The MOVIE REVIEW Thread

[scorpionking]

I watched 300 last month. I enjoyed the movie because I'm a history fanatic but I don't appreciate the use of too much technology. The CG was too obvious and it lessened the realism. There were flaws too on telling the historical facts. I like the older version of 300 Spartans. In fact its in my Netflix queue already. Along with "Ben HUr" and "The Robe"

[Waterbearer]

Watched the following last week

 

1. TMNT - nice movie....masyado lang talagang bitin....parang nanood lang ako ng cartoons na may 3 part episode....pero maganda sya

 

2. Music and Lyrics - natuwa ako sa palabas na ito....ang kulit ng pakembot kembot ni Hugh Grant pagnagpeperform....naalala ko tuloy si Manny Villar as expected Drew Barrymore is just hot.

 

3. Turistas - honestly, ok naman sya eh...ewan ko lang sa iba pero more of suspense sya rather than a slasher film...pero medyo offensive nga talaga kung brazilian ka kasi talagang minemention nung film explicitly yung downside ng kanilang economy.

 

4. Reign over me - Best acting from Adam Sandler...EVER!!! Sayang hinabol sana toh sa Oscar....taena may laban toh.....nagka goosebumps ako sa role nya.....excellent performance din from Don Cheadle...one of his best works IMHO.....the movie will move you on how a person changes when in isolation...grabe talaga.....i forgot Sandler was a comedian.....clearly his most prolific acting to date. Too bad, his name will be forgotten come awards season.....but nevertheless, this is my number 2 best film of 2007 after 300......this is a really nice movie.....drama-wise.

 

5. Inconvenient Truth - Now i know why it got an Oscar.....and it completely changed the way i looked at Al Gore.....no wonder millions look up to him....he is like the Gandhi of Environmental Protection. Very comprehensive presentation.....clearly it was succesful at conveying a scientific study to a layman.

 

6. Flags of our Father - hindi ko sya masyadong naappreciate....andami kasing flashback e.....nakakahilo.....pero pwede na rin lalo na pagnapanuod mo na ang letters from Iwo Jima....which is a magnificent film if you ask me.

Edited April 9, 2007 by Waterbearer

[<warriorofjah>]

sunshine -- a group of scientists out to "jumpstart" the dying energy source, the sun (similar to "The Core"). it's an expedtition gone wrong.. but in the end, the hero emerged on the movie is Kapa (Cillian Murphy, Batman Begins, Red Eye). stars Chris Evans (Fantastic Four), Hiroyuki Sanada (Last Samurai), Michelle Yeoh (Memoirs of a Geisha, among others). Story is somewhat slow, and the ending is... well, not that amazing. Yeah, it's an "ok-lang" movie, but not recommended. nuff said.

[Kurtsky Keigee]

Guys you should watch Deja Vu.

Its like Back To The Future+12 Monkeys+Enemy Of The State+The Final Cut

 

I just watched it I think beyond all those mumbo jumbo techy language its overall a good movie.

Its a little confusing thats why you have to watch it more than once to understand it.

It has a little humour too. Nice one liners

 

Buy the DVD. Denzel+Tony Scott+Jerry Bruckheimer

:cool:

Edited April 14, 2007 by kUrTsKY

[redshirt]

If you like movies about dance and with a hip-hop soundtrack go watch Stomp the yard :cool:

[fry_saging]

Rocky balboa is ok.. But do they really need a another love interest for rocky?

[Marshall Bruce]

The Hills have Eyes 2 was good stuff. Very entertaining movie imo. So violent, so bloody, so nice. :cool:

[clubber_lang]

Rocky balboa is ok.. But do they really need another love interest for rocky?

 

She was not a love interest. It was more of a friendly type of relationship since her character was the little girl in the original film. Rocky was just sort of helping her out.

 

I actually liked "Sunshine". It reminded me of Kubrick's "2001" though the latter is far superior. My problems with Boyle's film are Yeoh and Evans' characters which are either not fleshed out or just cliched. Plus, there's a twist that was just bonkers... But it was still entertaining...

