Brief reviews of movies you saw recently

[CrustClock]

Busty Cops 2: More Cops, More Busted - 5/10

Okay, I know reviewing a soft-porn movie is kind of below any one person's standards, but I'm just really bored today. Since there is no doubt that nobody will care about the plot of this film, I'm just going to go ahead and give it away. I never saw Busty Cops but I can't imagine it has much connection to the sequel. It tells the story of three female super cops (who are very busty indeed) who get a fourth member right around the time of trying to solve a train robbing mystery. However, you might already guess that this plot takes up about 15 minutes of the whole film. The rest of the film is filled with shower scenes, strip club scenes, sex scenes, and girl-on-girl sex scenes. The filmmakers never go all out and show genital contact, but watching those tits bounce around, getting rubbed, licked, rubbed some more, smeared with soapy tub water, splayyed with, sucked on... you get the picture. Bottom line, a bottom line porno with nothing really that risque. Sorry I even bothered reviewing it.

haha wtf

[Arctic]

Kung Fu Hustle - 8.5/10

I had wanted to see this movie when it came out, but I never got around to it. It seems that there were a few parts that were sort of lost in translation (or lost to my sense of humor, lol) but overall I thought it was a great movie. The rest of the humor was either funny in an outrageous way or very subtle. I also liked the numerous nods to Hollywood (my favorite being the Shining reference). Characters were pretty cool, and I thought the ending was nice, even if it was somewhat predictable.

I loved the exaggeration in actions and especially the two guys with the string instrument.

[AnimeClock]

Children of Men 10/10

Oh Jolly G. Jesus, yes, I enjoyed this movie. Terrific apocalyptic scenario, and oh! what beautiful cinematography. Good use of symbolism. The imagery drives the movie, not the dialogue. It's poetic--the imagery--it tells the story.

[Slurpee]

Wild Hogs was Tim Allen's best movie ever

Galaxy Quest would like a word with you.

[CrustClock]

Delta Farce, Shrek 3 and Spiderman 3 were all really funny

And if I haven't said this yet, Wild Hogs was Tim Allen's best movie ever

[imdb]Spiderman 3[/imdb]

A horribly bloated and unsubtle sequel. The number of times that the film relied on pure coincidence to conveniently progress the story was unbelievable; the sleazy reporter praying at the same same church that Spiderman arbitrarily decides to land on, Harry's butler being able to identify and deduce the fatal chain of events from a glider-wound, the meteor colliding with the earth at the exact same time and place that Spiderman happened to be, Harry hitting his head and forgetting that he hates Spiderman for half the film, out of all the people in the world it's Uncle Ben's killer who falls into the mysterious sand experiment...

Talking of which, I have no idea why 1). The Sandman had to be linked to Peter Parker at all, 2). why we were supposed to sympathise with him, 3). why Sandman had to be included at all, was he really such a memorable villain?

Regardless, the sand effects and the special effects throughout the whole film were fantastic. Although having said that, I personally felt like most of the action sequences were overly impressive. The camera is constantly jerking up, down, traveling through falling rubble and shifting this way and that while CGI Spiderman and [adversary] fight an impeccably choreographed and intense mid-air scrap - so impeccably choreographed that a lot of the time I could barely tell what was going on. These battles get so amazingly fierce and extreme that the whole thing becomes absurd to watch. I remember a part in the Green Goblin fight where Spiderman gets smashed through several brick walls then hurled through panes of glass. Wouldn't stuff   like that, er, kill you?

I also thought that Venom was hideously mistreated. I read in an earlier thread that "I know what will happen, Spiderman will put on the black suit and turn emo" but I didn't think that they're being being literal. (On that note, I hated the self-referential "humour" and montage. If the whole movie was meant to be taken in a tongue-in-cheek manner then it'd be excusable, but since it obviously wants to be taken seriously in parts it creates an odd and confusing viewing experience).

A confused, cramped film with plot holes you could drive a truck through. Extravagant and very impressive to look at but lacking any emotional depth or substance. Highly disappointing.

[AdrenalineClock]

Crust, it's a comic book movie.  They are super-powered beings.  The plot will be contrived and they will survive ridiculous damage.  Spider-Man 3 had problems, but those weren't them.

[StrangeClock]

Harry's butler being able to identify and deduce the fatal chain of events from a glider-wound,

They should've put in a flashback where the butler hovers over Willem Dafoe's dead body, puts on a Sherlock hat and pipe, and says "Clearly, this was a self-inflicted glider wound."

[Losperman]

Layer Cake - 9/10

Pretty awesome movie. Good acting all around, the story was fairly tight, and I liked the soundtrack quite a bit. The ending was pretty dang neat-o as well. I thought some of the characters could have been beefed up a little, but that didn't really take too much away. Might have even been too contrived if they were. But... yeah. Needed more Sienna Miller, though.

