Terminator II- Judgement Day

I rescreened this movie for the first time since I saw it in the theater. This time, I watched it with my two boys.

I absolutely loathed this movie when I first saw it. I thought putting Swartzenegger in the film as a "robot that could love" was just dire. The line "Why do humans cry?" made me want to vomit out of every orifice. I would get in lengthy nerd debates about how utterly crappy this movie was. Debates that would last for hours.

But y'know, the whole lovable robot thing didn't bother me as much this time around (although my eyes rolled more than once, and the goodbye scene in the foundry still bothers the hell out of me).

It's not as awful as I remember it, but it's still not as great as everyone insists it is either.

6/10

Misery

Not seen this for a few years, but still gripped the hell out of me, although I knew what was coming. The 'hobbling' scene is up there with cinema's best.

9/10
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Wrath of the Titans (2012) - Watched this last night at the nearest theater. Thank the heavens (or Olympus) for economy $6 Tuesdays. Well, the action pretty much started right away. Lots of kicking up sand and bodies (and lava) throughout the movie. I suppose it stands up as a good sequel, though it could also stand on its own.

Spoiler alert ahead...

I did see a dichotomy between the two pairs of brothers. The two pairs are comparatively contrasted and polarized by their actions on each other and how they resolve their differences in the end. The first pair, Zeus and Hades, while opposed for eons, finally forgive each other and bond to combat their daddy Kronus. On the other hand, the second pair, Ares and Perseus, do not resolve their differences amicably, though the differences had always been one-sided, i.e. Ares is jealous of Perseus, but Perseus has nothing against Ares. In the end though, one in each pair "dies", thus dissolving the opposing contrasts, if that makes sense. Of course all of this is not true to the canon of Greek mythos. Some people still pray to them.

I was a little tad annoyed at all the different language accents happening in the movie which seemed to distract me from the story, bringing me back to the land of dark theater reality and that these were just actors acting. Accents I could hear were Aussie (Worthington of course), Brit(?), Irish, Scottish, American/U.S., Spanish, Italian, and so forth. You would think that being this is supposed to be Greek, they'd all have some sort of spoken-tongue homogeneity, presuming all these actors were sent to study in accent class like what you see (hear) in other movies, but I guess it wasn't in the budget, or that it didn't matter to them.

Special effects (i.e. CGI) worked well and didn't distract me. Finally, although the battle with Kronus is resolved, I felt the ending a little hurried, leaving a lot to be desired imho. Could (or should) that mean there will be another sequel? And it was nice to see another little shout-out to Bubo in this one.

Hmm, I thought I spotted another review of this film somewhere in this forum.

6/10
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The Hunger Games

I expected more, I ignored all the 'tween' hype and went there with an open mind. Very disappointed. No surprises anywhere, some scenes which did not make sense (I'll pick some flowers and make a pretty death bed whilst people are chasing me)

4/10
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View from the Top

Don't judge me. The wife came to service visit me and she put it on. Girl movie about girls wanting to be flight attendants. Chick flick with not enough of anything to put it any category except blah. Somewhat entertaining if you're trapped in a hotel room. 4/10

I caught most of Fast Five though. A good manly movie about ripping off a drug king pin or whatever. Too bad it was on before the chick flick though. 7/10
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The Descendants

Much like an excessively violent movie that leaves you ill, this movie was excessively sad, almost relentless in how bad it wants to make you feel.

There were a few moments of comic relief interspersed on a long chain of elegiac and heart-breaking scenes, and it was hellbent on making sure people had no more tears left by the end credits. Maybe this would have been a better fit for the Lifetime network. After a while, it felt as exploitative of human sadness as a blood-spatter movie is with violence.

Acting/cinematography, all good. But sheesh, what a persistent downer. Alexander Payne peaked too early with Election.

The Cabin in the Woods.

Go see it quick before you hear all the spoilers. A must for horror fans.
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Thirded.

Enthiran
Caught the last hour (of three) of this Indian film about a guy that builds an android in his own image which turns into a menace. The action scene at the end is genuinely unusual and brilliant - the android having cloned itself into a small army, turns into something like a trapeze act from a circus. It's difficult to describe - you'd have to see it.

The most standout feature of the film is the lead actress who is phenomenally good-looking. I mean, astoundingly good-looking. I checked out the film on Wikipedia and apparently she's a former winner of Miss World. Other women must loathe her.

Videodrome

Not seen this for years and I watched it again the other night. It has not aged well.

Starts off quite interesting and the story sucks you in, but it just descends into a bit of a mess (like James Woods hand!)

I know this has 'cult' status but im my opinion it is not deserving of some of the plaudits thrown at it. It's just not a very good film.

Debbie Harry's breast was nice though.
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Flowers in the Attic

Never read the book (which I believe is a whole lot better) but I enjoyed this movie version. Looks a whole lot more dated than it's 1987 release date though!

7/10
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Battleship - Big budget alien invasion movie based on the board game. Yup, you read that correctly, the filmmakers licensed the classic board game to make this movie. However the only indication that it shares anything at all with the game is a part in the middle where they fire blindly at the aliens in the dark after making educated guesses as to their positions via wave buoys.

The bulk of the movie is that a small group of alien ships splash down in the ocean off Hawaii and then encase one of the islands in a force-field bubble. Multi-national naval exercises are being held in the area and all but three ships are caught outside the bubble. Two of the remaining ships are quickly destroyed and the last one has to take on all of the alien ships.

It was dumb, but entertaining. Kind of like Independence Day.

Spoilers follow...

One question I had after the movie was over was whether the aliens were actually hostile or whether the whole thing was a big mis-understanding. When one of the ships blows its horn, the aliens respond with their own version, which is more powerful. The humans fire a warning shot right next to one of the ships, which could easily have been mistaken for an attack and so they responded by destroying the ship that fired on them. When the main ship veers off rather than attacking them, the aliens power down their weapons. While staging a rescue of one of their comrades, the aliens don't go out of their way to kill anyone who doesn't attack them first. When they fire large automated weapons at the mainland, they specifically target military bases and access points, but avoid injuring a young boy. A scientist comes face to face with an alien while retrieving his satellite phone and the alien just lets him go.

It seemed to me that maybe the aliens thought they were invited (an earlier message sent to their possible home planet), lost their communications ship on the way down, saw a massive fleet in the water and decided to seal themselves inside the bubble for protection, defended themselves from attack and then tried to send an SOS back to their planet using the humans' radio telescopes. The scientist says that they killed his research students, but it's never revealed whether they tried to attack the aliens or not.

It's just that for an invading force, the aliens seemed pretty non-violent when not being attacked.

I was also a little disappointed that the aliens turned out to be humanoid walrus men. At least that's what they looked like to me.

Dead Man's Shoes
Excellent film about revenge. Absolutely nothing like you might imagine Hollywood would do it. Well, it's set in Derbyshire for a start. Pretty powerful stuff. I found myself just staring into space for five minutes after it finished.

Speaking of Shane Meadows, I liked This is England, but I recently saw This is England '88 (which is a straight to TV sequel I think) which gets more and more depressing from start to finish. Avoid!