Movies Watched in 2009

I'll admit that it looks great despite having somewhat dull usage of camera angles, but aside from the action scenes and good looks there really isn't much to glow over in Avatar. The plot is essentially a boring, bat-shit crazy fantasy version of Little Big Man or any other movie with that formula. Actors do a good job with bad material as they spout oneliners meant to be dialogue and Michelle Rodriguez continues to look like a chubby twat. The biggest problem with this movie is that it's a pretty boring thing to watch for about 2 hours. The setup-portion is so predictable and long that it becomes a chore to view no matter how good it looks. In all of the scriptual badness the only thing that is actually so bad it's funny is the bad guys. They just go so insanely overboard charecterising everyone as major idiots that I couldn't help but laugh.

I just think this is a movie with a premise so much better than what we get. It's a comedy, which is sort of a flaw with this story. Gervais just plays himself, and much of the later half of this thing is just really boring and cliched. Still, the opening half is hilarious and the celebrity cameos are all spot-on, so rightie-o, if you don't mind this being a cliched romance comedy like Zack&Miri or something, you'll probably like it. I just wish they would've gone a different way with this great a premise.

This was not a very good film. This is so much messier and more like a creature feature than the first one. Whereas that one had a very clear narrative structure, this sequel often feels like nothing more but "holy shit look at this cool monster OH WAIT NOW LOOK AT THIS ONE" rather than telling a story. And the quality of what was told was just silly, there was hardly any development within any of the characters, and the gimmicky fourth wall-segments like Hulkster just annoyed me. Also, I dislike the visual style the Gremlins have here. They look more like the fish monsters from Shadow Over Innsmouth than the ones in the first one. But, I really love the building itself. It's packed with a nice punch of social commentary against technological advancement and utopistic thinking.

Already wrote a review on this one, so check it out. I also must say one thing; this is kinda freaky, I mean the Gremlins are just batshit crazy and insane, and they friggin' wield handguns.

This is a meticulous, morbidly fantastic documentary that is Moore's best work and one of the best of the decade. I however strongly believe that when the Cuba-part arises the film just goes down Moore's boring, old path of pulling sensationalistic publicity stunts. I kind of just feel bad about calling it a horrible part of this film because it does seriously help a lot of people in their lives. But within this film, it does not work. The Cuba-scenes do not add to the message, themes or the experience. It is simply there to make Moore happy because this way his film now has a climax of some sort. I also do have an issue with the fact that this is obviously a movie aimed at americans, and I really got sick of Moore going "OMG FREE HEALTH CARE" really early on while he was wondering about it.

Otherwise, it is constructed as a superb, whole piece of film that has some of the best pacing and narrative choices I can quickly recall seeing in a documentary.

Saw the Extended Edition. This is a hilarious and fun flick to watch. The biggest problem is that sometimes it goes all-horror, and even though the horror parts aren't that bad, they're just not a part of the whole. Can't think of much else that would suck... Megan Fox is perfectly cast and her performance is actually occasionally surprisingly subtle, thanks to her and the script. Speaking of which, Cody has very much so learned to use her dialogue scarcely instead of making every character a witty wisecracker at all times. Especially the funeral speech Colin's mom gives is excellent, and could have so very easily been destroyed by some added Junoism. Slight spoiler here, but I'm giving this an extra point for that idiotic indie emo rock band that sacrificed Jennifer to Satan based on some spell they found on the internet. That was just the funniest thing in the entire movie aside from the "My tits!"-line.

This film has a nearly Tarkovskian ability to draw you into it's world using relatable everyday events in the imagery and narrative to create a sense of you being there or you having experienced everything before. However I think that the unlinear portrayal doesn't add anything to the film whatsoever, it's left at the stage of being a useless gimmick. It could be pulled off properly, but this movie doesn't succeed in it. The little girl is also horrible, why does every little girl after Juno have to be like Ellen Page? Otherwise it's wonderful and fun, a delightful drama comedy. The actors really do elevate the entire film to a whole new level, Gordon-Levitt is perfect.

As many of you know, I am quite the fan of this film. It's absolutely wonderful in every aspect in my eyes. This is why it's also quite the dilemma to put anything about it into words. Adoration does not make for good reading, and I don't really know how to deeply analyze this movie's content as to me it's always been more about athmosphere than metaphor or subtext. I guess the greatness that I see in Halloween is just a very difficult thing to reason about.

The movie has, as a whole, a wonderfully athmospheric mood about it. The opening scene sets the stage perfectly; this is a world like ours, and we see the worst side of it right away as a young child murders his sister. After this everything always just seems dark in this movie. The daytime scenes of teenagers wondering the idyllic streets of Haddonfield never seem joyous. It's the end of the fall. All the leaves have fallen. The world seems at a standstill in the red, yellow and dark hues of greenery we see traverse this plain of existence. Existence, which we know for some is doomed from the start. When we see certain characters, we mentally know that they are going to die in the hands of this unspeakable, unforeseeable evil, but we also deny it because the characters are very likeable. The performances are also delightful. Jamie Lee Curtis goes through the most horrendous of events in this movie. The destruction of the norm, the breaking if the ideal, the demolishing of her world takes place in a terrifying, steady pace throughout the film, and we can see her reactions to this in every single shot. She never starts out innocent or blank, but in the end we can clearly see that everything that has happened has shook her to the point of no mere elementary return. It's so very rare in slasher movies that we see the consequences of the killer's actions within the face of the lead as the murders commence. Donald Pleasence also does a far better job than some of his material necessarily deserves. The dialogue he spews in wonderful extended monologues isn't really the greatest, as it is a tad bit korny and rather over-the-top. But the face of this master whenever he says these words is so serious, very frank and far too true that we believe everything he says. Or atleast we believe he believes it all. Halloween hence contains a true example of how an actor can overcome the material he is given and turn it into something so much more.