[AdrenalineClock]

Saw Stranger Than Fiction today, damn good stuff.  Really nice acting and story, and quite funny.

Layer Cake - 9/10

Pretty awesome movie. Good acting all around, the story was fairly tight, and I liked the soundtrack quite a bit. The ending was pretty dang neat-o as well. I thought some of the characters could have been beefed up a little, but that didn't really take too much away. Might have even been too contrived if they were. But... yeah. Needed more Sienna Miller, though.

Between this and Casino Royale, Daniel Craig is the effing man.

[Losperman]

Between this and Casino Royale, Daniel Craig is the effing man.

Word. I actually want to see Bond movies again after seeing Casino Royale.

[Porti Fatti]

Being There - 9/10

Such a brilliant film revolving the events of Peter Seller's character who is a mentally challenged "gardener" that gets big in the political world; it's quite similar to Forrest Gump in a way. It's got some fantastic acting and a great cast. This has to be one of the best Peter Sellers film.

[CrustClock]

[imdb]Stranger Than Fiction[/imdb]

A silly chunk of Will Ferrell, "feel-good" buffoonery dressed up as a something highly profound about seizing the moment and, er... living life to the full or... er.... something...

it would be a much clearer annoying, cliché message without the baffling plot gimmick of the protagonist, Harold Crick (Will Ferrell), being a fictional character in a series of books who becomes aware of his fictitiousness and then contacts the writer of said series of books in order to find out why he's being killed off. If you're planning to blow some unsuspecting minds with your staggeringly far-fetched movie-concept then at least make it slightly intriguing and not just plain bizarre. The characters might as well have burst into song or started a race around the world for the (already minute) amount of interest I had invested in them.

StF is pretty much the same as any other lovable-nerd romantic comedy, bar an odd, highly confusing plot device (which you pretty much have to take at face value as it's never explained or resolved). It's not entirely bad and isn't without it's enjoyable moments, but overall it's forgettable fluff and not near as clever as it thinks it is.

(I thought Maggie Gyllenhaal's character was a really lame anarchist too)

[AdrenalineClock]

(I thought Maggie Gyllenhaal's character was a really lame anarchist too)

I'd hit that.

[StrangeClock]

[IMDB]A Scanner Darkly[/IMDB]
Not for me! Unique, perfectly cast (who better to play drug addicts than Keanu, Woody and Robert?), but I think I needed more foreknowledge to go into it blindly. The rotoscoping distracted me further from keeping tabs on the plot. I read up on things later, but while watching I couldn't figure out what events were happening at what points in time. To grab back to two earlier points (Winona's) noted by Crust, one of the few times I wasn't completely irritated by Winona Ryder's acting, which annoyingly distracts from the fact that she's pretty hot!

[IMDB]Apocalypto[/IMDB]
Mel Gibson may be a short-tempered crazed antisemitic bigot, but he can still make a mean movie. Not as raw as I expected after hearing all the controversy about how the Mayans were depicted as too bloodthirsty, though. The only thing that bothered me was how everything happened in such a short span of time. In two or three days Jaguar Paw gets captured, escapes and gets back to his wife. Obviously it wouldn't make sense if his wife got stuck in that pit too long, but ya know. So fast. Also, theme-wise, the movie is broadly a copy of the Patriot. Still, a powerful movie and something quite different due to its lack of famous actors and untouched setting.

[IMDB]Children of Men[/IMDB]
Stunning! By its subtlety the near future is made believable, and the urban combat scenes are hauntingly realistic. The scenes with continuous takes are fantastically tense and pretty much had me on the edge of my seat. From a directorial point of view I'm impressed by how much work that must've taken (though I read that some 'continuous takes' were pieced together with special effects work, as they often are), but from a viewer's point of view I'm just impressed by how well they worked. It's interesting to think that about 50 years ago, filmmakers started using cuts to manipulate time in a movie and so build tension, but by now we've seen it done so much it's nowhere near as engaging as a cameraman running after an actor in the midst of explosions and gunfire. Probably an aftereffect of seeing warzone journalism.
Really, for this movie the story is overshadowed by the method by which it is told. It also made me take Clive Owen much more serious as an actor. It was just slightly weird how suddenly the end c

[Munglai]

[imdb]Stranger Than Fiction[/imdb]

A silly chunk of Will Ferrell, "feel-good" buffoonery dressed up as a something highly profound about seizing the moment and, er... living life to the full or... er.... something...

it would be a much clearer annoying, cliché message without the baffling plot gimmick of the protagonist, Harold Crick (Will Ferrell), being a fictional character in a series of books who becomes aware of his fictitiousness and then contacts the writer of said series of books in order to find out why he's being killed off. If you're planning to blow some unsuspecting minds with your staggeringly far-fetched movie-concept then at least make it slightly intriguing and not just plain bizarre. The characters might as well have burst into song or started a race around the world for the (already minute) amount of interest I had invested in them.

