1:offensive.2:crap.4:has its moments.6:good.8:pushes the envelope.10:masterpiece

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02/02/02 - A Beautiful Mind
A film that is completely and extremely right up The Academy's alley. In other words, exactly the right amount of tried-and-true conventions with slight twists, exactly the right amount of not pushing the envelope too far or actually making a statement or a stand, and exactly the right amount of teetering on the edge of being totally ludicrous and actually terrible. Good film. It'll win a lot of Oscars. 7/10
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05/09/28 - A History Of Violence
It's good to know before you see this movie that the title refers not so much to the main character's past as it does to the entire human history of violence, ever since the day that first monkey bashed that other monkey with a bone and then threw it into the sky and they jump-cut to a space station. It's in our DNA: we're evolved from the cavemen that were better at kicking ass than the weakling cavemen. But while people whine about the violence and the culture and the kids these days, we've actually become way LESS violent than the 'good' old days. We actually think it's nice to let the weak people have a fair shot. Nobody likes a bully. But man, that bully? Wouldn't it be great to bust that guy's face?! Especially if it had to be done to protect our young which would impress the chicks and raaaaaar caveman! And so we go watch violent movies and pretend. Cronenberg is cool because he lets us look at the aftermath of the violence a little bit too long to let us wonder if it's really that exciting and cool after all. But besides that subtle theme, the movie is a pretty entertaining noir, what with the violence and nudity and swearing (and a couple really neat performances and cool characters). It's a tight simple little story, but Cronenberg tells it slowly and deliberately to let it sink in, and it's got a cool theme kicking around in the background for me to think about afterward. 7/10
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03/05/11 - A Mighty Wind
Waiting For Guffman was a drier kind of comedy, people with obviously poor skills being very earnest about their dreams. Best In Show was a little more immediate for the average comedy audience, taking the usual shots at "dog people" personalities. A Mighty Wind goes even drier than Guffman, with earnest people who are actually pretty good at what they do. Their only flaws are being somewhat out of touch and writing crap lyrics. I found I kind of felt for a lot of these people, especially Eugene Levy and Catherine O'Hara who contribute a character dynamic that brushes as much with poignancy as comedy. And thank goodness, they hold together what is otherwise pretty fluffy material. Plenty of brilliant improv moments though. And it's cool to see Spinal Tap redressed as aged folk singers and cranking out the live tunes. 6/10
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06/07/16 - A Scanner Darkly
I enjoyed it, but I'm a patient man. It's definitely more digestable than Waking Life, even in the animation, which is cleaner and a lot less woozy. Robert Downey Jr. is good as usual and just on his own can carry the audience along so they don't get bored or worry about being confused. It's more interesting knowing going in that it was written by Philip K. Dick on the tail of his immersion in the 60s-70s drug scene. And it plays like it, a 50/50 mix between buddies hanging out high for entertainment's sake, and paranoia, confusion, lucidity, all descending into madness. I just want to know what Phil and his buddies were on that so many of them ended up clinically insane and/or in jail. 6/10
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02/12/30 - About Schmidt
This movie is by Alexander Payne, the writer/director behind Election and Citizen Ruth. Schmidt shares a similar tone, but it's a much more somber movie. Basically, we're presented with a guy who shows no sign of ever having any passion or even making any decisions in his life. He retires and is forced to do something with himself, and the film is his odyssey of uncomfortable situations, bad social skills, and aggressively mediocre people forcing their way into his life. At the core it's really about facing up to bitter disappointment. But it's funny, and smart, and it's full of fantastic character performances. But you might not find any of the characters redeeming, and you might find Schmidt's mind-sucking boredom and uncomfortableness to be boring and uncomfortable. But that's kind of the point. 7/10
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02/12/27 - Adaptation
A movie not about making movies but about itself. It sounds like an egotistical stunt for Kaufman to write himself into his movie, but it really was the best way that he could adapt the tone and point of the real-life nonfiction book he was hired to adapt into a screenplay. Instead of the book being source material, the book becomes a character in a whole new story that shares its themes. The way the movie curles back into itself and mixes reality and fiction and blurs the lines is both its brilliance and its downfall. On an intellectual and creative level, this movie is simply a cut above most films and a real step forward for hollywood creativity. But the way the movie unravels its own fiction, the way it breaks its own reality on purpose, creates a distance between the audience and the emotions of the characters. You become acutely aware that you're watching actors playing out a script, but then you remember that half the characters are real people doing stuff that really happened, but then you realise that the writer is taking liberties with the facts, but then you think that any "true story" is a dramatized interpretation... and that's basically the experience of watching the movie. Which would be a bit of a pointless excercise if the film didn't back that up with some real human drama and questions about passion and art and interpretation. And then it takes it a step further and buries all that stuff under funny characters and dialogue and some suprising action... It's a hell of a movie. I can fathom a writer writing that script out of sheer frustration and inspiration and guts, but the fact that hollywood actually made it into a film boggles my mind. If nothing else, Adaptation is impressive just for how ballsy it is. And now that I've had time for that initial impression to wear off, the emotional fabric of the film itself is starting to grow on me. I'll need to see it again. 8/10
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01/06/29 - A.I.
Beautifully shot film. The Kubrick flavour is tangible. But it has zero insight into the idea of A.I., in fact I think it got the core idea wrong. Instead of having a robot develop emotions, he spends the entire film as a toy that's been hard-wired to act like it's in love. It's a different way to go, but we never empathize with him. As impressive as the performance is, it's a problem that he never seems more alive than an Aibo. The film does stumble along entertainingly enough to a shaky conclusion, and it's not a bad movie. But then it keeps going, for the long and drawn out epilogue second ending. This is where the movie shoots itself in the feet, the legs, the heart, the head, then crawls up its own ass and dies. What happened to you, Spielberg? 4/10
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02/05/19 - About A Boy
About A Boy is by the author of High Fidelity, it's got a soundtrack by Badly Drawn Boy, and it's got Hugh Grant in a great performance unlike I've seen him before; more real and without the fey British irony thing. The kid in it is good; he's not a typical hollywood cute kid and he's got his own thoughts and wisdom. And the movie has lots of good laughs. I have a feeling that the book probably fleshes these characters out a lot fuller, because the movie is a bit skimpy with motivation and so a lot of the payoff that we should be feeling at times doesn't quite come through. But I expect that the target of the filmmakers wasn't to make the film really resonating or insightful, but to look for success by emphasizing the fluff and the humour. But at the same time they were brave enough to respect the audience's intelligence instead of pandering. So yeah, it's entertaining and smart but it won't stick in my brainspace. 6/10
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01/12/27 - Ali
The photography is beautiful. The music is inspired. The acting is top-notch, Will Smith carries off what I didn't think he could. But the film as a whole? Michael Mann let me down. Heat may have been lengthy and a bit cumbersome at times, but it worked. And The Insider told me he had found his feet, able to tell even a seemingly tired story and make it into an epic. So how could he go wrong with a subject like Mohammad Ali? Well it got fumbled somehow. The three hour running time seems necessary for an Ali biopic, but for what ended up on the screen, it should have been more like two. Somehow the film ends without having presented a real sense of Ali's boxing prowress nor achieving the actual target of illustrating Ali as a person. It's like the film tried for it all, but spread itself too thin, missing any real impact or anchor or thread. And it's just too damn long. It's not a bad film by any means, it's just not nearly what it could have been, if only it had chosen something to be. The only really great part is the relationship between Ali and Howard Cosell.
I'm growing quite weary of the three-hour-film trend. It makes sense when the film needs it, but what happened to the 90 minute film? They're all stretched to 2 hours now. Is it a matter of perceived value? Does the moviegoer pick the longest film, hoping to get the most value out of their 13 and a half bucks? This film's runtime deflates it. 6/10
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04/08/13 - Alien vs Predator
Where's all the Aliens fighting Predators? Who are all these humans, and why do we have to sit through an hour of the dumbest exposition I can remember, and why don't we care if they suffer or die? Why does the script go out of its way to make their dialogue way stupider than is necessary to advance the plot? Why does it forget basic parts of the mythology of Aliens and Predators? Why aren't the Aliens or Predators scary or even cool? Why couldn't this movie have been worse so I could have enjoyed it? Why is there not a single interesting thing in the whole production? 2/10
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00/10/03 - Almost Famous
Hm. I'm writing about a movie about writing about music. Dancing about architecture anyone? Anyway... Not really thematic, and no subtext, this is simply a well done coming-of-age story where nobody really comes of age much. But it's an engaging, well-told, well-acted piece, with characters who are very real. (Extra real sometimes for being based on real people.) But I prefer something that is a cohesive work, something that more can be mined out of on repeat viewings. Still, it works really well as a string of good-to-great scenes. 7/10
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01/11/11 - Amelie
Kinetic, pure, heartfelt, stylish. And most of all Innocent. It's difficult to describe how this film manages to stay clear of soppiness, showing the odd sex shop and suicide jump, but still manage to feel like a portrait of the idyllic and pure side of humanity. It just makes you feel good. The characters are quirky and great, the little stories are cool, and the whole thing is assembled with an energy that keeps the movie buoyant. The delight does begin to wear thin toward the end, but it wraps up just before it starts to really falter. You can't help but like this movie, it just loves life too much. 8/10
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00/01/07 - American Movie
If you have any interest in the art of filmmaking, see this movie. This dude has so much heart, and it seems some talent too, but he's doomed by low-rent crews and low-brow aspirations. Still, he's ten times the filmmaker that George Lucas is now. 8/10
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00/04/25 - American Psycho
I liked it. Interesting character, some great scenes, funny, stylishly made, and it strikes up a great vibe of this society of people of no importance trying to fit in with eachother, where not even a total fucking lunatic can make a mark. I love how the desserts are more interesting than the people who eat them. 8/10
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03/08/25 - American Splendor
Like a snake eating its tail, this is a true story about a real writer who writes true stories about himself. It stars Paul Giamatti as real-life Harvey Pekar, but also stars the real Harvey Pekar, as the really-real Harvey Pekar. Harvey is kind of a poet, but also kind of an asshole. But we empathize, he's just a real guy, except with a slightly higher concentration of reality than most of us. The multiple-actor/multiple-role thing sounds like a gimmick, but it's not at all. Since Harvey's fiction is his reality, the lines the film draws between reality and fiction don't so much blur as cross back onto themselves and reinforce the message. The scenes end up being more real than a biography, even more real than most documentaries. You believe it even more, because nobody's hiding behind the concept of reenactments. They acknowlege when they're taking creative license, and you understand that they're not cheating, they're just distilling things down to their essence, purifying the truth. The experience of watching the whole thing turns out to be really...well...just TRUE. Recommended Triple Bill: Crumb, Ghost World, American Splendor. 9/10
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07/09/15 - The Animation Show 3
Nothing really blew my mind, though the latest Hertzfeldt is quite good, more immediate than the one before. The rest is mostly interesting, innovative, solid work. Only a couple quasi-yawners. Films are from the last few years, one is really old, so if you're in touch you might have seen most of these before, especially now that these things get online exposure. 5/10
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01/06/27 - The Anniversary Party
What happens when actors get together to make a movie? Indulgence. Weak plot. Lots of acting muscles being flexed. Which means some really great character moments, but not much of a whole movie up there. 4/10
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06/05/16 - Art School Confidential
You know how Ghost World had that subplot about the art class? What if the same director made a whole movie just about the art class? You might imagine it could be good or bad, and it's kind of both. 5/10
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07/11/06 - The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford
