Movies Seen in 2009

[Starbreaker]

Doubt (2008) [B+] Great acting, mediocre story.
Defiance (2008) [B-] Nothing very memorable, no emotional impace.
Franklyn (2008) [C+] I think this is getting a release date in the US sometime this year. It's visually appealing, but the story is very.. meh. I almost want to recommend it because it is so weird though.

[Michael Chris]

If I can recall the vast number of movies that I've seen this year on DVD or in theaters:

Watchmen
The Day the Earth Stood Still
Star Trek
Terminator Salvation

Uh, that's it I think. Wow, you guys watch a lot of movies.

[Starbreaker]

You watch too few movies!

I also watched the first 5 seasons of Stargate, and everything that was aired this year on Lost, Chuck, Battlestar Galactica, How I Met Your Mother, and The Big Bang Theory. Maybe I just have too much free time...

[MeanJoePhaser]

Sunshine Cleaning (part of the Sunshine trilogy starring Alan Arkin as wise patriachs)*

*SUNSHINE is not part of the Sunshine trilogy.

[Temis the Vorta]

Added: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. A+!!!

Working up the nerve to check out Pathology. It's gonna stink, isn't it. Sigh, another rental wasted.

[joangracoffande]

Dark Knight
Transformers 2
I love you Man
Up
Terminator
Star Trek

[od0_ital]

I'm still hopin' to get a pass to see Public Enemies this Thursday. Two of the contests I entered ended today, the other ends tomorrow.

'til then, I'll be goin' to see Star Trek (2009) for the fifth time tomorrow night, this time with my friend Zee. Found out last week at Away We Go that she hasn't seen it yet.

[Starbreaker]

Temis the Vorta wrote:

---

Added: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. A+!!!

Working up the nerve to check out Pathology. It's gonna stink, isn't it. Sigh, another rental wasted.

No! It's decent. It has a bunch of hot guys for you to look at. (I think).

[MeanJoePhaser]

od0_ital wrote:

---

I'm still hopin' to get a pass to see Public Enemies this Thursday. Two of the contests I entered ended today, the other ends tomorrow.

Just don't go accidently go to the dingy theater showing Pubic Enemies.

[Out Of My Vulcan Mind]

Three more for me:

Valkyrie (2008) - a slick historical thriller; it's funny how you find yourself rooting for them to succeed in knocking Adolf off even though you know how it turns out.

Gran Turino (2008) - like Million Dollar Baby, this is a slow burn film that builds to a powerful and poignant conclusion. A fitting last onscreen hurrah for Eastwood.

Masters of the Universe (1987) - pretty bad and uber-cheesy, but still kind of enjoyable for all that. The cast includes a very young Robert Duncan McNeill (who I didn't know was in the film prior to seeing it) and a very young, very pretty Courteney Cox (who I did know was in it).

[od0_ital]

MeanJoePhaser wrote:

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Just don't go accidently go to the dingy theater showing Pubic Enemies.

There's a joke in there somewhere, I'm sure of it...

Well, my friend had to cancel tonight, due to a medical emergency, and since I was in the mood to go to the movies anyway, I went to see Terminator: Salvation at the Galaxy.

So, add it to my list.

Gran Torino*
Frost/Nixon
Inkheart*
Fanboys
Friday the 13th (2009)*
The International*
Watchmen*
Monsters vs Aliens*
Fast and Furious*
Star Trek (2009)*
The Soloist*
Battle for Terra*
X-Men Origins: Wolverine
Band from TV Concert Video
Drag Me to Hell*
Away We Go*
Terminator: Salvation

each movie with a * means I saw it at a free advanced screenin'.

[Out Of My Vulcan Mind]

Five more:

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008) - good, but not great. It rang a bit hollow for me, and I found Cate Blanchett's performance generally annoying and overly mannered.

Slumdog Millionaire (2008) - great film.

American Splendor (2003) - one of the few comic book adaptations I hadn't seen (in terms of American films anyway - there are a lot of Japanese films adapted from manga I haven't seen yet). It's a great film, very inventive in its structure and often very funny.

I Wanna Hold Your Hand (1978) - the directorial debut of Robert Zemeckis; it's an enjoyable, amiable comedy about the Beatlemania that raged in 1964 when the Beatles appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show. Nancy Allen sure was gorgeous in her prime.

Norbit (2007) - awful, a laugh-free "comedy". It's thought that this being in release while Oscar voting was underway may have cost Eddie Murphy the award for Best Supporting Actor in Dreamgirls. It's astonishing that it made $95 million domestic.

[Temis the Vorta]

Starbreaker wrote:

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No! It's decent. It has a bunch of hot guys for you to look at. (I think).

Uh...Pathology did, indeed, stink. But it's my own damn fault, it scored 1 3/4ths stars out of five on Netflix so I can't say I wasn't warned.

Milo is cute, but dayaaaam. He really cannot act worth a damn, can he? He was even worse in this movie than on Heroes. He is so completely untalented that it cuts his hotness rating in half. Okay, a third. But still.

I noticed no other hot guys in the movie (which I watched about a third of the way thru till I got fedup and started fast-forwarding to the end.) The main bad guy (Michael Weston) was too much of a scruffy little toad to be remotely hot, but he did a credible job with his role and maybe would be worth watching in other character roles.

There's a germ of a decent idea in Pathology, but the writers didn't bother to actually give Milo a reason to go from "nice guy who saves babies for UNICEF" to "psycho freak." Well besides a completely token attempt at blackmail but that wouldn't have held up for five seconds anyway if Milo had decided to go to the cops like any halfway intelligent or sane person would have. They should have established that the character was a sicko from the start. Maybe he saw things in Africa that made him lose his faith in humanity. Maybe his UNICEF stint was just a way of masking his evil side. But it 1) needed to be in the script and 2) needed a different actor.

Basically you need a Michael C. Hall to pull off a role like that, but you're never going to get a decent actor with a stinker script so this movie never had a hope.

Also, the notion of med students murdering people just to play a guessing game about the cause of death is, uh, boring.

On to other business: I just saw Slumdog Millionaire. Dev Patel is very likable but wow, what an overrated movie. Fun to watch but not Oscar caliber at all. Just a dopey feel-good wish-fulfillment fantasy. The Oscar should have gone to Frost/Nixon or Milk.

[od0_ital]

^

Milk was way better than Frost/Nixon.

But, I also liked Slumdog Millionaire, so, ya know, go figure...

[MeanJoePhaser]

X-Men Origins: Wolverine (second time) - Not much better than first viewing, really. The opening scenes write a check the rest of the film fails to cash. Why the hell would someone whose only real power is to teleport try to go hand to hand with Sabretooth?

Dune Extended Cut (Alan Smithee) - Wow...some movies are worse than I remember. Some parts look great on DVD in widescreen, but this viewing I really saw why many people didn't like not only the extended cut but Lynch's whole take on things. I suppose I need to rewatch the theatrical edition someday.

The X-Files: I Want to Believe (2008) - What people said last year, that this amounted to a big screen version of a stand alone episode, applies. Given that, it's not bad. Scully gets annoying in her contempt for the child abuser psychic and annoyance with Mulder doing what he always used to do. It was nice to see the characters again, but I don't regret skipping it last year.

Double Dragon - Hey, we are making a movie with a villain who changes shape and takes the form of other characters in the movie...who should we cast? ROBERT PATRICK! Somehow his career survived this crap. I half-assed watched this one morning. Which is half an ass more than it deserved.