Going through your movie list for this year.

Watched Man of Steel yesterday.

Enjoyed it a lot. Best of the bunch.

Thanks

Was hard core Superman comic buyer for about 4 years.

The Offence 79/100

kind of extraordinary, with Connery giving an amazing performance as a burnt-out copper raging and unravelling from all the disgusting things he's seen over the years, his terrible home life, and his own dark thoughts about the young girls being abducted, raped and killed, Joined by potential suspect Ian Bannen, who has his own dark thoughts.


The third act is amazing. It feels like an dark, extended version of the Joker/Batman interrogation scene in The Dark Knight, played 30 years after by the same characters.

Haven't seen that one but the director also wrote and directed The Incredibles and Ratatouille, great if not top best animated movies too. Got The Iron Giant in my watchlist, gonna get it up thanks to this.

Mallrats

A lightweight, fun feature from Kevin Smith, his second movie after Clerks. Jason Lee is in fine form as a smartass Brodie, but the guys that make this most enjoyable are Jay and Silent Bob and their batman gadgets.

And Michael Rooker from The Walking Dead is in it too.


I liked its obsession with comic book stuff was ahead of its time, considering how "comic book heroes" modern culture and movies are - Stan Lee's in it, and there's talk about X-Men, Hulk, Spiderman etc etc - All 5 years before the 1st X-Men movie and 7 years before the Spiderman movie (pretty much all there was before this movie were the Superman movies, the batman movies, and odds and ends such as Blade and The Punisher)

75/100

Kubrick getting any 10s out of you?

Dr. Strangelove? c'mon.

I'll get to that... Eventually.

First time I saw Dr. Strangelove, it was on a very big screen - old movie theater, maybe the Oakland Fox Theater - and I had no expectations. It totally blew me away.

Licence To Kill



I enjoyed this one a lot. Easily the most brutal of the Bond movies, and I'm pretty sure this is the closest any of the movies so far got to the literary Bond. Dalton amps up the simmering rage that's held back by cold professionalism, and cuts right down on the quips. Like the literary Bond, the closest he gets to jokes are sardonic asides. He's like a wolf in this, watching, weighing the options, waiting to rip out a throat or go for the kill.

Also the writers revisited the Bond library somewhat by including two plot elements from different Bond stories - Leiter getting fed to a shark is straight out of the book of Live and Let Die, including the joke "He Disagreed with something that ate him", along with another element from LALD, the use of a fish company to hide smuggling, and a reference to an odd short story entitled "The Hildebrand Rarity", which concerns a cruel husband who uses a short stubby whip on his wife. There's also a quick reference to the fact Bond was married once before, a long time ago.

To continue the Live and Let Die link, Felix Leiter is played by the same actor who played him in the LALD movie (I don't think Leiter was ever played by the same guy twice in any other movies).

It's pretty cool when Bond gets reeled in by M at the start and resigns, and there's a hint of menace when M announces "This isn't a country club, 007!", but Bond escapes and goes rogue in a revenge-fuelled bloodbath (well, relative bloodbath - he's not The Punisher, after all).

The villain was pretty good in this - Sanchez, played by Robert Davi. Good turn from him. Right blend of true menace and Bond villain overblown-ness.

I also appreciated the fact the story was relatively linear.

I really liked the main female lead - she was cute and self-reliant, and a reasonable actress. The other female character in this, however, who played Sanchez' girlfirend, was a brutally bad actress - her line deliveries were terrible.

Overall, I think this one tends to be forgotten, but it's solid, and about as far from the Moore era Bonds as the series could get.

74/100

Two Mules for Sister Sara Rather great little Western, powers along at a good clip, some great dialogue and real chemistry between Eastwood and MacLaine. Very, very enjoyable.

76/100

American Psycho - 80/100 barking mad comedy about the sociopathy of some men. Bale gives a great performance of a shallow, unlikeable man whose lack of ability to feel is driving him mad.

Ruthless People - 72/100 decent comedy from the team that brought us Airplane! where Danny DeVito is a douchebag who won't pay the ransom for his kidnapped wife (Bette Midler). Bill Pullman is terrific is the Miami Vice-influence idiot gigolo

American Psycho 2: All American Girl 62/100

nothing like the original, but functions as a goofy light comedy about a teen serial killer. Mila Kunis elevates the slight material. Blended To Die For, American Pie and Dexter, kind of.

