![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
January
1. The Rum Diary
Well, I liked it better than Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (not a great feat, admittedly), but I am beginning to consider if I should reconsider my "watch all the Johnny Depp movies" approach to life.
2. The Killer Inside Me
Sorry to say that this wasn't that great a movie. Not so much because the main character is about as impossible to like as can be (which I understand was on purpose), but honestly - the basic plot is how one murder escalates to a small massacre, and the main motivation of the protagonist is apparently that he had some form of fucked up oedipal syndrome. Blah.
3. Suits season 1.
Once in a while there is something - usually a tv series - and you can see how it takes fandom by storm. Prompts and fics and fandom_secrets all over the place. And then you sit down and watch it and - was that it? Really? I mean yes, alright, it's perfectly entertaining, but seriously? That's it? (Which was also my response to White Collar, so...
4. Whale Rider
So, I mostly sat down to watch this movie because the main character is played by the actor who plays Gaia in Almighty Johnsons. And let me tell you, it is a lovely movie (also regularly wanted to yell at the grandfather, but hey, what did you expect?) - go watch. Now. (Or go watch the Whale Rider fanvid that got made for the last round of Festivid.)
5. Warrior
Am I the only one who cheered more for Tommy? I mean neither of the brothers had truly significant, life-altering stakes going for them, but honestly, the movie never managed to persuade me that Brendan's financial issues couldn't have been handled by him living within his means.
6. Vampires Anonymous
This movie - well, the premise of a vampire deciding to join a 12-step-program after loosing control and killing his latest girlfriend sounded funnier than it turned out. Though I rather enjoyed the protagonist's sponsor: Michael Madsen playing a friendly, family-man vampire, who has found excellent use of his condition in hisFamilywork-life.
February
7. Beasts of the Southern Wild
Two words: Oscar bait. Oh, don't get me wrong, it's a good movie. Maybe not as good as I expected, but I suspect my expectations had been raised unreasonably high by all the media attention and so forth. Anyway, I liked the post-apocalyptic feel of Hushpuppy's world. On the other hand, I was pretty unimpressed with the "aurochs" (that looked like smaller, meaker versions of how I imagine the Beast of London would look) - the "child imagining fantastic things based on her immediate surroundings" has been done before (I recommend The Fall) and done less - less as if the movie is trying to bloody well make sure you get it. Also, I could have lived without the touch of real world - because sadly, I don't particularly find Hushpuppy's dad and the band of lovable oddballs particularly, well, loveable. Just saying...
8. North & South
Oh, this is good. And yes, I got around to watching it because Richard Armitage, but I liked it. Strong heroine, suitably gloomy hero, interesting setting - mind you, I find it vaguely annoying that regency romances almost always stop at the proposal/wedding...
9. Jeffrey
So, this is a romantic comedy from the 90s. About AIDS. And I watched this as a teenager on tv and what I remembered best was still the best parts: Michael T. Weiss playing the love interest and an extremely campy Patrick Stewart. Also, there's several fun bits, like the uncomfortable three-way-phone-sex-with-the-parents-bit (admittedly, my embarassement squick was blinking there) and Sigourney Weaver's very unhelpful selfhelp guru. So what didn't I like about this movie? Jeffrey. The protagonist, a gay man who - during the height of the AIDS scare decides to stop having sex - only to turn around and fall for a gorgeous, fantastic guy, who turns out to have HIV. I suppose it could have been done well. But this guy? Jeffrey? A more selfcentered son-of-a-bitch I've rarely seen, toying with other people, changing his mind every which way - and the supposedly happy end of him finally having gathered his courage to make a real go of the relationship with Michael T. Weiss' character? Not a happy end, because that poor guy deserves so much better than being saddled with the bastard - for however long until the bastard's next round of doubt.
10. Les Revenants season 1.
What do you do, when the 13-year-old daughter who died in a bus accident three years ago suddenly walks in the door and heads straight for the fridge? Or the husband-to-be who died the night before your wedding comes knocking nine years later? Or you have a brother with serial killer tendencies who won't stay dead even if you bury him? In a small, French mountain village, dead people return to life - not brain eating zombies (admittedly, Serge has a thing for killing people and trying to eat their innards, but that seems to have more to do with the aforementioned serial killer tendencies), but just people. And now the families of the dead have to figure out what to do, how to cope, as well as (eventually) the community at large. And while of course there's the mystery of how the dead have come back and there's something mysterious going on with the nearby dam and the local wildlife, then the focus is very much on the people. And it's good. I'll look forward to a second season.
