What Movie Did You Just Watch? ...Rises

[Lazario]

Well they may have rubbed off on you.

Stop grasping at straws. The fans of the movie have popularity on their side and if that's not good enough for you, I'm deeply sorry.

Wait... No, I'm not.

[ajmrowland]

^I'm just having a little fun. Geez. Sorry if I offended you.

And considering how much influence our own parents can have on our tastes, it's a pretty big fucking straw to grasp at.

[Avaitor]

Trust me, you're not going to win this fight with him.

[SillySymphony]

The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)...The score was also terrible, which is surprising, since I usually love James Horner. Spider-man's theme sounded like a twisted version of the Superman fanfare and the romantic music sounded too much like Titanic...

I forgot to mention this in my review. Didn't know exactly why I disliked the music, then the Titantic vibe hit me during the credits.

[Lazario]

^I'm just having a little fun. Geez.

If that's true, then you shouldn't let what I said bother you. I certainly got how your replies have been on the fly but look how that (and the lack of smilies) makes them hard to interpret. I mean, it looked like your last reply was you saying I'm an idiot with no taste. Maybe I read you wrong but do you sorta see how I could have chosen to react to a statement like that? I was contemplating something like "fuck you" at one point. Not much fun in that.

As for the other thing, there's a big difference between parents deciding what their kids think about entertainment and simply exposing them to movies, TV, music, and books which they might not have been through Mtv and the trends their peers / friends follow.

Avaitor - that's not nice. I can control myself...

........................................................see?




Creepshow 2 (1987 / directed by: Michael Gornick)
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFn68-bpAHo



Well, what can one say about Creepshow 2? The original film, directed by George (Night of the Living Dead) Romero, is in my anything-but-humble opinion one of the greatest horror films ever made. It has everything a sensible horror fan could want (sorry, no boobs) and more. I will never forget the day I just randomly picked it off the shelf at my parents' house on a random day in 1998 (I'm guessing, which means I would have been 15), noon o'clock-ish. Sunny day, which meant as usual- I was inside. I think it was a weekend. I didn't know anything about almost anyone in the movie or who made it, I don't even know why I chose it or why I saw it there for months and never watched it. Something in my random-thinking mind said, "why not?" The movie is a solid 2-hours long and there wasn't a single moment of those 2 hours where I wasn't absolutely BLOWN AWAY!!! I sunk down in my chair and then the movie proceeded to nail me to it. The atmosphere... the music... the special effects... the production design... the lighting... the acting... the friggin' amazing dialogue... It's one of horror's greatest dark epics. Just nasty fun. Really nasty. Really fun. And dig that cast: Leslie Nielson, E.G. Marshall, Ed Harris, Hal Holbrook, Ted Dansen (not trying to be funny), Adrienne Barbeau, Stephen King (and ultra-creepy son). Zombies. Monsters. Excellent gore. Back stabbing. Intrigue and jealousy. Pitch-black humor. Social commentary. Poetic and frivolous revenge. And...more. One of the best surprises (read: gifts) the genre has ever given me.

How do they even approach doing a sequel? I guess they just handed the idea over to Tom Savini who complained on the Document of the Dead documentary - during the filming of Romero's half of Two Evil Eyes (1990) - that no studio wanted to let him direct a movie. Well, Columbia Pictures caved in and gave him the Night remake but for some reason, Roger Corman's New World didn't want to take the risk 3 years prior with this project. After seeing it, I'm not sure he could have done worse. (Or, perhaps, better than King himself: Maximum Overdrive. I was actually pleasently surprised by that movie.) Although, that statement needs elaboration. This is a highly frustrating movie but it does have its' strong points. It's still a multi-part anthology, like the first film, but with 3 parts plus semi-lengthy wraparound at a total of minus 30 minutes from the first. And, basically- the 3rd segment is pretty good if you take it a certain way, the 1st segment is complete and utter garbage, the 2nd... is... well, I'll get to that eventually (there's an interesting tidbit when I do), and the wraparound is just plain ridiculous. I'll discuss that now: of all the first-time watches for low-budget horror films I've scored this year, this might have the worst acting. Bar none. And this movie has the brilliant idea to bring back the "Billy" character from the original movie (the kid who murdered his father) so that it can turn him into animation (I'm not kidding) and give him a storyline where he's picked on by bullies. (Does the movie know he murdered his father? In cold blood.) Now, all of a sudden, he's frickin' Timmy Turner. Crying, after bullies steal a mail-order package from him and smash it on the ground, grinding it under their shoe. (He murdered his father for taking away his comic book... It's a little late to be trying to drum up sympathy for him now, movie.) The reason I bring up the acting here is to note that the movie had to hire a child actor to dub the animation. Of all the candidates they may have auditioned, I'm guessing they picked one of the worst. They also acquired a live-action Billy (a blond, no less) to - I swear - have an evil-laugh-off with Tom Savini in old-age makeup. Even if they were trying to camp this up, that was a Bad Idea. And the first frame of Savini onscreen is a closeup of his ass. Not sure if that was intentional but he was always a raging beefcake, don't let the freaky witchface fool you. Crude potential coincidence or no, it's quality ass.

