*Hauls out of retirement with help of shock paddles and lots of Epinephrine*
Had a bit of downtime, so in turn I wasted it watching a pile of films
Watchmen:
An incredibly odd film, no disputing that. I remember all of the hype surrounding the film prior to it's release, and thinking about how it seemed all so very meh. I never had high hopes for this film, and was at odds with myself as to whether I should watch it. Looking back, I am now very glad that I did. It's not your average superhero movie. Well, I say superhero, I should really say vigilantes - there's only one character that actually possesses superhuman abilities, the rest are just extremely well trained. Words can't quite explain how this movie goes about putting the world into perspective, but it does a good job. Zack Synder goes for epic again, with his success of 300, but doesn't quite make it. Undoubtedly, this is a good film, with quality acting, quality story, and a different outlook on what the world could have been. But it lacks a certain something, maybe the story is too convoluted, maybe it's too true to the original comic book. It seems to lack a particularly good ending, and you can't help feeling that the world isn't as dark as Snyder likes to show it as - if anything it's a little too eye-opening, and makes you feel as though there's not much hope for humanity. The film has especially been complimented for the character of Rorschach, the one remaining vigilante at the start of the film. In the comics, he is a deep character, with a lot of layers to break down, even if he doesn't actually want to appear that way. In the films, he either does that too well, or they just don't build him up enough - he is interesting, but only in one dimension - despite the two and a half hour runtime, the film doesn't do much to lend itself to the characters, with the flashbacks into their lives incapable at showing them to us as humans. Snyder was very close at creating a great film. Unfortunately, his balance between storyline and character development was too perfectly balanced - a good film needs one or the other to take precedence, even if only a little, but Watchmen does not.
I'd suggest watching the Watchmen, but I wouldn't suggest watching it for the Watchmen, or for what they do. I'd suggest watching it for the action, the intimacy, and the possibility of what the world could have been. It's very good, but I wouldn't rank it up there with the greats of comic book films. 7.5/10
17 Again:
Before I go any further, I will add a disclaimer: I was forced to watch this! This is your pretty stereotypical college romp through happy-go-lucky places, the occasional twist being shown, but nothing spectacular, or that you couldn't have predicted with the help of a our year-old and their sketchbook. Matthew Perry (who seems to be acting only for the joys of acting now, considering how much he's made off Friends) is his usual, down-on-your-luck man, who threw away a career in basketball in order to be with his pregnant girlfriend that he then proposes to. He then spends the next 20 years bemoaning that decision, forcing everyone away from him bar his best friend from high school, an uber geek who is also somehow incredibly wealthy. Bring on a spirit guide, a age-changing vortex, and you have the complicated scenario of him buggering off back to high school to show everyone up and save his kids from their rather useless fates. Bring on basketball with the son, relationship advice with the daughter, throw in awkward love scene moments with his wife (30 years his senior) and you essentially know where the film is going within half an hour. It's a shame, as more could have been done with the premise, but it does a good job of putting Zac Efron slap bang in his prime audience target - hormonal/horny women. A word of advice - if you ever go to see this film with a woman, she will spend more time staring at Zacy boy over the course of this film than she will spend staring at you for the rest of your natural born lives. He does a good job with a limited script, but frankly, his role is 'walk around, show people up, be sensitive, and wear clothes that make everyone want to go out and buy replicas, including the sodding sunglasses'.
If you are male, this movie is one you can afford to miss. If you are female and like a pretty boy dancing around less than in his usual musical roles, and with more body exposed, you should have already bought this. It's decent, but nothing special - bar perhaps Michelle Trachtenberg for the blokes out there, but she has so few scenes they may as well shown a pic of her for thirty seconds at the start, and then removed her scenes to add in more of Zac Efron. 4/10
Harry Potter 6 (The Half Blood Prince)
Anyone that has ever read the books would probably have not been expecting a lot from this movie. At all. Of all the books, it has the least going on in it, and the most backstory and fillers. Honestly, if you'd left those out, it would have been a shorter book than the original. Not to say it wasn't good, but there was very little to take from the book and make a story out of. And yet David Yates has somehow managed to make a two and a half hour film out of it. And what's more, it's a very good one, even if it's not particularly true to the books at all. All of the previous Harry Potter films have been very overwhelming with the amount of info that they try to get across, desperately racing through scenes in order to get it all across in a reasonable time frame. Thus, The Half Blood Prince doesn't suffer. It has time to dwell on issues, and the prevailing one is relationships. Gone is all the dark foreboding from the previous book, and instead in comes a bit of human warmth that helps the viewer identify with the characters a lot more than any other book or film. There are genuine emotions, and genuine characters. And for the first time in six films, it's proof that the leading trio can actually act. What I genuinely enjoyed about this film was about how epic it could be on such a small scale - everything happens in Hogwarts, and even then it only happens in a small few events. The three main characters all have their relationship problems, and that's probably the key feature of this film - not fighting off the dark lord, not huge action packed sequences, but love. In the books it's stated that love is the strongest type of magic, and this movie has proven it right. Instead of being an action movie, it's actually a drama/romance one. It's an incredibly refreshing break from the usual form, and drags personalities out of the lead characters. Harry falls for Ginny, she has a bf but also falls for Harry, insert tensions, back-and-forth moments, and the cruelest interruption by Ron EVER. Ron falls for Hermoine, but by the time he gets his act together, he gets latched onto by Lavender Brown and surprised, he gets into a relationship with her. This is the best bit of the film for me, as while Hermione displays no obvious emotions for Ron in the book, the film is better for it having them in there, leading to a very touching scene with her and Harry just over halfway into the film (as friends you dirty-minded bastards).
What's more, bar the little bits of magic scattered here or there, it's incredibly believable. And I think that's key. The characters are people you can now identify with, they have feelings, and what's more, you find yourself willing them along in relationships, wanting them to get together even though you know exactly when and how in advance. Most of the other films don't do the books justice. In this case, the book doesn't do the film justice. For me, this piece of film is verging on greatness. It never quite gets there, but it's oh so very close. 9/10
Edited by AJ, 16 October 2009 - 14:31.
4
Dauth, on 16 Aug 2009, 0:49, said:
. The title, which I thought sounded really badarse for some reason, is the name of a statue, the head of which is missing, and someone has to get it back. Lots of Thai boxing in it, and though the fighting scenes are pretty good, the plot and acting pretty terrible 
. But I guess that doesn't really matter for a fighting movie, of course. Though not nearly as violent as I gathered from Wiz & Pav, it's still a pretty good fighting movie.
) so I watched it on web ( you know these poor quality ones where they record with cam 
