While You Were Out Nailing Hot Chicks In March, I Watched These Instead

The Changeling
Just a great piece of work and easily Clint’s best to date. Shamefully ignored in awards season, save a few nods for Jolie. Really good stuff. Also found myself getting really wound up by it about half-way through. The brain, it resists implausible plot points, even true-to-life ones. Try and check it out though, it’s proper heartgutting.


Blindness
Y’know, it’s a bit crap. I get what they were going for, but it’s not far off being a complete and utter turkey. All the dancing, bleached-out camerawork just distances you from the characters, and as the genre bends towards science-fiction and asks you to care about all the rapins, betrayins and murderins...that just won’t do, baby.


Watchmen
“He’s so faithful to the comic” and whatever. Yeah, too faithful. You might as well read the bloody comic. It doesn’t connect in the way that Sin City does. You’ve got to know the difference between being faithful to a 2D material and rounding-out the characters and story into an actual film and Snyder just doesn’t seem to know how.


Australia
It’s not nearly as bad as I’d heard. I wouldn’t watch it again, but it was alright. I don’t know what people were expecting, but personally I was expecting exactly this, so was neither thrilled nor disappointed.


The Duchess
Hmm, yeah. Ok. Decent enough, for what it is. The sex scenes between Ralph “s’RAYF, actually” Fiennes and Keira “cum” Knightley were like watching a pale toad apathetically prod at a spatula. In that way, this movie was a complete success.


The Unborn
Pretty darn bad. And not even good-bad. Just averagely nothing. Also has a tacked-on ending you can see coming a mile off.


Knowing
KNOWING. Heh. I was excited and filled with dread about the whole thing. ‘Cause I hate The Crow, love Dark City and found I, Robot alright.

I kind of love Alex Proyas. He’s dear to me. So when I heard the plot I could kind of see what was going to happen. You were going to get a mental, old-school sci-fi story and jam Nicholas Cage’s hair plugs right in the middle of it.

That’s exactly what you get here. Fleeting, great moments ruined by epic retardedness. You can’t build up a terrifying moment and then throw a cartoony CGI moose on fire at the screen. It creates guffaws where there shouldn’t be any. Say what you want about the hilariously fucking inept 70s prog-rock vinyl front cover ending, but at least Proyas followed through on the basic idea.

Cage? Jesus, he under-acts here to the point of boredom. I dunno whether he had Botox or what. Christ. I’ve seen a lot of bad Cage acting but this was the worst he’s ever been. Laughably bad. And because Proyas seems to care so much about the (admittedly awful) material I found myself a bit angry at Cage for being so goddamn terrible, which is a trait of his I usually enjoy.


Role Models
A few amusing moments, but not nearly as good as Forgetting Sarah Marshall, which was about average. So, pretty bad.

I Hit This Shit In February, While You Were Out Having A Life

In defense of my blog that only a few poor souls read, I would like to say that during last week my boyfriend was looking to see whether a film he wanted to see was any good. As we were flipping through reviews on the internet, I was reading them aloud and he snapped "just skip to the last paragraph" because that's where the crux is. People don't really want the plot synopsis or any of that crap. So. Here, then:

Zack & Miri Make a Porno
I thought it was a lot better than Jersey Girl and Clerks 2, which had tone problems and were generally a bit wank. Quite sweet, really.

Frost/Nixon
Y'know, it’s Ron Howard. What are you expecting? Are you expecting a competently-directed film that occasionally lapses into dull moments, with a cavalier attitude to riding the line between actual events and more dramatic, entirely fictional moments? Well, that’s what you’ll get. Have at it.

Slumdog Millionaire
It’s crap. I’m not hating on it for racial reasons (piss off) but purely performance reasons on all fronts (except acting, which is ok). A while ago Danny Boyle directed a movie called Millions, which was critically and financially shat on from a great height. Slumdog is basically a remake of Millions with a bit of City of God thrown in. And the direction itself is chock-full of genuinely poor decisions, whether it be the Battlefield Earth-level of Dutch angles on show or by the criminal comparison of first and second unit shooting. Its massive scoop of awards is just shameful.

Good Dick
Jason Ritter is gently slipping into indie movie territory after the cancellation of Joan of Arcadia (terribly saccharine TV show of yore with Amber ‘inappropriately young girlfriend of David Cross’ Tamblyn). Good Dick is all over the place, but it stayed with me afterward inexplicably.

Defiance
Oh Liev. So hot. Edward Zwick does better here than with Blood Diamond. He’s still doing that thing he does. Taking a true story and mashing an action movie in there. Whatever makes you happy, Zwick.

Choke
Not a bad first effort from Clark Gregg (he of ‘I know him. Where do I know him from?’ TV bit-part fame) and Sam Rockwell looks like a great kisser, but overall it’s not outstanding and Kelly Macdonald is badly miscast.

Rachel Getting Married
I was really impressed with it. The horrible characters really reflected the grief process well. Great acting throughout. Bit overlong, but fuck it. The scene where Hathaway goes to see Winger before the wedding is AMAZING.

W
Just, no. Bad.

The Escapist
Rupert Wyatt (directed Ticks. No, seriously) does good here. Decent little prison escape piece with a tight running time and Steven Mackintosh playing a mental. Because he either plays a mental, or a straight character you keep expecting to go mental, but never does. Typecasting: gotta love it. Elsewhere, Damien Lewis perfects his mince. Sweet.

What Just Happened
Oh God. I mean, do we need another crappy Robert de Niro movie? We really don’t. When will it end?

The Day the Earth Stood Still
Keanu Reeves playing an emotionless alien. Method acting at its finest. Ropey CGI and an overall feeling of lameness. Also, Jennifer Connelly needs to eat at least....*counts on fingers*....5000 Subway meatball subs. Where is old-school big-titted lovely Jennifer? She collapsed in on herself like a manic-depressive white dwarf.

Outpost
Zombie Nazis. Cool. Tyres doesn’t die too early on, if you were wondering.

All the Boys Love Mandy Lane
They really do. Me too. I liked it. They reveal the killer pretty early on, and while it seems obvious who it is anyway, you can’t help but suspect there’s a twist ending coming. There is, and it sags a bit there. But Jonathan Levine is a director to look out for and you’ll be seeing A LOT of Amber Heard in the coming years. Possibly too much.

Seven Pounds
I cried all the way through shamelessly although it is, of course, fucking awful. Also, I was upset by the casting choice of Barry ‘The White Rat’ Pepper. If you’re going to cast Barry Pepper, give him something to do. Suggested viewing includes The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, 25th Hour and The Green Mile for proper awesome Pepper usage.