The same can't be said in any small measure about the 1st of the 3 segments, Old Chief Wood'nhead. I literally don't know where to begin. The entire movie seems to be trying to out-nasty the original in concept, twist these stories several times during their run so it doesn't end with a conventional comeuppance, and just generally punch the audience in the stomach. This segment's idea of doing the latter is to spend the first 10 minutes making you think you're watching Spielberg's Amazing Stories - complete with sweet elderly characters, upbeat heart-warming classical music score, and dialogue so full of "this will all end well for us, you'll see"-isms that you just want to puke - then, launch into a scene of violence, "tension," and bad language so "startling" that you will feel like someone pulled the rug out from under you. Yyyeeeeaaaaahhhhhh... The reality of this ploy on the other hand is that the movie didn't seem prepared for what would happen when they got to the rug-pulling moment and didn't know what to do. Because they clearly don't. Elderly couple is running a tiny general store in the middle of some kind of indian reservation town which is drying up. They're doing no business and some Indian Royalty Guy (if you believe the wife's dialogue) has been taking advantage of his charity. IRG shows up and offers him the equivalent of Indian Buried Treasure to keep stashed away because his own son is trying to steal it. Though he doesn't tell Elderly Couple this and so, about a minute after IRG leaves- the son breaks in with a shotgun and 2 white punks to trash the store. Okay... back up for a second. I want anyone reading (and thank you, seriously, it takes me about 20 minutes to write one of these paragraphs and not even half that for you to read it) to appreciate how wrong this entire concept is. IRG offers Elderly Husband the treasure as a form of collateral until he and "His People" (yes, that expression is used in this film) can pay back the debt they owe him. But, he's also kinda bringing it here to get the Husband to stash it away from the greedy son and not telling Mr. Elderly that the son is a cut-throat punk.

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I am Cartoon Indian Warrior, buy cigars from me.</center>
So then, you may be wondering how the film chooses to portray this awful man who's deceiving the ultra-kindly Mr. Elderly? Just as you would expect: a proud, dignified leader of a tribe of 80's Indians who is at-one with the spirits of animal and nature... Not once do they really try to hint that he has a deceitful bone in his body. Even though he is still practically cursing Mr. Elderly- who has all this noble dialogue about trying to keep the town thriving through his business. Why exactly would you curse someone who showed you nothing but generocity and good-will? This is probably a good time to tell you that the Gang of Punks kill both the husband and wife store owners when Mr. Elderly hesitates to hand over the Indian bounty. Though, most unmercifully, not until we suffer through about 7 minutes of them pretentiously trashing the store. Does any of it feel the slightest bit tense? No. It completely lacks context. The actors are TERRIBLE. The onscreen action has no logic to it. One of the follower punks is a rich white guy who picks up a basket of potatoes and looks at the owners before dumping it like "oh, no, not your potatoes! Noooo, agh- there they go..." They steal who knows how many thousands of dollars worth of power tools but the camera decides to linger on the dumping of a basket of potatoes. How will they ever pick up the pieces after that tragedy?? The other follower is fat. This is intented to be a defining characteristic (so much so that his death scene later is even moonlit with die-by-the-sword implication) but you won't form an opinion on that or the potential suggestion that the two white followers (as Fat Guy's dialogue makes apparent) consider themselves the Indian Son's willing slaves. (Kinky? Progressive for its' time?) Your ears will simply erupt in spontaneous bleeding every time he opens his mouth. This man cannot act. He can only squeal. Like a pig, if you will. He chimes in every chance he gets and every syllable of sound he utters is pure pain. And none of it effective to what the scenes he's in are trying to achieve. There needs to be a special Moron Award established because of this scene, only I'm not sure who's more deserving of winning it- the actor or the director.