Oh man, Roger Deakins' photography. And then Nick Cave on the score. This thing just plods forward, paced like a metronome, but it's so thick with history and tension it kept me hooked the whole way through. This is a great western because it's not a western. 8/10
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01/06/16 - Atlantis
The art is nice. And it's nice to see Disney making a more "adult" film, one with Star Wars type death, and no songs or animals. Unfortunately, the story line and characters are muddled and amateur and nothing quite gels. There's a lot of stuff in there that should make for a good film, but it's all cliched and misdirected, making the movie much less than the sum of its parts. The film never captures the sense of importance or wonder, or even coherence, that Atlantis deserves. 4/10
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05/01/17 - The Aviator
I guess Howard Hughes was more of a noteworthy guy than a great man, but I'm not sure if that's what this movie is about. Half of it seems to be about him washing his hands. The other half is mostly about how he had a ton of money that he would blow on paying tons of people to build him vanity projects. He does stand up for the right thing at one point. Oh, and there's also some love story stuff that goes nowhere? I was going to say the movie tries too hard to be epic and destroys itself, but when I think about it maybe it wasn't trying to be epic at all. It was just trying to be about too much and nothing in particular. The one thing I'm sure about is it's too long. 5/10
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04/07/03 - Baadasssss
Recommended. Entertaining, informative... shows really great behind-the-scenes moviemaking stuff, in a more realistic guerilla way than you're used to. Funky 70s tunes and style give it a kick. Won't go down in history like the real film within this film did, although I'm sure this movie is far superior. But as much passion as this film has for telling the story of Melvin's movie, it's probably not as much passion as Melvin's movie had. But the making of the first black film--the movie that inspired Blacksploitation--is still a great story worth knowing about, and I doubt anyone could tell it better than this. 7/10
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02/10/14 - Barber Shop
Is good. I would've liked to have spent more time inside the barbershop and less time with the subplot (that became more of a side plot--ie half the movie) about a couple stupid guys and a bank machine. The "day in the life" timeframe and wide supporting cast and subplots make it very much a Do The Right Thing 'lite'. But at least they've turned a bank of potentially stock characters into real people. Except maybe the Oreo guy, who's introduced with the 'complicated coffee' joke we've all seen a billion times. So to sum it all up: it's solid but not really fresh. 6/10
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05/06/21 - Batman Begins
It's cool to take a dead serious approach, and for the first 2/3rds it works really well. I was getting really into it when we started to see how Scarecrow and Batman are the same, strictly using fear as their weapon. It was a beautiful setup. The stuff with the love interest was pretty much the same notes as Mary Jane in Spiderman, but it can't possibly come off that well because Spiderman is really *about* MJ. So it's a little weak, but not a big deal. But then suddenly the movie starts introducing things like "the antidote", "the big evil plot that makes little sense", "lots of awkward exposition", "the crappy action set piece", and "the bad guy who suddenly makes everyone else's motives make no sense". For a movie so "serious", it turns really really stupid really quickly. Part of the problem with the home stretch is probably how the movie (naturally) concentrates on the action toward the end, and while nicely cold and brutal, it's really poorly edited action; all noise and bluster and little sense or structure. It was a clean 8 or 9 until the last third undermined the whole foundation. 7/10
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08/02/26 - Be Kind Rewind
I don't know what to make of it really, except that perhaps Gondry can't tell a good story without a bulletproof script written by somebody else. He tries to make up for it with inventiveness, but the core concept from the trailer gets marginalized and we never really get to see how they make the movies and how they turn out. I kinda get what they were driving at about the power of community and our own stories over the mass-market, but it was scattered enough that it didn't really push my buttons. If the disparate elements would have really gelled to hammer the theme home, it coulda been a heartbreaker. 5/10
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00/02/24 - The Beach
Trainspotting is a masterpiece. The guys behind it were also behind The Beach, so I had to see it despite the bad buzz. It's been interesting to watch Danny Boyle's visual style evolve. The bad part is, as he gets more polished visually, he seems to be neglecting story and character.  The arcs were essentially non existent, and there were some really interesting themes that were set up but never properly explored or paid off. So it ended up just an empty experience, unless you're inclined to extrapolate on the themes on your own time. 6/10
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04/08/02 - Before Sunset
I think the original Before Sunrise would have been a better movie for me when I was 19 or so. But I didn't see it until recently, and the thing that held it back was that the characters didn't really seem to be interacting so much as waiting for their turn to speak--or rather to deliver their monologue about some intellectual concept designed mostly to make the person saying it sound smart (rather than actually communicate). It's a kind of young nerd fantasy of two people falling in love because their ideas are so sexy. The movie worked in other ways, but got a little painful when the actors sounded like they were reciting text from a script instead of just acting like people. The first half of Before Sunset feels pretty much the same as the first movie, though the ideas are more mature, and more importantly there's a way different (and more interesting) dynamic to these people at this point in their lives. So it's a good movie for the first half. But then the movie turns an invisible little corner, and I was totally sucked in by the urgency and immediacy that came to the surface. Our loosely constructed characters suddenly sublimate into real human people. And for at least 20 minutes Linklater, Hawke, and Delpy succeed as well (or better) than I can remember anyone succeeding at capturing a moment right out of real life. 8/10
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00/10/17 - Best In Show
Not quite as good as Guffman, but still quite funny and very clever. The characters are cartoonish, but performed so well they become just feasable enough to make it genius. 8/10
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01/06/02 - Between The Moon And Montevideo
Stylish and atmospheric, but kinda boring for a lot of it. But it's got its good bits and it's got its spanish-flavoured-interplanetary-post-apocalyptic Delicatessen-meets-Lock Stock style. 4/10
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00/07/05 - Beyond The Mat
I'm not a wrestling fan. I went to this documentary to laugh at dumb guys doing silly acrobatics and watch the wacky politics behind the scenes. Instead I got an intensely personal, sometimes deeply moving portrait of the people behind this very dangerous spectacle and the rough lifes they lead. I have more respect for wrestling now than I could have imagined having before, and at the same time I want to watch wrestling even less. Highly, highly recommended. 8/10
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03/12/30 - Big Fish
I really enjoyed this. It's funny because it reminded me of In America from the day before, but only in the ways it approached the same emotions from completely the opposite angles. This is all about the unreality, the acceptance of the conventions of storytelling. Basically it just spins a big bunch of entertaining B.S., which is just good fun, until it starts showing us about the unspoken truths that lie at the core of all that B.S. that we all spin for ourselves. Or something. And then just when it had me primed, it totally suckerpunched me right in the tear-ducts. Tricky bastard, that Tim Burton. ...It doesn't knock Edward Scissorhands off the top for me, but it's a worthy attempt. 8/10
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02/01/19 - Black Hawk Down
If you're going to make a movie that's basically two straight hours of combat, there's lots of different ways to make it stay interesting. You can show the political forces at work or the simple tactics that make the events unfold, or otherwise give the audience an overview of what's happening on a larger scale to give the smaller events meaning. Three Kings. Or you can divide the action into several set pieces of different types of battle to keep the action fresh. Private Ryan. Or you can make the characters people that you care about and let them arc or at least play off eachother in interesting ways. Or you can make the action so visceral that the audience feels like they're going through the events themselves, hoping that the experience is fascinating or harrowing enough to be the point of the film. Or hopefully, like any good war movie, you put a bunch of these things together.
Black Hawk Down does none of these things. It gives you "characters" who are all boring interchangeable "hero" archetypes with no backstory and are even harder to tell apart for all looking the same. That would be fine, but then it puts them in a maze of streets and rubble, without a sense of where they're trying to go and what they're facing against, shooting in every direction at "bad guys" who pop up in random places at random times, for the whole movie. There's no sense of how far they are from their targets, how far the teams are from eachother, or even how far the army base is from the action when it's time to refuel and rearm. (A few long shots is all I ask.) The action is pretty visceral, but the perspective jumps between the different teams so much that you never get any sense of how long someone has been traveling or waiting, no elation when someone finds their objective, and it's even confusing what most people's objectives are or what direction they're heading.
I guess it can be argued that that's exactly the nature of being thrust into urban combat and having everything go wrong, and the movie in fact does a good job of keeping the events straight, but if you ask me it's just a lengthy two-plus hours of Bruckheimer-driven sensationalism. It would be a complete disaster if not for Ridley Scott's technical skill keeping it watchable. But I spent nearly the whole film thinking about how many ways it could have been much better. 5/10
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02/03/23 - Blade 2
Starts off really, really cool. There's some neat CG-stunt-double stuff that pushes the fight scene envelope. There's some great one liners. All the characters seem to hate eachother and throw insults around. It takes itself less seriously, and is more fun because of it. But then the plot stops making any sense whatsoever. And then the action stops making any sense whatsoever. And then they start doing WWF moves. And then they start plugging in formula scenes from the wrong formulas. And then it gets *really* bad. And then it finally closes off with a pretty good fight scene. I can't help but compare it to Resident Evil. It averages out to the same amount of overall stupid and cool, only Blade 2 has way higher highs and way lower lows. Low enough to drain out the fun. 5/10
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07/11/10 - Blade Runner: The Final Cut
"If only you could see what I've seen with your eyes." It's the director's cut, again, but on the big screen. It took other people to point out the slight differences to me. The stuntwoman's wig doesn't come off. The wires holding up the full-scale flying car have been painted out. The eye-lights are perhaps cleaner and more pronounced. Oh, and they fixed some dialogue so stupid idiots who read way too much into continuity errors can stop saying Deckard is the 6th of the escaped replicants, which would make absolutely ZERO sense. Its impact on the genre, and the fact that I can recite entire scenes, earned my 10.
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03/03/15 - Blind Spot: Hitler's Secretary
The challenging thing about this film is that it's quite literally a straight 90 minutes of one talking head. No embellishment, no cutaways, just dry medium closeup. Speaking German. It would be a lot more trying to read through all those subtitles, if not for the subject of the monologue being so interesting. Basically, it's an insider's portrait of Hitler during the last half of the war, an insider with a rare introspection and lucidity. A portrait from inside the bunker, a "blind spot" where the actual details and war crimes weren't heard of, just day-to-day life and speech writing. The film isn't entertainment so much as a historical document, an archive that was important to record. It's made a little more potent these days with the totalitarianism echoing a bit of both sides of our current events. 7/10
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00/07/21 - Blood Simple
This film is still stylish and slick, with some excellent moments. It was quite revolutionary in its time, but right now I'd give it 7/10
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02/08/30 - Blue Crush
Some beautiful footage. Good underwater shots, good underwear shots. But while it starts with a promising tone and promising surfing excitement, it gets dragged down with being too long and one-dimensional. The movie keeps telling us how hard her life is and how great a surfer she is, but all we see is her being pampered by a football player and scene after scene of her nearly being killed every time she tries to take a wave. There's lots of talked-up conflict between characters, but the conflict never actually happens--the characters in this film all seem to forgive eachother instantaneously and for no reason. It all feels like some weak girly-girl fantasy. Even the surfing is one-dimensional--give me Dogtown And Z-Boys' smooth cutbacks and fluid moves over this straight-ahead 'ride the pipe' risk-taking any day. It was all a big letdown to find out that the peak athlete in this side of the sport is the one who's lucky enough to score the best looking wave. Trite. 4/10
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00/02/27 - Boiler Room
The first two acts are good, but it falls apart in the third. Another thematically challenged flick, it showed potential to comment on several themes but didn't. So it merely ended up making me trust my broker even less. 6/10
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06/11/13 - Borat!
