Recent DVD Movie Reviews

[BoulderDawg]

I had a little time last weekend so I watched a few new movies

Milk: Not a bad movie, I thought Sean Penn did a good job playing a gay guy. This is a role that most straight actors just could not do. I liked the portrayal of Milk building his political career and fighting for his community.

Curious Case of Benjamin Button: Didn't care for it. To start with the movie was way too long and didn't really explain how someone could age backwards. I kept thinking this was a poor man's Forrest Gump. Except, unlike with Gump, I never really cared about the characters that passed through his life. In fact there were a few of them that I could not understand what they were saying (The tugboat captian comes to mind here).

Frost Nixon: The best of the three. I did not think I would like this movie but I Howard did a good job. It was like a verbal chess match.

[BoulderDawg]

Not a DVD but I did see Star Trek the other night.

I know everybody and his brother are just raving about this movie but to be honest I did not really care for it.

To start with I thought they dumbed it down a little for the teen/pre-teen crowd. The way they got Kirk on the Enterprise was just silly. Also, I thought Scotty went a little over board with the jokes and his little sidekick......a little too cute for me.

Finally the time travel thing has been done to death. Not only that it gave the producers license to, pretty well, do whatever they want to in future sequels and not have to worry about contradicting the original series....they are on a different time line!:rolleyes:

[Jimbo]

Also not a DVD, but today I went to see Angels and Demons. It's a good action/suspense film, and very much geared to an adult crowd. There were absolutely no teens or younger in the theater to be acting up, which can be nice for a change.

It's a sequel to DaVinci Code, which I didn't see. Angels and Demons has a lot of twists and turns in the plot. I'll leave it at that, so as not to spoil it for anyone. Suffice to say, if you like suspense and intrigue, you should like this one.

[BoulderDawg]

Haven't seen Angels and Demons. Just looked over at Rotten Tomatoes and saw they pretty well panned the movie about 2 to 1.

I did see DaVinci and thought it was way too long and full of nonsense. Not the usual Ron Howard quality.

This is one that I will wait until it comes along on Netflix to see it.

I found it interesting that "Ternimator Salvation" was also disliked by the critics at RT. I think this movie is going to be a big flop. Bale did not help matters either with his self destruction on set.

[Jimbo]

Yeah, Bale's rant did not help things, but I think the movie is doing very well. I believe it's at no. 2 right now, if I'm not mistaken. I do plan to see it, because it looks pretty good regardless. I really don't follow how a critic rates a film. I've seen many films that got panned by critics that I enjoyed, and seen others that critics gushed over that bored me to tears. Though Terminator Salvation got a very good local review.

I've really been noticing as the years go by, movies that are big box-office nowadays come and go in a blink. I thought the new Star Trek would stay on top at least for a while, but no. It can make even top movies seem to have only mediocre success, even if the $ is higher. Things move so fast, and even successful films are soon nearly forgotten. I remember when Raiders of the Lost Ark came out, it played locally for 60 straight weeks(!).

[BoulderDawg]

I really don't follow how a critic rates a film. I've seen many films that got panned by critics that I enjoyed, and seen others that critics gushed over that bored me to tears.

I've often heard that but don't really understand it. In fact I've heard people say they won't see a movie that was praised by the critcs and vice versa.

I use reviews as a guide and find them fairly accurate. If you have 75% of the critcs out there that hate a film then that to me is a pretty good indication that it's not very good. But critics are no different from regular movie goers. No matter how bad a movie is they will be a few of them that give a good review and, vice versa, a few that will give a movie (like Star Trek) a bad review.

As far as my personal review I'm much harsher than the critics are. I usually only give a good rating to about one out of every four that I see.

[doug maverick]

terminator got great reviews actually, especially here in new york, where the critics are always too harsh on films. i saw it and i enjoyed it. while it was wasnt perfect, it was good. now as for star trek coming from someone who is not a fan of star trek or jj abrams, i loved it, saw it twice actually.

[BoulderDawg]

Concerning Terminator Salvation:

I like rotten tomatoes because it has two ratings. One for the general public and one for the "top critics".

So far with the general public it has 169 reviews with 57 good and 112 bad. For the "top critics" it has 30 reviews with 10 good and 20 bad.

That pretty well tells me this film isn't going to win any oscars! Netfix movie.

[doug maverick]

Concerning Terminator Salvation:

I like rotten tomatoes because it has two ratings. One for the general public and one for the "top critics".

So far with the general public it has 169 reviews with 57 good and 112 bad. For the "top critics" it has 30 reviews with 10 good and 20 bad.

That pretty well tells me this film isn't going to win any oscars! Netfix movie.

when it comes to movies, i tend to stick to my own opinion. im not a eal fan of the terminator series, with the notable exception of part 2. and i thought salvation was **** good. i think alot of people are hating on this fim because of bales outburst and thats sad, really and truly cause this movie was good. not great, not perfect but good.

