Movie Reviews - A Lot Of Them
Mar. 7th, 2010 03:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
philosoraptor42Okay, there are a lot of films to get through, so I've decided to put them in order of quality. If you want to see what I thought, click on the links.
Best Movies
Grizzly Man (2005)
RT: 93%
Absolutely incredible and very moving documentary showing the footage captured by Timothy Treadwell during his days of living with bears. Treadwell was clearly quite a disturbed individual, so who better to help us understand him than Werner Herzog? Herzog approaches Treadwell as an aspiring fellow filmmaker and manages to open up a whole deeper level of understanding of this bizarre figure as a result.
Cherry Blossoms (2008)
RT: 82%
Exploring ideas on grief and mortality might not sound like the most fertile ground for a sweet little movie with comic elements. However, if you've seen "Goodbye Lenin" or "Lars And The Real Girl" you'll probably have some idea of what tone to expect here. We're told towards the beginning of the movie that a woman's husband is about to die, but that he won't feel the symptoms for a while yet. It is suggested that she take him on some kind of unique experience; an adventure. However, her husband is an obsessive compulsive and far prefers fixed routines to new experiences. With wonderful performances as well as beautiful scenery, this is an absolutely wonderful movie that everyone ought to see. (Nice to see an 'east meets west' movie which, unlike "Lost In Translation" doesn't descend into racism.)
5/5
Baader-Meinhof Complex (2008)
RT:87%
I didn't really know anything about the real events and I wonder whether I would have enjoyed it so much if I did. Very compelling story of how a left-wing liberal movement turns violent out of frustration with the injustices. It kept me fascinated from beginning to end, not least because of the brilliant performances.
Dead Presidents (1995)
RT: 41%
After![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
theweaselking added his damning review of the Hughes Brothers' latest outing "Book Of Eli" to its already lacklustre reception, Mark Kermode felt the need to point out one of their older pieces. That the movie was supposed to be about Vietnam made he rather hesitant. I really didn't like Platoon or Full Metal Jacket. (I quite liked "Casualties Of War" with Michael J. Fox though.) However, the posters and publicity material all seemed to feature black actors with guns and their faces painted a dehumanising white. I wondered what this could possibly mean. The movie seems to feature a wide array of fantastic black actors and I was extremely impressed with Chris Tucker who provides a far more nuanced performance than I would have expected. This really was a display of just how good the Hughes Brothers can be. I probably ought to check out "Menace 2 Society" now. Absolutely brilliant.
Sleeper (1973)
RT: 100%
"Annie Hall" only in the distant dystopian future. Classic.
The Cove (2009)
RT: 96%
At times I wondered whether this was going to annoy me, since the filmmakers are clearly the weepy "don't hurt the poor widdle animals" kind of people. However, there's no doubting the importance of the issue they are tackling and when things start going Mission Impossible it is really quite exciting. For the squeamish it's worth noting that there is a very horrible scene where they finally get the footage of what is happening in the cove (which, to be fair, they've been trying to get hold of from the beginning). However, you are given plenty of warning before that stage occurs and what comes before is well worth seeing. So yeah, even if you have to stop watching before the end, you will not regret seeing this fantastic documentary about the threat to dolphins in Japan.
4.5/5
City Of Lost Children (1995)
RT: 82%
Jean-Pierre Jeunet's fairytale is an urban fantasy masterpiece. I originally could only get hold of the dubbed version which I suggest you avoid like the plague, but now I've seen the subtitled version and it is quite awesome. That said, the relationship between Ron Perlman's character and the leader of the street kids feels a little dodgy at times (rather like the relationship between Leon and Matilda in Leon). Also the movie does suffer sometimes from being perhaps too quirky. However, if you can get past that it's an absolutely charming (and not a little creepy) movie which shows us how much better Alien Resurrection might have been if Jeunet had been left to his own devices on that project. (The extended scene at the beginning of the special edition where, during the surgery, Ripley breaks the surgeon's arm, have a similar darkly comic feel to them.) So yes, watch this, but expect it to be quite strange indeed (though thankfully a little less random than Jean-Pierre Jeunet's "Delicatessen" was).
