Last movie seen — Page 202

The new film going under the Die Hard moniker is a standard witless teal-stained CGI'ed to absolute hell 90 min potboiler that would be perfect for direct to streaming save for they stuck the franchise name on it.

Pitiful, inane, dull, ingratiating, slow, lumbering. A train wreck. You could fall asleep for a half hour and it would be a better movie. Willis on a smoke break is a better movie. Even the Kevin Smith bits from LFODH are better.

Ballless. It took them 6 years to do this trash. WTF.

It's Bad. Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad. Painfully bad. You'll be wincing within the first 5 minutes. The camerawork is beyond terrible when you can make out what's going on between all the CGI, shakycam, and computer assisted quick pans and quick zooms.

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

One of the best films ever made by anyone. 50 years or more ahead of its time. A bold uncompromising film that had to have inspired Peckinpah. Arguably Bogie's best performance. The three leads are perfection and play off of each other beautifully. The definitive John Huston picture.

A film from the 40's with no women, no songs, no romance, unlikable characters, real barren and remote locations, the story is all about greed, the star descends into madness and the film remains firmly grounded in reality.

Ultimate balls.

Watched the new Silent Hill. Firstly, I have to say, it isn't as bad as I thought it was going to be be, but really it didn't do anything the first didn't already do. Secondly, it seemed to be more of a Site B Lost World kind of thing, where it didn't make itself necessary, but in the end, I wasn't at all sad to go see more dinosaurs in Lost World.

It just didn't try to scare. It felt too stylized and more sexual than scary.

I just really feel Silent Hill should be played, not seen. What made the first Silent Hill work, was the fact that I had played the game, so I was already in that mindset. It's not that things are jumping out at you, it's that you have that feeling of dread and confusion. Games never affect the mind like Silent Hill did.

Johnny Ringo said:

When Sean Bean survives...you know something is wrong.

Yeah, I was kind of thinking he would end up dying in the sequel, but dammit, it never happened. He said he was going to stay, but that doesn't mean he'd die.

Tokyo Joe

This is a really interesting forgotten Bogie movie, I've always loved the plot of an ex-GI returning to a foreign country and digging up painful things from his past. (The Yakuza is a masterpiece) One of the first films to shoot in Japan after the war, the setting during the US occupation sets up a wonderfully dark tone that has hints of Kurosawa of the same period (see Drunken Angel, another masterpiece). Bogie returns to find his friend cowed by the war, the Army controlling everything with massive layers of red tape, his wife thought dead alive and well and married with child, the criminal underground desperate to ensnare an American in their plotting and so on.

The best thing is Bogie's performance, it elevates the overall film above the inherent flaws and corniness in some of the plotting. It is his tough guy persona betraying a sense of bitter regret and anger that he would concentrate into Dixon Steele a few months later.

3.5 balls out of 4. I can't believe how enjoyable these lesser B-movies are. Plus it has a judo fight between Bogie and SPECTRE No. 10 Mr. Osato. YES!

Jack the Giant Slayer

It was great fun. A healthy number of scenes obviously made with 3-D in mind (I saw it in 2-D). All the characters were the flattest of archetypes but it didn't matter. The Princess Bride came to mind in terms of story-telling, superficially the framing, and obvious silly tone (though it didn't have the quality of characters and wit). There were definitely laugh-worthy moments. The CGI was decent, it worked for the movie. The end of the movie felt a touch too contrived but could set things up for a contrived sequel ;0 All in all I would highly recommend it. Just old-fashioned fun.

I also got around to seeing Seven Samurai. It was entertaining. Some of you have recommended it as a model for a Star Wars movie, but I'm afraid I'm lacking in imagination. However, Kikuchiyo reminded me of Anakin - with occasional flare-ups of Jar-Jar.