Brief reviews of movies you saw recently

[RenegadeClock]

Castaway on the Moon - 9/10

This is a Korean flick about a guy who's overwhelmed by the troubles in his life and wants to end it, until he becomes stranded on an island and finds hope in a more primitive lifestyle. It's got a mix of humor and drama in the beginning but turns into more of a love story towards the end after a young girl spots him through a telescope from the shoreline.

[AmberArachnidClock]

Chocolate

This is a Thai martial arts movie about an autistic girl who can kick-box. The action scenes are ridiculous. It's all really well choreographed and the stunts are insane. The movie makes really good use of blunt weapons, you see people just get the shit kicked out of them with sword holsters and feet etc. The actual dialogue in between fighting is incredibly bad, but it's funny bad not painful bad, and you can fast-forward those scenes if you really want to.

But seriously though, if you want to see some ridiculous action kung fu then watch this movie. It's pretty fucking insane.

[Slurpee]

Take Shelter - 10/10
Okay so like this dude is going crazy? And his mom was crazy but you're not supposed to know that yet. He has all these dreams about it's raining motor oil and then the people go crazy like in The Crazies remember that flick? But that's only his dreans, And so he's schizophrenic or something but he thinks a storm is coming and so he wants to build a storm shelter for his family. With there's tornadoes. So he spends all kinds of money and gets into a big hole trying to figure out if he's crazy but also building the tornado shelter just in case? And the whole movie you can tell it's building to something but you're not sure what. it's this sense of dread that settles in and that's really what you're watching the movie for- this powerful sense of just... waiting for the roof to drop. Either the protagonist is gonna snap or the sky's gonna fall.

This is a movie. Give these sons of bitches your money.
Should be now playing in pretentious independent theaters and shit check fandango http://www.fandango.com/takeshelter_145337/movietimes they have times even for theaters they don't sell tickets for. I saw it at the shattuck in berkeley.

[LandlineClock]

A Clockwork Orange      9.998/10      
 
Almost everything about this movie is perfect. The only problem I have is how impossible it is to understand at a first watch. This movie actually took me some research to completely understand. And some of the rape scenes were really difficult to watch. But overall, fantastic work. Stanley Kubrick was a master director.

[RobClock]

Paul - 8/10
Oh man, I wish I had gotten around to seeing this before!


Three tits? Awesome!

[GearBoxClock]

Real Steel 8.5/10
Holy shit, this is an amazing film. It's really good. The fights have legitimate tension and the final half is very Rocky inspired. Watch it.

[RobClock]

The Good, The Bad & The Ugly - 10/10
Even if you haven't seen it, you've heard of this film. There's a reason for that.

[RobClock]

The Rum Diary - 6.5/10
It wasn't any kind of masterpiece, but I figure it was worth price of admission.

[SnakeClock]

IN TIME
5/10

Generally, I try and support movies with a clever concept, because I like to be able to see more of them, and this was one instance where I bit the bullet for the sake of creative support. Justin Timberlake plays a guy in future Los Angeles or something where they suddenly developed a way to make people stop aging at 25, and the time they have left to live is displayed on a readout on their arm. They exchange time like currency. Timberlake plays a ghetto dweller, and there is a severe problem with how time is distributed there. He's literally living "day to day" (the movie is full of dumb puns like this) and the cost of living keeps getting jacked as food and rent prices rise arbitrarily, and someone tells Timberlake that it's to control the population, since now apparently no one can die and they haven't heard of euthanasia.

The problems with this movie arise when it gets going, and you soon start to see that the movie is actually quite simple and vague. This is allegedly a dystopia, with severe class divisions as they're split into different "time zones" ( ), but you don't get the sense that this whole "stay 25 until this number counts down" thing is an answer to societal problems, like with most dystopian societies; you don't even get a clear idea how it started, or why anyone thought it was a good idea other than so that the rich can live forever. At times, it seems like a vague metaphor for the poor distribution of wealth, and at other times, it seems like a plutocracy whose implicit goal is killing the poor. None of these possibilities emerge as a distinct question about a world like this, so it's a cool concept unsupported by its own implications.

