FF:QLD At The Movies - Reviews & Critical Musings

We should totally be hosting The Movie Show HB

Max Payne was an interesting film; I was rarely bored during it, and as a slow burn police investigation movie, it kinda works.

But that's not a Max Payne film!

A Max Payne film would be like Shoot 'Em Up as HB said, though probably grimmer. Basically, it would need to follow the River Tam Beats Up Everyone model, but with balletic slow-mo gunplay (like Shoot 'Em Up) and noir inspired voice-overs.

Did I once hear "Playing it Bogart"? No; freakin' cool line, why cut it out?

As for the aforementioned rare boring bits; when they actually did Bullet Time. Yes, they managed to make freakin' bullet time boring!

The story of the original game; a homage to 80s action films; was made slightly different for the movie, and frankly with no good reason. The story from the game doesn't need to be changed; NYPD Detective Max Payne's family is murdered by junkies on a new drug called "V". He joins the DEA and goes deep undercover to track "V" to it's source through the local Mafia. He doesn't get a solid lead for three years, until his former partner calls him on the night of the biggest blizzard in New York City history. As the temperature drops and darkness falls, Max is framed for murder and finds himself being hunted by the cops, the Mafia, and a shadowy third group...

Seriously, what's wrong with that??

The biggest change was the switching of the Big Bad, who was weak and ineffective in a lot of ways. The person playing the role does their best, but clearly they're just here for the Booze Money, and not a lot could be done with such a flat character anyway. The hench however, is the Only Sane Man in the Film

What makes it frustrating is that the character who is the Big Bad in the game was portrayed in the film by someone who can play spiteful, vengeful and just plain nasty really well, so I was looking forward to monologuing from them that never eventuated.

Something else I noticed as being conspicuously absent, the haunting Max Payne theme, which is a beautiful piece of orchestral music. Why was that gone??

Not to sound completely negative, Mark Wahlberg was excellent in the title role. When he did get to narrate, he hit the tone perfectly. And he clearly "got" the character; the scene where he kicks a beautiful, willing and semi-nekkid woman out of his apartment proved that to me as it was a perfect character moment. Unfortunately he wasn't in the right film to really show this off.

If you haven't played the game, this is an average police thriller. If you have played the game, load it up and play it again and wait for this to come out on DVD to rent.

Be seeing you,

Magnus Darcrider

well thats a damn shame then...

Was tossing up wether to see it or not, i'll be waiting for dvd then.

Burn After Reading 3.5 /5

An involving couple hours locked in a room with idiots you kinda understand and feel for but don't mind when they get shot in the head.

Wasnt even laugh out loud funny for most of it, but amusing enough to smile all the way through. You quickly got to know everyone, although questioning that knowledge as you went along was half the fun. Malcovich was great as always although found myself repeting some of his favoured four letter worded lines a bt too much this past 24 hours since viewing. It was a little violent and full of swearing and...I enjoyed it..What???

Quirky as I'd hoped. Entire cast was great. Feel like I knew some of the people, even though I'm sure we've never met.Plot was RIDICULOUS but a violent comedy of errors you could fool yourself into going along with..if you don't mind a purely horrible set of resolutions.

Liked. Go see.

..whoa.. overdue movie reflection!

Hellboy2/Mummy3.. hmm, good watch for $5 day at the cinema or wait for the DVD.

TOTAL *squee!* moment of MAMMA MIA - spying Benny Anderson playing the piano in a boat in the background of Dancing Queen. The Boon rocked to 'ABBA' many days after.

The Duchess, besides the silky-costumey-goodness-overload, KK put in a very convincing turn.


Future news... apparently the Star Trek trailer will accompany Quantum of Solace when it screens. There are two mini-trailers floating the web now and FOUR DAYS TWO HOURS THIRTY EIGHT MINUTES till the full trailer. Who me counting?..naaah..

IC, Hellboy 2 was good. I can't comment on the Mummy.

Tried to download the Star Trek trailer the other day but couldn't manage to download all of it without error :S

New Harry Potter trailer <3

I like the star trek trailer. trailer's good, still not sure about the movie, but excited to find out!

Australia:
3/5

I guess I went in with no expectations and came out happy to have seen it. Beautiful to look at, touching and funny in places. Many moments of.."gosh, just too Australian cliche", and I did feel glad I wasn't watching it with people of other nationalities.