And... oh, I wish I was finished with this segment. But... there's more. Let's start with the small: did you know a famous part of the history of native Americans was that they liked to scalp people? Never heard of that before? Well, you're in luck- this movie teaches you how that all shakes down. Meanwhile, the Indian Son guy is a very strange breed of cookie. He's extraordinarily vain in addition to being disrespectful to his elders and just generally rude, worships female movie stars (let me finish), has a dream of going off to Hollywood to become a famous star (now we're getting into Muppet Movie territory and this guy might as well be a puppet with as much depth as he's given), and has a real fetish for his own hair. Can you smell the ending from here? Again, I might be able to forgive some of this insanity if only there were context. Who the hell is this guy, really? Why exactly are we watching him trash this store, since no one in the world would think it shocking? Furthermore: like he has a score to settle... with whom? According to what little dialogue he gets, he's mad at his father for accepting his tribe a lowly, mediocre lot in the town's socio-economic food chain. And the movie sticks this in at truly the most inconsequential moment they could find- when we're actually trying to believe for a second Fat Guy was a character. That previous bit was about him going all- "I've never seen a dead body before." Um... nobody cares about you and this revelation does nothing for the story (yeah, the revulsion at finding out the terror you've caused is real) and is extremely cliched anyway. The next big issue is that one which has been an issue in "socially-conscious" horror since I Spit on Your Grave: the protagonists suffer for stretches of minutes at a time (and, oh what drama is wrought), a revenge scenario is spurred, and... the revenge is executed in a minute fraction of what the "good guys" went through when they were on the chopping block. The film is forcing me to quote a Jim Carrey movie (though I remember liking this one): "Is that justice?!" (Liar Liar.) Not a moment of this segment prior had been the slightest bit entertaining... is it too much to ask that they at least indulge our bloodlust?

There's still more... I'm sorry but this one has really gotten on the wrong side of my cinematic righteous indignation. This is another big one: the Elderly Couple have a statue of a native American chief warrior guy standing outside their store. Before the punk gang even pull up in their car (which they must have done from the back entrance), we the audience can see the statue moving. The statue also reveals its' livingness to Indian Royalty Guy and... well, wouldn't a major problem here be solved if the movie were suggesting that IRG was silently telling Statue Chief that the store and the Elderly's were in his care- that he was sorta supposed to be guarding them? Yes it would; it would make IRG look like he truly wasn't putting the couple in harm's way by placing them in charge of the treasure. But wouldn't ya know it, one way or another, that statue isn't going to get off its' perch until it's far too late for it to be of use to anyone. Way after the Elderly's are dead and the criminals have fled, Statue Chief sssllllooooowwwly breaks off from his stand and leaps into action getting that revenge... Why? Did his character even care about what happened? Don't ask me. It seems pretty friggin' obvious that he could have done something during the robbery and chose not to be oncamera (I hear big guys are really shy) or included in the writing to any degree. And, as a result, aren't those death scenes so clever? Statue Chief is so slow and such a bad creation of the special effects and/or costuming departments that the only way for him to legitimately catch a victim offguard is by being kept offscreen so someone on the crew can bash through a wall with a wooden prop arm on his hand. Or, worse, the reverse: a completely fake victim being pulled through the wall in a shot cut short and no blood or gore shown at all... Ignore my assumed disappointment for a second and tell me you were able to wrap your head around that because it's a challenge. If... you're not going to show any blood or gore in a shot detailing a character's death... why shoot any shot of it at all since you're just using a very fake looking dummy??? This is a factor in all the death scenes. One uses arrows flying from a location we don't see nor do we see Chiefy firing them. Another just uses his shadow. The last one is where we really see him swinging and... he can't move. So... (Sounds like Swamp Thing rendered this useless 5 years prior.) Yeah, this one really sucks.