[Marshall Bruce]

The Shooter was ok. The movie didn't bore me as I thought it would. It was action packed and brutal at times. John Cena err Mark Wahlberg sold the role pretty well. They should've shown more of Rhona Mitra though.

Edited April 23, 2007 by Marshall Bruce

[MRyoso]

saw hillary swank's the reaping

 

i find it soooo boring

[Waterbearer]

The shooter was ok....though the plot was predictable.

[enobi13]

the hills have eyes 2 is good but the part one is better, ang sexy nung girl, sana ako na lang yung nag rape sa kanya, joke.

[Marshall Bruce]

Gray Matters starring Heather Graham, Bridget Moynahan and Tom Cavanagh was a waste of time and money. Should've trusted my instinct that this flick was not worth it. Aside from the kiss between Heather and Bridget, the movie didn't raise my inetest at all.

 

@ Mushy Rocker - I agree with you that Mark Wahlberg should've been the lead in the Bourne Series

[Waterbearer]

Spiderman 3 has got mixed reviews and its freakin 2 1/2 hours long......be prepared for the dragging....

 

Michael Bay made 2 test screenings for The Transformers for 850 people.....and he got the highest scores of his entire career.......I always knew this was going to be the most successful movie of 2007.

[thebigbadlonewolf]

Not Your Usual Bedtime Story:

My Take on Pan's Labyrinth

 

(Reposted from my blog)

 

* * * * W A R N I N G : S P O I L E R S F O L L O W * * * *

 

 

You know the story about Little Red Riding Hood, right? Yeah, you probably do. But the version you most probably recall is the post-Perrault, SANITIZED, GRIMM-ified, Disney-fied, watered-down, "happily ever after" version.

 

Interestingly, the other ORIGI NAL Red Riding Hood story was a bit more sinister.

 

 

As you can see, it involved real MURDER and DISMEMBERMENT(the wolf kills granny, pours her blood into a bottle and slices her flesh onto a plate), CANNIBALISM (the wolf tricks Red into eating and drinking her grandma's flesh and blood unwittingly), and a LESS-THAN-HAPPY ENDING(no woodsman to save the day; both granny and Red end up as the wolf's dinner). Not your usual bedtime story.

 

 

 

PAN'S LABYRINTH definitely fits the latter description.

 

 

Expecting a "Harry Potteresque" experience? Don't. Less than twenty minutes into the flick, you are already treated to a scene of the Captain (the main "villain") going ballistic on a suspected rebel's face, beating it to a bloody pulp with his gun. No sanitized camera work here either; you could actually SEE the beating and blood spurting all over.

 

 

Eventually, one gets used to all the violence. You see people getting shot in the HEAD at close range, the first stroke of a saw amputating a leg, TORTURE scenes, stabbing scenes, FACE-CARVING scenes, the actual NEEDLEWORK of the captain repairing his face from the face carving, and other gruesome little tidbits that actually made me flinch and bite my lip at some points.

 

But since I have already been de-sensitized to gore (aside from "300",i recently became a DC VERTIGO Graphic Novel fan), I was able to look past the disturbing scenes and appreciate the story.

 

 

It was actually one of those pretty interesting juxtapositions of the real world with the faerie realm. In the "real" world, Ofelia- the main protagonist- is an ordinary little girl who was -along with her pregnant mother - adopted by a sadistic captain of the Spanish army during Franco's time. In the "faerie" world however, Ofelia is really a princess who escaped to the mortal world, got her memories wiped out, and who was now being wooed by a faun (or "PAN") to return to her REAL FATHER in the faerie world.

 

 

To do this, Ofelia had to do a series of interconnected "quests" which involved: killing a giant toad to retrieve the golden key which unlocks a small nook which contains a golden dagger which could be used to sacrifice an innocent person's blood that will ultimately open up a magical portal so that Ofelia can return to the faerie world. WHEW!

