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The Movie Thread


Slaughter

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Chronicle. I enjoyed this, far better than the usual teen American crap. The handheld style is a conceit that literally becomes unworkable later on, where it becomes more of a found footage film, culled from different sources and yet incorporates lots of lovely suspiciously cinematic angles. Teens find weird thing, get superpowers. You can guess where it goes from there, so it is predictable and a little insulting, but it is still worth a watch.

 

One thing I don't understand. Alan Moore destroyed the idea of having superheroes and supervillains in Watchmen. That was twenty-five years ago. Why are we still stuck with that same idea? Why are the only writers who seem to be moving past it British (Millar, Moore, Ennis) when the medium is very American? Why did the vast majority of comic creators just go "Wow! Amazing!" and then acted like nothing happened?

 

Impostor. Based on a nice little Dick short story, it's got some decent actors, with the underrated Gary Sinise in the lead, Whatever Happened to Madeleine Stowe as the love interest, Vincent D'Onofrio as the Bad Good Guy and Tony Shalhoub as the Best Friend. It pads out the story a little too much, and the denouement is a little laboured, but overall it's probably worth seeing if only for Sinise wondering what he's doing out front. Oh, and the entire point of the story is ridiculous, but that's nothing new.

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Iron Sky. Some very amusing parts, some not very amusing parts. I freely confess to doing a little gaming during the more boring bits. Has a few great lines ("I'm like...Franklin D. Roosevelt, except not a spastic!") but mostly humdrum.

 

Haywire. Like Salt, but actually good. Gina Carano is an ex-MMA fighter so the fights look sharp (a touch Hollywood here and there, rather unnecessary really), and she looks nice and she can act. Imagine a female Bond, slightly cold and remote but very capable, and that's her. Amazing performance. Soderbergh's stlye as he pisses about with sound robs some scenes of weight, and the story itself isn't fantastic, but it's absolutely worth watching.

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which apparently is not considered precisely a good movie.

 

Beautifully put.

 

Chocolate. Thai film about an autistic girl who can learn martial arts just by watching them. Sick mother, money for health care, you know how it goes! Pretty entertaining, with some extremely noticeable CGI (occurs rarely, thankfully), and directed by the guy what done the Ong Bak films, with Tony Jaa out of off of the Ong Bak films. The leading lady here is very talented but she's not quite as good as she seems. A lot of it is Jackie Chan-esque encounters, using the environment and whatnot, and the genius of the film is in the very sharp editing, which helps disguise the staged nature of each shot. It's not always successful, but it stays entertaining.

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Tyrannosaur. Old borderline nutter tries to find redemption by helping an abused woman. If you think your life is bad, watch this, and your opinion will change. A very down to earth and devastating film. Written and directed by Paddy Considine, him out of of off loads of films. Well written, decently directed, beautiful but quite stark and unforgiving.

 

Okuribito (Departures). Japanese film about a cellist who has to take up a job as an undertaker. Because such professions are still considered by some to be unclean (see Wiki) he faces quite a few difficulties. It's sad, hilarious, and cheerful, by turns. Superb.

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Indie Game: The Movie. Absolutely loved it. It's a very soft film, soft in focus, stlye and content, with a bit too much hipster in it, but it's still a great film to watch. The Team Meat boys, Refenes and McMillen, make up a lot of the story, and watching them create SMB, go through the crunch period and succeed (spoiler!) is great. Phil Fish (Fez) doesn't come across too badly, as he's put in a difficult position (a strenuous creative process, buggy demo builds, and a problematic ex-business partner) but he does have the most melodramatic scenes. Jonathan Blow (Braid) comes across as a very thoughtful chap, and he expresses some dismay that although Braid got good reviews, a lot of people didn't grasp what it was about, and this disappointed him.

 

All three projects come across as intensely personal, and I think it's obvious that they're not in this for the money (though there is definitely money to be made), looking at Blow's musings, Refenes/McMillen's relief when they see player reactions, and Fish almost chewing himself in frustration.

 

8/10, and a 9/10 with the Team Meat commentary track.

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Robocop. Holy shit has it aged, and yet it's still a great film. The stop-motion is now painfully obvious, but modern films could learn a lot from the simple practical effects used throughout. Some fantastic ultraviolence, top 80s acting from many roles (Peter Weller does really well with very little, Ronny Cox is a great villain as Dick Jones, Kurtwood Smith is...a great villain as Clarence "Paedo Glasses" Boddicker, Miguel Ferrer is, er, another great villain as Bob Morton, etc. Nancy Allen as Lewis is also great, her "Murphy, I'm a mess." has come to mind many times in my life, usually upon waking up with a hangover), and some great music. An iconic action film (ED209, Emil coming out of the toxic sludge all melty, evil lines in every scene, Robocop shooting that poor chap in the wossnames, and so on).
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Dead Season. I was surprised by this low-budget effort. The acting is decent, but the effects are usually poor, the script isn't great, and it's not particularly well-directed. Yet it's a zombie film that doesn't miss the point, as a lot of them do, and the spirit of the film is firmly in the right place. The situation is a bit silly, even on top of a zombie apocalypse, but it provides a nice excuse to put the characters in compromising situations.

 

Oh, and Marissa Merrill is really very attractive indeed and has a cracking pair.

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Dark Shadows? Oh, Tim Burton's made his film again, has he?

 

Never done this before. Because the utterly amazing fantastic Best-Film-Of-2012 Cabin in the Woods isn't out on Blu Ray until September, I went and bought the Official Visual Companion. Which is actually quite meaty, with an interview with director/writer Drew Stoddard and producer/writer Joss Whedon, the complete script of the film, concept art, etc. Well worth it.

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Smilla's Sense of Snow. A decent version of the book that tries to pack too much in, resulting in a string of terribly unlikely events in the last half. Julia Ormond is decent but still a little too girly as Smilla, it seems you just can't have a rock-hard female protagonist.
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King Solomon's Mines. Imagine an Indiana Jones film with half the budget, and gross injections of racism and shit jokes. It's not a bad film, it's actually quite enjoyable, it's done with such panache that you can't help but smile, given the tongue-in-cheek silliness of it all. Very, very, 80s, complete with comedy Germans.
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