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The second - The Raft - is a mild improvement for several reasons. It's (at least it seems) shorter. Everything trucks right along, the segment makes zero stops. The threat is kept very vague (even I didn't know what was going to happen after reading 2 reviews on the movie). The special effects were impressive. And... well, the ending. But first, it's also a little too mild an improvement. The characters are still nothing but annoying and the actors Cannot Act. Except wicked hunk Paul Satterfield as the jock character, but even then there are moments where it looks like he's laughing even though he just saw someone die in front of him. It's a routine (and I mean they totally phoned this one in) Friday the 13th stereotype-collective set up. The shy girl has no character and almost no lines. I didn't like that. The not at all shy girl turns into a hysterical mess. I liked that even less. The nerdy guy has 55% of the lines but is by far the worst actor of the group. I found myself tolerating that fine most of the time due to how effective he was when he didn't speak. His surprisingly built physique might have had something to do with that. The jury's still out but I think he showed some genuine silent depth in that ending which I think is so interesting (I'm getting to it). And Paul Satterfield wears real swimming briefs, so all is well in that camp. But, of course... it has to be dealt with sometime: the lake weed blob monster. Cool or lame? Lame. Extremely. I don't mean to criticize the effects team because the meltdowns looked good, the blob itself did not. I didn't even like the 1988 Blob remake. Blobs are lame. This one looks like a giant quilt-sized wad of tissues. But it's the idea I object to every bit as much as the execution. It's clearly some kind of physical plasmatic manifestation of fluid meets skin/flesh- both heavily involved in the act of lovemaking. (Grow up, movies.)

However, it all kinda comes together for that ending... Here's the twist: it's become a survival situation. 4 "Teens" become 3 when they realize what the oil-tarp looking blob really is and they have to come up with a plan. Before Victim #2 can swim away for help or to at least try to escape, the blob crawls under the raft and kills him... With 2 teens left, they learn how to survive on the raft / do what Victim #2 did not: don't step between the boards. No, really, they make it all the way through the rest of the afternoon and right through the night into morning. And not without trouble either; see- it's really cold. Really cold, so much so that even swimming out to the raft wasn't easy. And so cold that with the two in their swim gear (her luckier since she has a sweatshirt on), they start going numb. So they have to do that Taxi thing and use their body heat to stay warm. Morning comes and... the sweet music starts playing and we shift back into Friday the 13th mode: he starts taking off her clothes and kissing her body. He lays her down over several boards while she's still technically asleep. But won't that get her killed...? Yes. Yes, it will. He has either lost all concept of their reality or is willing to sacrifice her life on the off-chance he might get laid. (DAMN! I forgot about that part of the Indian Son's motivation in the last segment. Well, anyway, it seems to be something of a theme to this movie.) With her asleep... The look on his face as she's dying, which is a brutal moment in the movie indeed, seems to suggest he's finally realized: he just got one of his best friends killed. It's this movie's sick / compelling equivalent of a protagonist wielding a weapon in the dark thinking they're nailing the killer and hitting anyone else instead, killing them. Admittedly, it's somewhat completely insane and nonsensical while being on the textbook verge of rape. But all the movie has to do is make you ask the wrong question at the right time and I did: when he first lays her down, was he thinking they're going to die and he should sacrifice her to the creature? But then his rather erotic advances had me adjusting character settings in my head- he's just horny. (And, this is just me but, I was making a Cabin Fever connection; I think that movie ripped this off a bit, but would anyone ever think to put the two together?). Characters in these plots have to make dumb decisions for anything to happen but this is probably the most disturbing Forward-button pressing sequence I've ever come across in the "Dead Teen" horror subgenre. It kinda works.

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The final segment, Thanks for the Ride, Lady... wait, no, it's called The Hitchhiker, is easily the best of the bunch. Mainly because, now, there's a point to everything. Lois Chiles (who you may remember was the wife of Dr. Evil's henchman killed by a steamroller in an Austin Powers deleted scene... that's her alright), the only actually interesting member of the cast, gives an incredible performance but, also in a strange twist of fate... she gets a decent part as well. With... writing... Like: good quality writing. There's so little plot here, it's almost beautiful: she's a smart, perky upper-class wife of a businessman having an affair. With a real male whore (you don't see too many of those in movies). They even have a discussion about her underpaying him. And that's the movie's first Good Idea for a change. (I'm as shocked as you are. This is a really braindead movie but now, a lightbulb has suddenly been turned on.) On the drive home, we learn she has a personal problem: she talks to herself. A lot. She's trying to invent an excuse for being so late arriving home and the best thing she comes up with... is telling him the truth. This is refreshing. Especially since she doesn't seem to even like her husband that much. The segment's only flaw is that we meet him and he turns out to be a saint. After she accidentally hits a man on the road, killing him, and drives away, he's the first car on the scene and is doing everything in his power to win Motorist of the Year. He's an inch away from spontaneously donning a Superman cape. Which makes her a huge bitch. But an honest one, in moviemaking terms. She contemplates turning herself in and really thinks about it. Until the ghost corpse of the victim politely approaches her car... She screams and drives off, she stops and he attacks her through the open roof hole, and as you probably know by now: she goes off the deep end and has a party killing him over and over again. This segment is really smart but in terms of being scary- you can forget about it. The music kills it; this couldn't be more inappropriate for building or sustaining horror-movie tension. But the whole thing does work as a comedy. It's very funny.