11. Vertigo
I didn't particularly like this one. Mostly because the protagonist - I hesitate to call him the hero - was a genuine bastard. Who the fuck barges into the life of a random woman with a passing resemblance to someone dead and proceeds to mold her into a duplicate of the dead woman? Yes, it turned out she was the dead woman, but it's not like he knew that at the time - creepy, I tell you.
12. Hvidsten Gruppen
It was okay. A bit - for a movie about a World War II resistance group it kind of lacked any narrative - surprises? It was predictable - which admittedly might be an unfair complaint to level against a based-on-real-life movie. Anyway, my absolute favourite scene? The sequence were the innkeeper is recruiting locals for the new resistance group. The whole Jutlandish saying a million things in two words in awesome.
13. The Bletchley Circle
I liked it. My favourite was Jean. And I spent an awful lot of time hoping to see Susan's husband get yelled at or something, which sadly never happened.
14. The Hobbit
Seriously?
15. The Hunger Games
I liked it. It's not high art and I won't be running off to dive into the fandom, but it's decent enough entertainment. I liked several of the stylistic choices made, how Panem, Capitol and the Hunger Games themselves were shown as compared with (and differing from) how they were shown in the book (admittedly, the control room sequences has left me suspecting the entire Hunger Games of taking place in a virtual reality space, but I digress). On the other hand, I find myself preferring book!Katniss to movie!Katniss, mostly because in the book she very much comes across as a survivor, calculating and playing the game to win and survive. Of course, the movie has the problem of conveying that in a character who is constantly aware of being watched by cameras and is therefore controlling herself.
16. Nazis at the Center of the Earth
I suppose I should have stopped watching this at some point. It was like a train wreck. I couldn't stop, I needed to know how they were going to top the latest madness: Mengele hiding in ice tunnels in Antartica, nazi zombies, nazi zombies raping female characters, Hitler killer cyborg, nazi flying saucer. It's not even a B movie, it's something like a V or X movie, a very poor man's attempt to emulate Iron Sky, maybe, and very, very much not recommended, but honestly, it was like a train wreck. You can't blame me.
17. Take Shelter
Oh, I like this. It's a movie about a perfectly ordinary family man haunted by dreams of an impending storm/disaster/zombie apocalypse, and gradually he grows paranoid, convinced that the dream is coming real. It's good, very good.
18. Django Unchained
And they lived happily ever after under Broomhilda's last name, because you just know who they were the ancestors of. This is a great movie, yes. Very Tarantino, unsurprisingly. I enjoyed Leonardo diCaprio's villain (mostly because he is pragmatic and willing to let the heroes go with the girl as long as he gets the money). Dr. Schultz the bounty hunter, well, I liked him, but he's very morally ambiguous - anti-slavery, but a bit too attached to the dead part of "wanted: dead or alive" to be considered actually good. And I would have liked Broomhilda to perhaps be less damsel in distress, though the movie might not have worked half as well if she had gone and rescued herself. Anyway.
19. Brave
Very pretty and occasionally funny (does Disney have a thing for turning people into bears these days?) That said, the plot annoyed me - not in the "it's-not-feminist-to-have-the-heroine-agree-to-marry-someone-for-politics-even-if-she-does-have-to-have-love-in-the-mix" way I've seen a couple of places. No, what annoys me is this: in the (admittedly anachronism soup) time of the movie, the political was personal for royal families. Marriages was diplomacy. Merida having to marry for the good of the kingdom is nothing surprising - no doubt so will her brothers in their turn. What is surprising - and annoying - is that it is surprising. This shouldn't have come as a surprise to her. This should have been something her parents had raised her to expect and understand the reasons for. But no, let's wait until it's practically the wedding day before bothering to tell the free-spirited girl. Dear Fergus, dear Elinor - you're idiots. Just saying...
20. Ripper Street season 1.
I liked this. And of course, I couldn't help but compare it with Copper, and the things is, they are very different shows - mostly because Copper is a drama series that happens to be set around 19th century New York police, while Ripper Street is a police series about 19th century London police, if you follow? Oh, RS has decent enough character arcs, but you can easily watch it for the case of the week (snuff movies, political terrorism, trafficking, etc.), while Copper was much more caught up in the storylines. And I admit that Copper has the better storylines, but frankly, I liked the protagonist of Ripper Street more.
