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Showing posts from March, 2009

What Happened? & Body of Lies

What Happened? Quite the correct title. How do you screw up a Barry Levinson directed Bobby DeNiro, Bruce Willis, and a plethora of other excellent castings? The title alone should have been fair warning to whomever backed this. Note to Hollywood: When making a comedy, add jokes, or something funny. 4/10 Body Of Lies Ridley Scott is a favored director because Blade Runner is a masterpiece. With this he basically set his film Kindom Of Heaven (review for that sometime, but a quick score for the curious, 10/10) in the current Middle East situation. Now, I, like the rest of America, am not really interested in the billion or so Iraq movies that Hollywood has been pumping out. Most are a trainwreck of filmmaking (Syrianna, 2/10), incredibly biased, or kind of depressing (The Kingdom, 7.5/10), and no matter which side of that fence you're on, it doesn't usually make for good entertainment. There are a few gems out there, but too many that follow the aforementioned faults to merit s

Appaloosa

I'll be the first to tell you, I'm an Ed Harris whore. After The Abyss, that dude has to work pretty hard to disappoint me. But the great casting for this flick goes on, and on, and on. Viggo Mortensen. Lance Henrickson. That one dude from Cliffhanger. Then theres the ever hideous Rene Zellwegger, who looks more and more like Carrottop everyday, but lets just ignore her and her dumb character. I'll also be the first to tell you the genre of western film isn't really my bag either. I hate the cliche stuff, so westerns are difficult for me to stomach unless they are unique or twist 'cowboys and indians' on its side. This film does that. I was quite surprised to hear them cracking jokes, and doing seriously non-cowboy things like reading and trying to improve their vocabulary . They shot some stuff too. The story is pretty servicable, even if it seems to meander around and get lost in the third act, but who cares. The real story here is the interactions between the

Akira

One of my favorite films, Akira pretty much gets the honor of introducing anime to the west. Many of the themes it contains also introduced me to the cinema of the east, relative to the style of issues Japanese films dive into. Motorcycles gangs, anti-government groups, secret government expiriments...all run amuck in Neo-Tokyo. After a government secret project code named Akira went bad and destroyed Tokyo in WWIII, the city spent decades rebuilding. The era and joy of rebuilding has cooled, and the citizens grow restless. Motorcycle gangs run rampant and normal people do they're best to stay out of their way. One night a simple street race with a rival gang brings our main characters into contact with a new escaped government creation, unleashing the possiblility of another Akira disaster. I don't like telling everything that happens, but rest assured, its excellent. Mixing every classic theme possible (man vs. man, man vs. society, man vs. himself) and asking the viewer thos

Allo, me blogmates.

I love lots of movies, though most are far from great. I'll get into movies, writings, and other general rantings for your amusement. Woo-hoo.