Hamlet 2

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

Really liked this film from a few years ago. Seemed to slip through the cracks a bit, but I feel it's much better than the trailer makes it look.

Steve Coogan is just amazing and very funny. I can also see aspects of his character in many of my theatre obsessed friends. Catherine Keener has a small but very memorable role and Elisabeth Shue is delightfully self-depreciating as herself.

It follows the inspirational teacher movie tropes while at the same time making fun of them. And the actual play of Hamlet 2 that is glimpsed in the finale is quite something to behold. Most enjoyable. If you missed it, seek it out.

Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol

IMDB
First time viewed: Yes
Current Release: Yes
Watched With: Paul, Matt, Tom, A few others

So much fun. Brad Bird can direct live-action just as well as animation. This action sequences are impeccably choreographed and shot. And those few shot in the Imax format look amazing. When those black bars start to slide out of frame as Tom Cruise steps out the window of the worlds tallest skyscraper and the camera follows him over the edge, you do get a little vertigo.

This one has one of the best title sequences in the series and I love the set up for it. I'm also glad they had cameos from Ving Rhames, so he is still the only other character that's in all 4 and also another person from the 3rd instalment I was hoping would show up.

Speaking of which, Simon Pegg finds his role expanded in this film, gets to act as comedic relief and does a good job of it. This film doesn't have as strong an emotional grounding as the third film and it's also the most straight forward of the series. The double crossing, the switching sides, the mystery villains, the reveals with masks, all that stuff is gone making this the most generic.

I don't mind so much about the masks, the were overused in the sequel and while they found a great way to fake out the audience with them in the 3rd film, I think it's best they left them out of the equation here. However I was really hoping for a double cross somewhere along the lines. Especially as they had a great set up with Josh Holloway at the start that never amounted to anything.

The spy tech in this film delightful too. Some pretty far out there stuff, but who knows, it probably exists somewhere. Compared to the bubblegum and a mac laptop in the first film it's almost sci-fi.

While the very end fell a little flat for me, the rest of the film is pretty much non-stop high-stakes action. It builds well and there's no annoying shaky cam where you can't tell what the hell is going on.

Definitely one of the best in the franchise. See it in Imax if you have the chance.

Little Women

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

I've been meaning to watch a version, any version of this story after having just been introduced to the story via musical. And also it make for a hilarious double feature with The Women.

I liked the look of the cast in this one. I do adore young Christian Bale. It's a perfectly sweet telling of this story. Ooo and a Thomas Newman score to boot.

Look it's not really my kind of story, I with this many characters over this long a period of time it tends to get episodic so I don't really connect with some individuals as much as others in the way you can with a novel. But there's still a lot to like here.

The Woman

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

I love Lucky McKee's film May and am pleased to see another great horror film directed by him with Angela Bettis and his usual strong feminist bent.

Things start off pretty straight forward, a family capture a wild woman with plans to civilise her. But of course things don't do as planned, leading to a delightfully gruesome finale. While the beginning was somewhat slow, there are strong hints of dark intent brewing underneath it all. Much fun.

The Future

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

After watching the trailer, this is exactly the kind of film I was expecting to see. And I had the exact kind of reaction too it I thought I would. It was ok.

I think I liked Miranda July's first film You and Me and Everyone We Know a little more than this one. Sure it's quirky, indie, light dramay, absurdist and too-hipster-to-function and I don't know exactly if it's too much for me or if I'm fine with it. But it was ok.

Green Lantern

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

Write up.

The extended cut on bluray adds nothing but some exposition at the start.

Melancholia

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

Well, it's certainly a lot happier than Antichrist. But that's not saying much. It's defiantly more welcoming though. And I DO love my disaster films so the idea of someone like Lars von Trier taking one on does make me somewhat giddy. Even if it's only a part of the film, it've very well done and looks stunning.

And the end of the world is just absolutely gorgeous in this. I am loving everything I see out of the Phantom camera. It all looks like some elegant perfume commercial, true, but I still love it. Like in Antichrist we have a little slow motion prologue that seems separate from the rest of the film, especially seem as the main segments are shot in a more Dogma 95 style, despite using the Alexa. He somehow manages to make it look like home video. Skill.

The film is divided into two halves, each focusing on a different sister. Kirsten Dunst is dealing with what I can only assume, given the director, is clinical depression. She does her best to make it through her wedding day but things get nice an awkward. I would have no problem marrying Alexander Skarsgård. Kirsten Dunst is just great in this.

The next half we follow her sister, played by Charlotte Gainsbourg, who has trouble dealing with family dramas but also the impending doom from the impact of a giant planet subtly named Melancholia.

While it still doesn't exactly feel cohesive in places, I actually really enjoyed this film. As much as you can enjoy a film about sadness. If this is how Lars works out his emotions, all the more power too him. It's vastly more accessible than the majority of his work and certainly easier to sit through than Antichrist. It has a very authentic feeling in the portrayal of depression. And the final sequences got me more worked up than any Roland Emmerich end of the word.

