Last movie watched...

[Van Dom]

Hard Candy.
Well.
That was....fun.
Heavy material very well played by Ellen Page in particular.
That 'castration' scene though...holy fuck. I had to hold on to my balls and avoid direct eye contact with the tv screen throughout its ten minute duration......

[Tiplodocus]

THE CHANGE UP

Stiff lawyer Jason Bateman and his womanising stoner buddy Ryan Reynolds accidentally exchange bodies and hilarity ensues while they learn a little bit about each other and a lot about themselves..

OK, you know  exactly where it is going but it has two good central performances and some fantastic gags (and top swearing).

Oh and Olivia Wild. Yum.

[Gonk]

1975 film set in Hollywood in 1930's. Bunch of wannabes trying to find success in films. Hollywood is depicted as a vast dream dump where every human dream in the collective unconscious is debased and turned into cheap entertainment. Human longings and desires are titillated but never fulfilled by this industry. A huge riot at the end of the film shows where such manipulation leads.

[Bat King]

Watched Centurion last night.  Eagle the night before.

[Beeks]

I went to watch 'The Woman In Black' today at the cinema and it was actually quite frightening

Really surprised it has a 12A rating

Good film

[Tiplodocus]

THE TIME TRAVELER'S WIFE
I'll admit I was disappointed in this. I was looking forward to a lush, romantic tear jerker (no, really) with some elements of time travel in it but the emotional core just seemed slightly off.  Not a tear in sight come the ending even from Mrs Tips who cries at *everything*.

Eric Bana is often the best thing in the things he's in but not this time - he seemed far too blase about his condition [spoiler]and resigned to a fate when he didn't need to be[/spoiler].  And he didn't sparkle with grown up Rachel in the slightest.

There were a couple of cute time travel elements (the old meeting out of order thing and her shagging [spoiler]the pre-op version of[/spoiler] him) but they missed the chance to explore other bigger  things; [spoiler]what if he comes back in ten years time when she has moved on to another man?  what can the (slightly creepy) daughter do to control her time travel?[/spoiler]

[bigjobs67]

'Dark Star' re issue on Blue Ray. It's the 'BOMB'.

[Van Dom]

Scary Movie 4. Thought I'd seen all of these but turns out I missed this one somehow. Expected it to be shit but I laughed pretty much non-stop throughout its 80 minutes, so how can you begrudge it, job done.
God I love Anna Faris. She's just amazing/enthralling/captivating to look at. She even made The Hot Chick watchable (no mean feat).

[chaingunchimp]

Heartless: a British indie horror film complete with Demon hoodies.
not a bad wee watch nice creature design but a little confusing at the end.

[Davek]

Watched Adjustment Bureau and The Tourist in the last week.

Adjustment Bureau was good - Matt Damon is normally watchable.

The Tourist was not quite as good - Johnny Depp seemed out of place.

[Professor Bear]

Murder By Decree, the story of Sherlock Holmes' pursuit of Jack the Ripper which is just as ludicrous, garish and anachronistic as the lambasted From Hell adaptation from about ten years back.  If you're into the screaming of the average Hammer outing this might be more your type of thing than it was mine, as all it seemed to me was a bunch of angry moustaches shouting at the working classes, who - alongside the upper classes - were portrayed as scum to a man, the only decency coming from middle class Dr Watson, and even he is vocally derisive of the notion of social equality and treats the oiks like housepets.  It can be argued I might be overthinking a lurid melodrama, but in my defence it started it by shoehorning in a sub-plot about the anti-monarchist/anarchist movement that contributes nothing to the overall story.  I liked Christopher Plummer as Holmes and James Mason as Watson, but that's about it.

[El Chivo]

Chronicle

Really good, original take on the superhero thang, in a Blair Witch/Cloverfield stylee

Only bummer was having to sit thru what felt like a 15 min trailer for This Means War
I thought i was sat in the wrong theatre for a while
What a humongous pile of shit!

Chi

[I, Cosh]

Seen quite a few lately.

Like Crazy. Fairly standard low budget indie two-hander about the relationship woes of a couple of attractive, talented and quirky twentysomethings trying to carry on a transatlantic relationship. It was all a bit actor's workshop but had two or three really nicely handled scenes and a wonderfully ambiguous ending.

Underworld: Awakenings was fun. Much like the Resident Evil franchise, I've always had a very suspect soft spot for this series and this is probably the best of the bunch, although I didn't see the last on account of the lack of Beckinsale. Certainly not a landmark in the history of cinema but a decent bit of schlock with a couple of decent action scenes and the promise of yet more sequels to come.
I certainly didn't expect this to be the film that would change my mind about 3D but I think it did. At least to the extent that I now think it can be a fun addition to a film rather than an automatic irritant.

Martha, Marcy May, Marlene. Been mentioned earlier but this was an excellent film which practices restraint and understatement to wonderful effect. Think I'd be captivated if Sol from out of Deadwood wrote a song for me too. It's only in retrospect that you wonder at the madness of it. On another day I would've loved the ending but coming so soon after Like Crazy, the uncertainty went unappreciated.

Over the weekend I watched Fresh, a very neat little ghetto gangster film from the early 90s. The eponymous hero is a 12 year old kid who's caught up amongst a couple of different crews of drug dealers trying to make ends meet and work things out for his family. It features all the usual elements and stock characters of this kind of film – the loudmouthed one, the smart one, the talented one, etc – and much the same social background but doesn't have the overtly moralistic tone of, say, Boyz in the Hood.
Samuel L Jackson has a pretty good part (hard to believe given the complete lack of snakes or light sabres) as Fresh's estranged, chess hustling dad. It's almost a cheesy metaphor that runs right through to The Wire - "You come at the king, you best not miss" - so it's a shock when you finally realise exactly how this little kid has set up all the opposing groups in order to take them all down. Some of the other kids are a bit ropey but the Sean Nelson is rock solid in the lead and this is well worth a watch.

Half watched Ghost Rider on Channel Five the other night. It seemed reasonably fun but almost an hour of origin before he even goes on fire felt like a bit of a liberty. Has actually got me thinking that the sequel might be worth a watch if it's on when I'm town, which certainly wasn't the case.

Finally, this evening, My Childhood, the first part of Bill Douglas's autobiographical trilogy. If it's grim up North then it's double fucking grim growing up in Scotland in the mid 40s. Inappropriate reaction: I pissed myself laughing when they come home from the air raid shelter to find [spoiler]the cat eating the canary[/spoiler]. The boot was on the other foot a couple of minutes later when his big brother smashes fuck out of the cat, right enough.
Memorable, and not even Tips would think it too long.

[bigjobs67]

Just about to sit and watch 'Beneath the Planet of the Apes'. This may sound like sacrilege but I think I like more that the first. Anyone else agree?

[Spikes]

No.