What's more, we actually learn something about her character through the chaos: she's been dealt a very stressful hand in the game of the haves and have-nots. With all the complaining she does throughout the segment about money, she's clearly the only rich person who worries enough about a bill to fix her car, when she drops her cigarette, her #1 priority is to not burn the seats. At the risk of letting the car spin out of control and maybe kill someone. This puts the seed of an idea in my mind, that there's something up with this character, and... the movie actually feeds it. I think, shy of her being found out by the police or killed in a manner we could recognize (when we see her corpse, it suspiciously looks as though she died of: Just End the Movie Already disease), this segment covers the most important base of this character. If she's going to make irrational decisions, she should be a little off. And she is, without turning it into a joke. The funny part is her doing all the damage to her precious Mercedes just to avoid the hitchhiker's ghost-corpse talking to her (he's black, by the way). But she's not crazy at all. She's a sophisticated, straight-talking upper class woman. Who just happens to talk to herself so much that she can't concentrate on holding her cigarette and driving at the same time. She's... a lot like me, actually. We both have to question first if we feel any emotion about anything and wonder for minutes on end what that emotion might be. Scarier still, she's questioning whether or not she feels bad at all for hitting the hitchhiker. Because if she did, then she decides she must turn herself in. The really interesting thing about this segment is she knows exactly what she's doing and narrates it the way a real person would. She says everything anyone would need to say about the scene during. Which makes it easier to have fun with (though it took me awhile to get past that awful music). I don't think we were meant to like her character but it's hard not to find her relentlessly entertaining. She couldn't be more frank about the things she talks about. It would seem that obsession over money (and it's still hard to figure out why she's so fixated on it, you kind of have let your mind have a field day) was some kind of ironic downfall for her.


And, as an added bonus, for your viewing pleasure... I present one of the worst actors in horror history (that's right... after watching this movie, I actually made a video about what a bad actor he was):

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/grQDNmI4adM" frameborder="0"></iframe>

[Goliath]

Well they may have rubbed off on you.

OH SNAP!


Tropa de Elite 2: The Enemy Within (2010)

Rarely is a sequel as good as the original. Even more rare is it when the sequel surpasses the original. Tropa de Elite 2 does just that. The first film was a magnificent, impressive and disturbing view of the impact that drugs trafficking and corrupt police wanting to have a part of the action have on the life in the slums of Rio de Janeiro, seen through the eyes of several members of the BOPE elite force. The sequel goes further and ties this together with the politics of Rio and Brazil and shows, in an uncompromising way, how connected high political office is with the violent drug-related crime on the streets. It's brutal at times, but above all it's impressive in its scale, script, structure, direction, editing, pacing and acting. Highly recommended. 8.5/10

Le Silence de Lorna (2008)

In sharp contrast, this was a real snooze-fest that I should've turned off after 15 minutes instead of waiting 45 minutes. I kept watching because the premise sounded so good: it was to be about an Albanian immigrant in Belgium and how her dependence on others made her vulnerable to ruthless criminals. Advertised as an intruing character study, all I saw was boring characters getting into boring arguments in boring situations and boring places. I should've know. The film was directed by the Dardenne brothers. I had to sit through their Le Fils (2001) in university and I literally fell asleep because it was so pointless. I will never watch one of their films again. I don't care how critically acclaimed they are. 2/10

Post Mortem (2010)

When I read the first two words of the review, I immediately knew I wanted to see this film: "Chile, 1973". They didn't even have to give me the date of September 11th. A film against the background of the Pinochet coup against the Allende administration is always going to interest me, even if it's just used as a backdrop, like this film, which is about a an employee at a morgue's recording office who falls for a burlesque dancer who mysteriously disappears. Sounds intruiging. Unfortunately, it was not. It started interesting, with the tanks rolling through Santiago. After that, everything of interest stopped. After the disappointment of the aforementioned film, I didn't doubt to turn this one off after only 30 minutes. 3/10

[ajmrowland]

Wh, well. I'm a mystery to myself sometimes.

