Recent Viewings

[Mr_Vindictive]

Brick - I was dying to see this one when it was released due to the strange trailer that was popping up on every Focus Feature dvd that was released at the time.  The film looked intriguing.  A high school film noir that looked inventive and dark.  It finally came to DVD on Tuesday so I bought a copy.

Amazing movie.  At first I didn't like it.  Seriously, I was hating the film.  I couldn't understand a word of what was being said.  Wait, that's not entirely true.  I could understand the words, but almost of all of it was slang.  Not only that, but the dialog was being fired out machine gun style.  Fast and poetic.

After about the first thirty minutes or so, everything they were saying became clear.  It was like I had instantly learned a new language.  It was amazing how all of a sudden you understand exactly what each word means when five minutes before you were lost.

Anyway, the film follows Brendan.  His ex-girlfriend calls him on a pay phone one day and sounds extremely distressed.  He then follows a few clues that she dropped while on the phone to track her down.  In doing so, he gets into a high school crime ring and situations much bigger than either he or his ex-girlfriend.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt puts in a great performance as Brendan.  His ex (Emily) is the only thing he's ever loved, and he'll go through ANY amount of pain and suffering to find out what happened to her.  Lucas Haas also throws down a great performance as "the pin".  He's the main drug supplier to the high schoolers and lives with his mother, with provides some great comic relief throughout the heavy situations.

I recommend this one to everyone.  It's superb.  I can't think of a better word to describe it.

10/10



The Ant Bully - Caught this one last week down in Atlanta while on vacation.  My wife and I took our 3 y/o daughter to it at an IMAX theater there.  The film also happened to be in 3-d which was a treat.

The film is about Lucas, a kid who is constantly being beat up by bullies. Everytime he gets beat up, he takes it out on an ant pile in his yard by spraying water into it, killing thousands of ants.  To the ants, he is known only as "destroyer".  One of the ants (Nic Cage) comes up with a potion to shrink Lucas down to the size of an ant so he can be tried by the queen and then murdered.  The queen takes pity on Lucas and makes him live as an ant in the colony.  He then has to help them fight off an evil exterminator voiced by Paul Giamatti.

Overall, not a bad film.  This was my first HD digital film I've seen in a theater.  The clarity is unmatched by anything I've ever seen in my life.  The 3-d works excellently well too.  There was no bluring, everything stayed smooth throughout.  It was a hell of an experience.

A huge treat for me was one of the voice actors in the film.  As soon as he spoke, I knew EXACTLY who it was and started geeking out.  After a few minutes of his character, my wife leaned over and said:

"Is that......"

my reply:

"IT'S BRUCE!!!!"

Bruce Campbell has a huge role here as a boasty adventure-man(ant) who is always talking about his various conquests and journeys.  I actually believe he has the most speaking roles in the film, which is fantastic.

Overall, it's not a bad film by any means, but I don't think I would have liked it as well without the HD and 3-D.  It is great to see Bruce getting a big role in a major film though.

8/10

[dean]

BRUCE!!! Am seeing due to fanboy love as soon as I can...

As for Brick, it was shown here at the Melbourne International Film Festival last week.  I didn't catch it, but a friend of mine did.




She described it as 'brilliantly over-done, over-stylised, self indulgent, smart arse, jive talking, hip swaggering, present day highschool melodrama pretentious noir kind of good stuff' and she quite enjoyed it.  So if it comes back to screen here I'll have to go see it.

[Mr_Vindictive]

Dean,

Yeah, it does seem a bit pretentious at first but for me it lost most of that as I got caught up in the story.  It's quite surreal.

[daveblackeye15]

Holy crap, I had no interest in seeing Ant Bully until you mentioned Bruce was in it.

Maybe I will go see it.

[loyal1]

Brick sounds good..although when you talked about the slang and the "machine gun dialoug"  All I could picture was a bunch of Deltoros from the movie The Usual Suspects "Gimeda fuhin kes yacocsucer." lol.

[Mr_Vindictive]

Loyal,

Fenster is still my favorite character from Usual Suspects.  Hilarious stuff.  The scene with him being interrogated by the police is priceless.


When I said machine guy style dialogue...I meant that everything is said quite quickly.  But it all has a beat to it.  It was almost as if Mamet and Dashiell Hammett had gotten together and wrote the script.