Total Recall

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

Another awesome Paul Verhoeven film and one of Arnold Schwarzenegger's most quotable. And as much as I love the action and the awesome fx it's really the story I love and the is it real or isn't ending, quintessential Philip K. Dick stuff.

We get a remake next year and perhaps it'll stick close to the book than this does. I would love to get my hands on the script David Cronenberg was going to make before it got passed on to Verhoeven. But I do like his pulpy style.

One of my favs.

Restless

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

Whoa, cancer double feature. I should have read more about what these films were about before randomly going to see both just because it was a cheap day.

Gus Van Sant is an interesting director. I suppose that's a nice way of saying sometimes I just don't get what he was thinking. I love some of his stuff, and other times I find it very boring. Oddly enough though, I liked Gerry, but I didn't like Last Days or Paranoid Park.

This one sits somewhere in the middle, but he's definitely in Indie movie mode. While it's no Harold and Maude it seems to be going for the same tone.

Mia Wasikowska is great, new comer Henry Hopper is pretty good too. Again, I just don't think I cared that much about the story. It's certainly a lot sweeter than I was expecting, and from the mixed reviews I've read I think some very low expectations helped somewhat. Faint praise indeed, but really, this is the worst film to follow up Burning Man. My bad.

Burning Man

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

It's Man on Fire all over again. Is it too much to ask to see someone set alight?

Instead we have a non-linear to the point of becoming schizophrenic story of a chef, played brilliantly by Matthew Goode, having trouble dealing with his wife dying of cancer and being left with an 8 year old son.

Goode is great. The rest of the film was a pretty standard caner drama, no matter how much they try to chop up the timeline to make it more mysterious. The editing also makes it hard to connect. Or maybe I'm just a heartless bastard, but I always think it's cheating to just have someone die from cancer and automatically expect the audience to be empathetic and ball out eyes out. Not if we're not invested in character first.

Yeah I didn't really connect with this one.

New Year's Eve

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

This film is like the white noise of romantic comedies. The writer and director of Valentine's Day decided they hadn't got enough milage out of that film so the shuffled things about a bit and changed the setting. Really, it's the EXACT SAME MOVIE. They even make fun of this fact in the awful credit blooper reel by literally pulling the Valentine's Day bluray out of Jessica Biel's vagina and shoving it in our faces. And then the DVD. I wonder what's next. Arbour Day? Labor Day? Inauguration Day?

This film has a cast list a mile long and doesn't do much with any of them. Although I liked to think Cary Elwes was reprising his role from the Saw franchise. They would intercut nicely. All the stories are light a fluffy, except Robert De Niro dying of cancer. That was just boring.

The most impressive thing about the film was creating New Years Eve 2012 in Time Square. Good job. The Arri Alexa night footage looks pretty great, very saturated and colourful but even then, there is a lot of very obvious digital enhancement trying to make Katherine Heigl look human. Ew.

The advantage of having so many stories is that if you don't like one plot line, chances are the film will have moved on to something else within a few minuets. For me though, there was a greater percentage of dislikes so that didn't help. It's a bland romantic comedy (that was neither romantic nor funny) and the best, the film is inoffensive.

Jack and Jill

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

Happy Madison producitons used to be watchable. That all changed somewhere along the lines when they realise that kids will watch any old crap so they can make more by trying less. This feels like a bad parody movie from Funny People. It cuts the soul.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

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

Write up.

Bit of late night commentary. I started on the director, but he sounded pretty boring, so I swapped to the writers.

Mission: Impossible 2

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

Ahh what the hell, may as well finish off the series.

Anthony Hopkins is in this? Forgot that. I do remember it's practically all set in Australia. Perhaps that's why I shy away from it so much. They do absolutely everything to remind you of this every two seconds, with shots of kangaroos of the Sydney Harbor Bridge. The BMX Bandits ending doesn't help either.

So this is the John Woo entry. So there's an awful lot of gunplay in slow motion with a big rock guitar soundtrack. And everyone always wares sunglasses. And there's not really much spying at all despite the over use of masks. There's something very early 90's about the romance side of the action/romance. As in, even at the time it was made it was already dated.

I guess it's serviceable.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon

IMDB
First time viewed: No
Current Release: Yes
Watched With: Mum, Dad

Write ups here and here.

Watch with the old folks this time. I still can't get over the scale of this film. And the Budget spent of a talking car movie. It was too epic for them, they had to split it into two nights of viewing. That's why I hate showing films to my parents not in a cinema.

By the way, the current bluray has crap all extra features. Very disappointing.

Mission: Impossible 3

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

Sorry John Woo! We skipped your entry due to time constraints, but to be fair, it is the worst of the series. No slow mo flying doves for us.

So 10 years later, J.J Abrams takes the reins after 5 season of his own very fun Spy TV series. They add in a love interest for a bit of heart and keep the action big and the stakes high. And as usual have a mysterious high concept macguffin that is never explained but does allow for some nice location shooting for an action sequence on a skyscraper in Shanghai.