[PeterPanfan]

Batman (1989) - Never seen this despite being a fan of the superhero himself. It didn't floor me as I expected it to, but Keaton is a damn good masked hero (his Bruce Wayne didn't do too much for me, however). Kim Basinger was give-or-take but I thought Jack Nicholson was fantastic as The Joker (a reviewing of TDK would allow me to compare the two.) I liked that there was no origin story here, although it still dragged a bit.

Batman Returns - So much better than its preceder. Keaton tightened up his acting and Michelle Pfieffer was fantastic. Danny Devito was actually pretty frightening in his disturbing get-up, and it was overall a more fun and coherent script than the first by Burton.

[TheSequelOfDisney]

The Hit - It was certainly interesting; this type of film wouldn't necessarily be my first choice, but I thought it was good. I liked Terrance Stamp (I recognized him from The Limey, which I saw in my Film Noir class), and thought that John Hurt (man, Mr. Ollivander looks young, haha) was pretty good, too, as Braddock. The film wasn't anything special for me, though; it was good, but I doubt I'll be watching this again any time soon.

Black Narcissus - Now this film I'll definitely be watching again really soon (I just bought the Criterion Blu-ray)! This was fantastic! I seriously loved every aspect of it. I have seen The Red Shoes (another Powell and Pressburger film that I love and bought the Criterion Blu-ray last year), and thought that I would like this--little did I know that I would love it. Deborah Kerr was great as Sister Clodagh and Kathleen Byron was electric as the psychotic Sister Ruth. The cinematography was exceptional as was the art direction (no wonder the film won Oscars for both). I love this film and can't wait to watch it in glorious 1080p (I borrowed the newest Criterion DVD of the film from my local library).

[carolinakid]

Finally got around to seeing Cars 2 (2011) last night. It was OK...

[toonaspie]

Meet the Feebles (1989)

Peter Jackson's best work. LOL. I still love it for its dark comedy and the last 10 minutes of insanity. I actually enjoy this more than most Muppet movies. People say it's a Muppet parody but there a bits of homage in the film if you look close enough.

[TheSequelOfDisney]

Black Narcissus - I watched this again with the commentary (with Martin Scorsese and Michael Powell); it was quite informative, even though there were some patches of silence. The film looks gorgeous (I now have the Criterion Blu-ray), and it was a joy to watch again. This is a great Powell/Pressburger film. I'm glad I'm now able to watch it whenever I want to

The Red Shoes - Another Powell and Pressburger film that I absolutely love (well, I've only seen these two). It's a sheer delight and is pretty much perfect in every regard. The cinematography/art design is breathtakingly beautiful (the Technicolor is AMAZING), and the acting is pretty great, as well, especially considering that many were not actors but dancers. This is a must have, and, really, everyone should see this.

Psycho - This was my first Hitchcock film (yeah, I know...), and it was brilliant. It was so suspenseful! Seriously, I had to pause it a few times near the end because I couldn't stand seeing what was going to happen. No wonder this is such a highly regarded film (from what I've read/heard). But, really, this was superbly well done. I've only ever seen a small portion of The Birds, so this really is my first outing with Hitchcock, and I'm really impressed.

The Aviator - This one was interesting. Leonardo DiCaprio was pretty good, as was Cate Blanchette (she was great as Katharine Hepburn). It was a tad long, though, at nearly three hours. Marin Scorcese sure can make a well-crafted film. We've had the Blu-ray of this for years--I actually got it for my dad--but I haven't fully watched the film until now. I liked it, overall, but I doubt I'll watch it all that frequently.

[DisneyAnimation88]

The Dark Knight Rises - After the amazing Batman Begins and The Dark Kinght, I went into this film expecting to be let down in some way but happily Christopher Nolan, for me the best and most original director in Hollywood today, has created an incredible and fitting conclusion to what I think is the greatest film trilogy of all time. I won't give any of the story details away but, like with every film that Nolan has crafted with his brother Jonathan, the writing is superb and gripping, despite the near-three hour run time, though I hardly noticed the length of the film given how much I enjoyed it. The cast, most of whom Nolan has worked with before are all excellent; Christian Bale gives his best performance in the title role while Gary Oldman and Morgan Freeman are always excellent, even in the smaller roles they have played in this series. Of the newcomers, Anne Hathaway is brilliant as Catwoman (and looks better in a catsuit that anyone I have ever seen) while Tom Hardy is amazing and menacing in the role of Bane, no small feat given that his performance relies heavily on his facial expressions. But for me, the most impressive performance in the film comes from Joseph Gordon-Levitt and he is fast becoming one of the most exciting actors around today with his performances in this, Inception and 50/50. Nolan has created a brilliant ending to this series but has still managed to leave me wanting to see more and judging my the comments of nearly everyone around me in the sold-out cinema, I'm not alone in that.