Black Hawk Down (2001)
RT: 76%
I feel like I ought to be saying that this was a long meandering movie with no real point and far too many characters. The fact is though that the meandering nature of it was part of the point and, more importantly, I never found myself confused as to which character was which. Throughout the movie I could remember who was where and I could follow what was happening to them and I really found myself caring about every single prominent soldier that was introduced to us. Needless to say, Black Hawk Down is a movie about a military campaign which goes very, very wrong. Things are going to get quite seriously FUBAR. Nevertheless, I felt there were a few loose ends and it wasn't obvious what the movie was really trying to tell us, but in the end it was definitely though-provoking and engaging and well worth your time.
4/5
Them! (1954)
RT: 100%
On the DVD for this movie there was also the original trailer in the extras. (It turns out that the short section from this movie which appears in Werner Herzog's documentary "Encounters At The End Of The World" about people who choose to work isolated in Antarctica is actually from the trailer, not the actual movie.) The thing is, rather too much about this movie is given away by the poster and pretty much every decent scene is spoiled if you watch the trailer. (I've not used the normal poster above.) At the beginning of the movie the police are checking out some rather bizarre murders and then a scientist with a rather odd specialism comes in to investigate. The less you know about the movie in advance, the better. A wonderful classic, but on the other hand very definitely dated and a product of its time.
Pusher (1996)
RT: 77%
Follows the Tarantino (and, um, Kevin Smith?) pattern of having characters who talk like real people. The main characters make sex jokles with one another to a point where, to be honest, we begin to get a little sick of it. Fortunately this is all a necessary part of helping us to know and understand the main characters and their situation before things get more exciting in the second half. While comparisons could easily be made to Guy Ritchie's "Lock Stock" and "Snatch", things remain much more gritty, real and refreshingly understated. Think more Requiem For A Dream than Trainspotting. Sadly the movie does not feature impressive cinematography either though. This is a low budget debut feature with all the limitations that implies. Nevertheless, after the enigmatic but far from anti-climactic ending I am really looking forward to the sequel which has 100% on RT and a healthy 7.1 on imdb. Well worth a watch and, of course, even more so if the sequels are as good as I'm expecting.
3.5/5
Ponyo (2008)
RT: 92%
Ok, I know that the animation was wonderful, that the characters were endearing and that the Miyazaki magic was in full swing. In fact, that is exactly why this is higher than average. This was certainly an above average movie. I would really highly recommend that anyone who like Miyazaki's work goes to see this (though perhaps after they've already seen "Princess Mononoke", "Castle In The Sky" and "Spirited Away"). However, this suffers from the same problem as can be seen in his previous outing "Howl's Moving Castle". The level of imagination is fantastic and the characters are compelling, but towards the end I felt like it was all becoming distant as the pathos started revving up. It's a little hard to invest in the story once we are told that everything hangs on how much two young children love each other. When we've never seen them have a single disagreement during the entire movie, it's rather hard to feel any tension and therefore there's only so much we are going to care. - All this being said, it is a beautiful and wonderful story which is well worth you watching. Just expect it to let you down towards the end.
Army Of Crime (2009)
RT: 100%
The setting of the French Resistance during the second world war is quite an exciting scenario to plunge into. The film is well shot, the characters are well developed. And, once again, this is an above average feature. This is like the complete reverse of my review for Slumdog Millionaire, where there was a real sense of excitement and movie magic but absolutely no decent character development and plot holes out the wazoo. In Army of Crime the story is compelling and interesting, but the pacing is done very badly so that we aren't always swept along as much as we ought to be. Also while the characters have depth and are well-acted it is really hard to keep track of all of them. I often found myself uncertain as to where people were and what they were doing. Making it so that none of the characters were peripheral also meant that I felt frustrated when I couldn't keep up with them all. While there was nothing wrong with the ending, the poor pacing of the film meant that I wasn't as invested in the outcome as I ought to have been.
Timecrimes (2007)
RT: 88%
While it's a common problem that movies let the audience down at the end, perhaps it's then not so surprising that in a time travel movie I found myself let down by the beginning! The scene in the movie which really starts things moving is the main character seeing a woman getting undressed on a hillside as he surveys the surrounding area of his new house with binoculars. Rather bizarrely his next decision is to make his way around to that area of the hillside to find the undressing woman. This makes it seem like the main character is extraordinarily perverted and creepy, which makes it rather hard to invest in him as a protagonist. It's unfortunate since the rest of the movie works very well indeed and I would love to call this a classic in the time travelling genre. Unfortunately I cannot get over the irritating stupidity/creepiness of the protagonist in one of the main opening scenes.
