Last movie watched...

[Professor Bear]

Curse of the Undead, a western about a black-clad gun for hire who rides into town and takes advantage of a violent feud between ranchers to ply his trade.  As an afterthought, the gunslinger also happens to be a vampire, so when he says his life is death he is not being florid.
Surprisingly good stuff, it reminds me of some of the better Twilight Zone episodes, and the vampire being one of the old-school variety who can walk in the sun and became cursed by an act of murder and suicide rather than being necked by a foreigner is a nice touch.

In The Name Of The King 2: Two Worlds, being a sequel to Uwe Boll's best film and a remake of the fantasy opus that was Beastmaster 2: Through The Portal Of Time.  I have not seen a Dolph Lundgren vehicle in years beyond that last Universal Soldier sequel, but here he is a juddering shambles of a man, barely able to move and I hope it's just the role he's playing rather than anything health-related.  The film has the germs of a few good ideas, but it doesn't hold together and the pacing isn't good enough enough to hide the shortcomings of a pedestrian plot that looks like it's building up to a grim twist ending but then just sort of stops.  The fights - main selling point with a DL flick - are pretty unremarkable, though the scenery is lovely, with Vancouver looking more like a fantasy realm than the actual fantasy realm.

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol is the fourth flick where Ethan Hunt goes rogue against orders and this time those in charge don't even bother with the notion he might be wrong to do so, with his boss being all like "well, I guess when we stop talking you escape or something and go sort this out for me" , which he does.  There's a passing scene where the Cruiser says "we're all alone and this is all we got for this mission", but it has no relevence to what follows, what follows being the usual MI schtick of a few hi-tech heists that go wrong at the end and result in some chases and a few scraps in strange locales.
Logic is an unwelcome intruder (there being at least two glaring instances of the script second-guessing its own stupidity in an attempt to hand-wave it away) and the remixed theme over the opening credits is just awful in its aggressive banality, but otherwise it's a big daffy romp from the ever-reliable Cruise.

Darkest Hour. Shite.

[The Legendary Shark]

Speed Racer - Glorious piffle from start to finish.

[Mardroid]

Captain America- Enjoyable. Kinda cheesy in places but it didn't take itself seriously. Actually some funny stuff too, particularly the musical number showing his career in the War Bonds business. Oh, and nice getting more of an explanation on that cube thing*.  And Nazis with laser guns kinda worked, although it shouldn't.

Oh, and I loved the Red Skull's car. A fabulous machine.


*The Tesseract. I actually looked it up on Wiki, and was interested to see the term is actually used to describe a fourth dimensional construct. Essentially to cubes in four dimensions what cubes are to squares.

[JamesC]

Beastmaster 2: Through The Portal Of Time.  I have not seen a Dolph Lundgren vehicle in years beyond that last Universal Soldier sequel, but here he is a juddering shambles of a man, barely able to move and I hope it's just the role he's playing rather than anything health-related.  The film has the germs of a few good ideas, but it doesn't hold together and the pacing isn't good enough enough to hide the shortcomings of a pedestrian plot that looks like it's building up to a grim twist ending but then just sort of stops.  The fights - main selling point with a DL flick - are pretty unremarkable, though the scenery is lovely, with Vancouver looking more like a fantasy realm than the actual fantasy realm.

Dolph Lundgren isn't in the Beastmaster films - it's Marc Singer (one of those 'what have I seen him in' actors*)

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001743/




* 'V' probably

[Professor Bear]

You seem to have somehow missed that I was talking about another film entirely...

[von Boom]

I saw Pirate Radio yesterday. It was surprisingly enjoyable. The cast was excellent and Bill Nighy heads an excellent group of actors that, for me, have not been embraced by the public as well as they could be. I don't want to give anything away, but if you want to see an entertaining film with an excellent soundtrack I would definitely give this one a look.

JvB

[Tiplodocus]

Darkest Hour. Shite.

Come now, Prof. That review should surely read:

Darkest Hour. More like the Shitest Hour

[JamesC]

You seem to have somehow missed that I was talking about another film entirely...

Oh yeah - it was the bold title on a new line that threw me!