It also benefits from having a much clearer villain than the first instalment, here embodied with relish by the great Philip Seymour Hoffman.

Watching it directly after the first instalment a few things stand out. The spy technology for one, colour grading went crazy in 10 years and every set piece is 30 times bigger. The Helicopter chase at the start is nifty and I like breaking into Vatican City just because it shows off their more high tech mask creation technology, a staple of the series and one they finally sold me on with this instalment.

Again, a great cast of supporting characters, some of whom shall thankfully be returning in the next film.

Mission: Impossible

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

Holy Cow this film is 15 years old. The internet and computer tech dates it pretty clearly but it's still a damn great film from Brian De Palma, a man who never says no to a good split field diopter shot.

The harness drop scene has been parodied more times than I could count and that whole sequence still manages to get the tension up. The opening fake out is great, classic noir stuff. They introduce a team played by great actors who all get top billing and then just immediately kill them off. It's pretty mean, but it just get you on edge. And then there's the final train action set piece, which is pretty ridiculous but a lot of fun.

It's the film that ushered in the new wave of spy films, that sits somewhere between where the big action of James Bond was at the time and before the Borne series with it's more serious and realistic low key approach, which the Bond franchise has now taken on to a degree.

Good stuff.

Black Swan

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

I've watched this the most. 6 times this year now. I finally wore mum down and she worked up the nerve to watch it. Good stuff.

While I haven't started thinking much about my best of 2011 list yet, and I don't think this will be number 1, I think it'll definitely make the top 10.

Minority Report

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

Steven Spielberg directing a Philip K. Dick based story? Yes please.

What starts out as a Sci-fi action thriller steadily turns into a detective noir. As usual with Dick's stories, there's a great central conceit that leads to many morally and philosophically grey areas. In this case, arresting someone before they commit a crime.

I've always loved this film and what stood out to me most watching it through again, besides now knowing Anne Lively was played by Jessica Harper from Suspiria and Shock Treatment, was the great sound design and music and how it works almost subconsciously on the audience to keep complicated multiple plot threads recognised as they pop up and interweave.

If I have a problem with this film it's that it almost feels episodic. Don't get me wrong, it has a very clear, linear and compelling story driving everything through but they way it goes about telling it can sometimes feel like segments from different films. Sequences like Lois Smith's delightfully bizarre exposition in the greenhouse feel so radically different than the Jet Pack chase that comes before it or Peter Stormare's funny and icky surgery scene straight after. Pretty much all the supporting characters get there one scene and then that's it. So while everything has a great pace and if you don't like one segment chances are you'll like the next, it does make getting to the finish a bit of a chore. Each time you think you're getting a handle on the situation it changes up.

Perhaps that's not a bad thing at all, but watching it so late at night it does make it feel very long, each time you're ready for it to get to the end it picks up a plot thread you forgot about. And there is quite a lot in there, they do the work of fleshing out our main character with a damaged past and tying it in to story arc well.

And each segment is filled with cool stuff. I love all the future design stuff they came up with. That tricky area of being just slightly in the future, so recognisable but with some subtle and some not so subtle changes. Jet Packs are always awesome. As are those little spider eye scanning robots that suspiciously resemble the Tripods of Spielberg and Cruise's next collaboration.

It's also filled with wonderful and often eccentric performances from supporting cast. Like I said before, they don't all get much screen time but they do make some pretty big choices to ensure each one is unique and memorable.

Technically it's immaculate, as you'd come to expect. What can you say about a John Williams score? This one probably sounds the most like a mash-up of other work he's done but there's still really great stuff in there.

However I think this was the first film where Janusz Kaminski's cinematography started to get on my nerves. This is probably the highest contrast, bleached out grainy looking of Spielberg's films. That's fine, it suits the story. But Kaminski really went to town with his usual diffuse light glowing look. It's so pronounced it really started to bug me, peoples faces just became a shiny line of hi-lights. Probably made compositing a nightmare for the FX houses too.

Speaking of FX, I can't tell you how many times I've been asked to replicated the "Minority Report computer interface" style graphics. Although references seem to have moved forward to Ironman, this still crops up.

But despite all the cool sci-fi shine and the dark detectivy noir story, the usual warm beating heart at the centre of the story is there and there are some quite unexpectedly moving scenes towards the end.

I've heard theories about the end of this film, for the people that find Spielberg's happy everything's-neatly-tied-up endings too syrupy. Without giving anything away, there are lines planted, particularly by Tim Blake Nelson, that suggest the last few scenes may not be real at all, just a dream inside someone's head while they are incarcerated. Like other Phillip K. Dick stories, I'm thinking Total Recall here, it actively supports both readings, neither confirming nor denying either. So the cynical among you could debate the happy ending to your hearts content. While I'm not a big fan of the way the end just wraps up so quickly and so happily considering everything that came before it I do feel like what we are seeing is true, just because those references are so slight and, after all it IS Spielberg.

But perhaps you should give it a watch and see what you think.