Whether we see more of The Dark Knight or not, this trilogy has been one of the best and most entertaining film-viewing experiences I've ever had and I've already got my tickets to see it a second time and I'll probably go again after that. For me, without question the film of the year - 10/10.

[jpanimation]

The Dark Knight Rises (2012) 6.5/10 - Probably the worst of the trilogy, which is massively overrated to begin with. They absolutely ruined Bane (well, they created an original character and named him Bane, so that fans wouldn't feel ripped off by not having a villain from the comics) and the plot was soo tired that I found myself dosing off (really? criminals take over the city...how original...and the League of Shadows wants to destroy Gotham City using stolen Wayne tech, wait a minute). For such a long runtime, not much really happens (in terms of character development, plot or action). Anne Hathaway was miscast as Catwoman and her outfit looked ridiculous (sexy halloween costume???). I heard from my friends that there was a twist ending that I'd never see coming and got excited that maybe Two-Face was back - you know, after they wasted a great villain in the last movie - but no, they reveal that Talia is Ra's al Ghul daughter, something we already knew. None of the villains here are nearly as interesting as the Joker was and I felt emotionally detached to all the characters. I guess this counts as spoilers but Batman sacrificing himself flying the nuclear bomb away reminded me of Tony Stark sacrificing himself flying the nuclear bomb away in The Avengers (hint, they both live at the end). As for the Robin tease, instead of exciting me with the prospect of more it disappointed me that they wouldn't be rebooting the series for something closer to the comics.

[dvdjunkie]

jpanimation: I know you saw the same movie I did, but I think you had your eyes closed. There was nothing slow or miscast for this film. The Bane villain was amazing, and Catwoman fit her role from head to toe. The storyline ties well with the other two movies and is the end of the "Perfect" trilogy. Christopher Nolan has left a legacy that will be hard to beat with the Dark Knight films. Was it overlong? NOT!!! No character development? I think you saw a totally different movie than the rest of us have seen.

If you didn't like the first two, why waste your money on the third, I work too hard for my money to waste it on a bad movie.

Just sayin'!!!!!

[Lazario]

jpanimation: I know you saw the same movie I did, but I think you had your eyes closed. There was nothing slow or miscast for this film.

I like slow but a LOT of people have been complaining that they thought it was miscast.

Oh, and... Catwoman? Well, I was all set to say that's Michelle Pfeiffer but she was the best Selina Kyle. In fact, I never cared about Catwoman except for what she was able to reveal about Pfeiffer's Selina Kyle as a character. But I think I can safely say Julie Newmar and Eartha Kitt were vastly superior Cat...women.

[TheValentineBros]

The Dark Knight Rises.

Brilliant as fuck! One of the best closures to a movie franchise.

[TheSequelOfDisney]

Over the weekend and the beginning of the week I've watched:

The Royal Tenenbaums - Love this film! I've seen Moonrise Kingdom (and loved it, too) and just had to see another Wes Anderson film. I love the quirkiness, irony and sarcasm. The ensemble of actors are fantastic, too (I seriously don't think I disliked any of them). I don't know which character is my favorite, because I really do like them all, but I really liked Chas, Margot and Richie Tenenbaum; they're all so different but I find something in them that I can relate to (which I think is why I love the film so much). I'll definitely try and buy the Criterion Blu-ray when it comes out mid-August. Definitely a must-watch!

La Belle et La Bête - Another great film! I went in trying not to compare it to Disney's animated film, and found that I really couldn't do that because they're pretty different. I do have a few gripes, though (they're minimal): I feel like Belle fell in love with the Beast way too quickly in this film (like, all he does is give Belle some jewelry and she becomes wildly optimistic); and Belle kind of did a total one-eighty at the end where she was totally out of character once the Beast transformed into a man. Those are just too small gripes, but overall this was pretty great. I might get this Criterion Blu-ray if I have some extra cash.

