Event Horizon

I remember when I first watched this. I was 9 years old I think, and it scared the shit out of me. I didnt even finish the movie. Now many years later, seeing it for the first time since then, it doesnt really frighten me anymore. It's really creepy for about 40 minutes though. Great, nightmarish set designs. A truly chilling premise. This is the kind of movie that necessitates wise use its time to mount the feeling of unease and dread. Paul WS Anderson only bothers doing so to an extent (ie for 40 or so minutes) before setting loose the gore and cheapo slasher thrills. And after that it simply degenerates into an exercise in blood and gore. Not to mention some inappropriate humour as well, and I'm not sure if it's intentional. In the end it's a decent horror flick, but a real pity. It could have been a truly remarkable sci-fi/horror flick in better hands.

Sunshine stole a chunk from it. I've not seen it but Pandorum looks like it got a few ideas from there as well. The thing is, for 40 minutes it looked like it could be The Shining in space, and even scarier. It's a shame they settled for less later on. Sam Neil sans eyes was freaky though.

I still think 2001: ASO is very unconventional today. There is no other film like it.

My thoughts exactly. It was never very original to start with, but it was doing so damn well before that third act twist came in.

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince - Uhm, I think I've outgrown the Potter movies and books. While I enjoy the movies still, I don't approach it with the same amount of excitement and expectations as I did when movie #1, #2, and #3 came out. After the fourth book, the series becomes muddy and meanders around way too much, which is possibly why I cant remember much from any of the last three books.

This movie is like that. 2 hours and 30 minutes for what? To introduce to us the Horcuxes, which is one of the few things I remember from the book because I didn't like how it was just introduced into the story out of the blue. I'm not sure how much different the introduction is handled in the movie, but I didn't find it too intrusive here. Apart from that, nothing really happens in the movie. You have a couple of teenage love stories that are pretty sickening. One character dies, though I felt the response to that death was a bit too subdued. And I cant remember anything else that happens. But I wasn't bored. So 3.5/5

Bruno - Hilarious in parts, pretty funny in others, outrageously gross without being funny in a few scenes. It's more outrageous than Borat, but not as funny overall. Part of this lies in the character itself. Borat was inherently a more diversely funny creation - dumb, ignorant, insensitive, gay, straight, rude, uncivilized, ugly, perverse. Bruno is gay, and that's pretty much it. Of course, he's also insensitive and rude and the others too, but all of them are seen through the 'gay' angle, which sometimes becomes tiresome. Still, some scenes put the gay angle to great use, like the Cage Wrestling scene, or the interview with Ron Paul. The interview with Harrison Ford is side-splitting funny, so was the talk show with OJ. Movie could have done less with dancing penises though, and the staged sequences are not very funny.

This post has been edited by QuickFire: Nov 9 2009, 07:22 PM

9

Cant understand anyone who calls this one 'ambitious'. If anything its the very opposite of ambitious. Replace the ragdolls with human begins and you get an animated Terminator Salvation, with even less character development.

I quite like Terminator Salvation, but it is not essential at all.

Moon - I'm happy to say the comparisons to the amazing Gattaca are justified. It doesn't soar as high, but at its core the movie is about humans and humanity, and it pulls it off very well.

The visuals and some of the machines were pretty good, but everything else was painfully unambitious. The writer had a whiff of an idea, not a fully though-out one and certainly not realized by any stretch of imagination on screen, and he just decided to throw it in and make a movie out of it. The short running time doesn't allow for an substantial character development, yet at the same time I'm glad it was this short because it probably would have been painful to sit through 2 hours of this.

The Godfather - Every time I watch this... just WOW. Plus with the Coppola Restoration this looks even more beautiful now!

Gamer - Didnt expect it to be any good going in, so it didnt disappoint. Not a good movie, but not that bad either. Has an interesting idea but the director has no clue how to develop it. What Butler's character does with a bottle of vodka has to be the most ridiculous scene this year!

dude dont ruin it for the others! when I saw what he did it for finally I couldnt stop laughing!

