[Kolzig]

Changeling

A very dramatic and strong movie.

I felt a bit sick in the stomach because of some stuff that happened in the middle of the movie, but in the end I have to agree that Clint Eastwood is one of the brightest minds ever to direct movies.

He truly is one the best directors the world has ever seen.

Angelina Jolie was very good in her role, but as I have not seen Kate Winslet's Oscar winning movie, I can't say which of them was better.

Geoffrey Pierson in the role of S.S.Hahn was a great siderole! I would love to have a lawyer like that if I someday needed one.

Simply put a very dramatic movie from the 1920's USA.

8/10

[stepurhan]

Originally Posted by SoccerDude28

I whole-heartedly agree with you Lucien. Although it did diverge from the book in a few places( like the totally new ending),

I think you'd have had to put in a lot of extra scenes to have the original ending make sense. You get bits and pieces of that scattered throughout the original novel.

This is where I think most of the noticable changes have come from, keeping the film to a moderately sensible running time. The other two major cuts I noticed were short-circuiting of the origin stories for Rorschach and Dr Manhattan. I can appreciate from a film-making point of view why these amendments were necessary and so this is the first time an adpatation of an Alan Moore book hasn't annoyed me. The changes all seemed to be made for valid reasons to do with the change of medium, not because someone thought slotting in a love story subplot (I'm looking at you V for Vendetta ) or extra characters (ditto League of Extraordinary Gentleman) was a good idea.

[splin]

Endgame documentary about New World Order. Highly recommend.

[Henke]

Angel Heart

I finally saw it, one of the things that inspired Jane Jensen while writing Sins Of the Fathers. An incredible movie that blends aspects from Noir/detective stories with an edgy horror style (me like a lot). Totally amazing.

[kuze]

Watchmen - woah, what a piece of crap. I hate American comics, but found the Dark Knight to be pretty enjoyable and gave this a go. Waste of money. Cheesy plot, horrible soundtrack, ridiculous outfits, very meh dialogues.

[Henke]

I read Watchmen around 12 years ago but I didn't understand the hype at all.

[Ninja Dodo]

I saw Watchmen earlier and found it enjoyable. It had some iffy writing and acting here and there, but it had some good characters. I was entertained.

I was watching The Matrix Reloaded yesterday, that is to say, a special version. As an exercise in editing and I guess just to amuse myself I've made some attempts at creating a cut without all the redundant bits, because in my opinion there's a good film in there... it's just surrounded by too many unnecessary characters and side-plots and some scenes are just loooong.

Last time I got it down to 15 minutes less. Been tinkering with it some more.

[Tiocfaidh]

Originally Posted by Ninja Dodo

I saw Watchmen I was watching The Matrix Reloaded yesterday, that is to say, a special version. As an exercise in editing and I guess just to amuse myself I've made some attempts at creating a cut without all the redundant bits, because in my opinion there's a good film in there... it's just surrounded by too many unnecessary characters and side-plots and some scenes are just loooong.

Last time I got it down to 15 minutes less. Been tinkering with it some more.

What cut´s did you make ?

I remember the discussions of how to make Phantom Menace a better movie.
That was fun !
Ten Years Gone

[Ninja Dodo]

I cut the stupid dance/sex-scene and went straight to Bane's demise after Morpheus' speech. I cut a small part of the Burly Brawl (which was just a bit too long), cut "She used to be with Morpheus, now she's with Lock", Dee's introduction, that stupid line about the floor being rigged with explosives which is never referred to again, the 'special' cake...

Basically I got rid of all the scenes that were either too long, didn't add to the story or just explained too much... as long as it didn't break the flow or cut badly with the music.

Revolutions had some unnecessary scenes as well, but definitely not as much as Reloaded. I think if they had kept Tank, Gloria Foster hadn't died and they'd cut most of the side-stories and extra characters they could have been one great sequel.

It's still a good story, but not as tightly cut or written as the first film.

[MystGirl]

Watchmen, was EXCELLENT. I made sure to read the entire graphic novel before I saw it. I loved the movie adaptation. I think they did a darn good job. There were some changes but I didn't mind them and honestly, I liked the movie ending better then the novel ending. This is quickly becoming one of my favorite comic book movie adaptations of all time.

[MystGirl]

Originally Posted by Lucien21

Punisher :War Zone

3rd time lucky for Punisher?

I'm in a minority that I actually like the Thomas Jane version that came out in 2004.

This one though was dreadful. Ray Stevenson plays the armed vigilante who's family is murdered and he goes on a one man war against the mob.

This is so gruesomly violent as to be hilariously funny. Heads, legs and arms are seen exploding with showers of blood as he guns his way through an army of cannon fodder enemy.

Dumb and stupid with little going for it.

4/10

I'm one of the few that actually enjoyed the Thomas Jane version as well. I'm sorry to hear this newest one was lame though. I was looking forward to it because Ray Stevenson looked much more like The Punisher in the comic book, as far as his "dark, brooding" look for this newest movie. The movie just looked much darker and violent in general from the trailers which sounded cool. I'm sorry to hear it's just kind of corny instead. I'll still rent it though just for the heck of it. I like to see comicbook movie adaptations even if they are bad adaptations.

[MystGirl]

Let The Right One In.... wow. My brother rented it. One of the best movies I've seen in 2009 so far. I love movies that have a more soft, haunting "feel" to them. This one worked on all levels... and the ending? Perfect.

The two children they picked for the two main roles, were excellent. What bothers me about the way so many children are portrayed in so many movies, is that they tend to be far too "sophisticated" for their ages. Too many child actors come accross as much older then they are in movies. But one of the things I liked about this movie, was that while these children were harboring dark secrets, they still "acted" like children, instead of little adults. That was a refreshing take and made their characters all the more sincere.