There's also so much telling in this movie. Besides the crass "time is money" puns that remind us of the concept every few minutes, there's also a lot of things about the plot and characters that we're just told, rather than shown. For example, we're told that Amanda Seyfried's character is "kind of reckless," when they could have shown this by, I dunno, having her do something reckless. When she DOES start doing reckless things later, it's like she's thinking to herself "Oh, the movie said I was reckless, I'd better get started on that."

The movie juggles a few villains with various degrees of success, ranging from the rich asshole to the by-the-book policeman (or "Timekeeper", as he's called) to just the gang of nondescript thugs that likes, cough, "taking your time". The whole "time as currency" thing also doesn't make a lot of sense, because its not like it's dependent on the nation's GDP or other economic factors: it's just numbers in a computer, and you can have as much of it as you damn well want. Also, though Timberlake eventually becomes a Robin Hood-like figure, spreading around these arbitrary computer numbers, his plan to do this comes off as really simple, and with a lot of logic holes. For example, he robs a "time bank" by driving an armoured car through the wall and just walking into the vault WHICH IS JUST LYING OPEN FOR SOME REASON. Why is there no security there?

Some things I liked about this movie is that it's very well-shot, and some of the characters are likeable in their own ways. Olivia Wilde plays Timberlake's mother (remember, they all stop aging at 25), and Amanda Seyfried's character had a few funny moments, like when Timberlake gives her a gun, she enjoys shooting it a little too much. There are also points where the time concept actually does become cool, like when it first kicks in for Seyfried, she says "I just looked at myself in the mirror, I suppose everyone does, and thought to myself 'this is what you're going to look like for the rest of your life.'" If this movie had the nerve and the energy to maintain its cool concept, like Source Code, it could have been great. Hell, it was from the director and writer of Gattaca, so I know it had potential, and though this movie itself was a bit of a dud, I'm glad to have supported it.

[AmberArachnidClock]

IN TIME
Hell, it was from the director and writer of Gattaca

haha wow that's all you had to say (Although I guess apparently some people liked that movie)

[SnakeClock]

haha wow that's all you had to say (Although I guess apparently some people liked that movie)

Gattaca is another one of those movies that people either liked for its sharp concept or interesting art direction, or hated because it wasn't a well-made film. It's at least the sort of movie that knew what it was about and didn't have to constantly remind itself, though.

[SnakeClock]

A VERY HAROLD & KUMAR 3D CHRISTMAS
9/10

Uproariously funny.

[TelephoneClock]

The Wizard of Oz (1939 of course) - 9/10

Haven't seen this movie for so long that I forgot most of it, so seeing it again at an age where I can appreciate it more was a treat! I was surprised at how clever some of the humor was, and the acting wasn't all that bad. You could tell some of the actors were really hamming it up and having fun. The sound quality (and yelling because of microphones) always starts to grate on me in these old movies, but nevertheless it was a thoroughly enjoyable experience.

And nothing against short people or anything, but those munchkins were creepy as fuck

[DWARFINATORclock]

colombiana 6/10

meh

[DWARFINATORclock]

streetfighter the legend of chun li
if you watch by yourself: 1/10
if you watch with friend mst3k style: 9/10

really bad but pointing out/making fun of all the inconsistencies is a lot of fun

[SilverCherryClock]

Melancholia was good as hell, 8.5/10

[RobClock]

6 Days to Air - 8/10
The documentary of how they make an episode of South Park. It was really cool. Matt and Trey are absolutely brilliant.

[RobClock]

The Muppets - 9/10

[GearBoxClock]

Rise of the Planet of the Apes - 8/10
The title makes it sound much worse than it is.

[miracle fruit]

Rise of the Planet of the Apes - 8/10
The title makes it sound much worse than it is.

yea it was pretty good compared to the tim burton one. but i dont get all this criticism over the name. nearly every planet of the apes title has had really long and dumb title

Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970)
Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971)
Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972)
Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973)
Return to the Planet of the Apes (TV Series 1975ââ,¬â€œ1976)
Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011)