Doctor No by Ian Fleming

Fleming follows up his excellent From Russia With Love with this, a book that I think is his most exciting, straightforward, and intense book. This should be the book they show under the definition of 'page-turner'. I can see why they chose this as the first movie. Simply plot and premise, but hell is Bond up against it in this one. It's funny how they actual toned down some of the elements of this for the movie, because they were sadistic. For example, in the movie, Bond makes an escape and has to crawl through venting tubes and face heat, rushing water and dangerous drops. In the book, he's being deliberately put through an assault course of pain and terror by Doctor No, for 'scientific research'.

I really enjoyed this, I think it's the darkest of Fleming's books.

Goldeneye 73/100



6 years after Licence to Kill, we get a pretty solid first feature from Pierce Brosnan. He has the look, the attitude, the delivery and the charisma, but looks pretty skinny and small when bare-chested. That jars a little, even Moore was at least solid in body. The villains are pretty good, as are the minor support (Robbie Coltrane with a funny turn by Minnie Driver as his tone-deaf mistress, and Joe Don Baker, playing an entirely different character from his Living Daylights turn).

Sean Bean is cool and there's an extra kick that he could have made a good, tough Bond himself.

My favourite, though, is Famke Janssen, really relishing the badgirl role as Xenia Onatopp. She's terrific.

Solid action sequences, especially the opener and the tank chase. The only other downside is there's a thread of emo running through this Bond's character. Brooding is fine, but not emo. Exhibit A, this dialogue:

Natalya:How can you act like this? How can you be so cold?
James Bond: It's what keeps me alive.


Sean Connery's Bond would NEVER say a line like that.


Overall very enjoyable.


Best dialogue:
(Bond's driving a girl at high speed through the mountains, and she's getting scared)
Caroline: I enjoy a spirited ride as much as the next girl, but...
[Xenia Onatopp pulls up alongside and smiles]
Caroline: Who's that?
Bond: The next girl.

Spinal Tap - superb comedy that never ages. The extras are also great 11/10

Hansel & Gretel Witch Hunters - 67/100 Goofy but fun adult actioner that owes more than a little to Army of Darkness

Doctor Who: Genesis of the Daleks 92/100 Great story and characters, especially Davros. There's also some terrific speeches. Just overlook there cheap production values.

The Punisher 1989 - 77/100 This is glorious and criminally underrated, with Dolph kicking ass as a mashup of the Fonz and Frankenstein's monster. Totally enjoyable.

Dredd - ****ing awesome. The go-to movie if you want to see scumbugs being shot through the face in slow motion. 95/100

The Last Stand 67/100 pretty decent actioner, nice return for Arnie as a lead. I like the whole premise of a psycho getting the batmobile, backed up by a private army.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show 70/100 some great songs (timewarp) and a great cast, giving incoherent fun. I enjoyed it.

The Shrine 60/100

Poor acting in the main female lead and poor dialogue, and a plodding first half, but gets way better in the second half where it goes from a cliché about 'americans have a bad time when they go overseas' to something much better. Enjoyable by the end.

Leon: The Professional 92/100



A terrific movie from a great year for movies (1994), Rewatching makes me think this is Portman's best performance in any movie, and Jean Reno has so much presence as the unassuming cleaner. And of course, Oldman is terrific. Some great shots, and outstanding music design, Just wonderful.

Casino Royale (2006)



76/100

4 years after Die Another Day (seems longer), we get a Bond reboot of sorts (M is still Dench, but playing it harder edged), starting with Bond winning his Double-0 status by killing 2 men. He's a loose cannon here, but extremely resourceful, icy and distant.

I saw this when it came out, and not since, and remembered bits I liked (most of it actually except the stupid self-defribilator part, and I didn't buy the love story at the end), but completely forgot a whole section in the middle involving an attempt to destroy a new aircraft - and damn well-put together it was. I really enjoyed the rewatch, and my estimation of the movie has gone up somewhat. I still think the poker scenes had very little tension compared to what they could have had, and the defibrillator scene is still poor, but I was most changed over my view of Eva Green and the love story - she was a great Vesper, and it did work, I was wrong.

Excellent start by Craig imo, and definitely a big step up from the silliness that Die Another Day has got into.

Theme song sucks. Fantastic opening chase, by the way. And very nice ending too.

Rocky Horror is really more of an experience than a movie. Going to a theater full of RH fans is the way to go. Watching it at home just doesn't do it justice. Find a midnight showing somewhere (if they still do this).