Hot Fuzz

The concept sounded less ambitious than Shaun of the Dead, and so I didn't hasten to see it, despite being interested to see it. However, now i've seen it, I think it's even more ambitious than Shaun of the Dead, and an equally good film.

[imdb]Perfume: The Story Of A Murderer[/imdb]

Whilst the sense of smell is understandably a difficult thing to represent in the medium of film, "Perfume: The Story Of A Murderer" manages it effortlessly. The anti-hero, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is well cast (although his voice is distractingly high) alongside a short-tempered Dustin Hoffman as his mentor, Giuseppe Baldini, and Alan Rickman (playing Snape in a wig).

Despite it's two hour + length, the pace barely drops at all. The plot follows Grenouille and his ambition to create the perfect perfume - the scent of a woman (or 13).

Some of the shots and scenarios, while impressive to look at, however, seem to be there more for artistic effect rather than to tell the story. For example, a woman is trapped in a barn without a ladder. someone opens the door and walks in. The someone turns out to be Grenouille. In the next shot we see the same woman, dead, in a cylindrical glass tank being pickled in yellow liquid. In broad daylight. While a fantastic reveal it is an incredibly inconspicuous way of conducting your dubious lady-pickling experiments.

Another example of this is in the montage of death, where Grenouille dumps his victim's bodies, naked and hairless, back where he had abducted them. It again seems like an awful lot of effort and risk for a multiple murderer, and I doubt someone who kills women for their scent is going to care much for giving the famillies something to bury.

The ending of the film is one of the most bizarre and unexpected of anything I've ever watched. I don't want to ruin it, but it's almost fairy-tale like in it's nature, albeit with a massive group orgy. Whether it was meant to be literal or metaphoric I'm not sure.

Overall: a thoroughly enjoyable and original thriller, especially for something considered "unfilmable". Highly recommended. 4/5.

Quote from: CrustClock;779797[imdb]Perfume: The Story Of A Murderer[/imdb]

Whilst the sense of smell is understandably a difficult thing to represent in the medium of film, "Perfume: The Story Of A Murderer" manages it effortlessly. The anti-hero, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is well cast (although his voice is distractingly high) alongside a short-tempered Dustin Hoffman as his mentor, Giuseppe Baldini, and Alan Rickman (playing Snape in a wig).

Despite it's two hour + length, the pace barely drops at all. The plot follows Grenouille and his ambition to create the perfect perfume - the scent of a woman (or 13).

Some of the shots and scenarios, while impressive to look at, however, seem to be there more for artistic effect rather than to tell the story. For example, a woman is trapped in a barn without a ladder. someone opens the door and walks in. The someone turns out to be Grenouille. In the next shot we see the same woman, dead, in a cylindrical glass tank being pickled in yellow liquid. In broad daylight. While a fantastic reveal it is an incredibly inconspicuous way of conducting your dubious lady-pickling experiments.

Another example of this is in the montage of death, where Grenouille dumps his victim's bodies, naked and hairless, back where he had abducted them. It again seems like an awful lot of effort and risk for a multiple murderer, and I doubt someone who kills women for their scent is going to care much for giving the famillies something to bury.

The ending of the film is one of the most bizarre and unexpected of anything I've ever watched. I don't want to ruin it, but it's almost fairy-tale like in it's nature, albeit with a massive group orgy. Whether it was meant to be literal or metaphoric I'm not sure.

Overall: a thoroughly enjoyable and original thriller, especially for something considered "unfilmable". Highly recommended. 4/5.

I thought it was bloody awful, the whole way through. I was waiting for it to become the intelligent movie it was trying to be, but it never got beyond a high-school level of sophistication, in terms of both the story and it's boring, one-dimensional, unbelievable, unlikable characters.

At the end, I was just left offended by how pointless it was. Tom Tykwer is the one wearing the Emperor's Clothes now: Run Lola Run worked because it had a thrilling story, innovative narrative and characters we give a shit about. Perfume has the opposite, and so its pretentious message falls flat on its face.

Eraserhead

I can't rate this. It's impossible to judge this movie like a conventional movie. I'm not sure of what I just watched. I'm not sure what was real and what was a dream, but I know this: That was the creepiest hour and a half of my life. The baby. Holy. Fucking. Jesus. I swear to god it was alive. There's no way it could have been fake. I'm going to need to watch it again.