Nicole was better than I'd thought she'd be, although Hugh wasn't as great. Looked great though. Story of the aboriginal boy was the narrative though and that was done fairly well. Cared about the kid and what happened. The love story was a bit ..dunno..quick and superficial for my liking, especially in a movie of that length.

But it's certainly entertaining and I laughed well and felt like I'd been at the movies. Actually the overall feeling was of a very 1950's type movie experience, well what it'd probably have felt like.

Worth seeing, but it's not the best movie of the year.

I did finally get to see the Star Trek trailer. It's not really Star Trek... I know they are going for a reboot, but Kirk... I don't know. All the others characters seemed spot on, granted we didn't see much of them, but Kirk... Not sure how I feel about the guy playing him.

The only moment in the trailer I could have done without was the woman (Uhara?) removing her shirt - just a little too much of a Blockbuster Trailer Indulgence there. All in all, though, this is exactly the sort of preview the film needs. Considering the steep uphill battle of promoting Star Trek to a mainstream audience, it's frankly very wise to make the trailer 90% explosion.

It's very definitely a quote-unquote Mainstream Audience teaser, and very definitely a teaser, hence the boobs and the 'splosions. I'm holding off judgment until I can see some more meaty footage.

See, that's why it completely works.

I'm a passing Trek fan - I know enough about it to enjoy watching it but I'd never go out and buy boxsets of any series and I only own 3 of the movies on DVD (II, III & VI). This is the first time I've ever been really excited by a Trek movie trailer... and enough to see the film on opening day.

I couldn't give a flying s#it if the movie ends up annoying diehard and longtime Trek fans. From what I can tell, they're the very people that are responsible for Star Trek's slow death. They need a kick in the butt more than anyone over their beloved, yet completely stale franchise.

JJ Abrahms made me forget the atrocity against film that was Mission Impossible II - I have complete faith that soon he's going to make me a Trekkie!

I feel the same way about it as you NeecH. Im no trek fan by far...but after watching that a few times, i'll go see it opening day. Let this one be a success and let the inevitable sequal move into more of the 'trek' that you fans know.

in saying that, i can see where hate is coming from...i'm paranoid at what they will be doing to my robotech when that film comes out

x2

Also, the Watchmen trailer looks excellent. Haven't read the book, is it worth getting before the movie comes out?

In a word: yes. Watchmen us fantastic, and totally deserving of its reputation.

CCD, it's about $40 at Borders. I don't know where else you'd be able to get it except a comic book store. And the book is brilliant.

Thanks, I suspected as much. Ordered it from Amazon ($35 inc shipping).

I got my copy of Watchmen for $25 in Melbourne at Minotaur - I'm pretty sure they do online ordering too...

Kingdom of Heaven - Director's Cut

I wrote about the original cut of this film on another board way back in May 2005. Thanks to the Glory of the Shovel, here is what I wrote:

This film gave me a headache, and I'm only a minor student of history. This movie would probably kill someone who actually knew what was going on.

I mean wow, they trained medieval French blacksmiths so well that they could rival the strategic prowess of arguably the Greatest General of the Era.

If more time was spent in showing the blacksmith's training, I probably would complain less, as historically he WAS the Defender of Jerusalem.

Edward Norton's turn as the Leper King was great, and David Thewlis did very well as a (very) enlightened Hospitalier.

It was pretty to look at ultimately, even if the historical accuracy DID induce me to almost spasm.

I hadn't seen the film since...it was a BAD headache it caused. I heard about the director's cut via this article, and it was reviewed again here. However I've only just gotten to see the film.

A VAST improvement, I'm hoping Ridley Scott, Orlando Bloom, Eva Green and William Monahan (the writer) beat the Morons at Fox with large sticks, cos they were shafted royally by the studio over the theatrical cut of this film.

Historically inaccurate? Well yes, but this is an improvement over, say, Gladiator. However, all important context and backstory are put in place now; Orlando Bloom's Balian is a former military engineer; he understands warfare and strategy. Battles and violence happen for a reason now (mostly involving family issues), and Eva Green's character's sharp turn into hermitage in the final act makes more sense now.

David Thewlis' unreasonably enlightened Hospitalier is toned down (he makes more sense now too), and cameos by Phillip Glenister and Kevin McKidd are welcomed.

I've just ordered a copy of this, and would be happy to show it around when it gets here. An Epic worthy of your time.

