Space Battleship Yamato

IMDB
First time viewed: Yes
Current Release: Yes
Watched With: Myself

Been trying to see this for a while now. I don't know the original series it's based on but I saw the trailer and it look pretty cool.

It's very reminiscent of the new Battlestar Galactica series. More than likely the original series predates that but the look of the battles and ships for the live action version are similar.

It's a pretty long film and feels more like a miniseries of 3 of 4 episodes strung together. It was very enjoyable for the most part, the production looks great, the effects were fun and the characters weren't too bad either despite the abundance of japanese melodrama they love to sprinkle throughout.

Unfortunately I think it doesn't stick the landing. I'm fine with there being an emotional climax but this kind of film really needs an action climax as well. And to stop the film before the resolution of the 2 and a half hours of preceding plot in order to finish on a downer self-sacrifice ending is infuriating.

Still there's a lot to enjoy here and I'm sure for fans of the series it's even more enjoyable.

Female Trouble

IMDB
First time viewed: Yes
Current Release: No
Watched With: Myself

Some more John Waters. This one's more like it. Delightfully outrageous and yes, filthy. I'm not even sure what I was seeing half the time. Dawn Davenport has to be the trashiest white female character ever created. We follow her from highschool right through to the end of her life, sentenced to death in the chair. It's an wild and interesting ride.

Winnie the Pooh

IMDB
First time viewed: Yes
Current Release: Yes
Watched With: Myself

Disney's latest (and hopefully not last, although sadly, I'm not aware of anything in the works) traditionally 2D animated feature. If you can call it a feature, it's just an hour long. It's pretty charming though. And nice they've tried to keep the tone of the books and a few more British voices. John Cleese Narrates.

Zooey Deschanel distinctive voice sing a few song on the soundtrack. The songs are pretty forgettable. The story is very simple but the animation is beautiful.

It's a quaint little film and perfectly enjoyable.

The Tunnel

IMDB
First time viewed: Yes
Current Release: Yes
Watched With: Myself

An Aussie doco horror thingy "crowdfunded" and released on the torrents. The doumentary format rang false for me, I don't know what it is, probably distain for australian accents but I just could not buy in to the reality this film was selling. It all seemed too contrived and I hated all the characters.

By the time stuff started happening I was ready to give up. Nothing much happened after the set up anyway. Didn't like it.

Batman: Year One

IMDB
First time viewed: Yes
Current Release: Yes
Watched With: Myself

So I believe this was the comic Darren Aronofsky was going to adapt to reboot the Batman live action franchise before Christopher Nolan took jumped in.

It covers some of the same ground as Batman Begins although this is told mainly from the perspective of Jim Gordon as voiced by the always awesome Bryan Cranston.

For a little straight to home video animation all these DC comic adaptations have been pretty awesome (or at least the handful I've seen, there are a lot of them) and they get away with some pretty dark stuff in this one. They might seem churned out but they are still well made and well told stories.

Warrior

IMDB
First time viewed: Yes
Current Release: Yes
Watched With: Myself

If I'm going to watch an almost two and a half hour film about a subject I don't really care for I may as well do it in the luxurious relaxation of gold class with a giant ice-cream sundae. Except they forgot to bring me my sundae. When questioned after the film they refunded me AND got me the sundae, which was great, but then I had to sit at the bar and eat it in front of them. I feel a little sick now, those things are huge.

Oh yeah and there was something about a boxing match or something.

Braindead

IMDB
First time viewed: No
Current Release: No
Watched With: Alex

Here's my first write up.

Oh man this film is ridiculous, silly and very funny.

The Fall

IMDB
First time viewed: No
Current Release: No
Watched With: Alex, Kyla

Here's my write up. Love love love this movie. It's just beautiful.

Jurassic Park

IMDB
First time viewed: No
Current Release: No
Watched With: Emmet, Alex

Jurassic Park is the best. I watch it now and forget that there actually isn't as many dinosaurs in it as I remember. They were very sparing and judicious about what they would show, probably because they were still figuring out what they could and couldn't do. But what the do show is awesome.

God bless Stand Winston. He made full size dinosaur robots. There will never be anyone like him again. An chances are if they were to make another one today (which apparently they are planning, but I'll believe it when I see it) they would do it all CG anyway.