I thought it might get old with that much Borat all in a row, but it really works. I only felt sorry for the interviewees/victims here and there, and the 'dying an awkward slow death' scenes all cut mercifully before they entered the comedy torture zone. Some big, big laughs; lots of missing the next line because the audience was laughing too hard. Is nice. 8/10
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02/06/15 - The Bourne Identity
What you'd expect. You get a car chase, you get some martial arts, you get some gunplay. Amnesia is a key plot device. Basically the whole premise looks pretty bad on paper, but somehow it works quite well, due simply to excellent execution. The stuff I liked was the kind of forced-european-backpacker thing where our hero comes ashore in a foreign country with one change of clothes and a hundred bucks and no idea who he is. Oh yeah, and everyone is trying to kill him. Good sight-seeing movie. Good action film. Some cool characters. You know, it's a really enjoyable flick, I recommend it, it's just pretty forgettable. 6/10
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04/07/27 - The Bourne Supremacy
I'm all for equal opportunity, but maybe you shouldn't hire epileptics with advanced parkinsons as camera operators. Hollywood needs to stop watching their movies in the top corner of their 19" AVID monitor and deciding that the action plays well. I wouldn't complain so much if that problem wasn't so indicitive of the whole movie; a bunch of blustery noise to try to trick you into thinking what you're watching is really exciting and makes sense, when in fact it's kind of empty and lacking any real dramatic storyline...despite being well crafted in all the technical disciplines. But in the artistic disciplines: Why is he shaking the camera during completely calm, purely character-centric dialogue scenes? Is he scared of being boring? What a dick. The first Bourne had more going for it in terms of feeling. People say these action scenes are better, but while they have more "attitude", they're poorly conceived because they're all noise and no structure. You can't tell what's happening beat to beat, so there's no drama to the action. These guys are calculated, experienced killers, they don't find their moves frantic and desperate, never quite knowing what's going on. I'm all for style, but they whitewashed this movie beginning to end in the same "style" and ruined the chance to have it make the movie better. To put it another way: you know how Robin Williams at his most coked-out would jump around the stage yelling and freaking out, and people would laugh and enjoy his energy even though what he's saying isn't funny and sometimes downright mundane? Bourne Supremecy scores big for creating the *illusion* of entertainment, but it loses points for what it really is: a half-assed story. 5/10
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07/08/08 - The Bourne Ultimatum
This movie is really exciting considering that nothing actually happens and there's no plot. Greengrass's Bourne movies put me off with the shaky cam, but on the other hand I give them full props for being the only action films left that care about being plausible. No riding on the wing of a harrier and jumping 8 stories onto concrete while someone hacks a police car into jumping over a helicopter. I mean, there's a couple things that go too far, a couple big dumb cheats in the story, but luckily the camera shakes so bad and cuts so quick you don't really pick up on it. So it's blustery nonsense, but I guess I bought it? Maybe the globetrotting locales and attention to strategic technical detail redeem its minor sins? 7/10
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02/10/20 - Bowling For Columbine
A really good documentary, one that actually provides answers instead of just questions. And Michael Moore keeps the grandstanding to a minimum, only twice confronting respectable people with evil challenges that they have no capacity to answer and so no matter what they do they look like jerks. Anyway, his commentary is heavy-handed at times, but it's always clever, and sometimes it gets really moving. There's some serious, serious problems in the U.S, and it's really scary to see them held up to the light and know that nobody is doing anything about it. It's really really frightening, but it's a good kind of fear for us to have, because the fear that the rest of the media is feeding us is only perpetuating the problem. See this film. 8/10
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00/01/01 - Boys Don't Cry
Pretty good. A little rough around the edges, but endearing. Hilary Swank will win the best actress oscar because she looks like a boy. 7/10
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06/01/25 - Brokeback Mountain
Is everybody over it yet? Does the fact that there's more female nudity than male help anyone? Wisely, the trailers and press and what everybody thinks the movie is about only gets you 1/3rd of the way in. The interesting thing about the movie is how it gets there and then especially what happens for the remaining 2/3rds. I thought it was a good flick, in its small quiet way. The only hard part about watching it, or not watching it, is having any opinion without it being considered a political statement. But the filmmakers can't complain; the movie doesn't have a hook outside of that. 7/10
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05/08/15 - Broken Flowers
Kind of a snooze. Don't believe the trailer that says this is quirky and funny. It's really like a more vacant and sparse version of About Schmidt. To me, the tone is too light and airy to support such a poker-faced main character...it's awkward encounter after awkward encounter, but where Schmidt reacted, these interactions don't seem to faze either party. Everyone just stands around acting at eachother. So the point of the movie clearly isn't the central mystery, but I'm hard pressed to see what the point is. Sure it's some guy trying to figure out what he wants, and Bill Murray blah blah blah, but the movie arrives nowhere. What the hell was the point? 4/10
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02/02/17 - Brotherhood Of The Wolf
A horror monster kung-fu revenge action foreign-language love-story adventure period piece. Based on a true story. And surprisingly, it all jells in a ridiculously pleasing way. Pure and total popcorn movie funtime. Just a little too much fad-editing cheese. And then there's the big plot holes, but it's just too fun and confusing to care. Who knew the French could kick ass? 7/10
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08/09/20 - Burn After Reading
You know that bad cliche scene where someone is snooping and then some comes home, and the guy hides in the closet and spies on him, and then the guy goes to get something out of the closet? This movie has the best one of those scenes ever shot. Other than that, it has a lot of hilarious exasperation. I guess it's like a cross between Fargo and Lebowski, but fluffier, less substantial. 7/10
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05/12/06 - Capote
Pretty good for a character/acting movie. There's not a lot of plot or history lesson, but Capote and the killers are interesting characters, and their evolving dynamic even moreso. I haven't read In Cold Blood, but this seems like the story behind the story. It's probably a good piece when it makes me feel like I really should read the book and it's kind of shameful that I haven't already. 6/10
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06/12/01 - Casino Royale
Bond is back to great action sequences. Real stunts. Realistic gags. Things like that. Other parts are kind of laughable. One scene in particular has the entire audience groaning. (and if the audience has lots of poker players in it, there's a second scene that deserves groans and 'wait a second' too.) But on the whole it does its job, which is something Bond movies have been failing at worse and worse since Goldeneye until now. 6/10
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03/01/03 - Catch Me If You Can
Spielberg is simply one of the finest film craftsman there's ever been. I consider him a journeyman. And this film is a tight, good-looking, entertaining journeyman of a film. Funny as hell but not in an obvious way, superbly acted by DiCaprio and Hanks, beautifully shot... It's a recipe for a thoroughly enjoyable film. It runs a little long, but ends up paying off the real-life characters nicely. Interesting story at its core, suitably embellished by the work of pros. 8/10
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00/08/24 - The Cell
I like film because it's a visceral medium. I like Saving Private Ryan not because of the story or characters, but because it's a sensory experience, it gives you shell-shock. The Cell is a visceral film; its bizarre and fascinating imagery is easily worth seeing for its own sake. It's just too bad the film doesn't have the depth to comment properly on the themes it raises. 7/10
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01/05/24 - The Center Of The World
It made an attempt at something big, but I don't think it pulled it off. I'm not sure if it pulled it off, cause I'm not really sure what it was trying for. 4/10
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00/11/12 - Charlie's Angels
It looks like everyone had fun making it. Girls should enjoy the "strong female characters". Boys should enjoy the T&A. I won't criticize the fact that it's a bad movie, but I have to say it barely held my attention. It made my mind wander. It was like watching a string of music videos; three-to-five-minute scenes that have nothing to do with eachother with the occasional appearance by a talking head explaining what you just saw and what's coming up. 4/10
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05/07/17 - Charlie And The Chocolate Factory
Tim Burton's got father issues, hey? Fleshing out Willy Wonka's character made things more interesting, but not for kids I imagine. I think they kind of screwed up Willy Wonka. I'm not sure how much of it is Depp and how much is Burton...but this take on the story is really about Wonka and his weaknesses, and I'm not sure if the movie is better for it. It probably would have been just a psychadelic horror story of brats getting punished (like the book) if not for asking and answering "what makes Wonka tick?", so I liked that added depth, but when the movie isn't quite fun like it should be, I wonder if that's the cause. 6/10
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00/06/28 - Chicken Run
Really quite very entertaining. 7/10
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07/01/06 - Children Of Men
I really admire the craftsmanship of this one. Best "all in one shot" sequences ever, but subtle enough that most people won't even realize. All you know is that when all hell is breaking loose it feels like you're there. And then the storytelling is mostly excellent, with so much of the backstory coming through in the details of the set dressing and ads and newspapers. The downside for me is that while the plot makes total sense as one-sentence summaries ("sure, they're corrupt so we can't trust them") I wasn't buying it when it came down to characters expositing the details. ("hey wait, 'being corrupt' still wouldn't give them that motive you're talking about"). I think the book was thoughtful and dry, and it was transformed into a totally different plot designed to pay off the visceral feeling of what it would like to be in that world. It definetly pulls that off. 8/10
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01/02/24 - Chocolat
It's like Pleasantville, only instead of being in black and white, everyone is constantly eating. Best picture? I guess if you're a woman with a problem with sweets or an eating disorder... And you like straightforward, well-made, predictable movies. 6/10
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00/08/08 - Chuck & Buck
We all know someone who lives in their own world, who doesn't quite obey the general rules of conversation, etiquette, of society. Well hell, we're all like that in some way, we all miss that societal ideal of "normal", be it an adult fascination with Lego and Nerf or our sexual preferences. Chuck has grown up, the rules have changed his behaviour, he is normal. Buck has gotten old, but still behaves as an 11 year old. He is functioning in a world of rules with complete ignorance of what the rules are. Oddly paced, shot with ugly video, and frustrating at times, but more and more interesting the more I think about it. 7/10
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00/03/20 - Cider House Rules
I thoroughly enjoyed this movie as I watched it. But as early as half an hour later, I started to realise there really wasn't much point to it. Just a coming-of-age tale that touches lightly upon a few strong issues (parenting, orphans, abortion), but doesn't adequatly connect them. Mostly forgettable. 7/10
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03/02/05 - City Of God
The best movie of the year...if it counts as 2002, which it barely does. It's like a kind of Goodfellas from the slums of Rio de Janeiro, shot and edited with the style of Traffic meets Trainspotting only more baroque and kinetic. It takes place in the 60s and 70s, with appropriate music and fashion and style and filmstock. Based on true events, it's like the ultimate hybrid of documentary and first-person storytelling. And it's frighteningly real. 9/10
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08/01/20 - Cloverfield
It's done pretty much as well as one could hope. Not exactly informative of the human condition or anything, it's a rollercoaster. Maybe it would have been better if our rag-tag group of heroes jumped a cab into the creature's mouth? Oh wait, this moive just proves with every minute how bad most dumb blockbusters are at character and story. 6/10
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04/08/05 - Collateral
Michael Mann is back in form. This is his least "epic" movie, and that's exactly what makes it stand with his best work. It could have been the usual action nonsense, but Mann handles it very artfully, even letting it have a theme. The characters are good, and nothing is too contrived. Very watchable, but willing to push the envelope a bit and smart enough to hold up to scrutiny. One thing though: I saw an advanced screening and sitting behind me was one of those movie fans that's killing movies. I didn't really believe they existed, but this was one of those people that likes to watch all the trailers and wishes the trailers gave MORE of the story away. See, if you already know the whole story, then when you watch the movie you get to feel way smarter than the characters cause "Bad move man, that guy's a killer! Didn't you know?! HA!" and "Uh oh, don't answer the door! That guy's dead." I can imagine this guy at a play of Romeo And Juliet yelling out "Oh man he thinks she's dead but she's not! HAhahahaha!" I'm glad you get such enjoyment out of thinking everything on screen is a giant joke, especially when characters make decisions based on the information they have at the time. Laugh riot. Asshole. 8/10
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03/01/26 - Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind
Clooney shows promise as a director, though the whole thing adds up to little more than a bunch of hip style (when it's not trying too hard) with little substance. Considering the nature of the source material, this is probably the treatment it deserved. It's entertaining, but really just par for the course. 5/10
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05/09/07 - The Constant Gardener
There was this one thing that I didn't buy in this movie, but then a pharmacist I know pointed out that it happens all the time in real life. Pharmaceutical companies will discover their drug kills people, but hide the research and go to market with it anyway. I thought "but they'll get crazy sued and run out of business!" and they do get sued; but only after they've made their billions, so what's losing a hundred million in a lawsuit? Oh well, pull it from the shelves, sorry 'bout that! On with the next product! It kinda makes me feel ill. So yeah, this movie isn't quite The Insider or anything, but it's in the ballpark. Directed stylishly by the dude who did City Of God, this second effort is a lot more downtempo than that first masterpiece, but that's the vibe this one needs. More reserved, more contemplative. The thing I appreciated was the subjective point of view in the telling that really put us in the main character's mind. 7/10
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06/09/12 - Conversations With Other Women
A whole movie that is one conversation between a man and a women, done entirely in splitscreen, usually the split is the same scene from slightly different angles, sometimes one side becomes flashback (or misremembering? fantasy?)... The subject matter deals honestly with the complexities of trying to revisit old relationships; the familiarity, awkwardness, strategy...the blurry line between romantic and needy... honest details of what changes and what stays the same. If that sounds good to you, you won't be dissatisfied. It was right up my alley at the time so I found it very compelling. 7/10
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03/04/05 - The Core
More like "The Bore"! ...no, wait, more like "The Snore"! ...no wait more like "The Cliche Whore"! ...no wait... uh, nevermind. ...The thing I don't get is that even though this movie is almost exactly like Armageddon in every terrible detail, I enjoyed Armageddon where I found this movie unredeemable. I think it might be because in Armageddon, the idea of flying into space to blow up an asteroid makes enough sense to buy the basic premise. In The Core, the earth-threatening problem is actually as real-life as Armageddon's, except the movie skips over the reality of the magnetic-pole switching thing and actually makes it sound like nonsense. Okay, that's fine, except that the premise of driving a vehicle to the centre of the not-insignificantly hot and pressurized earth is a little bit less sensical. Okay fine, the science is shaky, but now consider that while flying through outer space can be visually interesting, piloting a steel-tube vehicle through a featureless sea of opaque magma is the very definition of "unfilmable". How do you actually show a shot of this in action that looks anything like you're looking at a real thing? And so the meat of the film consists of scenes inside three sets: an infinite orange background with no sense of distance or scale, a featureless vehicle with no windows, and a standard mission control (with a grade 2 textbook 2-D cross section of the earth as their mission map "Crust, Mantle, Core"). Which, okay, fine, who cares if it makes any logical sense or is nice to look at as long as it's dramatic, right? Oops, the characters all suck and everyone is constantly making nonsensical decisions when they aren't busy spouting pandering exposition to the audience. I can't really criticize any particular detail, because nothing in particular was wrong with the film, except that the entire thing doesn't have a single redeeming feature that I can think of. It comes down to this: you know those stories that young kids tell people that they make up as they go? The ones that go "and then my parents bought a horse but then it kicked my sister in the head and she died but i flew to the moon and i got a million dollars"? The Core is a story like that; a collection of moments that are supposed to be dramatic, except the whole thing is a giant string of nonsense. 3/10
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04/01/16 - The Corporation
You know those protestors who get stopped in their tracks by questions like "If this war is for oil, why doesn't America already own the oil after the last Gulf War?". The ones that have such strong opinions, but they don't know any information beyond what they copied off of someone else's picket sign? As much as I agree with their cause, I hate those guys.
