WingedKagouti on 17/12/2008 at 19:47

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I've only seen one or two episodes of the original series, the movie is a solid popcorn flick. A tolerance for cheese (average saturday morning cartoon level plot/jokes/dialogue), liberal CGI in pastels and alternate physics (some of those stunts...) is highly recommended.

Morte on 17/12/2008 at 22:27

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Well, what do you know, I managed to muster ten movie I can feel at least mildly positive about!

1. Wall-E - I almost cried! More than once! It's just beautiful.

2. [REC] - A grungy, nasty little Spanish horror movie that aside from a few moments of hokey exposition does the job brilliantly. It out found-footages Cloverfield, and like any good non-American horror movie it predictably immediately got a (reportedly) inferior remake in Quarantine.

3. The Dark Knight - There's tons of things wrong with it, but whenever Heath Ledger is on the screen, it just sings.

4. Hellboy 2: The Golden Army - There's some unfortunate plot holes and clunky dialogue, but del Toro's got such a great visual imagination it can paper over most things.

5. In Bruges - I don't know what the fuck is wrong with you Scots to not have "You fucking retract that bit about my cunt fucking kids" completely melt your heart. You cunt.

6. Iron Man - There's two solid acts of Robert Downey JR being charismatic and funny, before they have to resolve the plot by having two robots hit each other for an utterly dull half hour.

7. Doomsday - 28 Days Later Mad Max Escapes From Bravehart, while fine young cannibals dance to the Fine Young Cannibals. Hilarious and awesome, in a completely trashy way.

8. Cloverfield - It's got a bigger budget, but it's not as good as [REC] sorry. Still quite effective though.

9. Body of Lies - It's Ridley Scott putting tap A into slot B, to steal a Kermodism, and William Monahan's not nearly as clever a writer as he thinks he is, but Scott can put a movie together *so* well. There are Moments though. "Bone fragments - not yours."

10. Harold and Kumar: Escape From Guantanamo Bay - It's wildly uneven and not as good as White Castle, but it delivers more Harold and Kumar bickering like and old married couple, which was all I really wanted. Plus, bonus Rob Cordry.


The bland, the bad and the utter bollocks:

Street Kings - James Ellroy rewritten to the point of pastische.

Vantage Point - Nice car chase, but the framing device manages to wear out its welcome after the first fifteen minutes.

Hancock - A quite interesting opening half hour is completely sabotageg by the rest of the movie, which is lazy and terrible.

Wanted - Utterly retarded and juvenile, but at least it managed to transcend the source material by not being thoroughly vile and hateful as well.

Indy 4 - With a helping of denial, the shambling corpse on the screen managed to fool me into believing that it was sort of the Indy I knew and loved, but halfway through it burst open and revealed George Lucas' grinnning face, unnatural prehensile lizard tongue unfolding and cackling "He begged me to kill him while I wore his eyeball on my cock! Now squeal, piggie, squeal!"

Rambo - Dour, dull and vaguely reprehensible.

Quantum of Solace - Awsome Craig and Dench, unfortunately saddled with a weak script and an incompetent director.

Max Payne - How can you make a movie based on a game filled with balls-to-the-walls gunfights so inert and dull?


EDIT:
Movies from 2007 that I saw this year that could beat up Batman if I ignored release dates:
There Will Be Blood, No Country For Old Men, American Gangster, The Orphanage, Enchanted (Yes, you read that right! Enchanted - quite possibly better than The Dark Knight! )

Movies I really Want To See:
Slumdog Millionaire, Let the Right One In. (it's playing in Helsinki right now! Get a print to Turku you askfhfmsdbfvsdmbn vmxdfcnbv gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah)

Angel Dust on 17/12/2008 at 23:30

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There is no need for this kind of attitude. Not everyone has easy access to a cinema that shows more than the latest Hollywood release or has their 'radar' set to pick up the latest in interesting film. Maybe instead of being a snob you could actually explain your choices which could in turn lead to people checking out some of them. That's one of the cool things about threads like this, especially with the range of nationalities we have on these boards.

With that in mind:

Care to share what you loved about these 2 films? They are two that I have somewhat of an interest in seeing, particularly 'Man On Wire', so I am interested in what you liked about them.

quinch on 18/12/2008 at 00:16

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Kung Fu Panda - Skadoosh :) Dustin Hoffman :D

I liked In Bruges, although it came across as basically an above average play set in an extraordinary beautiful city. Great acting from the two Irishmen. Ralph Fiennes not so good. I wasn't so sure about the weird anti-American sentiment either. "That was for John Lennon"...? Shut up.

Illuminatus on 18/12/2008 at 03:29

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(http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/lat_den_ratte_komma_in/)

Now, now, you're comparing Buffy with Bergman. "Let the Right One in" is probably the most poignant (in all real senses of that word) movie of the year. There's a love story in there that's so well told you'll almost forget you're watching a "horror movie" (in fact, the horror element really has little to do with the vampire, but rather with themes of existentialism and longing).