Quote from: G to tha ONZO clock;780794Eraserhead

I can't rate this. It's impossible to judge this movie like a conventional movie. I'm not sure of what I just watched. I'm not sure what was real and what was a dream, but I know this: That was the creepiest hour and a half of my life. The baby. Holy. Fucking. Jesus. I swear to god it was alive. There's no way it could have been fake. I'm going to need to watch it again.

http://www.dvdverdict.com/printer/eraserhead.php

O BROTHER WHERE ART THOU?

I LIKED THIS MOVIE

THE DREAMERS

THIS MOVIE WAS WELL-MADE BUT RATHER UNSURPRISING AND GENERIC


NATURAL BORN KILLERS

THIS MOVIE WAS SO ENERGETIC THAT I FELT EXHAUSTED AFTER WATCHING IT. ITS ECCENTRIC VISUAL STYLE WAS OFTEN EXCITING AND BOLD, BUT SOMETIMES RATHER TEDIOUS. OVERALL A VERY ENTERTAINING AND INSPIRING PIECE OF ART THAT I RECOMMEND FOR VIEWING

Quote from: LeekClock;783712
NATURAL BORN KILLERS

THIS MOVIE WAS SO ENERGETIC THAT I FELT EXHAUSTED AFTER WATCHING IT. IT'S ECCENTRIC VISUAL STYLE WAS OFTEN EXCITING AND BOLD, BUT SOMETIMES RATHER TEDIOUS. OVERALL A VERY ENTERTAINING AND INSPIRING PIECE OF ART THAT I RECOMMEND FOR VIEWING

Lol, Leek has gone crazy. But that is one of my favorite movies of all time, so you can't be too crazy.

[imdb]Pan's Labyrinth[/imdb]

I was surprised how small the fantasy aspect of the movie was considering how much the trailers centered around it. In fact, most of the time is spent in the real world setting - Fascist Spain in 1944.
Nevertheless, PL is a beautiful, violent film with highly memorable performances, especially for Ofelia and the despicable Captain Vidal. I thought that the Captain's death was perfect: he thinks that although he has lost the battle that his legacy will be passed on - but the last thing he hears before he dies is that his son won't even know his name.
The film itself looks gorgeous and the makeup effects on the Faun and the Pale Man really are remarkable, although strangely, the CGI effects aren't nearly as impressive. I'm not usually a fan of endings with no single interpretation but in this film it seemed to be a very fitting conclusion.  

5/5

The Last Mimsy- 9/10
Much better than I expected.
Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man's Chest- 8ish or something/10
Enjoyable.
Man of the Year- 8.5/10
Gets big points for just the presence of Robin Williams, Christopher Walken, and Lewis Black in the same move.
Lady in the Water- 7/10
Lolk.

Touch of Evil: 9/10

A brilliant Film Noir. Orson Welles is the perfect villian for the genre, corrupt yet very human. Charlton Heston playing a mexican gives a mediocre performance, but it's ever so satisfying to see Orson Welles come on and act him into oblivion. A true classic.

Meet the Robinsons
Actually one of the better 'new' Disney films - witty, and full of charm.  Better than Chicken Frickin' Little.  In fact, better than I thought it was going to be.  8.5/10

Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Wererabbit
Also better than I thought it was going to be.  Not sure if its up to the same standard as the original trilogy though.  7/10

Cinderella Man
Quite good, but a tad too dramatic.  One for the real boxing fans, I think.  7.5/10

[imdb]Oldboy[/imdb]

:siren:SPOILERS:siren: :siren:SPOILERS:siren:

A good film but I just felt completely depressed after watching it. I know that Daesu's rumour, in a roundabout way, killed the main bad guy's sister, but to be honest that's what you get for fucking your brother! Being trapped for 15 years in a hotel room then being unwittingly conditioned to fall in love and sleep with your own daughter makes Woo-jin's end of the stick look clean as a whistle.

:siren:END OF SPOILERS:siren: :siren:END OF SPOILERS:siren:



A very good, highly stylish film, although I think you can appreciate it much more on the second viewing.

5/5

Quote from: CrustClock;786711[imdb]Oldboy[/imdb]

5/5

Quote from: ArseOnToast;786714

I heard about this. I find it really ironic that people are blaming Oldboy for this kid's psychosis. Because, although the story is a revenge story, it turns out that...

SPOILERS!!!!!

... the only reason Daesu has been imprisoned was for bullying he had done as a kid, making his revenge partially unjustified and in the end meaningless.

END OF SPOILERS!!!

