't really, though, that's a plus! I do occasionally like to rain on Hurt Locker's parade a little, but I'd honestly put it ahead of Up in the Air, no questions from this quarter. An altogether more solid film, I felt, and one that did make more of a lasting impression than Reitman's affable, well timed, but somewhat tepid dramedy. I'd be fine if it or Hurt Locker or Avatar won (I'd prefer Inlgourious Basterds over all three, mind you) but am annoyed that A Serious Man isn't turning heads at all. I get why Moon is overlooked, but when the Coen brothers craft a nice little masterpiece and leave it by the shelf shouldn't it provoke some concern? Some days that vies with Moon as my favourite movie of last year, in truth, and it may just succeed there.
Sherlock Holmes [B-] Men in Black [A] Up in the Air [A] Star Trek: The Motion Picture [D+] I'm Not There [A] Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (2009) [D-] American Violet [B ] Inglourious Basterds [A] Death at a Funeral [B ] A Serious Man [A] The Hurt Locker [A-] Mad Max 2 (AKA The Road Warrior) [C] The Book of Eli [C-] Elegy [B+] Close Encounters of the Third Kind [A] The Invention of Lying [B-] Gamer [C] This movie was much better than I thought it would be, but it still wasn't very good. Michael C. Hall chews the scenery as well as he can, but that doesn't stop the aggresive editing (which worked for the directors in Crank, but is too much here) from overloading the senses. Worth a rental, if you don't see anything else of note.
Drag Me to Hell. I was expecting better from Raimi. Yeah, I get his jokey-horror style, but for some reason, it didn't work in this film. I could see the ending coming a mile away. Worth a rental and perhaps a second viewing. Some of the shadowy demon scenes were effective and I liked the psychic. I didn't find myself sympathizing with the heroine.