Recent viewings

[JaseSF]

Adaptation. (2002): A struggling real-life screenwriter named Charlie Kaufman (Nicolas Cage) tries to adapt a book about a real life Orchid thief and the beauty of flowers written by a New Yorker journalist for the silver screen but finds his everyday mundane existance, the emergence of his twin live-in brother Donald (also played by Cage) himself as a screenwriter and his own self doubts getting in the way.

This film blends the lines of fantasy and reality in fascinating ways. It's quite different and breaks many of the rules one expects a film to follow. In the end, it's more about life lessons and the struggle of us as human beings to find our place in the world, to find what we want from life, to find some small measure of happiness, to feel something. It's about how we hurt and care for each other. It's about a man who finally must take a step forward to move from a place he's stuck at to somewhere new. It's about a woman searching for life experience. It's about a man hoping for recognition and so much more. It's about life. Like life though, this film proves a bit imperfect especially with its ending which feels more like a movie script, a descent into a thriller piece (which interestingly in what Donald's specialty as a screenwriter in the film is described as), than the earlier part which was about real life. I think Cage gives a great performance in this one. ***1/2 out of ***** stars

Donald Kaufman: "You are what you love, not what loves you. That's what I decided a long time ago."

[InformationGeek]

Red Water: A shark film staring Lou Diamond Phillips and Coolio.  There's nothing much to say about this film, other than it is pretty uninteresting and uninvolving.  I say avoid it.

[Rev. Powell]

...this film proves a bit imperfect especially with its ending which feels more like a movie script, a descent into a thriller piece (which interestingly in what Donald's specialty as a screenwriter in the film is described as), than the earlier part which was about real life.

The ending is what makes it fascinating.  Charlie spends the entire movie refusing to write a sell-out, formula script, and yet the movie finishes with a by-the-numbers Hollywood ending.  That's 100% deliberate; the question is, why does he decide end the movie that way? 

[JaseSF]

WARNING: POTENTIAL SPOILERS for Adaptation..  Ah I get it now! The blurring of reality and fantasy yet again...the ending is an illusion. Life doesn't change for one character after all, he doesn't really succeed because the movie is changed in the end.

[3mnkids]

Noise(2007)~ An Australian film about the only survivor of a mass shooting on a subway train, a cop put on light duty in a caravan(because of tinnitus), the husband of a murder victim(is it related to the subway shooter? who the hell knows) and a slow but sweet young guy(what was the point of this character?).... What a mess this was. The performances were very good but FFS its slow moving and honestly, I didn't give a crap about anyone. I also hated the ending. I just don't understand what the hell the point was.

According to imdb it won a bunch of Australian film awards.... Maybe its an Aussie thing cause I sure as hell didn't get it.

[Jack]

Recon 2023: The Gauda Prime Conspiracy (2009) - Imagine if Starship Troopers had been written and directed by Howard Stern...no, scratch that, that movie would have probably been funny.  Anyhow, a group of space Marines go to a desert planet and walk around talking about women and sex, in that high school locker room style that sounds so intelligent when it's coming from people in their twenties.  Occasionally a CGI monster attacks.  There's a giant crab that looks like a Fisher Price toy.  The Marines shoot at it - in slow motion - for about 5 minutes.  Apparently the aliens can cause people to have dreams, and about 10 minutes into the movie, we get a super cheesy '70s blaxploitation flick.  WTF?  Oh, it was a guy having one of those dreams.  Lots of nudity, but all the characters are dumb as dirt and it fails, well...at everything.  Apparently there are several of these movies, and if you haven't seen the previous ones (which I haven't), half this crap doesn't make any sense.  1.5/5.

[Doggett]

Nikita (1990)

A drugged up gang attacks a chemist, they all get killed except for a woman called Nikita, when a officer checks on her, she shoots him dead. She gets sentanced to life imprionment, however, she actually becomes part of a highly trained assassin group. A group where being able to kill is just as important as being a well turned out member of society. What she finds out is that now she is a more together person than she used to be, that killing people for a living might just be wrong.

The lead actress is great ! Compare her to Bridgette Fonda in the remake The Assassin/Point of no Return (US) and you'll see what I mean. In all honesty, I didn't quiet 'get' the ending and I wish it had a little more Ooomph ! But it was a great ride. Imagine My Fair Lady, with guns instead of songs.

4/5

Taxi (2004)

A cop that can't drive.
A taxi driver that drives to the extreme.
Will these two meet up ?
Of course they will in the Queen Latifa comedy flick !

A cop and a cabbie team up to take on brazillian supermodels who are robbing banks. Its stupid and rubbish, but not quiet as bad as I was lead to believe.

2.5/5

Transporter 2 (2005)
Jason Statham.
'Nuff said.

3/5

[lester1/2jr]

transporter 2 had two completely ridiculous scenes if I recall correctly. one was he had a bomb under his car so he made the car do a flip in just sucha way that a  crane thing scraped the bomb off.  another was he drove from the roof of one building into the middle of a parking garage next to it  with no apparent calculation, he was just randomly lucky he didn't clip or land fully in the spaces between the floor where the ceiling is.

