cloverfield

i'd been waiting a fair while for this, and like a lot of other people was quite excited about it. hype usually leads to disappointment, so i usually don't get too caught up in it and keep my expectations open. it seems that the movie has divided people into love/hate camps, which i guess is inevitable with anything that a) has hype, and b) doesn't conform. i for one thought it was absolutely brilliantly done. the hand-held camera style was completely immersive, and put you right in the action. you went through everything that the characters did, and you knew everything that they did about what was happening.. which wasn't much. i find it annoying how people have complained about there being so many unanswered questions. i don't care what happens afterwards. i don't care what the monster is, where it came from, or why it's ripping the shit out of manhattan. the movie doesn't need to explain these things, because it doesn't matter.. it's about being in the now, and experiencing this thing first-hand. it creates intrigue, and leaves things to your imagination.. that's a good thing! the acting was great, and all the characters were pretty likeable. the effects were just perfect.. seamless and incredibly impressive. plus there's a sneaky little easter egg after the credits. can't recommend this enough.



american gangster

i dunno if i was tired or just stupid at the time, but i found this movie a little hard to follow at the start. there's a lot of people who are introduced, but it didn't really take that long to get a handle on things, and figure out who's who, and where they stand within the story. the movie is long, but it didn't really feel it.. it keeps you pretty engrossed the whole time with some strong acting from denzel washington and all the supporting players. pretty amazing story, and a true one to boot.



pterodactyl

haven't heard of it? the tagline is "ptowering pterror". this movie is absolutely stunning, but not in a good way. some of this movie is so bad it's good, but most of it is so bad it's gone past good and back to bad again. it's hard to decide which is the most embarrasing aspect.. the effects, the acting or the writing. if it was trying to be tongue-in-cheek, then it failed horribly at that too.. it was just flatout lame. so it goes something like this: a professor and bunch of students (complete with good old clichés like the nervous geeky guy and the hot bitchy girl) go on this trip to check out a volcano that's supposedly full of fossils. turns out it's totally full of dinosaurs instead. meanwhile there's another equally thin plotline of u.s. army soldiers (led by fucking coolio of all people) on a covert mission to hunt down some bad guys. their paths cross, nearly everyone dies, yada yada. it's funny how just the slightest touch by one of those pterodactyls will cause random limbs to fly clean off. amazing.



evan almighty

this wasn't too bad for a fairly enjoyable, light movie, although it felt a bit flat and all too played out in the wake of bruce almighty. there were some quite funny parts, although i think it was the cast more than anything that was holding it together. it was full of glaring plotholes, but that's kind of a stupid thing to say with a movie like this. not terrible, but don't go out of your way to see it.



the last kiss

i've been wanting to see this movie for a while, but only got around to it yesterday. all i'd pretty much heard about it is "it's not as good as garden state". maybe it's not, but i found it to be nearly on par with it, with an equally good ensemble cast and soundtrack. it's a fairly sad movie, and has feels pretty true to life throughout. i loved it.



28 weeks later

i was actually pleasantly surprised with this. firstly because i've heard nothing but bad things about it, and second because i didn't know rose byrne was in it.. and rose byrne is awesome. anyway, it wasn't as good as the first, but probably a little better than the average zombie movie.



sunshine

another movie which i meant to see earlier. the ending of this movie really let it down.. if you've seen it you'll know exactly which bit i mean. after building nicely as an interesting sci-fi thriller, it completely changes directions into a crazy horror story, similar to how event horizon played out. up to that point it was great.. interesting concept, good cast with some interesting character dynamics, and some stunning visuals. it was really unfolding to become a fantastic movie, then the suspension of disbelief was just pushed too far and it got stupid. pity.