u1_fd Reviews

Animal Kingdom (2010)

Excellent!

[9/10 · 10 June 2010]

One of those movies that grabs you from the excellent opening credits as the camera pans over security camera stills of a gang of Melbourne thugs robbing banks. The audience, which was rustling noisy junk food through the previews, fell silent very quickly.

Jackie Weaver as the Matriarch of this crime family was amazing.

It felt a little "talkie" until about half way through, but there is tension right from the beginning that carries you through. Every character is connected to every other as if by springs quivering with tension or compression and the movie really delivers holding the resolution to the final frame where everything shifts into a new alignment.

I really enjoyed Animal Kingdom, it does not glamorize the life of these crims the way Underbelly or Sopranos does, and the cops reflect the dirty history of the Melbourne's finest too (Guy Pearce reprising his role in LA Confidential as a rare Mr Clean). Overall I think David Simon (The Wire) would approve of Animal Kingdom.

Anyone who has wondered how murderers can be loved by their Moms (isn't that most everyone?) should see this movie, it isn't a TV experience it really works well on the big screen.

Avatar (2009)

Average, in every respect but one

[6/10 · 30 December 2009]

Entirely computer rendered movies are some of my favorites over the last 10 years. The Incredibles, Up, Toy Story, Finding Nemo, Wall-E, (the list is long!). But Avatar doesn't deserve to be on this list. In fact, given the money spent, it is a failure worth 2/10. However ignoring the budget for a second, it is a 6. A summer block buster popcorn movie that somehow is pretending to be a classic.

it is bad? it is so well reviewed!

well, first, the 3d. The glasses reduce the brightness, and for someone with good vision it just isn't pleasant to sit for 3 hours with a black fuzzy rim bracketing the screen and a plastic weight on your nose. The 3D effect, when executed, _demands_ you look at whatever is in focus lest you get a headache trying the impossible -- to focus the fuzz outside that spot. This is annoying. When 3d is mostly suppressed you'd really rather be watching a regular big screen movie.

Second problem. Multiple ones. Forget for a moment the computer graphics. What you are left with is - a cliché ridden script - the least cohesive imagining of future science I've seen for ages. Stuff that varies from barely better than stuff the Pentagon shows off now, to god-like technology. All set in 2154. - stereotypical characters - a very dull leading man. He sounds a bit like Russell crowe, but there ends that comparison. - an extremely predictable plot. Not just predictable. You've sat through this story before, and parts of it you've seen several times.

The worst is the script. On the rare occasion the characters reveal some inner emotion or conflict through subtle action or facial expression, they immediately blurt out their motivation. I guess for the sake of us dim wits in the audience. Meanwhile the full orchestral score swells and swirls almost without a breather from the first second to the last, unnecessarily ramming down our ear canals whatever emotion we are being ordered to feel.

A good movie you think about not just the next morning, but the next week. The next month. Avatar only left me annoyed. I couldn't care less about the characters, I was left with zero curiosity for where an Avatar 2 might take them.

I'm squarely in the demographic for this movie, supposedly. Bit of a geek. Like sci-fi. Interested in technology and prepared to pay to see good CGI and Avatar totally failed me. Reading some of the rabid comments left for the few professional reviewers brave enough to be actually critical makes me wonder if the studio has launched a viral "think positive" campaign to support this movie. Either that, or the lowest common denominator uncritical cud chewing PR swallowing movie going public is a lot more interested & active on blogs and message boards than I had imagined! If the latter then I'll be spending a lot less money on Hollywood over the next decade than I did over the last!

Oldboy (2003)

A raw and visceral movie

[10/10 · 26 May 2005]

OK actually it is 9/10 but I'm doing my bit to counter some fools who, i think, monitor the IMDb top 100 (in order to acquire a taste they don't have for themselves) then go to each one and get mad if it isn't their type of movie, returning to do a drive-by low vote on it.

The movie is great. The soundtrack is wonderful, the camera-work, the acting, the story. It reminded me of Sin City at the time and I was surprised and pleased to read in another comment that it WAS based on some Japanese anime - I think it showed. That also explains why a few of the scenes are so OTT. But they work anyway. It all just .. all .. fits ..

Go see this movie if you like foreign films, Asian films, if you like black humor, if you like revenge, if you like seeing a new face and find he acts amazingly from the very first second you lay eyes on him. The opening minutes are mesmerizing, and the movie hardly lets up from there on.

As for the "eating" scene? so what? you've never eaten live lobster sushi before? if you're so easily shocked - by strong tastes, strong visuals - then find another movie to see! Old Boy is one of the years best for me.. definitely. I can shut my eyes and many many scenes replay vividly for me. Someone else mentioned that the film made them wonder if they were drunk, it had the same effect on me, in a good way.