The pacing is very slow and poetic so it's not one of those movies you can watch on a lazy night. But it looks damn gorgeous.

Jennifer's Body - Diablo Cody you suck and so does your movie.

Hero - Very simple story which you could probably perfectly sum up in one sentence, but I thought it was handled pretty deftly and turned out quite weighty (in a good way), and the images were beautiful, and the fights were nicely choreographed. I really liked it.

Reservoir Dogs - Classic. Within its own aspirations I think this is QT's most perfect movie.

got cuts or not?

Tell No One - A french mystery/drama flick. 95% approval at RT. What a crock of shit. There arent many other things that piss me off more than a movie which thinks it's clever by employing a simple, generic story, hiding all the details from the audience whilst bombarding them with useless information, and then revealing all in the last 20 mins as some kind of terrific surprise. For a movie that relies almost singularly on its story, this is f***ing awful.

This post has been edited by QuickFire: Dec 15 2009, 11:19 PM

Paranormal Acitivity

Thought I would like get a good freak-out before going out on Christmas eve. Suffice to say it wonr be a scary christmas for me. This is nothing more than a glorified Ghost Adventures, which is aired on ntv7 weekly. Of course, unlike Ghost Adventures (which is a shit series anyway), this doesn't absolutely proclaim to be true, it knows the audience knows its fake (although there are still some unbelievably gullible ones, there always are), so it does show a bit (key phrase: a BIT) more than just "slightly flapping curtains" or "slight shadowy movements in the corner" (if Ghost Adventures did this everyone would know it was fake, so they had to have massive restraints to make people think "this might be fake but I'm not sure...").

But for the most part, it's quite dreadfully unhappening. I wasn't bored, but I'm certain I will be on a second viewing, which wont happen because I've already deleted the file. I watched both endings, and I prefer the theatrical ending which at least provides a good fright.

Very much inferior to The Blair Witch Project.

SPOILERS EDIT: OK I just wikied the movie, and the alternate ending I saw had the girl coming into the bedroom and slitting her throat.

EDIT AGAIN: OK I will also admit that this is the kind of movie whose merits, if they exist, will be clear to see only after a sleeping a night or two alone in a room.

This post has been edited by QuickFire: Dec 24 2009, 09:28 PM

The Hunt For Red October - Owh so disappointing. A movie that is extremely plot-driven, yet having a plot that is at once overplotted and vacuous. All the characters simply exist in the moment with nary a backstory or any kind of motivation for what they are doing. Connery, Baldwin, and Sam Neil are all wasted. Okay Jan De Bont's cinematography mostly looks good but the interior sets, to me, are lacking. The movie doesn't sink as it isn't wholly boring, but it never rises out of the murky water its submerged in.

I will watch Das Boot (200-min director's cut) and Crimson Tide over the next week. Considering its reputation, Das Boot better be much better than Red October.

Oh and Mov Freak should be glad to know I have Rashomon coming up.

This post has been edited by QuickFire: Dec 27 2009, 10:09 AM

I didnt like it that much. Sure, almost everyone feels connected to it, but at the end it didn't leave anything behind for me. What did it show me that I didnt already know? What was the point of the movie?

Fearless - Good martial arts movie, with the usual melodramatic storyline.

This post has been edited by QuickFire: Dec 27 2009, 04:22 PM

What's the point of showing you what you go through when you break up? There are the witty, hippy dialogue, little quirky details and cool soundtrack all of which I enjoyed but those are merely embellishments to a movie which I feel tries and wants to be a realistic break-up movie that makes a point but what point, I do not know. All movies have a point. Bruno's point was to sicken you and make you laugh at the same time. Wanted's point is to have some OTT fun. This movie's point was maybe to show you what a realistic break up and post-break-up is? Sorry but I dont find that interesting enough. We experience that enough. Either you have gone through that and the movie adds nothing new, or you havent gone through it and you feel disconnected form the movie.

While we're at it I think the best soundtrack is The Boat That Rocked or Inglourious Basterds.

This post has been edited by QuickFire: Dec 27 2009, 06:14 PM