[JamesC]

Just watched Skeleton Key, a twisty hoodoo horror film from 2005 starring Kate Hudson and John Hurt who doesn't say anything.
I actually really enjoyed this much more than I was expecting to - I'm not a fan of Kate Hudson usually and this film completely passed me by when it was released. It's hard to describe the story without spoiling it but it's really creepy and great fun with a proper nasty baddie!

[Satanist]

IRON SKY - it pass hour and half good.

[Professor Bear]

The Darkest Hour - more like THE SHITEST SHIT.

Journey 2: The Mysterious Island.  Do not engage your brain at any point and you might enjoy this, but dare to form any kind of coherent thought before the credits roll and no good will come of it.  You'll be shouting "NO NO NO - THAT MAKES NO FUCKING SENSE AT ALL" at the screen roughly once every three minutes, assuming you make it past the one minute mark where the deeply unlikable main character is introduced to the strains of a soft rawk song by teenagers who like to pretend they're mad at daddy but secretly love him very much because he bought them a record company.  Seriously, the main character is a jerk and only makes it worse every time he opens his gob, essentially introduced to the audience while he's treating the Rock like dirt for keeping the kid from going to prison - it's a really bad bit of character setup that is never resolved, so the kid is basically an entitled prick from the off.  The 3d is really obnoxious, and the high point is probably when it is applied to the female lead's arse as it wriggles out of a cave - she needs to eat a pie (the Rock is in this so I will clarify that by "eat a pie" I do not mean she should nosh fanny).
"Stupid"is a deeply inadequate word in this instance, but it is all I have to offer.

[Roger Godpleton]

In America they use the word fanny to refer to rear ends.

[Hoagy]

I decided to try that "Girl with de Dragon Tattoo".  I enjoyed it after avoiding it because of a suspicious amount of sudden love from nowhere for these films. She, the girl, is courageous and cool. The partnership is loving but unforgiving. Retribution is served well and the stories come together in sweet orchestration. In result, the follow ups will be attended.

One question: Any one know which Kurt  Vonnegut book he was burning at the house of investigations?

[Roger Godpleton]

MIB 3: There is no real need for this movie to exist but it's surprisingly fun thanks to a solid supporting cast. Nice to see Big J getting to ham it up in a big proper Hollywood movie and Bill Hader is always fun to have around. Shame that I wanted to punch Larry Gopnik in his character's stupid fucking face though.

Moonrise Kingdom: This is a Wes Anderson Movie. It looks lovely, and Bill M and Franny McD are their typical awesome selves, but this basically crossed the line into unintentional-self-parody a hundred times over. After a whole bunch of stupid crap involving stupid fucking children the whole thing descends into a frankly insulting action movie parody that brought me *this* close to walking out. Wes isn't danger of falling behind W in the Anderson race but he sure isn't catching up to PT any time soon.

[Tiplodocus]

FINAL FANTASY: SPIRITS WITHIN
I slept through this at the cinema years ago but this time round, I rather enjoyed it.  Thematically and in the way the action sequences are set, it really does feel like a japanese video game turned into a film

But I love the resolution and there is some cracking design work and animation throughout.  I don't know if it was mo-capped or not but I think I actually preferred it to later stuff like BEOWULF as FF lacks the "dead-eye" feel and FF characters also seem to move a little faster.   

SAVING PRIVATE RYAN
My annual rewatch. Still love it - outstanding cast, well sketched characters (exception being the very written bible quoting sniper), fantastic action and top WWII hardware on display. 
I increasingly love the three bits just before the final fight; Upham talking about Edith Piaf , Reiben talking about the dress shop and Ryan talking to Miller about his brothers. "No, that memory is just for me."
I know nobody likes the bookend scenes but really, aren't they the point? 

The cheaty bits still stand out:
Various bits of historical or tactical innaccuracy; but I'll let them off as it's clearly an AMERICAN film. And who wants military accuracy over drama (apart from Commando Forces).
How is Ryan recalling what went on in Hanks platoon at D-DAY?
Why, after brilliantly emphasising the sheer random luck and instant death of any battle do each of the platoon get a little piece to do [spoiler]before dying [/spoiler] heroically in the final engagement.