Rosemary's Baby - This one was interesting. Isn't this supposed to be one of the scariest horror films ever? Cause I wasn't scared at all (maybe a little freaked out during the rape scene, but never scared; I was more scared while watching Psycho last week). I liked Mia Farrow (she was really great), and the supporting cast was good, too. I just thought that I was going to be horrified about the film, but I wasn't. I mean, you didn't even see the Devil-baby (though, I guess, it wasn't really necessary to show the Devil-baby). It was good, but, I don't know; maybe I need to watch it again.

8 1/2 - Hmmmm, I know this is supposed to be fantastic, and it was pretty good, but I kept on comparing it to Nine even though I know I shouldn't have (and I think that hurt my thoughts toward the film for some reason). I was pretty familiar with the story so I knew, basically, what was going to happen. I did really like the actors (especially Marcello Mastroianni as Guido and Sandra Milo as Carla). I still need to watch the film with the audio commentary, and hopefully that will help me differentiate between this film and Nine.

La Graine et Le Mulet - I really, really liked The Secret of the Grain. There were so many family members, but you really got to know each and every one of them. Even though the story was simple (a 61 year old man who gets fired from his 35 year job starts up a restaurant on a boat, serving couscous, which is la graine, and mullet, which is le mulet) it's really effective. You begin to really care for Slimane (the man) and you're left wondering what happens to him at the end of the film. The breakout star is Hafsia Herzi as Rym (the belly dancing scene alone made me really impressed). I think this might be tied for my favorite film out of these five (along with The Royal Tenenbaums). It's so sincere. It's definitely recommended.

[Dr Frankenollie]

I mean, you didn't even see the Devil-baby (though, I guess, it wasn't really necessary to show the Devil-baby).

It wasn't just unnecessary to see Adrian, but it's scarier if you don't see him - your imagination can probably create something scarier than any special effect or puppet could have.

I have watched only one film in the past week, and that is The Dark Knight Rises. This film is the final nail in the coffin of going to the cinema for me; not because of the movie itself, but the agonising amount of adverts I had to sit through first. No amount of closing my eyes and trying to escape to my happy place could allow me to stop hearing the dreadful jokes and the modern music that sounds exactly the fucking same for every damn song.

As for the film itself, as I have written a detailed review (http://onethousandandonemovienights.blo ... ew_22.html), I'll try to be brief here: I liked it. I love its predecessors and wasn't expecting it to be better than The Dark Knight, and even though I lowered my expectations quite a bit, it still failed to fully exceed them. The actors we're already used to in the series - Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman and Christian Bale - are all still good, but disappointingly underused (even Bale!). Nolan said in one interview he wanted to end the story rather than keep blowing up the plot bubble, but regardless introduced far too many new characters. Nonetheless, the performances for these new characters are generally excellent: Tom Hardy is menacing and at times oddly charismatic as Bane (but unsurprisingly not a patch on Heath Ledger's Joker), and although I slightly prefer Michelle Pfeiffer, Anne Hathaway is fun as Catwoman. John Blake seemed to be more of a clunky plot device than an actual character, and sometimes the film seemed to be spectacle-driven rather than focusing on substance and characters. The big, explosive set-pieces took centre stage instead of the characters; it's hard to criticise them though because they're don't just impress the eyes, but also the mind too. While it's not the masterpiece I was hoping for, it was still good fun.

A few final things: in the penultimate scene with Alfred in Florence, they should have ended it with him looking up instead of being condescending to the audience; I find it hard to believe that Gordon was able to remember putting a coat around young Bruce's shoulders when it happened thirty years ago, and he may have done the same to someone else during a more meaningful experience; and they missed a gigantic opportunity in the scene with the bomb in the Bat. Why, why, why couldn't Batman have said: "Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb"?

[jpanimation]

jpanimation: I know you saw the same movie I did, but I think you had your eyes closed. There was nothing slow or miscast for this film. The Bane villain was amazing, and Catwoman fit her role from head to toe. The storyline ties well with the other two movies and is the end of the "Perfect" trilogy. Christopher Nolan has left a legacy that will be hard to beat with the Dark Knight films. Was it overlong? NOT!!! No character development? I think you saw a totally different movie than the rest of us have seen.

If you didn't like the first two, why waste your money on the third, I work too hard for my money to waste it on a bad movie.

Just sayin'!!!!!

You wanna try that again without the condescending attitude? You might also want to actually read what I wrote; to which I never said the movie was “slow” or that I didn’t like the first two (does calling them overrated count as not liking them?).