Below Average
2/5
Silent Running (1972)
RT:68%
I was being told that this was responsible for influencing all sorts of recent movies like Moon and Wall E. Being heralded as Mark Kermode as an underrated classic I felt like I really ought to check it out. There are most certainly parts of it that are good. The singing from Joan Baez at certain points, far from giving a sense of wonder to the forests in space, is actually extremely grating. The premise is that a crew are maintaining the last remaining forests in space because they can no longer survive on Earth. On Earth apparently they have done away with disease and the temperature is constant all around the globe, but there are no plants anymore. Only one member of the crew actually cares. Most of the crew don't see any point in eating fruit or vegetables, preferring a processed food instead. When the authorities announce that the forests are to be abandoned and nuked in space, three of the four crew members are unsurprised and happy to be going back home. The fourth member of the crew who was actually responsible for maintaining the forests however, decides it's time to take drastic action. In order to insert a bit of tension into the story later on we are told that the plants are all dying for some reason the gardner/astronaut is unable to work out. This was a particularly major blow to the credibility of the film for me since when we discover what the problem actually was it feels remarkable that these forests had survived as long as they had.
Some very good moments and a brilliant performance from the main character do not make up for the plodding pacing, the irritating music or for the aforementioned "twist".
0.5/5
The Mutant Chronicles (2008)
RT: 16%
Yeah, sure I knew was going to be awful, but I'd been given the impression that it was going to be entertainingly awful like Ultraviolet (the movie starring Milla Jojovich, not the awesome tv series about vampires). Anyway, the premise appeared to be zombies in space, so imagine my surprise when this turned out to be extremely boring. And no, not boring in the Terminator Salvation sense of "why should I care about any of these explosions when I don't give a s*** about the characters?", but boring in the traditional sense of "nothing is happening". Seriously, there is practically no action in this movie. The inclusion of Ron Perlman and John Malkovich in the cast made me expect something more.
Cross-posted to moviebuffs
Best Movies
Grizzly Man (2005)
RT: 93%
Absolutely incredible and very moving documentary showing the footage captured by Timothy Treadwell during his days of living with bears. Treadwell was clearly quite a disturbed individual, so who better to help us understand him than Werner Herzog? Herzog approaches Treadwell as an aspiring fellow filmmaker and manages to open up a whole deeper level of understanding of this bizarre figure as a result.
Cherry Blossoms (2008)
RT: 82%
Exploring ideas on grief and mortality might not sound like the most fertile ground for a sweet little movie with comic elements. However, if you've seen "Goodbye Lenin" or "Lars And The Real Girl" you'll probably have some idea of what tone to expect here. We're told towards the beginning of the movie that a woman's husband is about to die, but that he won't feel the symptoms for a while yet. It is suggested that she take him on some kind of unique experience; an adventure. However, her husband is an obsessive compulsive and far prefers fixed routines to new experiences. With wonderful performances as well as beautiful scenery, this is an absolutely wonderful movie that everyone ought to see. (Nice to see an 'east meets west' movie which, unlike "Lost In Translation" doesn't descend into racism.)
5/5
Baader-Meinhof Complex (2008)
RT:87%
I didn't really know anything about the real events and I wonder whether I would have enjoyed it so much if I did. Very compelling story of how a left-wing liberal movement turns violent out of frustration with the injustices. It kept me fascinated from beginning to end, not least because of the brilliant performances.
Dead Presidents (1995)
RT: 41%
After
theweaselking added his damning review of the Hughes Brothers' latest outing "Book Of Eli" to its already lacklustre reception, Mark Kermode felt the need to point out one of their older pieces. That the movie was supposed to be about Vietnam made he rather hesitant. I really didn't like Platoon or Full Metal Jacket. (I quite liked "Casualties Of War" with Michael J. Fox though.) However, the posters and publicity material all seemed to feature black actors with guns and their faces painted a dehumanising white. I wondered what this could possibly mean. The movie seems to feature a wide array of fantastic black actors and I was extremely impressed with Chris Tucker who provides a far more nuanced performance than I would have expected. This really was a display of just how good the Hughes Brothers can be. I probably ought to check out "Menace 2 Society" now. Absolutely brilliant.Sleeper (1973)
RT: 100%
"Annie Hall" only in the distant dystopian future. Classic.