 

 

In the end, the innocent blood donor would turn out to be Ofelia's brother, which of course she does not agree to, which leads to her death (SHOT in the tummy by the sadistic Captain). Ironically, her death is the FINAL part of the quest, sacrificing her own life and blood opened up the magical portal anyway, so in the end, she was ultimately reunited with her dad and mom in the faerie world.

 

 

Yup, there's a moral to the story after all, kids.

 

Although if you get your logical brain to think about it...it's still a tragedy. In the real world, the kid still dies bleeding in the end. Who knows if the faerie world was real or if the kid just imagined it at her moment of death? I mean, she was a fan of fairy tales after all, so she could have just been suffering from schizophrenic delusions brought about by her stressful situation and her need to "escape". I guess you can choose whether it was a happy ending or not, depending on your disposition (and faith in the realm of the faerie). Me? I believe.... I choose to believe.

 

Visually, i found the treatment literally too dark at some points (i don't know if they purposely did that, or it was the projector or film).

 

I liked the scene change treatment - slow panning, then when the camera hits a tree or some other large object close up it seamlessly morphs into another scene (it's like the graphic novel equivalent of "meanwhile..."). It was overdone JUST A LITTLE BIT, but it was forgivable. Certainly much better than those original "star wars" transitions.

 

The Music was haunting in parts, and set the mood perfectly; I was humming the lullabye theme all the way to my car.

 

The CG and costumes were great! The Faun-with his milky slanted eyes and grotesque appearance was really creepy...and his voice reinforced his creepiness. You did not know if he was a friend or a trickster til the very final scene.

 

 

 

But the creepiest character in the movie (aside from the sadistic Captain) was the PALE MAN. Dude, this is the stuff my NIGHTMARES are made of. The Pale man is a child-eating monster who only comes to life when kids give in to temptation and partake of the sumptuous banquet at his table.

 

 

His eyes lie motionless on a plate in front of him; once he is awakened, he grabs his eyeballs and stuffs them into crevices (sockets?) in his hands. yeaarraarrrgh. The monster actually killed two fairies by CHOMPING THEIR FRICKIN' HEADS OFF. Can you imagine that in a Disney flick? *shudder*.

 

 

Pretty hair-raising stuff...but the chase scene was one of the most exciting parts in the movie (of course, our heroine and one fairy escape unscathed).

 

Oh yeah, I almost forgot...before you trot off to see it, please be informed that the whole film's dialogue....is in SPANISH. At first, I thought that the subtitles were just a prelude to lend authenticity and would subsequently transition into English when they cut to the faerie world...but alas, the subtitles were there forever. But then again, once you get over all the "hola's", "entonses", and "hijo de p#ta's", you get engrossed in the film and just forget that it is dubbed in a foreign tongue.

 

 

Hey....come to think of it, I think that I actually ENJOYED it more because I love to read, and I was not swayed by the nuances and inflections the actors/directors would have done had it been in English. In short, I was making my own dialogue in my head, aided by the visuals and the sounds...making it more EMOTIONAL due to my "internal" dialogue. Hmmm...maybe I should start watching my DVD's in foreign languages too! (...but then, that's just me. I actually noticed several groups of people leave after twenty minutes...I guess they got tired of waiting for the English to kick in, haha)

 

 

Overall, very highly recommended if you (1) are mature enough, (2) appreciate a good story even if it's not "cutesy wutesy" sanitized, and (3) would not mind reading English subtitles for two hours.

But please....leave the kids at home.

 

-tbbLONEWOLF

 

 

P.S. I just did a search for movie stills now, and I found out that this movie actually won several Oscars...Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction, and Best Makeup). Well deserved IMHO!

 

Official Site is at www.panslabyrinth.com

 

Air your thoughts here.

 

P.P.S. btw, this is how the original Red Riding Hood tale ends.

 

Big Bad Wolves are the SHIZNIT, yo! ;->

Edited April 30, 2007 by thebigbadlonewolf