I liked this movie quite a bit.

[DustyShinigami]

Glad you liked it, MystGirl. I'm happy that i've finally received my imported copy of the movie on dvd. For me and my sister, it's become our new favourite movie.

I know this isn't a movie for everyone. My mum doesn't like it because she finds it too depressing, my dad doesn't like it because there's not enough action/special effects and my brother won't touch it because you have to read subtitles. Lame excuses. These are the reasons why i don't think the movie will do particularly well over here. It really pains me to be honest. And it's all thanks to more mainstream shite like Twilight.

This movie is a breath of fresh air and it's great that there are movies like this that can still be great without fancy special effects and explosions.

[UPtimist]

A few Jim Jarmusch movies: Down By Law, Night on Earth (well, half of it) and Ghost Dog

Perhaps my favorite of at least current directors, sort of Kaurismäki meets Tarantino (in the oddness, not so much the violence).

Let's see... Down By Law, first part of the movie was just OK, I'm not too into the whole low-class realism thing (although that wasn't exaclty my point, but I'm talking about the scanty settings and things going bad or something like that ) but once the movie starts rolling, especially after the prison part, it's got that Jarmusch pull that's just got something that makes you watch it all the way. It's somehow at the same time so realistic and so out-there (like all of Jarmusch's work), with excellent easy tempo (some say this one is even too slow, I liked it a lot though) and a constant back-drop (is that even a word?) of comedy.

Night on Earth follows five taxi-drivers during one night (one story at a time) in LA, New York, Paris, Rome and Helsinki (which of course seems like a really bleak town in this, as usual ). As I said, I dindn't see all of them but seemed to be the usual, with this time an especial emphasis on dialogue, as you can't really have much more going on in a taxi. The end, with Helsinki, was a bit more depressing than the others I saw and the ending wasn't exactly cheerful (although I'm not sure if it ties to the beginning or something or not, as right now it's a bit loose from the earlier, often humorous other stories) but aside from that I believe this still was more comedic than Down By Law, at points just hilarious. And of course it's all cleverly psychological. It's one of those movies that's really hard to pinpoint what the deal is. I probably liked it a bit more than Down By Law.

And finally, Ghost Dog, one of my favorite movies of all times. Simply put: cool and elegant. I mean, the premise sounds silly: an assassin in New Jersey (?) who follows the way of the Samurai. And actually when I first saw very short glimpses of this movie (not really knowing what it's about), I didn't think much of it (seemed very silly, actually) But then when I really saw the movie it just blew me away. It's really funny, and yet has a deep and meaningful story, with some of the best characters ever in movies (at least in this area). And it's all crowned by music by the Rza, really great stuff, works just so well. Won't say too much, as I think it's pretty much a must-see (well, most of Jarmusch's movies are) and there's just so much great stuff going on, with all the good stuff I said about Jarmusch before true here too. Forest Whitaker does an excellent job as the protagonist, keeping a low-key and cool performance. And the way the Way and philosophy is incorporated is really deep (as usual) and the dialogue is just marvellous (as usual)

Pretty much all is just right in the movie.

[Lucien21]

Paul Blart - Mall Cop

OK it's a stupid movie. Overweight Mall Cop Paul Blart does a "Die hard in a mall" as he gets trapped inside while some Parkour/skateboard riding villians take over the shopping complex to rob it of $30million.

But both me and my Dad laughed enough times to make it a reasonable night out. The lead actor is pretty funny in King of Queens and pretty decent her as he prat falls, squeezes his oversized butt into air ducts and zooms around on a segeway to great effect.

Unexpectantly quite funny.(Blatent product placement for a dating website aside)

6/10

[RLacey]

Transformers

Finally saw this on HD DVD. It's stupid, and stupidly entertaining, and looks and sounds fantastic in high definition. But then, you all know that, because you saw it a couple of years ago...

[Lucien21]

Wolverine

Saw it on Saturday and I enjoyed it.

It's certainly not a perfect film, the CGI of the blades is extremely dodgy, but it had some decent set pieces during the film.

Sabretooth was decent as the bad guy and the opening 10 mins was extremely well done as it showed the pair of them in various wars.

It was quite good seeing some of the other mutants on screen, Gambit was pretty good, Deadpool was unfortunatly a mixed bag (He was good in the first bit of action in the elevator and the sword fight, but they cocked it up with the Weapon XI rubbish - Although I would put money on that it wasn't really Deadpool)

Overall a middling comic book movie, but not the disaster I feared.

6/10

[Lucien21]

Star Trek

Can TV's Wunderkid JJ Abrams successfully relaunch the Star Trek franchise?

With the evidence of this film...he certainly can, but not without some reservations.

The plot is like watered down Trek, Time travelling Romulan peeved off at the destruction of his planet, wages war agains the Vulcans and the federation in the hope of changing the timeline.

In step the younger versions of Kirk, Spock et al to save the day in an action packed, sexy and stylised version of the Trek universe (We are in an alternate universe now)

The cast are all perfect for their parts with Pine's playboy Kirk, Sylar's Spock, Bone McCoy being the stars of the show although all the new cast get a chance in this film.

JJ Abrams has taken the slower pace of the normal Star Trek movie with all the talking and science technobabble and threw it out an airlock.

This is a rollercoaster ride set to maximum warp.

An action packed movie, full of humour and stunning visuals.The best blockbuster of the year so far, but is it really Star Trek???

A debate that will rage on Trekkie boards I'm sure. However,I loved it.

9/10

[Jelena]

*gasp*
No technobabble?

[Lucien21]

There is some just not as much as you eould expect.