...So, if you've ever read Adbusters, then this movie will teach you nothing. Actually, if you're media-savvy enough to have simply heard of this movie, then you probably have nothing to learn from it. You'll be especially underwhelmed if you've watched any Michael Moore stuff outside of Bowling For Columbine (even just the extras on the Columbine DVD). In fact, the filmmakers create entire segments that are nothing more than Michael Moore retelling stories you've heard before, and even just showing clips from his old TV show. Preaching to the converted is one thing, and can be fine if you've got an interesting point of view, or some clever stuff to say, or at least clever ways to say it, but aside from a few stylistic gimmicks, this movie is lazy. Luckily it starts strong, gets a neat little hook going to push itself forward, and there's a few really great anecdotes sprinkled in there. But the film is padded out (like 60-90 minutes too long, honest to god) with the same old boring rhetoric, and the frustrating thing is they keep getting derailed into subjects that have nothing to do with their point. They start wasting time on "somebody owns 'Happy Birthday'" and "advertising is devious!" and "there's pesticides in food!" but don't use it to draw any conclusions or contribute to any specific point. Movies like this are made interesting by putting these clips together in a structure that shows the connections between what different people are saying. But this movie is like listening to a drunken rant by your stereotypical under-informed political protestor, simply rattling off every single thing he can remember hearing through the grapevine about how messed up the world is. So the movie bogs down in the middle hour, feeling like an endless string of unrelated 10 minute TV spots. The movie finally draws to a close by simply putting Michael Moore on the screen to repeat his public-speaking closer about taking action. Except the movie hasn't provided any kind of perspective to fuel it. It's got the gumption to be a call to arms for political protest, but it's only got the brains to ape what it heard once from Moore and Chomsky, without interpretation, and perhaps even without correct understanding. Going in, I was expecting left-wing propoganda, but I was expecting the kind of higher-level intelligence you associate with the left wing. Instead I got to see proof that the left wing can be just as lazy and misinformed as the right wing, and just as prone to rallying everyone to violence as a solution. If only the movie was as smart as some of the people it interviewed... There's real humanity at the heart of these issues, and there's real irony to be shown, as demonstrated in the anecdotes of the executives. There's a video clip of a Shell executive who's sitting down to have a conversation with the protestors on his lawn, and his wife is giving them coffee and apologies that there's no soya. Everyone in the theatre laughed. If only the movie was willing to be that self-aware, to be that even-handed, to sit us down and ask the real questions that need to be asked, then maybe we all could have learned something from it. Michael Moore's films are a journey, one that Michael Moore learns something on. These filmmakers didn't learn anything. What ticks me off is that instead of helping everyone come together to see the real picture, they're happy to just try and build a left wing army every bit as dumb and lazy as the right wing army we all despise. 4/10
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04/06/11 - The Chronicles Of Riddick
I wish this movie was worse. At least I can get excited about hating a really bad movie. Or even better, sometimes it's bad enough that it's totally entertaining. But this? Dull. Tedious. Pointless. There's no particular shortcomings except for absolutely everything is completely uninteresting. 3/10
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02/06/23 - CQ
The trailer for CQ suggests something great. You have a man making two movies; one personal, the other a cheesy action spy picture. As he is pulled into the ridiculous hollywood world, his life changes, as he struggles to hold onto what's real while lured into a life that's exciting and fake. In the end, we should see his life reflected in the hollywood film, and we should see what he learned reflected in his personal film. All the disparate characters and themes and scenes should dovetail in interesting ways, and to top it all off the whole thing is wrapped up in an ultracool retro-futuristic universe. ...Well, CQ not only fails as building a coherent movie, it fails at building coherent movies within the movie, and then it even fails at delivering on the production design that's promised in the trailer. There's a dilemna in films that try to portray fictional great artists: do you show the art or just hint at it? Cause the art is only as good as the filmmakers can muster themselves. And such, the levels of irony on CQ stack up like crazy. All the problems the character has with his films are problems with the film itself. And this isn't a good thing. CQ should be a GOOD movie about a character turning his BAD movies into GOOD movies. But pulling that off would require the director of CQ to know how to make a good movie, so instead we get a BAD movie about a guy taking bad movies and not going anywhere with them. Ironic that the movie within the movie has only one thing going for it: the trailer. ...I read somewhere a quote that said "a great film is one with three good scenes and no bad ones". Well, CQ is three bad scenes and no good ones. It only scores points for the tiny scraps of production design (all of which you see in the trailer), Jason Schwartzman being awesome, and the occasional hints that the movie almost knew what it was trying to do. 3/10
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00/12/13 - Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
It's a Kung Fu movie with a real story and a strong female slant. Refreshing change of pace. The mystical action pieces are pure delight, and the storyline draws together some great themes, symbols, and intriguing character relationships. For the majority of the film I was sure it was all going to tie together into a brilliant masterpiece, but eventually the threads are left dangling without adequate payoff. The inconsistent storyline (including a badly placed and paced flashback scene and a poorly conceived climax) drags this high-aiming epic down to the realm of "merely" enjoyable action-melodrama. The film is still quite a pleasure, just not the genius it nearly was. 8/10
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09/01/03 - The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button
Life is like a box of buttons; you never know what you're going to get out of its suprisingly unremarkable plot and characters. For a 3 hour movie of mostly good scenes, it's pretty weird how nothing much is going on. Lots of stuff almost happens and doesn't. Dozens of ideas are set up and none are paid off. It feels like it was a 5 hour movie that had all the interesting parts removed. 6/10
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00/10/13 - Dancer In The Dark
Amazing, amazing film. I was shaken. Being shot on video actually works FOR this film instead of against, the first time I've ever seen that. The performances are great, the story tragic. Powerful and moving. 9/10
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08/07/20 - The Dark Knight
Dense. The basic theme is morals, and while every character has a perspective on it, nobody is cut and dried. So much so that I couldn't follow what was happening or motivating anyone for the middle part of it. I'd hazard to say it's too long and overly muddled. (And Nolan doesn't know how to shoot an action scene). But it's so dense with tone and compelling key characters that nobody really notices that it isn't wall-to-wall awesome. Which it probably is once you disentangle the plot. I didn't realize it watching it, but The Joker is motivated strictly by manipulating people into moral dilemmas for his own entertainment--very cool. 8/10
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07/10/14 - The Darjeeling Limited
I'll just put this up front: it's better than Life Aquatic. I mean, it's different. The elastic band stretched to max and now it's snapped back to only three characters in a simple setting that doesn't feel artificial. Is it better than Tenenbaums? Probably not. Bottle Rocket? Maybe. I don't know, can you appreciate a Wes Anderson movie after first viewing? The further he goes, the more the movies are about the subtleties, and the more I wonder if the whole thing would be impenetrable if not for the music. Since Tenenbaums, the first time through the music is significantly more immediate and emotional than the things the characters are doing; it's like listening to a brilliant album that's merely underscored with imagery and plot to evoke that trademark tone of beautiful melancholy. On the second viewing you know the story, so you can concentrate on the characters and spot all the subtleties that are important. And that's when the beautiful album fills out into a beautiful story about real people, and that emotional distance gets closed.
Darjeeling, while pleasing, may be the first Wes Anderson movie that doesn't quite qualify as comedy. This is a story of three deeply damaged people, each failing to cope and acting out in their own way, coming together just because they're all equally lost and lonely. India is a last-ditch effort to find meaning, but their approach is textbook and superficial. Combine that with mistrust and alienation from each other and their efforts aren't exactly earnest. You know you're in trouble when you can only bond by having a fistfight and macing each other in the face. Lucky for the audience this makes for some memorable stuff, and the comedy and sadness will only get deeper with each viewing. 8/10
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01/07/16 - Dark Days
Heartbreaking, hilarious... But mostly it's simply earnest and sincere, because it's a documentary made by its subjects: "homeless" people living in the subway tunnels of New York. There's no spin on it, it's just a self-portrait of their lives. And a good one. 7/10
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04/04/04 - Dawn Of The Dead
Efficient. ...I've got a question: how come characters in Zombie movies have never heard of the idea of a zombie before? People in Vampire movies are usually aware of vampire folklore. In zombie movies, it's always a voyage of discovery about what the infection might be and how it may spread. "You mean if one of 'THEM' bites you, then you become one of 'THEM'?" They never even SAY "zombie". It's good in a movie like 28 days later, where they care about the science, but this is a zombie movie of the "all visceral" type. More of a "holy fuck zombies!" movie. And a good example of the genre. 7/10
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06/10/15 - The Departed
Man did I ever have to pee by the end. Jason laughed at the way I was walking, not to say that he and everyone else wasn't making the same trip. It felt like what I imagine heroin might feel like. Aaaaaaah. 7/10
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07/07/11 - Die Hard 4
What a piece of shit. It starts off mediocre and then becomes a one-upmanship contest between the guys writing the plot and the guys designing the action scenes for who can come up with the most implausible undercooked horseshit. All I ask is for a single scene to make any sense whatsoever. And I don't know why people are parroting the lying marketing, almost every scene uses CG extensively. There's not a good practical gag in the whole mess. 3/10
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00/05/20 - Dinosaur
Amazing to look at. Aside from the technical feat, which is largely a question of time and money, the story is Land Before Time and Tarzan and a million other movies, so it's inoffensive and somewhat tired... good for kids probably 6/10
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03/08/25 - Dirty Pretty Things
The Good: it's gentle, well-handled, character-driven and very well acted, it's interesting and kinda realistic, which gives the ugly underworld stuff more gravity. The characters are really good. It lets you in on the world of illegal immigrants and how hard it can be to do the things we take for granted, simply because of the place you're born. It answers the question, "why don't they just leave?" in interesting ways. The Not-So-Good: it's kinda slow, the plot has problems, the point seems vague for most of the film... Basically there's nothing really wrong with the movie at all. I just found it didn't add up to much. The director wisely pays his attention to the characters and emotion and empathy, and glosses over the mechanics of the plot. This is a good choice because the characters have depth to explore whereas the plot is simple second-tier thriller stuff. But ultimately I thought there was a lack of narrative drive, and so the scenes just weren't particularily affecting or interesting, despite the hard work and good choices of the talents involved. It was all good stuff, but it just didn't gel together for me. Too schizophrenic or something. Some may love this film. Some may hate it. I have no opinion. 5/10
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01/04/18 - The Dish
Good clean fun. By the time we get to the moon landing, it's actually a pretty moving event. Good stuff. Nice to see a comedy without the conventions. ..Except for old-man bookends. Enough with old-man bookends, film people! It didn't even work in Private Ryan! 6/10
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06/06/02 - District B13
The founder of Parkour gets his own movie. Start with Ong Bak, chop it off at 80 minutes long, and shoot it with some slicker photography. It's a bite-size Ong Bak with Parkour stunts instead of elbows to the head. And there's also some elbows to the head. ...As a bonus, I learned an important lesson: exposing a politician as being tough on crime cures heroin addiction. 7/10
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02/08/12 - Dogtown And Z-Boys
A good documentary about the birth of skateboarding as we know it today. Lots of great footage of the original guys who figured out skating in empty swimming pools, lots of groovy west-coast moves, tons of old-skool goodness. It was made by one of these groundbreaking skaters, so it's a bit one sided, and it sometimes feels a bit too much like a vanity project, but hey. It's interesting nonetheless to be taken back in time to the moment they invented vert. 6/10
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03/05/18 - Down With Love
A movie completely made out of style, energy, and double-entendres. It's a film reminiscent of the 60s that never were, more 60s than the 60s. And I'm a sucker for that style of inhumanly snappy dialogue. You could allege that the energy and candy coating are a smokescreen disguising the fact that the movie might not have much under the hood, that the plot is a little bit of a mess, that it's always at least a little tongue-in-cheek. But I enjoyed it so thoroughly that I have to insist that the style IS the substance, and that it just plain works as a narrative and as a comedy. But please don't call it a "romantic" comedy, it's way too sharp for that dull moniker. 8/10
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01/05/12 - Driven
Drivel. 2/10
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00/10/20 - Drunken Master II
Jackie Chan's best film, from 1994, is now in North America. The story bits are long, but the action is some of the best fight sequences that will ever be filmed. The timing and motion and comedy make it so broad and fun, it becomes a human cartoon. Amazing physical gags, hilarious drunken-style moves, it's the epitome of spectacle cinema. Totally totally brillant. If you've only seen the North American Chan flicks, and aren't impressed, see this one; it's in a class by itself. 9/10
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01/01/09 - Dude, Where's My Car?