The Cove (2009)
RT: 96%
At times I wondered whether this was going to annoy me, since the filmmakers are clearly the weepy "don't hurt the poor widdle animals" kind of people. However, there's no doubting the importance of the issue they are tackling and when things start going Mission Impossible it is really quite exciting. For the squeamish it's worth noting that there is a very horrible scene where they finally get the footage of what is happening in the cove (which, to be fair, they've been trying to get hold of from the beginning). However, you are given plenty of warning before that stage occurs and what comes before is well worth seeing. So yeah, even if you have to stop watching before the end, you will not regret seeing this fantastic documentary about the threat to dolphins in Japan.
4.5/5
City Of Lost Children (1995)
RT: 82%
Jean-Pierre Jeunet's fairytale is an urban fantasy masterpiece. I originally could only get hold of the dubbed version which I suggest you avoid like the plague, but now I've seen the subtitled version and it is quite awesome. That said, the relationship between Ron Perlman's character and the leader of the street kids feels a little dodgy at times (rather like the relationship between Leon and Matilda in Leon). Also the movie does suffer sometimes from being perhaps too quirky. However, if you can get past that it's an absolutely charming (and not a little creepy) movie which shows us how much better Alien Resurrection might have been if Jeunet had been left to his own devices on that project. (The extended scene at the beginning of the special edition where, during the surgery, Ripley breaks the surgeon's arm, have a similar darkly comic feel to them.) So yes, watch this, but expect it to be quite strange indeed (though thankfully a little less random than Jean-Pierre Jeunet's "Delicatessen" was).
Black Hawk Down (2001)
RT: 76%
I feel like I ought to be saying that this was a long meandering movie with no real point and far too many characters. The fact is though that the meandering nature of it was part of the point and, more importantly, I never found myself confused as to which character was which. Throughout the movie I could remember who was where and I could follow what was happening to them and I really found myself caring about every single prominent soldier that was introduced to us. Needless to say, Black Hawk Down is a movie about a military campaign which goes very, very wrong. Things are going to get quite seriously FUBAR. Nevertheless, I felt there were a few loose ends and it wasn't obvious what the movie was really trying to tell us, but in the end it was definitely though-provoking and engaging and well worth your time.
4/5
Them! (1954)
RT: 100%
On the DVD for this movie there was also the original trailer in the extras. (It turns out that the short section from this movie which appears in Werner Herzog's documentary "Encounters At The End Of The World" about people who choose to work isolated in Antarctica is actually from the trailer, not the actual movie.) The thing is, rather too much about this movie is given away by the poster and pretty much every decent scene is spoiled if you watch the trailer. (I've not used the normal poster above.) At the beginning of the movie the police are checking out some rather bizarre murders and then a scientist with a rather odd specialism comes in to investigate. The less you know about the movie in advance, the better. A wonderful classic, but on the other hand very definitely dated and a product of its time.
Pusher (1996)
RT: 77%
Follows the Tarantino (and, um, Kevin Smith?) pattern of having characters who talk like real people. The main characters make sex jokles with one another to a point where, to be honest, we begin to get a little sick of it. Fortunately this is all a necessary part of helping us to know and understand the main characters and their situation before things get more exciting in the second half. While comparisons could easily be made to Guy Ritchie's "Lock Stock" and "Snatch", things remain much more gritty, real and refreshingly understated. Think more Requiem For A Dream than Trainspotting. Sadly the movie does not feature impressive cinematography either though. This is a low budget debut feature with all the limitations that implies. Nevertheless, after the enigmatic but far from anti-climactic ending I am really looking forward to the sequel which has 100% on RT and a healthy 7.1 on imdb. Well worth a watch and, of course, even more so if the sequels are as good as I'm expecting.