[Doggett]

transporter 2 had two completely ridiculous scenes if I recall correctly. one was he had a bomb under his car so he made the car do a flip in just sucha way that a  crane thing scraped the bomb off.  another was he drove from the roof of one building into the middle of a parking garage next to it  with no apparent calculation, he was just randomly lucky he didn't clip or land fully in the spaces between the floor where the ceiling is.

Don't forget the fight scene in an aeroplane as it falls from the sky becuase the pilot is dead.

[Jim H]

Rampage - This is a Uwe Bolle film.  Yeah.  The basic plot concerns a young man who eventually goes on an explosive shooting rampage for unclear reasons.  Which, if someone did it the way he did, would be the worst shooting rampage ever. 

I don't want to say too much more.  Despite the Bolle influence, this is actually a decent film.  It's well shot and well put together, and has some mild satire (so mild I think some may miss it) that I enjoyed.  While I found the twists in what the lead does mostly predictable, it's still generally believable and interesting to watch.  It's also a perfect example of how we want our lead characters to "win" in film, as it is pretty easy to find yourself rooting for the "hero" of this film, even as everything he does is horrendously awful (and the movie does nothing to try to hide or white wash what he does).  I particularly like how they sort of set it up as if it will be a revenge fantasy involving people who have wronged him, ala Falling Down or something, but with the way things go, that's not really the case.

I will say if there's supposed to be a message here, it's pretty muddled (and the very, very end is kind of weak).  But as an interesting ride, it's worth a watch.

7/10. 

[dean]

Noise(2007)~ An Australian film about the only survivor of a mass shooting on a subway train, a cop put on light duty in a caravan(because of tinnitus), the husband of a murder victim(is it related to the subway shooter? who the hell knows) and a slow but sweet young guy(what was the point of this character?).... What a mess this was. The performances were very good but FFS its slow moving and honestly, I didn't give a crap about anyone. I also hated the ending. I just don't understand what the hell the point was.

According to imdb it won a bunch of Australian film awards.... Maybe its an Aussie thing cause I sure as hell didn't get it.

Didn't watch it but I'm pretty sure it was a quiet year for Australian film in 2007.  Also the award winners seem to always be these character-driven dramas that seem really boring to me.  Pfftt...

[3mnkids]

Dean, maybe that was it.       I normally really enjoy Australian films but noise just didn't do it for me.

Spiral~ Mason is a geeky telemarketer for a car insurance company.He's also a talented artist. He meets Amber at work and she is sweet, funny, and his complete opposite. They hit it off but, Mason may have a dark side.

I usually really like this type of movie but I had to force myself to finish it. Its only an hour and half long but it feels at least twice that. The twist ending  wasn't much of a twist and even if it had been I still wouldn't have cared. Im confused by the really good reviews its gotten. 

I have been up all night due to an earache so maybe my judgement is clouded by pain? No, I don't think thats it.  This was disappointing.  The soundtrack is really good though.   

[Jack]

Transmorphers: Fall of Man (2009) - This is a prequel to Transmorphers (which was laughable crap), the Asylum's low budget knock off of Transformers.  Everyday electronic devices like cell phones start transmorphing into killer robots.  This is because all of our modern day electronics knowledge comes from the alien ship that crashed at Area 51, but little did we know that it was all an evil plot, as the technology contains, um...something to make everything turn into killer robots.  Uh...yeah.  But that's okay, because sheriff Bruce Boxleitner is on the case.  He teams up with his daughter (who is absolutely poured into that tight little mini-dress of hers), the daughter's boyfriend (drunken loser who just happens to be the military's top expert on electronics), and Jennifer Rubin as an FBI agent or something who knows the big secret that the gov't has been keeping from all of us.   The robots were pretty cool actually, I really liked them.  Instead of trying to CGI them in a realistic manner, it's as if they tried to make them look like the models from Robot Jox.  The characters were quite likable, the plot had a few slow spots but overall it was okay.  3.5/5.

[Rev. Powell]

THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS (1993):  Jack Skellington, the Pumpkin King of Halloweentown, discovers Christmas and tries to recreate it, with ghoulish results.  The songs and story can't keep up with the visuals, but the expressionist stop-motion animation is a joy to look at.  4/5.

VINCENT (1982):Early Tim Burton black and white stop animation short: a poem  about a 7-year old boy with an unnatural obsession for Vincent Price, narrated by Price himself.  Very well done; classic horror fans will love all the VP references, and Burton's style of mixing the childlike and the macabre is already fully developed here.  4/5.

[lester1/2jr]

oss 117 -Cairo nest of spies-  it's another  james bond parody! who would have thought of that except everybody ever , its a genre in itself really (my favorite is italy's  fantastic argo man. actually that's more of a superhero parody but whatever)  this one starts off lame, becomes okay and ends up passably entertaining. It is not really geared for export outside of it's native france.

I had forgotten egypt was a colony of france and they had all sorts of imperial stuff there until someone brought it up an hour into this. If you are french you didn't need to be reminded of it I'm sure. There is some funny stuff and again it eventually more or less grew on me but the best part was Berenice Bejo as a muslim spy who is at first unimpressed with oss 177,thats the guy, and then starts to fall for him a la Austin powers. she is awfully pretty and the scene with her tied up in her underwear is the best part of the movie.

3/5