StF is pretty much the same as any other lovable-nerd romantic comedy, bar an odd, highly confusing plot device (which you pretty much have to take at face value as it's never explained or resolved). It's not entirely bad and isn't without it's enjoyable moments, but overall it's forgettable fluff and not near as clever as it thinks it is.

(I thought Maggie Gyllenhaal's character was a really lame anarchist too)

I always wonder if people who write stuff like this actually think in this way or if they go into a kind of FILM WATCHING MODE where their brain turns into some kind of cynical machine that focuses all its energy on comparing and contrasting and all that wanky school essay stuff instead of just watching.

The only thing I thought was a bit off about Stranger Than Fiction was that the literature expert said the ending of the book was one of the most important things in literature history or something and actually it turned out to be pretty rubbish.

Maggie wasn't much of an anarchist though, I'll give you that.

[Randy Pearson]

28 Weeks Later...
8/10

28 Weeks Later does to the franchise what Aliens did to the Alien series. It supertransposed it out of the horror genre and into a more action oriented film. 28 Weeks Later is nothing like the original, which can be good or bad depending upon your tastes, I guess. I personally like the fact that the filmmakers used similar techniques but use them to create an entirely different effect (quick cuts, shacky camera work, etc.).
28 Weeks carries many of the same themes as the original film but instills it with a sense of sheer and utter hopelessness which it does even better than the original. Those who saw 28 Days will remember the horrifying nightmare being constantly interrupted by dream-like sequences of serenity and peace, all leading up to an optimistic ending. Those looking for that same "We shall overcome" mentality will be sorely dissapointed. There is no break. It is one continuoue nightmare. We watch it and get scared out of our minds all the while wondering when this horrible dream will finally end, and when it does it's kind of a shock.
It is not without its flaws though. One really has to wonder if nearly enough time is spent developing the characters as is done explaining situations and moving from place to place, all done extremely bluntly and with not nearly the same subtlety as the original. However, it does prove to be far easier to sit through and, if you have a slight demon streak, much more entertaining.  It also manages to be far more scary than the original.
28 Weeks is definetly a worthy sequel to 28 Days Later, and, depending on who you are, it can prove to be, not only up-to-par, but better than the original.

[SnakeClock]

The only thing I thought was a bit off about Stranger Than Fiction was that the literature expert said the ending of the book was one of the most important things in literature history or something and actually it turned out to be pretty rubbish.

That was the ending in which Harold Crick would have died, rather than the one Karen ended up using, which the literature professor thought was just "okay". Had Harold Crick died, not only would Karen have to live with that, but the writers of the movie would have had to actually write one of the most significant literary pieces of the 20th century, which anyone will tell you is no picnic.

But Heck, since I'm here...


X-Men: The Last Stand - 6/10

I'm always a bit hesitant about comic book movies, because in my opinion they just regurgitate the most mainstream comic book plots that most everyone is aware of. That's not necessarily bad if the movie can support this plot with a foundation of invention, but in this particular instance, it can't.

Right, so there's a "mutant cure", which I can't possibly believe that someone's entire genetic makeup can be reversed in such a particular way that just injecting something or being near this chemo kid would perfectly reverse it: error one, a deus ex machina hinging the entire plot. Magneto's convinced that the oppressive US government is going to start using this to shoot at mutants to make them "normal" whether they like it or not, and all I can picture is scenes the Kent State University shooting.

Scott (Cyclops) is hanging out back at Alkali Lake where Jean died a few months ago, and holy shit, she's come back to life with great drama and fanfare. But apparently, the power that lets her do this also harbours a terrible split personality, so we're fucked. She's killed Scott, too. So much for Cyclops.

Plot: Jean Grey flips out and does several elaborate, destructive psychokinetic demonstrations where she slams heavy vault doors off their hinges, lifts cars in the entire city a few feet off the ground and drops them, causes debris ranging from grains of sand to houses to swirl around her, and let's not forget vapourizing people at random, and she does all of this while being extremely pissy.

And of course, Magneto's really starting to get serious about the whole "up with mutants" cause; serious enough that it practically parallels Jihad now. I guess this was inevitable, but it still seems so bluntly villainous. As well, Mystique gets stuck with the cure while they're freeing X-Men mainstays that have been absent from the series until now, Juggernaut (was he ever English?) and Multiple Man, so they just dump her off, naked and helpless. Whatever; she's "one of them" now.