3.5/5
Ponyo (2008)
RT: 92%
Ok, I know that the animation was wonderful, that the characters were endearing and that the Miyazaki magic was in full swing. In fact, that is exactly why this is higher than average. This was certainly an above average movie. I would really highly recommend that anyone who like Miyazaki's work goes to see this (though perhaps after they've already seen "Princess Mononoke", "Castle In The Sky" and "Spirited Away"). However, this suffers from the same problem as can be seen in his previous outing "Howl's Moving Castle". The level of imagination is fantastic and the characters are compelling, but towards the end I felt like it was all becoming distant as the pathos started revving up. It's a little hard to invest in the story once we are told that everything hangs on how much two young children love each other. When we've never seen them have a single disagreement during the entire movie, it's rather hard to feel any tension and therefore there's only so much we are going to care. - All this being said, it is a beautiful and wonderful story which is well worth you watching. Just expect it to let you down towards the end.
Army Of Crime (2009)
RT: 100%
The setting of the French Resistance during the second world war is quite an exciting scenario to plunge into. The film is well shot, the characters are well developed. And, once again, this is an above average feature. This is like the complete reverse of my review for Slumdog Millionaire, where there was a real sense of excitement and movie magic but absolutely no decent character development and plot holes out the wazoo. In Army of Crime the story is compelling and interesting, but the pacing is done very badly so that we aren't always swept along as much as we ought to be. Also while the characters have depth and are well-acted it is really hard to keep track of all of them. I often found myself uncertain as to where people were and what they were doing. Making it so that none of the characters were peripheral also meant that I felt frustrated when I couldn't keep up with them all. While there was nothing wrong with the ending, the poor pacing of the film meant that I wasn't as invested in the outcome as I ought to have been.
Timecrimes (2007)
RT: 88%
While it's a common problem that movies let the audience down at the end, perhaps it's then not so surprising that in a time travel movie I found myself let down by the beginning! The scene in the movie which really starts things moving is the main character seeing a woman getting undressed on a hillside as he surveys the surrounding area of his new house with binoculars. Rather bizarrely his next decision is to make his way around to that area of the hillside to find the undressing woman. This makes it seem like the main character is extraordinarily perverted and creepy, which makes it rather hard to invest in him as a protagonist. It's unfortunate since the rest of the movie works very well indeed and I would love to call this a classic in the time travelling genre. Unfortunately I cannot get over the irritating stupidity/creepiness of the protagonist in one of the main opening scenes.
Below Average
2/5
Silent Running (1972)
RT:68%
I was being told that this was responsible for influencing all sorts of recent movies like Moon and Wall E. Being heralded as Mark Kermode as an underrated classic I felt like I really ought to check it out. There are most certainly parts of it that are good. The singing from Joan Baez at certain points, far from giving a sense of wonder to the forests in space, is actually extremely grating. The premise is that a crew are maintaining the last remaining forests in space because they can no longer survive on Earth. On Earth apparently they have done away with disease and the temperature is constant all around the globe, but there are no plants anymore. Only one member of the crew actually cares. Most of the crew don't see any point in eating fruit or vegetables, preferring a processed food instead. When the authorities announce that the forests are to be abandoned and nuked in space, three of the four crew members are unsurprised and happy to be going back home. The fourth member of the crew who was actually responsible for maintaining the forests however, decides it's time to take drastic action. In order to insert a bit of tension into the story later on we are told that the plants are all dying for some reason the gardner/astronaut is unable to work out. This was a particularly major blow to the credibility of the film for me since when we discover what the problem actually was it feels remarkable that these forests had survived as long as they had.
Some very good moments and a brilliant performance from the main character do not make up for the plodding pacing, the irritating music or for the aforementioned "twist".
0.5/5
The Mutant Chronicles (2008)
RT: 16%
Yeah, sure I knew was going to be awful, but I'd been given the impression that it was going to be entertainingly awful like Ultraviolet (the movie starring Milla Jojovich, not the awesome tv series about vampires). Anyway, the premise appeared to be zombies in space, so imagine my surprise when this turned out to be extremely boring. And no, not boring in the Terminator Salvation sense of "why should I care about any of these explosions when I don't give a s*** about the characters?", but boring in the traditional sense of "nothing is happening". Seriously, there is practically no action in this movie. The inclusion of Ron Perlman and John Malkovich in the cast made me expect something more.
Cross-posted to moviebuffs