Speaking of which, this is pretty much the film where everyone was sold on CG. Sure it had been used in bits and pieces here and there on a few films before, most notably James Cameron's The Abyss and Terminator 2, but here it produced living breathing characters that were really the feature of the film.

Spielberg creates a sense of wonder and awe surrounding the introduction of these creations. In 1993 it worked on the audience not just at the amazement of seeing a dinosaur, like the characters in the film, but also the amazement of how film effects suddenly took a huge leap into the future.

That first T-Rex attack still give me goosebumps. I love when he smashes his head through the roof of the jeep after the children and there's nothing between them but a thin plate of glass. Freaked me out as a kid the first time I snuck out of bed early one morning and watched it quietly it on VHS. (I was banned from watching because my older brother saw it and got scared. I will never forgive my parents for robbing me of this theatrical experience.)

All the action and suspense sequences are just great. You're in safe hands with The Beard. That and John Williams' iconic score that soars. And an awesome cast. Everything, it's all the best. Jurassic Park is the best. Love it!

Julia's Eyes

IMDB
First time viewed: No
Current Release: Yes
Watched With: Jordan

Like I said in my first review, I really loved this film and now I own it on bluray I can confirm that the projector was more than likely at fault at the first screening I saw. Great stuff.

Canadian Bacon

IMDB
First time viewed: Yes
Current Release: No
Watched With: Jordan

Michael Moore made a fictional film? A comedy about a war between Canada and America? With an awesome cast?

I can see why he stuck to documentaries after that. Not that it wasn't good, it certainly has some very funny moments in it but overall it doesn't hold together too well. You can see the point he's trying to make but logic has to go out the window in order for the concept to work.

John Candy's last film. :(

Attack the Block

IMDB
First time viewed: No
Current Release: Yes
Watched With: Jordan, Tyler, Amberly

Here's my first write up. Love the film!

The Big Lebowski

IMDB
First time viewed: No
Current Release: No
Watched With: Jordan, Tyler

The dude abides.

Brilliant!

Clean, Shaven

IMDB
First time viewed: Yes
Current Release: No
Watched With: Myself

Officially beat my record for most films watched in a year. And what an odd film to choose, but I wanted to see something I hadn't seen before. Apparently it's something a lot of people haven't seen before, I couldn't even find a trailer. From what I gather, we are following a schizophrenic trying to get his daughter back and getting caught up in a murder case, although I could be wrong.

In a way this reminds me of an even more minimalist Spider, if you can imagine such a thing, but with less comprehensible story and character and a darker more psychotic tone.

This is a very low budget affair. The image is grainy, the sound quality isn't great, at least on the version I saw. A pity, since so much of the film relies on the soundscape. It has a very disjointed feeling, which gets you into the frame of a broken mind. It's also very grimy, it depicts a world you don't want to visit long.

It has some interesting ideas and Peter Greene is good, but it didn't do much else for me.

Pecker

IMDB
First time viewed: Yes
Current Release: No
Watched With: Myself

Another John Waters I hadn't seen. Nice to see Edward Furlong again.

I think the thing is I find his films more amusing than actually laugh out loud funny most of the time. I did like some of the situations presented in the film and the general theme but I never did feel compelled to laugh about them.

Polyester

IMDB
First time viewed: Yes
Current Release: No
Watched With: Myself

I recently saw John Waters' live show where he spoke about his career. There's a lot of his films I haven't seen so I plan to rectify this. I saw Serial Mom earlier in the year and that was a lot of fun. I don't think the story holds together quite so well in this one but it still has it's moments.

I thought this would be a good follow up, especially since I just saw Spy Kids 4 which also used a scratch and sniff card to produce smells from the film. Unfortunately I didn't have one for this film so I'll have to imagine. Aside from that, the only thing I knew about the film was it was sampled for the opening of that Frontier Psychiatrist song.

The film is like a over the top trashy soap opera complete with hilarious acting you might associate with the genre. Basically we just watch as Francine Fishpaw's life falls apart. Divine is just hilarious in the role.

It sits in that where it's extremely hard to tell if they are sincere or taking the piss, either way it's pretty funny.