[Jimbo]

I saw Drag Me to ____ and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Sam Raimi revisits his Evil Dead roots, and this film is very much in that style. At first I wasn't sure about it, due to a lot of CGI, but the film mixes good acting, decent suspense, and some humor interspersed throughout. During the film and at the end, the audience was hooting, laughing and clapping...something that seems very rare nowadays, at least rare since the '80s or so. Raimi's still got it.

The reason I didn't completely write out the title is because I'm one of those people who believe words have power, and I prefer not to say/write that last word in that order.

[BoulderDawg]

Another DVD! I recently heard of this movie called Cannibal Holocaust and how shocking it was suppose to be. I mean the director was jailed for murder until the actors came forward and said, "It's a fake documentary!"

Anyway I watch it. The movie is a little dated. After all it is 30 years old. I just yawned at the scenes where the cannibals were eating the people and so on and so forth...seen that before.

The parts that were really graphic and disgusting was the torture and slaughter of 3 or 4 animals in the film....That was real and uncalled for.

Of course this movie came from Netflix. Just a word on Netflix. I hate to do it but I'm going to drop the service. If you put a 20-30 year old movie in your Netflix queue it's sent the next day. However if you list a new release you may never get it. I put Slumdog Millionaire on my queue at #1. It stayed there for a month and I never got the movie. In fact after a month it was still was listed as "long wait". I called and said "I'd been waiting over a month for this movie should I not be somewhere close to the front of the line"? They told me it didn't work that way. So I just told them that after this month, which I have already paid for, you can shove the service! :-)

[doug maverick]

i saw this movie today at my sisters house, it is a remake of a west craven film, which i think is a remake of another film not to sure....anyway people were screaming bloody murder about this film because it depicted a rape scene that was suppose to be ultra violent. and actually it wasnt, i mean rape is bad anyway you slice it. but i remember this french film that was a ultra violent ode to thelma and louis that showed the girls being raped and that was super disturbing, you actually felt the girls pain, and also the film american history X when ed norton gets raped, that was crazy, but this i mean the girl still had her cloths on. just looking at it from a filmmakers perspective if your going to go there go there dont just get your feet wet, dive the **** in.

[Jimbo]

I finally went to see Terminator Salvation and thought it was a really good movie. It did what I go to movies for: kept me entertained! It was definitely way better than T3, which was the worst of the series. IMO, T2 is still the best installment, though. And I wasn't really thinking much about Bale's on-set outburst. I think that since that news came out, other news has eclipsed it, such as (obviously) David Carradine's death, etc., almost to the point it's half-forgotten. And I thought the cinematography is **** good, so it's kind of a puzzle why he went on a rant anyway.

[BoulderDawg]

Finally saw Slumdog millionaire.

It was a good movie but I don't really see the qualities that made it an academy award winner.

I kinda felt I was being force fed here. We all have a pretty good idea that street life for an Indian orphan is not very pleasant. However I sorta felt they were playing it up for shock value. A good example of this was putting the kids eyes out. It sorta reminded me of Operation Rescue showing us pictures of dead fetuses.

That said, it did tell a good story, a little confusing at times but still a good story.

The "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" story line was interesting I thought but they could have told the story without it. I'm just wondering if there really is a WWTBAM in India and how they felt about being portrayed as a group of people that would hook you up to car batteries if you are about to win the money!:D

[BoulderDawg]

Just saw "Better Luck Tomorrow"

A friend told me about this film that features Chinese Americans.

To be honest I have mixed emotions about it. I think it's a well made film that explores some issues here in the US.

As far as cultural issues go, the flim sort of falls flat. All the major character are Chinese Americans with American names (The girl is even adopted with a Dutch name) who have no accent what-so-ever. Also to top it all off this movie can be summed up as rich kids with too much time on their hands. However, as far as exploring anything remotely to do with the Chinese culture it simply doesn't.

I understand the producers took a little heat when this movie was released from the Asian community. I can understand why.

[Jimbo]

I never did see Better Luck Tomorrow. By American names, do you mean just their first names, or that they had European surnames like "Tommy Anderson" or "Ricky Graham?" It sounds like there's some things to be annoyed about in the movie from what I've heard, but IMO Asian-Americans having no Asian accent shouldn't be a problem. Neither I nor any of my relatives speak English with an Asian accent at all.

[BoulderDawg]

Some are, some aren't.

The main characters in the movie are Ben Manibag, Virgil Hu, Stephanie Vandergosh, Daric Loo and Steve Choe. The only Asian given name for a main character was "Han" who's last name is never mentioned.

Best of my recollection there was a few extremely heated discussions about the portrayal of Chinese in this movie at the Cannes Flim festival when it debuted.

Any way, as said, the movie is worth seeing. There is an interesting cameo by Jerry Mathers (The Beaver) who plays a teacher and has one of the very few adult role in the film.