Quills tries to be serious and important and fails, which makes for miserable viewing. Dude aims so low it can't miss. If you're 15 years old, anyway. Can you fault a movie for that? Well, it made me sigh more than it made me laugh, so... Too bad the movie couldn't capture the brilliance of its trailers and title. 3/10
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07/09/14 - Eastern Promises
Not quite as arresting as A History Of Violence, but similar in tone etc. A couple standout scenes to make it all worthwhile, and otherwise just solid unshowy craftsmanship. Kind of like our hero. 6/10
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02/11/09 - 8 Mile
Yell yell yell, punch punch punch, rhyme rhyme rhyme, yell yell yell, punch punch punch, yell yell yell, punch punch punch, rhyme rhyme rhyme. (The rhyme parts are good, the rest doesn't add up to a whole lot.) Not a very GOOD movie, but a pretty COOL movie. 6/10
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03/10/03 - Elephant
"There's an elephant in the room and nobody is talking about it." When Columbine happened, it was used by all kinds of opposing political groups as support for their cause. "Nobody should have guns" "Everyone, especially teachers, should have guns". The blame was passed around to the fashionable targets, and the logic of the event was reduced to one-dimensional bullshit. "It's videogames" "It's bullying" "There's no prayer in schools" "They were probably gay" "Marilyn Manson". Gus Van Sant had a noble, if flawed, idea to reclaim the event from all the politicking and pay due respect to the people and the event. He wants you to live the day, and understand it from within, outside of any and all points of view that have been imposed on it. He wants you to know that there's no reductionist issue at hand, it's all issues and more. Nobody involved is completely innocent or guilty. None of the people involved should be reduced to one-dimensional symbols with singular motivations. But that's exactly the fatal flaw that most people will find with it. Since no character is allowed to be a tragic victim or someone who deserves it, no character is allowed to be a bad guy or hero--nobody is allowed to represent a specific point of view--you end up with a bunch of characters that have no character that means anything in the context of the film. Not to mention the film is paced to be incredibly slow, in order to eliminate any sense of building excitement. He needs it to be cold and dry to keep it from having a message, and to keep it from feeling remotely glamourous or entertaining. He wants to leave you on the outside to observe and have time with each moment to reflect on your own. But in doing so the movie can't absorb you, so it ends up feeling completely detached and largely unguided. Which is probably entirely accurate to how it felt to actually be there. Elephant was a noble experiment, and Gus Van Sant made exactly the movie he wanted to make, and very very well. But I can't tell you the experiment was a resounding success. Still, you have to give him credit; the movie would have been insulting if it was populated with villians, heroes, or tragic victims. In fact, I think the film would have been a disaster if he'd done anything at all differently. But as real as it feels, and as honestly as he treats the subject matter and the people involved, you still know that it's fiction, and so I didn't find it any more honest or affecting than Bowling For Columbine. But if nothing else, it's memorable. That's my rational for 7/10
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04/01/01 - Elf
The neat thing about Elf is how it takes place in the world of the classic Rankin/Bass stop-motion Christmas specials from the 60s. (Will Ferrel is dressed exactly like Hermey, the elf from Rudolph) It manages to stay consistent with those characters and art-direction, and goes so far as to be a movie that fits right in as an extention of that world, without ever getting ironic or making fun of it or tearing it down and destroying it (you know, like those wretched Dr. Suess movies?). If nothing else, Elf stands out as the only Christmas movie made in the last 20 years that is actually good. And it's funny. 6/10
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00/12/15 - The Emperor's New Groove
It's great to see Disney do an actual cartoon, something based on funny characters and animation gags. Refreshing change of pace from the constant "epics" and way more enjoyable for it. Consistently funny and totally entertaining. 7/10
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01/03/18 - Enemy At The Gates
A film as misguided as its title. It's a movie about a sniper, but with less sniping scenes than Private Ryan, and not as good sniping scenes at that. Plus it's less emotionally engaging than the Sniper Wolf bit of Metal Gear Solid. It's a good story told poorly, with a bunch of bad melodrama that derails the REAL drama; sniper versus sniper. 5/10
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00/03/24 - Erin Brockovich
Steven Soderbergh directed this film, which is the only reason I went to see it. But it was good. A girl would probably score this movie 1 point higher than I do. Still impossible to see Julia Roberts as her character and not just Julia Roberts. 7/10
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04/03/24 - Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind
Really just kind of great. People will go out of their way to declare this movie as "weird" or even "impenetrable", but if anything I think it's the most accessible movie that has been produced from a Kaufman script. Sure it's got an unorthodox structure, but it's done for a reason and it's not confusing. Maybe critics are just trying to protect people from seeing a film that's interesting and emotional and honest when they'd be more comfortable renting The Wedding Planner. If only more people had the guts to show real relationships on screen like this...to be honest about what's inside people's heads. Kaufman has proven to me that he's an expert of the art and the craft of writing. Not only does he entertain and enlighten with his ideas, he's a genius at structuring a movie that puts demands on the audience only where it helps the film. Master storyteller, and one who can invent great stories. Credit also to Gondry for being a genius with imagery. Gondry and Kaufman are a more exciting team than Jonze and Kaufman, though we should be so lucky that 10% of filmmakers could live up to either pairing. 10/10
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01/06/08 - Evolution
You've seen it all before. And much better. Still, the laughs outnumber the groans. Barely. 4/10
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04/07/03 - Fahrenheit 911
The Corporation was lazy left-wing moviemaking, researched only far enough to support the usual accusations but not far enough to prove anything or make a point. Bowling For Columbine was heartfelt; a story of Moore looking for answers, discovering things, and finding and facing some truth. Fahrenheit 911 is exactly half way between. I admire that Moore means well, but he doesn't reveal or prove anything. He doesn't call anybody out with proof or unanswerable questions, he just points at all the skeletons in the closets and the dug-up dirt, and goes "see? see?" without really having a point. Thankfully he keeps the grandstanding to a minimum, much less than I feared from the trailer. The real point of this movie isn't to steamroll Bush with a smear campaign, it's really just to be a counterpoint to what CNN has been spoonfeeding everyone for the last 3 years. This is a 2 hour collection of what people should have been seeing on the news. Moore is rightfully pissed at all the whitewashing and terrible spin-doctoring, and he wants to show you that all these assholes are full of shit and people like you are dying for it. I applaud his cause, but if his objective was to convince the right wing, or at least shake them in their beliefs, he could have done a much better job. This film won't have an impact on the election. 5/10
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00/01/19 - Fantasia 2000
Well, you know. Classical music. Half-way-to-art animation that half spoils the music, half keeps you interested. More accessable than the original, but far from a thrill ride. 6/10
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02/12/18 - Far From Heaven
It's a movie about the 50's, but the twist is that instead of being an ironic look back, or a historically accurate picture of the times, it's as if the movie itself was made in the 50's. I think it's an attempt at being the best movie from the 50's ever made. And technically it's very well executed. I understand it's even got all the studio-system symolism from the time and blah blah. But I'm not a student of the era, and when you get down to it, the leave-it-to-beaver feel on the characters and drama made me feel like none of the characters were real. I kept expecting the 50s facade to crack apart and the humanity to come out, but it was just a dry 50s melodrama, albeit one that would be have the edgiest content of the time, and be a very important movie in "its day". So though the execution was quite successful, it left me out in the cold. 6/10
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01/06/22 - The Fast And The Furious
First off, this is "bad" cinema. The dialogue and storyline are laughable, the characters are stock. But you know what? This is porno for car nerds. The dialogue doesn't matter, cause the real dialogue and character come from the cars. We're here to see the hoods come up, get a nice view of the intake system, listen to the engines growl and pop and hiss, and then watch them lay rubber neck and neck on their way down the street. And they made this movie RIGHT. Fuck you Renny Harland and Driven! Fuck you Gone In Sixty Seconds! Fuck you action movies without coherent action! This film even makes going in a straight line exciting and strategic! Let alone the street chases and hijacking scenes. Even the character development is earnestly done and well-shot. The best car porno ever. 8/10
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03/06/07 - 2 Fast 2 Furious
The first F&F was a total "B" picture, top to bottom. For the sequel, they've upgraded it to "A" status. The dialogue is intentionally funny instead of unintentionally. The story is paced well, without a big lull through the middle. Paul Walker even comes off as a decent actor, maybe because his character has some character this time, or maybe because he doesn't have to share the screen with Diesel. Overall, it's a slicker, more polished, more appealing movie. And it's got all the ingredients necessary to be a worthy sequel: a circuit race, an interesting relay race, even some highway action. So why did the entire film get completely outclassed by its predecessor? Because the car idea is stale? Because the story rejects the car culture setting in favour of lame cop nonsense? Nope, it's because they fucked up the whole point of any car movie. CAR STUNTS. Any car movie worth its salt knows that the appeal is you're doing real stunts with real cars and filming it. F&F may have done the CG thing with the first drag race, but it was okay because they were planting you into the subjective experience of Paul Walker on his first race. Afterward they kept everything real, made all the action make sense. And in the end they won the day with the semi scene and then the airborne Dodge. They didn't edit around any impossible nonsense. They didn't make the cars do anything that broke the reality. And the staging and editing was fluid. One shot leads to another, the viewer understands the physical logic of the race or action scene. But now John Singleton is in control, and he thinks that quick cutaways of cars swooshing by makes for excitement. He's sadly mistaken. Especially when the cars are CG, and especially when the cars start taking to the skies and landing without a scratch. It's a sad state of affairs when the sequel to The Fast And The Furious gets outdriven by The Dukes Of Hazzard. 5/10
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06/06/17 - The Fast And The Furious: Tokyo Drift
Better than #2, but doesn't touch the chocolate and cheese perfection of #1. The dialogue is bad enough to be good again (though not "sandwich crazy" brilliant), and there's very little of the CG non-stunts as we deserve. Unfortunately, most of the stunt driving is shot too tight and cut up too fine to capture the exhiliration. And like #2, car sponsorship ruins things a bit as half the cars are 350Zs and nothing else very interesting really shows up...they forgot that the cars ARE the characters, not just background dressing. There isn't too much of Japan on the screen either as pretty much every character is a non-Japanese english speaker that's just as "not from Japan" as our hero. Not nearly as interesting as it could have been, but not bad. Adequate. 5/10
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06/11/16 - Fast Food Nation
The emphasis is on the Nation part of the title; it's not about fast food as much as it's about what fast food represents: a big broad shiny wrapper over something that's a load of crap. People don't bother to think, they just buy the wrapper. I didn't find it political in a "look how bad the industry is" kind of way, I found it more a statement of "let's all be honest with ourselves". The movie assumes we all know that fast food is unhealthy. We all know they add artificial scent. We even know that they kill cows to make hamburger, but do we really KNOW these things? Sure we understand the concept but do we think about the process? I really do think that if you're going to eat the meat, you have to be able to stomach the killing floor. Let's all be honest with ourselves.