Be seeing you,

Magnus Darcrider

I'll have to borrow that off you. I've heard nothing but mediocre/bad things about that film, but conversely many many people have said that the Director's Cut is surprisingly good. I'll get in queue for The Loaner.

Hell, it's been aaaaages since I saw Gladiator. I could go a double-feature of those two.

Magnus, while Gladiator was historically inaccurate in terms of the story, much of what is going on around and in the background were nice little touches that made it accurate in a cultural sense. The large standout exception being the thumbs up-thumbs down issue in the arena. I seem to remember they had it the wrong way around, but I do realise that it wouldn't have made sense to the audience to do it accurately.

Oh yeah, a lot of the little details were good (with two glaring errors from the costuming department), but I saw it with a Roman Legionnaire Re-enactment Group Back in the Day, which is like watching any episode of Buffy depicting witchcraft with a wiccan...or watching a David E. Kelley legal drama with me It's gonna clolour your viewpoint. Still enjoy Gladiator though...wait, I don't have a copy of that!

Either way, neither of these films were as inaccurate as say, 300

Be seeing you,

Magnus Darcrider

Yes, but 300 is ostensibly one long hero shot more than anything.

300 gets a pass because it wasn't trying the slightest to be accurate. I actually really like how it's presented as a hyper-exaggerated war story, ripe with propaganda that demonizes the enemy (literally) and turns the heroes into god-like adonises of muscular perfection. Awesomeness and badassery ensue.


I saw it with a Roman Legionnaire Re-enactment Group Back in the Day, which is like watching any episode of Buffy depicting witchcraft with a wiccan...or watching a David E. Kelley legal drama with me

Or watching a movie with computers with an IT person such as myself. ANY movie with computers. Seriously.

Saw High School Musical 3.

Okay.

So, yeah, don't see it. Not like you were going to anyway. Honestly I liked the first one.

But yeah..umm. Don't.



Madagascar 2 I thoroughly enjoyed however. But I liked the humour of the first one too, despite Ben Stiller. Funny.


Quantum of Solace. I'm not sure I liked it. Felt like much of the same as the last, but not in the best Bond way. I did miss some of the last scenes due to not being well, so that may have affected my overall liking of the film. Might need to see it again. Although in comparison to High School Musical, it's up there with Empire for me.

The Day The Earth Stood Still (2008)

I just don't get modern cinema audiences. Here we've got a good update of what is considered a science-fiction classic; with the themes and ideas updated for the time; and it gets panned.

Maybe it's the presence of Keanu Reeves? I've never understood why he's so disliked; like Arnold Swarzenegger he's not a bad actor, he's just an actor with a limited range. Here he's great as Klaatu; the alien intelligence implanted into a human body to act as a representive of an alliance of Alien Races to the people of Earth. He plays Klaatu as uncomfortable and unused to his new body, and does it well. He's sufficiently creepy and unnerving to put you on edge and reinforce that this being is alien. Given what I saw here, I'd love to see him play the G-Man in a Half-Life movie. The suit helped

The US Government and Military are demonised in this film, to the point where I was surprised the filmmakers got the cooperation of the US Military and Department of Defense. The film really shows the difference between conventional thinking and military thinking; a threat is automatically assumed when the incoming vessel temporarily disables missile systems so it can land unaccosted. Scary, yes, but not once do they consider the fact that it had already anticipated the supreme likihood that humanity would shoot first and ask questions later.

The alien defense system GORT is updated as well, and is much more terrifying and threatening. It initially looks the same as the original robot, but is far more advanced.

The ending is a little ambiguous, let me just say it's a global event. The update to the original ending is necessary as the original would have no impact on modern audiences. One reviewer suggested that because of this, the film should have been a sequel rather than a remake. That idea has merit, but this is what we've got, and it works.

The only complaint I have are some moronic physics and tactics; for example, a large object is hurtling towards Manhattan at a speed of 3 x 10^7 metres per second and the US Military keeps it's first encounter force airborne in helicopters surrounding the intended impact area??? The shockwave alone would cause a headache for the helicopter pilots!

I recommend this film, and would love to discuss the ideas with you guys. Like all good sci-fi, it takes current ideas and repackages them, and while it's not subtle in some cases, it does provoke thought.

Be seeing you,

Magnus Darcrider

I thought The Day the Earth Stood Still was pretty good... at least it started extremely well and then the end was a little average. GORT was definitely cool but very underused. I actually felt that Keanu Reeves was the best part of the movie, he was quiet but still very menacing when needed.