1. The Rum Diary
Well, I liked it better than Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (not a great feat, admittedly), but I am beginning to consider if I should reconsider my "watch all the Johnny Depp movies" approach to life.
2. The Killer Inside Me
Sorry to say that this wasn't that great a movie. Not so much because the main character is about as impossible to like as can be (which I understand was on purpose), but honestly - the basic plot is how one murder escalates to a small massacre, and the main motivation of the protagonist is apparently that he had some form of fucked up oedipal syndrome. Blah.
3. Suits season 1.
Once in a while there is something - usually a tv series - and you can see how it takes fandom by storm. Prompts and fics and fandom_secrets all over the place. And then you sit down and watch it and - was that it? Really? I mean yes, alright, it's perfectly entertaining, but seriously? That's it? (Which was also my response to White Collar, so...
4. Whale Rider
So, I mostly sat down to watch this movie because the main character is played by the actor who plays Gaia in Almighty Johnsons. And let me tell you, it is a lovely movie (also regularly wanted to yell at the grandfather, but hey, what did you expect?) - go watch. Now. (Or go watch the Whale Rider fanvid that got made for the last round of Festivid.)
5. Warrior
Am I the only one who cheered more for Tommy? I mean neither of the brothers had truly significant, life-altering stakes going for them, but honestly, the movie never managed to persuade me that Brendan's financial issues couldn't have been handled by him living within his means.
6. Vampires Anonymous
This movie - well, the premise of a vampire deciding to join a 12-step-program after loosing control and killing his latest girlfriend sounded funnier than it turned out. Though I rather enjoyed the protagonist's sponsor: Michael Madsen playing a friendly, family-man vampire, who has found excellent use of his condition in his
February
7. Beasts of the Southern Wild
Two words: Oscar bait. Oh, don't get me wrong, it's a good movie. Maybe not as good as I expected, but I suspect my expectations had been raised unreasonably high by all the media attention and so forth. Anyway, I liked the post-apocalyptic feel of Hushpuppy's world. On the other hand, I was pretty unimpressed with the "aurochs" (that looked like smaller, meaker versions of how I imagine the Beast of London would look) - the "child imagining fantastic things based on her immediate surroundings" has been done before (I recommend The Fall) and done less - less as if the movie is trying to bloody well make sure you get it. Also, I could have lived without the touch of real world - because sadly, I don't particularly find Hushpuppy's dad and the band of lovable oddballs particularly, well, loveable. Just saying...
8. North & South
Oh, this is good. And yes, I got around to watching it because Richard Armitage, but I liked it. Strong heroine, suitably gloomy hero, interesting setting - mind you, I find it vaguely annoying that regency romances almost always stop at the proposal/wedding...
9. Jeffrey
So, this is a romantic comedy from the 90s. About AIDS. And I watched this as a teenager on tv and what I remembered best was still the best parts: Michael T. Weiss playing the love interest and an extremely campy Patrick Stewart. Also, there's several fun bits, like the uncomfortable three-way-phone-sex-with-the-parents-bit (admittedly, my embarassement squick was blinking there) and Sigourney Weaver's very unhelpful selfhelp guru. So what didn't I like about this movie? Jeffrey. The protagonist, a gay man who - during the height of the AIDS scare decides to stop having sex - only to turn around and fall for a gorgeous, fantastic guy, who turns out to have HIV. I suppose it could have been done well. But this guy? Jeffrey? A more selfcentered son-of-a-bitch I've rarely seen, toying with other people, changing his mind every which way - and the supposedly happy end of him finally having gathered his courage to make a real go of the relationship with Michael T. Weiss' character? Not a happy end, because that poor guy deserves so much better than being saddled with the bastard - for however long until the bastard's next round of doubt.
10. Les Revenants season 1.
What do you do, when the 13-year-old daughter who died in a bus accident three years ago suddenly walks in the door and heads straight for the fridge? Or the husband-to-be who died the night before your wedding comes knocking nine years later? Or you have a brother with serial killer tendencies who won't stay dead even if you bury him? In a small, French mountain village, dead people return to life - not brain eating zombies (admittedly, Serge has a thing for killing people and trying to eat their innards, but that seems to have more to do with the aforementioned serial killer tendencies), but just people. And now the families of the dead have to figure out what to do, how to cope, as well as (eventually) the community at large. And while of course there's the mystery of how the dead have come back and there's something mysterious going on with the nearby dam and the local wildlife, then the focus is very much on the people. And it's good. I'll look forward to a second season.