If anything, the kid should have learned a good lesson about revenge from Oldboy, and it's quite obvious no reporter on the matter has really taken the time to sit down and watch the film. The kid was a psycho. You can't blame Oldboy for that.

Eyes Wide Shut

An engrossing cinematic experience! Perhaps the type of cinema that I most admire and aspire to creating. You find yourself lost in the intimidating and intriguing world that Kubrick has created. You are taken on a dangerous and eye-opening (despite the title ) journey. Your mind is stretched and kneaded skilfully into a doughy ball by Mr. Kubrick, the master baker.

Quote from: Predator;787105The kid was a psycho. You can't blame Oldboy for that.

He wasn't a psycho, just angry.

[IMDB]the Prestige[/IMDB]
Good movie, but not as good as I expected. The scene structure was a tad confusing at first, though it worked out as the story progressed. I could guess where the story was going at some point, but wasn't sure until the climax if I was right. And I did feel a moment of glee at the appearance of David Bowie. Worthwhile watch.

[IMDB]Ultraviolet[/IMDB]
Let's combine Aeon Flux, Equilibrium and Underworld and have the visual style of the film be a combination of Playboy airbrushing and typical Myspace whore filters. I'm not certain what's so wrong with this film that isn't wrong with [IMDB]300[/IMDB] -- both have poorly developed characters, a hollow plot and focus pretty much entirely on choreographed fights and visual effects, but in 300 I could appreciate it. Most likely Ultraviolet just likes itself too much -- the endlessly borrowed elements from comics and videogames scream "look at me, being hip". It might've been better if it had taken itself less serious and had been completely over the top ridiculous, rather than just balancing on the edge.
It's also a good idea if you're going to shoot a movie that's probably going to be greenscreen 90% of the time, don't get actors who can barely enunciate in English, it just confuses them more. They should've learned that from watching Immortel Ad Videm, which is another film this one suspiciously resembles.

I should probably admit that I didn't finish it, I felt like I was insulting my taste and wasting my time.

The Dead Zone- 10/10
I enjoyed this thoroughly.

Finding Neverland- 8.5/10
Pretty good.

Smoking Aces - 8.5/10

At around the halfway point of the movie, I felt like they were just dragging me around trying to build suspense and wasn't really sure I was liking it too much. It was decent to that point, but nothing spectacular. That all changed once things started to go down. I thought they brought everything to a climax pretty nicely, and the ending was awesome (even though you will most likely figure out 75% of the "twist" by the 30 min mark). Acting was mostly great, with just a couple of exceptions. Alicia Keys was damn hot. So was Ryan Reynolds. And the action scenes were pretty awesome. So beside the mediocre beginning, I thought this was a pretty swell movie.

The Hills Have Eyes (remake) - 5/10

I just want to start out by sayying that there are some horror movies that have gone above and beyond the call of their genre to make a movie that can really stand its own as an actual film. Films like Cannibal Holocaust, while gory, had an important subtext about the nature of society and its misconceptions about the aboriginal world and sadistic way it treats disastor. There are many horror movies that want to make the viewer think and learn a lesson from the experience of seeing it.

The Hills Have Eyes does not want to do that. The Hills Have Eyes wants to track gore and shit through our minds. Its goal is not really to scare the viewer at all, but disgust them to the point that you wish you had gone ahead a picked a better movie. The film is paced poorly with little or no exposition in favor of long tracking shots of desert sand. It seems that any sort of marker for beginning, climax, and conclusion are abandoned in order to show us fleeting glimpses of... you guessed it, sand. It drags on and on through a gooey muck which is essentially the equivilant of putting your brain through a meat grinder and eatting it yourself. The writing is so horrible that one really has to wonder if the film was made by and for people with ADD. The same concepts and ideas are done over and over again to the point of being almost as sickening as the gore. What little dialogue there is does nothing to further the plot and this whole film is just watching people do stupid things that if they had any common sense what-so-ever they just wouldn't do. But, The Hills Have Eyes needs to be admired for its simplicity. It doesn't try to be anything other than what it is: a gorey, stupid, idiotic, sadistic nightmare filled with murder, carnage, rape, and babies constantly almost barely being killed. That is the only reason this film was at all bearable. It was at least better than The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake. But, for the love of God, if you're in the mood for a horror movie and have to make a choice between this movie and something like Eraserhead, The Fly (remake), Tetsuo... for Christ's sake and the sake of your attention span, don't pick this movie.