...So I really admire the concept. The execution is hard to recommend. There are parts that are quite moving and parts that make interesting points and counterpoints... it has a little Traffic in it, but gives way to Linklater's weaknesses. There's the Before-Sunrise-style unnatural monologue-essays, but the key problem is too much invested in the day-to-day minutiae of illegal immigrants with seldom a point or observation made. If you like Linklater in general (like me) you can get past it for the good stuff, but if his talky flicks irritate you be warned. 7/10
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01/03/11 - 15 Minutes
John Herzfeld needs to stop directing his own scripts. He's too in love with every one of his words and characters and scenes, and he sucks at tone and pacing. A director with talent would have reinterpreted this into a movie worth something. 3/10
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01/07/13 - Final Fantasy
Wow, that's one shiny turd. ...Question: why do the commandos wear body armour? ...Answer: Because it *looks good*, even though it's pointless and stupid and shows how the filmmakers weren't thinking at all, just going with the genre cliches. But SO badly. What an enormous waste of effort. 3/10
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03/06/02 - Finding Nemo
Pixar always makes good movies. But I'm starting to see a trend. There's the top-tier Pixar films where they take a fundamental truth about life (toys are alive when you leave, monsters live in your closet) as a jumping off point for great characters with interesting motivations to interact in ways that create a plot that's natural, organic, exciting, and poignant. Then there's the second-tier films where they start with a world (bugs, fish) and there's a basic adventure plot that seems more in service of interesting visuals and set pieces than story. The focus seems to be more on technical and aesthetic development than on storytelling moments. Funny characters are added, but their interactions and growth seems more tacked-on for dramatic effect than born from within. I found Nemo to belong to this second category. It's not that the obstacles faced on the adventure aren't exciting or pretty, they just don't service the plot as elegantly as the top-tier stories, where the obstacles are born from the characters' choices and weaknesses. So yeah, I rank this one above A Bug's Life, but below the Toy Story and Monsters Inc tier. Still better than Shrek though. 7/10
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03/03/30 - Flower & Garnet
People like to think that with humans, specific inputs create specific results. You play videogames, you become violent. You are poor, you become a criminal. You have a crappy childhood, you become a crappy parent. These ideas don't give humans much credit. It may be overly optimistic, but some people like to think that people are smarter than that, that people can be aware of right and wrong, and strive for what's right, without being raised on specific value systems. People also don't give kids much credit for being thoughtful. Flower & Garnet are two kids with a piss-poor parenting situation. The film is one of those stark and realistic small-town dramas (The Pledge, In The Bedroom, The Sweet Hereafter...), and it's a good one. The thing I liked about it was the actions of the characters aren't summed up by simple movie logic of setup and payoff. These are real humans on the screen, and their actions make sense in an unspoken, true-to-life way. No easy answers, just the truth. The acting is really good, especially Garnet. Watch out Haley Joel. 7/10
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04/02/07 - The Fog Of War
This movie will make you smarter. 8/10
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08/04/24 - Forgetting Sarah Marshall
It's not quite Knocked Up or Superbad, but it's got legs. I was impressed. The key stuff is written from life and you can tell. It's painful and funny often at the same time. If you've ever broken up with someone or been broken up with, you'll probably relate, and laugh really hard at parts, and suck air through your teeth at others. 7/10
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05/09/05 - The 40-Year-Old Virgin
Had me...then lost me. It's admirable that they kept things on a higher brow most of the time, keeping our hero's dignity intact, and even busting out some 'gay' jokes in a not-unclassy way. But 2 Hours is a little long for a one joke premise, especially in the 3rd act that felt really first draft; they start throwing in incredibly awful coincidences explained away with expository dialogue (friends just show up INSIDE crazy girl's house?) and then the tedious extra misunderstandings when we're well past the point of "okay, get them together already". People seem to like it, but for me... par. Great tee-off, but an ugly 2-putt at the end. 5/10
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06/11/18 - For Your Consideration
Not quite as dry as A Mighty Wind, but still pretty dry. There's no denying the magical gems of dialogue in any of these movies. They're hard to rate because they all need repeat viewings to become loved and quoted, but something seemed not quite as good about this one...the humour is expectedly dry, but also very broad...maybe not a good combo? I've been trying to compare it to the other ones to figure out why I smiled through it but didn't totally buy in. Guffman had people that were aggressively bad at what they did in a funny way, where people here are bad at their jobs in a detached, pedestrian way that made it hard to laugh at? ...Or maybe the lousy filmmaking just hits too close to home for me. Like a dogshow nut that sees Best In Show and wonders what everyone is laughing at. Or a metal band watching Spinal Tap and getting knots in their stomachs. 5/10
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06/11/26 - The Fountain
Just a little movie about mankind's coming to terms with his own mortality from the beginnings of civilization across modern science and into the future. You could call it artsy-fartsy and pretentious and I wouldn't be able to argue, but if you're willing to buy into it it's worth your while. The parts that have their feet on the ground are downright moving. And beyond those parts it dares to overreach. That's a good thing. 7/10
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02/04/12 - Frailty
Good concept. Weak execution. I think the core problem is that in the wake of Sixth Sense, audiences are too keen on scoping out plot twists. Sixth Sense was good because it was compelling regardless of the "truth" of the plot. Frailty stumbles because it immediately presents two possible truths, black and white, and puts the question of which is real front and center for the whole film. There's no ambiguity or nuance beyond it. It's Bill Paxton's first try at directing (unless you count the music video "Fish Heads") and I think he stuck too close to the amateurish storytelling of the script. The structure of the film is kind of creaky, and there's too much voiceover. It could have been turned into something, but the whole project seems like a good idea that came off a bit lame. 4/10
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08/12/14 - Frost/Nixon
Kind of a "lite" version of The Insider. Very compelling. Though instead of being about personal integrity and The Greater Good like The Insider, it's about a couple of self-serving screwups...though one is on a much grander scale with a much greater intellect. It's a great matchup in unexpected ways. 8/10
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02/05/26 - FUBAR
Simple good fun, a breezy 80 minutes of bangers rockin and drinkin and generally givin'r, but with a story to give it some direction. This mockumentary pushes the Chris Guest envelope by being less overtly silly, more realistic, and trying new things like getting the documentary crew into the story, incorporating some real people who aren't in on the joke interacting with the characters, (blurring the lines between fiction and reality) and I'm pretty convinced that alot of the drunkenness was method acting. It may not be a great film, but it's very entertaining and you get a real sense of how much fun they had making it. You can tell it's guerilla filmmaking, and that energy is infectious. 6/10
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00/01/17 - Galaxy Quest
Better than Phantom Menace. 6/10
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03/01/04 - Gangs Of New York
There's a blurry line between Big Sprawling Masterpiece and Big Sprawling Mess. This one crosses back and forth across that line, but ends up favouring the latter. I think the problem is over-editing; it feels like there's been too many cooks and too many second-guesses, and instead of concentrating on a core, it tries to hit every single little beat (revenge, love story, father-son, historical info, racial politics, government politics, character politics...it can't make up its mind!) and by doing so fails to hit anything properly. One reason to see it is the character performance by Daniel Day-Lewis. Other than that, it's pretty lukewarm. 6/10
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04/08/16 - Garden State
Another one of those off-beat actor's movies with the usual vibe of being kind of unfocused and comprised of good individual moments that don't fit together very well... except this time the overall tone and quirkiness and attitude of it really pulls it together. And I like how it captured the feeling of a new relationship properly, ignoring the contrived empty "drama" and cliche of so-called romantic movies. Mostly. Maybe it didn't capture a sense of yearning so much as just let Natalie Portman be so cute that I could hardly stand it. 7/10
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00/04/13 - Ghost Dog: The Way Of The Samurai
Hey, a modern hitman living by the philosophy of medieval Japan. Sounded like a cool premise. Fairly interesting throughout, but nothing particularily stunning. Some great characters. 7/10
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01/08/25 - Ghost World
After graduating High School, most people assimilate into the "real world" and start living the way they're supposed to, instead of the idealized and naive high school way. Enid refuses to compromise and soon finds herself amongst society's ghosts, people who are there, but aren't really "living". Which way of life is better? Well, one of them is certainly lonelier. One of those poignant films; often hilarious, occasionally heartbreaking but mostly just really really intelligent. 8/10
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01/01/21 - The Gift
Slow, but at times very scaaary. Plus Katie Holmes' boobies. I mostly liked it, but I wouldn't want to see it a second time. 6/10
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00/05/05 - Gladiator
Spectacle: quite good. Story: fine. 8/10
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00/08/22 - Godzilla 2000
There's an hour of boring setup, but then the film redeems itself when the rubber-suit guys finally go at it. In the end, the film teaches us that in the battle between good and evil the loser is always Tokyo. 4/10
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00/06/09 - Gone In Sixty Seconds
None of the good bits of MI2, but none of the bad bits either. I like cars. That's the only reason I enjoyed this film at all. 4/10
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05/11/11 - Good Night, And Good Luck.