11. Vertigo
I didn't particularly like this one. Mostly because the protagonist - I hesitate to call him the hero - was a genuine bastard. Who the fuck barges into the life of a random woman with a passing resemblance to someone dead and proceeds to mold her into a duplicate of the dead woman? Yes, it turned out she was the dead woman, but it's not like he knew that at the time - creepy, I tell you.
12. Hvidsten Gruppen
It was okay. A bit - for a movie about a World War II resistance group it kind of lacked any narrative - surprises? It was predictable - which admittedly might be an unfair complaint to level against a based-on-real-life movie. Anyway, my absolute favourite scene? The sequence were the innkeeper is recruiting locals for the new resistance group. The whole Jutlandish saying a million things in two words in awesome.
13. The Bletchley Circle
I liked it. My favourite was Jean. And I spent an awful lot of time hoping to see Susan's husband get yelled at or something, which sadly never happened.
14. The Hobbit
Seriously?
15. The Hunger Games
I liked it. It's not high art and I won't be running off to dive into the fandom, but it's decent enough entertainment. I liked several of the stylistic choices made, how Panem, Capitol and the Hunger Games themselves were shown as compared with (and differing from) how they were shown in the book (admittedly, the control room sequences has left me suspecting the entire Hunger Games of taking place in a virtual reality space, but I digress). On the other hand, I find myself preferring book!Katniss to movie!Katniss, mostly because in the book she very much comes across as a survivor, calculating and playing the game to win and survive. Of course, the movie has the problem of conveying that in a character who is constantly aware of being watched by cameras and is therefore controlling herself.
16. Nazis at the Center of the Earth
I suppose I should have stopped watching this at some point. It was like a train wreck. I couldn't stop, I needed to know how they were going to top the latest madness: Mengele hiding in ice tunnels in Antartica, nazi zombies, nazi zombies raping female characters, Hitler killer cyborg, nazi flying saucer. It's not even a B movie, it's something like a V or X movie, a very poor man's attempt to emulate Iron Sky, maybe, and very, very much not recommended, but honestly, it was like a train wreck. You can't blame me.
17. Take Shelter
Oh, I like this. It's a movie about a perfectly ordinary family man haunted by dreams of an impending storm/disaster/zombie apocalypse, and gradually he grows paranoid, convinced that the dream is coming real. It's good, very good.
18. Django Unchained
And they lived happily ever after under Broomhilda's last name, because you just know who they were the ancestors of. This is a great movie, yes. Very Tarantino, unsurprisingly. I enjoyed Leonardo diCaprio's villain (mostly because he is pragmatic and willing to let the heroes go with the girl as long as he gets the money). Dr. Schultz the bounty hunter, well, I liked him, but he's very morally ambiguous - anti-slavery, but a bit too attached to the dead part of "wanted: dead or alive" to be considered actually good. And I would have liked Broomhilda to perhaps be less damsel in distress, though the movie might not have worked half as well if she had gone and rescued herself. Anyway.
19. Brave
Very pretty and occasionally funny (does Disney have a thing for turning people into bears these days?) That said, the plot annoyed me - not in the "it's-not-feminist-to-have-the-heroine-agree-to-marry-someone-for-politics-even-if-she-does-have-to-have-love-in-the-mix" way I've seen a couple of places. No, what annoys me is this: in the (admittedly anachronism soup) time of the movie, the political was personal for royal families. Marriages was diplomacy. Merida having to marry for the good of the kingdom is nothing surprising - no doubt so will her brothers in their turn. What is surprising - and annoying - is that it is surprising. This shouldn't have come as a surprise to her. This should have been something her parents had raised her to expect and understand the reasons for. But no, let's wait until it's practically the wedding day before bothering to tell the free-spirited girl. Dear Fergus, dear Elinor - you're idiots. Just saying...
20. Ripper Street season 1.
I liked this. And of course, I couldn't help but compare it with Copper, and the things is, they are very different shows - mostly because Copper is a drama series that happens to be set around 19th century New York police, while Ripper Street is a police series about 19th century London police, if you follow? Oh, RS has decent enough character arcs, but you can easily watch it for the case of the week (snuff movies, political terrorism, trafficking, etc.), while Copper was much more caught up in the storylines. And I admit that Copper has the better storylines, but frankly, I liked the protagonist of Ripper Street more.
Tags:
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
But some people on my flist loved it, so.
From:
no subject
From: (Anonymous)
no subject
I'd never seen that The Hobbit short, though I do remember another Hobbit animated film.