Anyways, they continue: the power-stopping kid is being held on the very picturesque Alcatraz Island, so Magneto moves the Golden Gate Bridge so that his thousand-strong army can walk there, and about ten or twenty of the more awesome X-Men make a dramatic entrance to stop the huge army. It's Juggernaut's job to get the kid, and Kitty Pryde (also conspicuously absent until now) has to use her passing-through-walls power to get there first, so after the obligatory "I'm the Juggernaut, Bitch!" (at which point I'm sure some nerds left the theatre, content), Kitty gets him safe and sound.

Wait, then what? Oh, well he's forgotten, so now Jean Grey flips out again and start vapourizing people and swirling around cool debris. Only Wolverine, with his quick healing power, can walk through this debris field and confront her, with some good ol' "You don't have to do this!" sort of motivation, ending with a last cry of "I love you!" before he sticks her through the chest and ends all the horror... for now.

Magneto's been stuck with the cure too, so he's also "one of them". You'd think that's it for his terrorism, but at the end, he's trying to move some metal chess pieces. FORESHADOWING!

Oh, and about Angel... I guess his superpower, on top of having those cool wings, is that he pops up whenever it would be coolest for him to appear, but not necessarily with any plot rhythm.

What was great about the other X-Men movies is that they were able to etch out their own attitude and aesthetic both independent of and reverent to its source material. Their characters were confused and troubled, their situations were serious and dangerous, everyone was pretty astounded by what they could do, but they knew that's how it was for them. In this movie, the characters just seem like they're lugging plot from one end of the movie to the other, while Jean Grey makes stuff blow up real good.



Pulp Fiction - 10/10

Finally, I got to see this frigging movie. Even though I knew what it was about, I had no idea what I was in for.

As near as I could tell, this is a movie about wit. All these characters who are interesting in their own unique ways are getting involved with nicely interconnected vignettes while they have conversations about how things are, what's of interest to them, and what needs to be done. Some of the characters are tortured, some are confused, some are weak, some are irresponsible, but they all eventually figure things out about their problems, whether through dialogue, action, reason, circumstance, or yes, even divine providence.

Any movie can be great if it just has a little wit, so any movie entirely about wit is great by its very nature.

[Randy Pearson]

Pulp Fiction - 10/10

Finally, I got to see this frigging movie. Even though I knew what it was about, I had no idea what I was in for.

As near as I could tell, this is a movie about wit. All these characters who are interesting in their own unique ways are getting involved with nicely interconnected vignettes while they have conversations about how things are, what's of interest to them, and what needs to be done. Some of the characters are tortured, some are confused, some are weak, some are irresponsible, but they all eventually figure things out about their problems, whether through dialogue, action, reason, circumstance, or yes, even divine providence.

Any movie can be great if it just has a little wit, so any movie entirely about wit is great by its very nature.

SPOILERS!!

I don't know. To me the film has always been about redemption. Each one of the characters goes through a life-altering experience that almost always brings them close to death, and almost all of them see the "error of their ways" so to speak and become better people because of it. I say almost because, obviously, Vincent didn't learn his lesson. Vincent ignores the divine intervention of God to save his life and refuses to join Jules in "wandering the Earth." He is given the chance at a better life and redemption from his wickedness but ignores it. The result, by his own carelessness he is shot and killed by Butch. All the other characters? Alive and kicking.

Glad you got the chance to watch it. It is by far Quentin Tarantino's best work and perhaps even one of the greatest films of all time.

[Kombucha]

Spiderman 3: 9/10
Too many people complained about this movie for the wrong reasons.

TMNT: 3 or 4 or something like that blah/10
Not very good.

[Slurpee]

SPOILERS!!

I don't know. To me the film has always been about redemption. Each one of the characters goes through a life-altering experience that almost always brings them close to death, and almost all of them see the "error of their ways" so to speak and become better people because of it. I say almost because, obviously, Vincent didn't learn his lesson. Vincent ignores the divine intervention of God to save his life and refuses to join Jules in "wandering the Earth." He is given the chance at a better life and redemption from his wickedness but ignores it. The result, by his own carelessness he is shot and killed by Butch. All the other characters? Alive and kicking.

Glad you got the chance to watch it. It is by far Quentin Tarantino's best work and perhaps even one of the greatest films of all time.

I completely agree with everything you said here (which is weird.)

I just want to bring up one of my favorite aspects of Pulp Fiction: Every time Vincent goes to the bathroom, something terrible happens.
Mia overdoses, the restaraunt is held up, and finally Butch fucking shoots him.