I can't go on. Honest. I know I can give some reasoning to my love for Halloween, but the truth is it has flaws. Flaws that I can never remember and flaws that I have always overlooked when I watch it. There is never a moment during Halloween when I think that "this should be different" or "boy, THAT sucked". I simply stare and go "Holy shit this is the best thing ever." It can't necessarily be reasoned with words. You would have to feel what I feel to understand, and I am not the poet to make that happen with words. Halloween is a film that hits every note for me. It is the epitaph, and example of what I think cinema should be. It is perfect to me. And it is flawless to me.

A funny comedy on how you can get over someone. Not much to say about this really, I don't necessarilly agree with half it's points, but the pop culture-references and often hilarious jokes make it a worthwhile comedy. Also, you get to see Mila Kunis's boobs, even if they are fake.

I like how The Others is essentially an anti-haunted house film after you've seen it once. During the rewatch it really becomes obvious that the ending is absolutely ingenious as it makes perfect sense in the context of the whole, which is something that many twists (cough, SAW, cough) fail to do completely.

I rarely, very rarely, compare a film adaptation with the source material. This is one of those cases. I love the comic book and it's sequels. The artwork stands out enough to make it almost unique, the storyline is very well-written and the characters each individuals. In this film, the events of the original 30 Days of Night are depicted. It has a great set-up which introduces cardboard cutouts that are supposed to be our heroes while being pretty creepy with dog murders and whatnot. But after this effective opening 40 minutes all the craft and detail is thrown out the window as the movie just turns into a bloody survival struggle against faceless vamps who have no motivation except being EEEVIL. Way to throw away the best thing about the comic, movie.

A grea little terror thriller that is so robust with patriotism that it almost reaches unintentional hilarity. When the evil mutants get fucked up the ass, we cheer on as patriotic fanfares reach their primes when we watch blood splatter all over the screen. How fun, isn't it?

Herzog poons the modern documentarists by showing where it's at with his film that is often breathtakingly beautiful, and it also feels very much like a montage of Werner's stylistic and narrative tricks. He has a unique way of bringing out his own vision in all of his docs, and this is certainly no exception. He still manages to keep a cool, neutral tone with his narration throughout. Herzog also is superb with shooting the people he's interviewing; if someone points somewhere while telling a story as in "That's where I caught a fish that weighed two kilos," he will not point the camera obsessively at that spot. He is trying to capture the feelings these people have of the stories they tell, and has realised that the best way to achieve this is by showing their facial expressions and their gestures as they talk. This works, as does the entire rest of the film.

The swedes make a 2½ hour sequel to the best CSI-episode ever, and it turns out to be a technotriller with James Bond-like sverves and supersoldiers. Plus there's a twist ripped out of Empire Strikes Back. Doesn't that just sound so original and like a fitting continuation to a crime-solving flick?

Exactly.

A fun adaptation of the Odyssey, but it falls short on being a consistant whole. Some twists just feel like filler despite being true to the origin, and the performance Clooney gives often seems to consist of nothing but funny quips.

I was in somewhat of an awe as I noticed that Stuart Townsend is, as a director, about five gazillion times superior to anything that he has ever done in acting. The man knows how to create a compelling audiovisual experience with an ensemble cast. And thank goodness for the fact that this movie is pretty tightly knit, it doesn't fall apart despite being a story with many different plotlines and characters. I guess it's because the setting is essentially downtown Seattle, there isn't much room for storyline separation. Woody Harrelson is fantastic in this movie by the way, perhaps his best performance yet.

Kurt Wimmer writes a movie about the legal system of America. Yes, this is about as subtle as you might expect from the man who decided that the best way to describe apartheid and totalitarianism was strapping guns to Milla Jovovich and giving her leather pants. For all it's shortcomings it doesn't exactly blow so to speak though, as Butler does suck the little juice there is to suck out of his dull and simple-minded role.

This film series as a whole is nothing but the culmination of laziness from the Hollywood-writers. "Hey, we wanna do a slasher!"
"Alright, who should the iconic killer be?"
"Gee whiz, I can't write that well! How about if they all just kinda like died?"
"FUCKING SOLD!"

Tony Todd is fucking PIMP! Not only is this a great horror story, it is a great modern one at that too. This is one of the few films I have seen that truly combine a classic horror tale into our modern world. The set pieces are so urban that this feels very realistic, while remaining rather hyperbolic and surreal at the same time.

It's a movie about the man who invented the interval timer to the windshield wiper. Not only does that rhyme, but it also makes a boring film. I think we still have some inventions that earn their own movies instead of the guy who invented this.

Definately an A+ film, Barry Pepper gives yet another performance for which he'd deserve an Oscar for, Beltrami shows that he can make a score that isn't so damn melodramatic and in-your-face and Tommy Lee Jones of all people showcases that he can direct a film under the influence of apparently Sam Peckinpah. The script was also pretty darn grand, dealing with themes of friendship and regret in a very straightforward and clinical fashion. It never got sentimental, which is exactly what films like these should always avoid. It's a study, an analysis, on the themes, and that's fantastic.

I've reviewed this, so you can just go ahead and check that out.

If I wanted to watch a porn with Jenna Jameson, I WOULD WATCH A PORN WITH JENNA JAMESON. I would NOT watch this idiotic piece of horse doodoo that is essentially nothing but a voyeristic peepshow with hot girls who are eventually replaced by zombies. When half of your entire movie is just tits you might want to reconsider changing the god damn plot.

The review hath been written.

I've reviewed this, so just read that would ya?

This is such fucking shit. My head hurts.

This is reviewed as well on this site.