If nothing else, it's a bit of a history lesson. But it's definitely no The Insider. It's way too straightforward, too dry, too cold, and a little too smug. 5/10
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02/01/13 - Gosford Park
If you're looking for a complex but smoothly executed interwoven character study and class system satire, with an early 20th century Britain setting and a classy bit of "the butler did it" whodunnit thrown in, and plenty of comedy and good acting from a great cast and smooth pacing and skillful technical execution, you can't do any better than this. If only that were the kind of movie I'm generally looking for myself. But it's completely entertaining. 7/10
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99/12/ - The Green Mile
The first third is boring. The second third sets up a brilliant situation. Life and death right there, death row, a giver of life, the perfect setup for exploring the notions of life and death, of man's relationship to it. He is often in control of the science of death, yet at a loss spiritually to understand it. In the last third it quickly becomes evident that the filmmakers had nothing to actually say, and the film proceeds to throw everything away as it degenerates into a shitty Steven King story. And it's long. Don't believe the we-feel-sorry-for-Shawshank buzz, this is not a great film. In fact, the more I think about it, the less I think it was even a good film. 4/10
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00/11/18 - How The Grinch Stole Christmas
Do you like Jim Carrey? That's the question, because this isn't The Grinch, this is Jim Carrey's sarcastic fast-talking other-movie-referencing Grinch. It felt to me like Carrey was less performing the story than making fun of it. The art direction didn't help, ending up nightmarish instead of pleasant and cute, which threw a dark tone on everything. ..So, it's basically a Carrey character film, which is good and bad. The story gets lost, but it also means that it has some really, really funny moments in it too, mostly due to Carrey's amazing physical acting. But I have to say that Carrey's performance wore on me. The Grinch just wouldn't shut up. And in the end, I didn't believe the Grinch had changed at all; he was still a sarcastic idiot. 4/10
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07/04/13 - Grindhouse
Right up my alley: a silly/gory zombie-and-guns movie followed by a cars and girls movie. Robert Rodriguez should only ever make B movies, it's totally his medium. But Tarantino needs to find a better way to write dialogue than doing a pile of coke and just writing stream of consciousness monologues in his own voice. But he redeems himself with a car chase sequence that's one for the books. I think I want to be a stunt driver. 8/10
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00/05/28 - Hamlet
I don't know how to rate this flick. Hamlet fans would find it clever. Otherwise it's kinda slow and oddly paced, but really stylish. 7/10
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08/06/23 - The Happening
I can't figure out why everyone was directed to act like they'd just suffered a concussion and were reading words off a page that they'd never seen before, making sure not to put any emotion into it. You're better off watching Frozen Grand Central on youtube (or vimeo), it's way more impressive and spooky in only 2 minutes. 4/10
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01/11/18 - Harry Potter And The Sorcerer's Stone
Long. Not so much for the time, but because the movie is really episodic and scattered. Every scene is supposed to feel like the big important bit, but none of it really feels connected together. I haven't read the book. And watching this film doesn't make me want to. Or rather, it DOES make me want to, because the book has got to be more interesting and entertaining than this film that mostly just feels flat. I'm sure the movie's a lot better when you've read the book, since you'd be familiar with Harry Potter the character, know what's going on in his mind, because the film sure doesn't illustrate him as much of anything. He just kind of stands around looking sad for the vast majority of it. Flat. Flat is the best way to describe pretty much any aspect of the film. Except maybe "dark". As in the lighting. There's maybe 3 scenes that don't take place in rimlit blue and black shadowy dust cellars. Well actually, sometimes the shadowy dust places are orange. Anyway, it all just contributes to an overwhelming sense of flat. The film would actually have been quite good if it weren't for the flat-handed direction of Chris Columbus, who refused to punch any scene above any other scene. It's not a bad film, it's just... flat. 5/10
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04/06/05 - Harry Potter: Prisoner Of Azkaban
The first 2 movies were lame, Chris Columbus sucks. But the director of Y Tu Mama steps in and handles this one artfully. I really liked it. I haven't read the books, so I assumed the minor plot holes had an answer. It's cool to see teenagers get a little angsty and spiteful when they have magical powers, and it's great to see things get a little creepy and serious. Finally some drama, some character, and finally a movie that makes the Harry Potter world feel like somewhere you'd want to go. This time they remembered to put the magic in. 8/10
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05/12/20 - Harry Potter: Goblet Of Fire
More really good stuff. It's a close call, but I think I still like the 3rd one better, it had more a sense of adventure and wonder. I'm not sure I dig the peril, adventure, or plausability presented by some weird planned sporting event with ill-defined rules, it's just more contrived than when the characters cause their own adventures. Luckily it's not much of an issue because the characters and their development carries the movie no problem. It's completely entertaining and engrossing top to bottom. 7/10
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01/08/16 - Hedwig And The Angry Inch
If you liked Moulin Rouge... well, Hedwig isn't really "better", just "different". But also better. Instead of boisterous and hollow, it's deep and poignant. (But still loud and stylish and hilarious) Instead of 80s covers, it's original glam-punk music. (and good - Bowie would be proud if he had come up with this as a concept albumn) Instead of cartoon characters and themes, it's real and human and thoughtful. 9/10
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04/04/11 - Hellboy
Listening to people talk, I think this one is more enjoyable to viewers who don't know the comic than fans like me. I think it's because the main characters are rad, but the fans are already familiar with the characters, so then we're left to pay attention to the story, which is terrible. Del Toro sucks at story. And the characters they added aren't worth it. But at least they stayed true to the character, and I give them major respect for getting this movie made for that money under the studio system. Still, somebody teach this guy to tell a story. Give the audience some way to measure at least ONE character's progress toward or away from a goal. 5/10
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00/03/31 - High Fidelity
I quite enjoyed this agressively-styled flick that explores relationships in the world of a guy who's such a pop-culture by-product he can't seem to get past the TV image of what a relationship is supposed to be. Music and Love, interwoven and commenting on eachother. Real characters, great performances. Sharp. Funny. ...Watching it again, I've grown to really love this film for its pace, its comedy, and above all its true honesty about relationships and the male mind. 9/10
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05/04/29 - The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy
The front of this version of the guide should say in large friendly letters "Don't Bother". Douglas Adams deserves skillful storytelling, not this half-baked amateur best-try. Its heart is in the right place, but it ultimately fails at capturing anything but fleeting moments of proper Hitchikerness. 3/10
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05/09/28 - A History Of Violence
It's good to know before you see this movie that the title refers not so much to the main character's past as it does to the entire human history of violence, ever since the day that first monkey bashed that other monkey with a bone and then threw it into the sky and they jump-cut to a space station. It's in our DNA: we're evolved from the cavemen that were better at kicking ass than the weakling cavemen. But while people whine about the violence and the culture and the kids these days, we've actually become way LESS violent than the 'good' old days. We actually think it's nice to let the weak people have a fair shot. Nobody likes a bully. But man, that bully? Wouldn't it be great to bust that guy's face?! Especially if it had to be done to protect our young which would impress the chicks and raaaaaar caveman! And so we go watch violent movies and pretend. Cronenberg is cool because he lets us look at the aftermath of the violence a little bit too long to let us wonder if it's really that exciting and cool after all. But besides that subtle theme, the movie is a pretty entertaining noir, what with the violence and nudity and swearing (and a couple really neat performances and cool characters). It's a tight simple little story, but Cronenberg tells it slowly and deliberately to let it sink in, and it's got a cool theme kicking around in the background for me to think about afterward. 7/10
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07/04/01 - The Host
Like a Godzilla movie, in a good way. On one hand it's kinda silly and good, and on the other hand it's got a really cool creature sequence. Wears out its welcome a bit as it goes on. 4/10
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07/04/21 - Hot Fuzz
And you thought Shaun Of The Dead had inappropriately graphic violence. Chock full of good gags, but the inconsistent tone really threw me...I lost interest in where it was going. (Buddies? Mystery? Comedic action? Serious action? Horror? All of the above.) Seems like a bit of a step backwards from Shaun. 5/10
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07/08/10 - Hot Rod
You know how all those dumb-fun comedies have the plot where the hero has to raise some round number of money (orphanage, house, operation) so he's forced to enter some thing he can't hope to win but we root for him? This movie has the best reason to raise the money ever. (The hero needs to pay for an operation for his ailing dad so he can face the old man in a fair fight and beat the living shit out of him). Also it has a world-class "falling down a hill" scene. 6/10
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03/02/08 - The Hours
I didn't get a lot out of this movie. And while the performances were all good (I especially liked Nicole Kidman), there comes a point where scene after scene of crying on cue just gets tiresome. I haven't read Mrs Dalloway, and I'm not very familiar with Viginia Woolf. If I was, or was a girl, I'm sure I would have gotten more out of it, but without, it just seemed like a mopey trudging movie that was lucky to have good acting to keep it afloat. 5/10
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05/01/01 - House Of Flying Daggers
It shows a potential at first that isn't realised. There's a few scenes that make it seem like it's really going somewhere, but eventually it just sort of drags on and on, and then it goes so far as to just repeat the same 3 scenes over and over. Okay, enough with the tearing at eachother clothes! And how many times can the same character die? By the end it's revealed itself to be just some kind of dumbass Harlequin romance with not-very-interesting Kung Fu. 4/10
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05/05/30 - Howl's Moving Castle
I'll save true judgement for a version with subtitles (especially after seeing how the fucking godawful american dub of Porco Rosso raped the entire film), but regardless of the words Miyazaki fumbled this one. I've read the (great) book this is based on, but the funny thing is that while it has a lot in common with Kiki's, Miyazaki chose instead to remove all the magic stuff and replace it with ripoffs of all his other films. So we get some kind of Nausicaa/Laputa/Spirited Away story, but with the strong lead character of the book hobbled by all the extra added noise. He even added war scenes to a story without one...is he trying to comment on his favourite themes, or is he just too in love with drawing airships and black gooey guys? I've got nothing against changing the source material--in fact I started to get excited half way through about the interesting direction he was taking the characters and story--but then the film derails itself into a thematic mess with no dramatic thread. It's fine to not have time to include some of the best (and most important) scenes in the book, but to then spend 30 minutes on a brand new subplot that eventually doesn't have anything to do with anything... sorry, but it's been sharply downhill since Mononoke. 4/10
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03/06/21 - Hulk
What a big hulking mess. I've heard of people criticizing the acting, but I think they're really misplacing criticism of the script. Of course the characters are going to seem like suck when they have no motives, no goals, and no obstacles to those nonexistent goals. If it wasn't for the great actors putting in their best effort, the thin fart of a plot would collapse on itself. This movie had such high aspirations, but it failed on every level except for the technical ones. The CG was actually way better in context than the commercials make it look. The multi-panel editing thing was good, but only because it was the only interesting thing about the first hour, the only thing keeping me awake. I wouldn't mind the long wait before the big green guy shows up if it actually had any connection to the rest of the movie whatsoever. When things finally get going, Hulk smashes some giant poodles, and then later he fights an electric cloud underwater. Good job, writers. Idiots. And nothing Hulk does has any effect on Bruce Banner. Bruce has no struggle, no coming to terms with the beast. Nobody learns anything! The movie is about nothing! What a colossal missed opportunity. The worst thing is they tried to do all the stuff that they were supposed to try to do, but they missed every target by a mile. It has its moments, but only when Hulk smashes. I found it just barely held my attention as it moved along. But my lack of getting absorbed by the fiction might have something to do with the row of 11-year-olds behind me making snoring noises and talking through the whole thing. 5/10
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00/02/02 - The Hurricane
Watch Do The Right Thing and The Shawshank Redemption and you'll have seen 10 times the movie this is.  Unfortunate, as the real life story is amazing. 6/10
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07/12/29 - I Am Legend
It's half a pretty good movie. The scary bits are properly scary, though the CG things look kinda stupid and stretchy instead of good like dudes in makeup in every zombie movie ever for way cheaper. Read the book, it's great. And it's short: barely longer than the movie. Neither spoils the other, in fact knowing one will make the other better because of the completely opposite plot twists. For example the book maintains consistency and logic, has dramatic twists that make sense, and is really good all the way to the end. 5/10
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04/10/16 - I Heart Huckabees
The trailer made me want to see this so bad, but it didn't live up. O. Russel promises enlightening philosophy but provides mostly confused, banal ideas. But that's just in the overall big picture. The movie is made of details and moments that are mostly pretty great. Mark Wahlberg is awesome as an overly aggro, overanalitical nihilist. He has suprising chemistry with Schwartzman. The movie's energy keeps it afloat. There's a good serving of really fun stuff, but when you get down to it, it nagged on me the whole time that I was watching a movie made of fragments that don't add together properly, no matter how many on-the-nose voiceovers they add to the trying-too-hard dream imagery. Sorry O. Russel, but the magic feeling doesn't happen, next time don't try to force it. 5/10
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02/03/17 - Ice Age
Technicals: Really impressive. The animation is way better than Shrek, easily on par with Pixar. I was also impressed by the quality of the rendering. It just looked softer and warmer and more like clay than polygons. And the overall visual direction was a nice break. The models had a cartoon style and shape. Artistic: It's a good film. Mostly funny jokes, great characters. A little more kid-skewed than Pixar/Shrek, but I didn't mind at all. The character motivations are pretty vague and inconsistent, which keeps the story from really paying off. If we want to play the competition game, it's as good as the over-rated Shrek, better than A Bug's Life, but not quite Monster's Inc. 7/10
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03/12/29 - In America
Jim Sheridan directed The Boxer, which I really like. This is his latest, inspired and based on his own family, and while the movie doesn't really stand out in any immediate or easily described way, there's something so personal and honest and real about it... it just snuck up on me in a quiet subtle way, and despite any technical nitpicking one could try to apply, the simple fact is the emotion and humanity of it just totally knocked me on my ass. 8/10
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05/01/29 - In Good Company
When The Insider came out, nobody really saw it because it didn't have a hook. The content of the movie couldn't be summed up in a few images or catchphrases, so despite hearing good things, nobody got around to seeing it. In Good Company is going to suffer the same fate. In and out of theatres and nobody notices and meanwhile it's a better movie and better acting than most of our Oscar nominees. I can't sum it up other than to say that for once someone has written a group of characters that are interesting and complex and interact in meaningful ways that are dramatic and funny and it all flows together into this great little movie that doesn't try too hard but subtly nails things perfectly and says something new without overstating itself. The characters are well written but all the actors really bring them to life beautifully. Everyone does a fantastic job. ...Still, it has its flaws, it's not one of those great films, but damned if it's not the best thing playing in the last three months (and probably the next three too) 8/10
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02/01/27 - In The Bedroom
A movie that just kind of simmers. The tension cranks up and up and it feels like everything is going to to explode any second, and it sustains that feeling. Kind of harrowing to watch. Fantastic acting, it's really great to see this kind of depth and texture and subtlety. And the film itself always seems hyper-realistic. Overall, I think it's a lot like The Pledge, only done better, or maybe like The Sweet Hereafter, but without the hard questions and complexity. Really engaging and real. 7/10
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08/06/21 - The Incredible Hulk
Hulk smash good this time. 6/10
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04/11/05 - The Incredibles
Brad Bird finally wins. This one is more of a grown-up drama than the usual Pixar movie, but no less entertaining. It fits right in with the upper echelon of Pixar films. Great entertainment, not a bad scene in the lot. Not an abundance of absolutely brilliant original scenes and ideas, so I give it a "meagre" 8/10
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08/05/26 - Indiana Jones 4
I feared the worst, so this was a pleasant surprise in most places, though it totally lived up to the fear in other places. It's more like people goofing around and calling it an Indy movie than an actual worthy Indy movie. That impression might strictly be because of all the CG non-stunts (and ending). The practical stuff is good. 5/10
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06/03/25 - Inside Man
Solid little bank robbery movie. The good bits are in the Spike Lee character scenes, but figuring out what the robbery strategy is keeps the movie going. It's no Dog Day Afternoon, but it's willing to have a character make reference to it. Expertly crafted, other than it drags on a little long in a couple places where you're wondering not so much where it's going but why you should care. 7/10
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The Insider
Damn, Michael Mann knows how to make films. He takes this story I thought would be boring and digs an epic, sprawling story about integrity out of it. Brilliant acting, photography, music, storytelling. 10/10
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02/06/10 - Insomnia
I find thrillers kinda lame generally. There's just too much "why is he doing that?" and "if he would just..." which adds up to a general feeling of plot manipulation. Insomnia is more intelligent--which is good--but even more interesting is when the movie ignores the typical serial killer mystery stuff and starts to focus on the real hooks: the sleep deprivation 24 hour sun thing, and especially the moral ambiguity angles. The line separating good and evil gets really blurry, and that's what makes this film interesting. Unfortunately, the sleepless bright nights aren't handled in an interesting way, and the movie backs away from the cool moral angles and concentrates on the straight up hollywood "thriller" aspect. I hear the original Insomnia is more the film I would be looking for. This one's still pretty solid though. 7/10
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07/11/03 - Into The Wild
On one hand you have this symbol of the absolute extreme of going it alone, to live on the fringes and by the law of nature. On the other hand, a shred of common sense points out this guy is bloody-minded with no perspective and a death wish. If he had a map, if had boots, if he knew what he was doing...but any of that would have destroyed the point. He shouldn't be idolized, but he should be appreciated for showing us how far one can go. It's a great story, and it happened. And the places he finds, all the communities that are out there on the fringes, well they should make any viewer ashamed for continuing to live in one place, knowing only of conventional existence, owning more than you can carry... How many of us live as much in our whole lives as this guy did during those 2 years? 8/10
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03/10/22 - Intolerable Cruelty
So it's a Coen Brother's movie, but the first one they directed but didn't write. And it kind of feels that way; Coen-esque, but not quite Coen. I guess it was just the lack of dream sequences and howling fat men... Anyway, it's a fun ride. It's another nice throwback to really sharp, quick dialogue, it's really funny, you know the whole deal. It's basically like Down With Love, but I didn't like it quite as much because it wasn't as purely stylish, and its cynical core betrayed its occassionaly romantic intentions. Though I'm all for cynicism. If only it had the guts to take it further. But hey, it's supposed to be a classic romantic-comedy farce, so what do you expect? 6/10
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08/05/03 - Iron Man
With superheroes, guys wish they were Spider-Man or Superman etc, but I don't want to be Iron Man at all. I want to be Tony Stark. The alter-ego is way more fun. Rich, famous, charismatic, and with the greatest workshop ever. Just build whatever I feel like whenever I want. The last thing I'd build is a robot suit to fight crime. 7/10
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01/10/28 - Iron Monkey
The Kung Fu is sped up faster than I've ever seen before, which is bad. It has more leap-of-logic editing to string the moves together than I've ever seen, which is bad. While it has a bit of solidly impressive stuff and a few really good scenes, it mostly relies on really over-the-top-to-the-point-of-silly wire fighting. Which is actually pretty entertaining, if you don't mind the unfeasible side of kung fu films. They were smart not to bog the movie down with boring exposition bits, so the film cruises along fine. But I can only recommend it if you're really in the mood for some silly kung fu. 4/10
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03/06/15 - The Italian Job
A totally adequate heist movie. With real stuntwork thank god. Good solid fun, no surprises. But could they maybe photograph Charlize Theron in a way that doesn't make her look like the most beautiful woman in the history of time? Cause it's killing me, seriously. 6/10
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05/06/19 - It's All Gone Pete Tong
Contrary to the advertising, it's not a mockumentary (it's shot subjectively, and well), and it's not even really a comedy. I was kind of expecting/hoping for an indictment of the whole superstar DJ/long-past-the-sell-by rave culture, but instead it's really a character drama with some laughs and moments of overt silliness, but with a serious theme by the end. Block out the noise and learn how to feel. 7/10
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05/11/19 - Jarhead
Some really great memorable imagery. And a lot of interesting, funny, tragic (often all at the same time) bits that show what it was really like to be there, as writen by someone who was. This is what the military is really like these days, just as we all suspected, but somehow way more real for all the details. 7/10
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01/08/30 - Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back
One dumb fucking movie. With a few good laughs. 3/10
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01/04/19 - Josie And The Pussycats
Actually pretty clever and funny. Pretty effectively satirizes the pop culture money machine. The universe they create of billboards and ads everywhere (even underwater in the Beluga pool) is just brilliant. 5/10
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08/02/19 - Jumper
A whole movie about Nightcrawler...two Nightcrawlers even, and yet there's no action scene as good as X-Men 2's opening. There's nothing bad though, it gets by. 4/10
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07/12/28 - Juno
I liked it. Some people want to whine about it trying too hard or being too cool or too "typically indie" or the music or whatever...these people need to get over themselves. I do know that there are characters here that are better drawn in 2 short scenes than the main characters of popular trilogies. 8/10
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01/07/28 - Jurassic Park 3
Solid summer fare. 6/10
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00/04/08 - Keeping The Faith
I dig Eddie Norton's work, and this is his directorial debut, so I went to see the advance screening. He turns in a competent showing on a by-the-books romantic comedy with some minor religious undertones. Largely forgettable, but entertaining. 6/10
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01/02/08 - Kikujiro
A string of episodes, mostly comic but some poignant, about a belligerent ex-gangster taking a lonely kid on a road trip. The pace is slow and relaxed, feeling like the long summer vacation from school that the film is about. Which is good and bad. A lot of the movie works really well; some of the funniest cuts I've ever seen and a nice theme of the gangster being a grown-up version of the kid, only not really grown-up at all. But a bunch of the movie doesn't quite work, with some overly-long and disconnected episodes derailing the already fragile flow. 6/10
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03/10/11 - Kill Bill: vol 1
It seems weird to me to give Tarantino any props for indulging his ego any further, especially with a movie that's really so thin at the core (Ebert says "all storytelling and no story"), but holy. Fucking. Shit. I really think he nailed something here. This is a movie for movie lovers, NOT "film", but movies. A movie he made for himself. And for people like him; anyone who digs old spagetti westerns, 50s samurai films (these two already have a lot in common), old kung fu epics (From Bruce Lee to Jackie Chan), 70s blacksploitation, girls kicking ass (the true action staple since "Come Drink With Me"), and for some reason, it really struck me as seeming like Japanese anime (it was probably all the hyper-stylized characters and over-the-top spraying blood [it goes head-to-head with Dead Alive at times-they even go black-and-white for a bit so the R-rated audience can stomach it]). Tarantino has really actually succeeded in distilling down all that B-movie history, adding his own unique perspective, and creating something new and beautiful. In a way, I think he may have made the hardest, boldest, baddest, most balls-to-the-wall pull-out-all-the-stops kick-ass, PUREST action movie ever. Not to raise your expectations or anything. I even kind of liked the fact that it ended when it did with a "to be continued". A movie so huge and hard-hitting needs an intermission at that point. It's just too bad the intermission is 4 months long. Until the second half lands, and it can prove to be one of my few favorite films ever, I'm holding it at 9/10.
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04/04/18 - Kill Bill vol 2
You can't pay off viscerally better than the last half of vol 1, so Tarantino switches it up for the second half. It would make sense all in a line, but on its own this one feels like too much talk and not enough action. I was excited about the purity of the first one, but this one seems to reverse decisions, give unnamed people their name, ruin the orderly checklist, stuff like that. I suppose it makes for a nice changeup or something, but I couldn't help feeling burned. There were whole scenes that felt extraneous, what happened to the economy we saw in the beginning? Overall good stuff, but it's a little deflated, a little flabby, in comparison to where it felt like it was going. 8/10
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05/12/14 - King Kong
Lord of the Rings just kept ending and ending and ending for an hour too long. This one keeps on middling and middling and middling for an hour too long. How many different giant animals do we need to see nameless people run away from and swing swords at and get killed by? Action can be so boring when it's all fake. Around the redundant and slow stuff is some really good bits though. I just wish Peter Jackson would start getting his stuff done on time so he could actually watch his whole movie before the premiere. (and then fix the pacing) I really hope that's the problem, because I fear it's really that he's just fallen in love with the "12 hour movie" feeling. King Kong just doesn't have the plot for it. It's just a little awkward that with all the junk they added, by the end, when they say that "great" last line, it's totally untrue. 5/10
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07/12/18 - The King Of Kong
You couldn't write a better villain. The injustice is palpable! It's kind of lame when people show up to this movie with the intention of laughing at the people on screen for being losers, but I think half way through the movie had converted even those hipsters into the drama of it, rooting for the little guy against the dark forces. Afterwards I looked up my pinball machine on Twin Galaxies, looks like I could place in the worldwide top 10 no problem. 6/10
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01/07/08 - Kiss Of The Dragon
Top notch action scenes. B-level plot. But it's a Kung Fu movie, so... Thank god it was directed by someone who knows how to do action scenes, instead of the usual hollywood music-video poseur. Too bad the dialogue drags it down, and the weak story makes the action have little weight. Par. 5/10
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07/06/03 - Knocked Up
This is so good I'm compelled to buy Freaks And Geeks. Definitely better than 40-year-old Virgin. It wanders, but in a good way. It's so nice to see something that ignores maximum-economy story structure, lets itself switch between comedy and serious, lets characters be real people, and just works end-to-end in a way that feels effortless. 9/10
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05/04/24 - Kung Fu Hustle
It doesn't quite have the heart of Shaolin Soccer, but it makes up for it in style and energy and characters and creativity. Over-the-top comedy-cool Kung Fu isn't everyone's cup of tea, but if you think the trailer looks good, I can promise you the movie completely follows through on it and more. 8/10
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05/06/27 - Land Of The Dead
Zombie movies aren't about zombies, they're about the humans put in the situation (and asking "what would *I*