Unbreakable (2000) - 7/10

This movie is pretty darn great. The plotting and structure is really scaled down and slow-moving. However so many other interesting aspects are at play here, including great cinematography (this movie on Bluray looks fantasticly cinematic with filmgrain, shot anamorphically leading to some soft shots, with great contrast and colors) and spectacular sound mixing and sound design which excels at providing atmosphere and bridging some scenes with others (a great example is early on in the hospital where Willis walks out and we only hear distant echoing footsteps, the rest of the sound being comprised of almost Lynchian atmospheric ambience.

The Sixth Sense and this movie both showcase Shyamalan as a great filmmaker in my opinion. His later films both have much worse writing, performed by the wrong actors, and without the more esoteric ambiance and uniquely artistic touches that add an extra layer of interesting texture to the film. Most scenes in Unbreakable are quite simply setup and executed, but the sound work and cinematographic touches just captures my interest. They take it one step beyond just a banal everyday situation of, for example, two people talking, and wraps them in an otherworldly aura.

The plotting in this one might become a bit stilted at times, but that's a small niggle, as an emotional experience and an example of the craft of film-making this is awesome. Willis and Penn are great, so is the kid and Sam Jackson. Great score by James Newton Howard.

12 Years A Slave (2013)  - 9/10

Very recommended. I haven't seen too many exampels in the past of media depicting slavery (only Django being fairly recent but coming from a very different angle), but if you have I can see this being perhaps one too many for some people.
This movie excels at one thing, and that is what it seems to set out to do: Create a pervasive feeling of dredd. The story is of a free black man who is essentially kidnapped into slavery. The contrast of going from a normal life into one of absolute despair and hopelessness makes this immediately accessible to anyone, this didn't need to be a period movie for it to work just as well.

Taking place over 12 years, this places almost no focus on tracking the time. Its one goal is to convey to the audience the realities of living as a slave.
Have you ever had that situation in life where something is just making you really anxious to the point of having a lump in your throat, and you try to sit down and eat something and pretend like nothing is wrong, yet just the act of forcing food down your throat seems almost an impossibility?
That's the feeling I got more or less throughout. It lacks melodrama for the most part, only some points allow for Hans Zimmers score to really guide you. It is also quite matter of fact and doesn't really caricature any character, good or bad. Which makes it even horrible since that leads you to realize that some people who owned and abused slaves weren't necessarily bad people, they were simply conditioned to see the slaves as nothing more than cattle. To me that seems even more horrifying than having evil be personified as a moustache-twirling villain.

Some remarkable and earnest performances in this, again rarely dropping into melodrama.
Michael Fassbender is AMAZING. Truly one of the most powerful performances this year, including a 4-ish minute single take scene which is probably the best single scene I've seen all year. Horrifying aswell.

Most time jumps are fairly isolated and with little connective tissue, but as a matter-of-fact presentation of one man and his experiences, this works so well. The fact that it doesn't try to tell you what to feel most of the time allows room for you to actively think about what is happening as it is happening.

I watched the movie yesterday, and I am still as lukewarm about it as when I saw it in theaters.

!!SPOILERS!!

The score for me is pretty bad, I could identify atleast 3 moments where it sounded exactly like the dark knight or TDKR, with the same type of texture, instrumentation or general feel. At one point it was a note for note ripoff. The synthy song that ends the film I have to admit is great, and the main melody is great, but it does not a good score make, it's completely derivative and unimaginative.

As for the story, it feels very fabricated to me. Almost every thing feels "off". So many things in the film are lazily explained just to justify that aspect of the film being possible in the first place. Everything is just so damn convenient.

The scavs just happen to need weird-looking helmets and voice modulators to fool the guard sentries, which very conveniently also allows the film to not show them to be humans. Also the first we see of them they are running on all 4s (like humans do?). Was that to confuse the sentinels aswell, or was that just to further confuse the audience and allow for the reveal in the middle of the film?

When Tom is fighting Tom they accidentally discharge one single shot in a random direction. Which by astronomical odds is exactly where Julia is standing.

The story is clunkily written. There are 2-3 moments I counted of instanced where characters say to each other: "hey, wouldn't it be neat if this thing happened... yeah, I wish...", and then at the end of the film it happens. It aims for setup and payoff, but it's way too obvious and poorly put forward, as soon as they say it you know that is what will happen.
I think it's better than Elysium, but not by much. It's bland, it really needed a artistic push in any direction to make it really distinct. Right now it's a bunch of beautiful but sterile CG shots, and a rudimentary "chosen one" journey of killing the evil bad guys.

Will listen to the commentary just now though, will be interesting to hear other POVs.

The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)  -  8  (8.4)

Sort of like a much less depressing Boogie Nights mixed with the light-hearted atmosphere of Matt Damons "The Informant". The IMDB score actually feels pretty spot on, such a fun movie with expert acting, direction, cinematography, and editing. Almost 3 hours just fly by. Jonah Hill and DiCaprio are powerhouses in this one.
This is a film you can pretty much put on and watch whenever, pacing is great and the energy is almost always high. Haven't laughed this much in a movie recently.

Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues (2013)  -  5  (6.9)

Some funny gags, but for some reason it just doesn't work all that well. There's too much winking at the audience, and too many references to the first film. I don't know, I don't have many feelings for it at all really. Watched it, gut-laughed a couple times, but somehow this feels less like a movie and more like short skits strung together with familiar characters. Not offensive if you want some random jokes, but it doesn't do anything to justify spending another 2 hours with these characters. It just makes the first film feel 4 hours long, which goes beyond the point where it stops being funny and just slowly becomes annoying.

The Thing (1982)  -  7  (8.2)

Great bare-bones, stripped-down horror thriller. Excellent atmosphere-building, impressive practical effects. Works very well as a psychological who-can-you-trust-setup.

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013)  -  6  (7.9)

Not quite as hokey-feeling as the first one. Individual scenes are for me usually stronger and more punchy, I think partly due to direction and also acting, and the added focus on the politics was really needed to bring some depth to the events. Somehow I don't think this one makes the first one look better (I just don't care much for the filmmaking in general in that one).
Phillip Seymour-Hoffman is the best thing about it.

Generally a more mild and natural color grade, some scenes look almost true-color instead of draped in blue-purple like the first one.
First-class soundmix, really impressive.

Captain Phillips (2013)  -  8  (8.0)

Really straight-forward, but also incredibly effective and tense. The documentary style of it doesn't allow for many artificial moments of dramatic release, so you find yourself just holding your breath for the entire film. Hanks does very well, and the supporting characters are also very strong. Very strong filmmaking, tense, finely tuned, music supports without really coming across as manipulative despite being orchestrally based and using alot of action beats.
Very recommended.

Grand Piano (2013)  -  5  (6.0)

A guy playing a difficult piano concert must not miss a single note under threat of a killer.
Some cool bits here, but overall this, for me, pales in comarison to "Phone Booth" or similar. I've seen others saying this trumps phone booth, but there is very little substance here, and for me it didn't really manage to get me particularly invested.

"Phone Booth" has such tension because it entirely revolves around Colin Pharrells character and under threat forcing him to confront his own lies and deceit.
"Grand Piano" lacks all this, Elijah Woods piano-playing character isn't the focus of the killer, just a means to an end. Plus they establish immediately that the final notes of the concert are the main concern, so you know that is where the movie is going from the get-go. There are no revelations throughout it, just chitchat over radio between pianist and killer.
Overall too thinly scripted and stretched out for me to enjoy it more.

Thor: The Dark World (2013)  -  7  (7.3)

Well, for some reason I enjoyed this. I'll agree that this, like alot of Marvel movies, is a bit of a mess with evil objects here, weird aliens there, subplots and hit-and-miss humor.
However this fell on the right side of enjoyable for me. There is focus on the other worlds in the Thor mythology, and allows for some very nice production design. The final fight has some clever use of worm-holes and teleportation. Renewed focus on the relationship between Thor and Loki which works for me.
Overall very inoffensive, but for me with ideas and setups that were surprisingly enjoyable. Might be dropped down to a 6 on repeat viewings though.

I love PT Andersons films because all his scenes seem written purely to give the characters a situation in which to react and reveal nuances of themselves, not necessarily to fit into a specific narrative. Seeing as Daniel and Eli subscribe to almost completely different worldviews, bringing them together in the way the movie does say something very strong about Daniels feelings of Eli and his despise of people in general and him specifically.

It never bothered me, in fact I love the dialogue and performances, but I rarely tend to think in terms of what is improbable for the plot, particularly not in purely character-driven movies. If something comes out of left field, as long as it is in itself well-staged, well-directed and true to the character, I'd even applaud it for being surprising.

I also almost-love The Master, and the plot has even less coherence in that, it basically only created scenarios for characters to clash in various ways to expose deeper layers.

Hey Porridgegun, I'd be interested to hear your perspective on "The Talented Mr. Ripley" and "There Will Be Blood". Mind sharing your thoughts on them?

Watching the movie now.

Matt Damon gets irradiated because he steps into a room which is going to be irradiated and moves something that prevented the door from closing... What other result could there have been really? Did he think he would move the thing that blocks the door and the door wouldn't close behind him? They don't show him activating any kind of failsafe to lock the door and prevent it from closing before he goes in there?

Do they even have failsafes on the doors? Why didn't he just open the door again, move what was in the way and then close it again? Do they not have the ability to open the door again unless it closes completely? That seems stupid.

The boss forces Damon to go in to the room under threat of firing him. The boss, you would think, knows of the stupendous risk because of the above described design of the doors. Once Damon gets irradiated they apparently shut down production entirely causing superboss Fichner to get angry. Surely Damons boss should have handled the blocked door differently and with more attention since it obviously could lose them lots of time and money if he sent Damon in there and things went wrong? Why didn't he? Just so he also could have a moustache-twirling moment? If they're so money-hungry you'd think they would be able to make a simple cost-benefit-analysis and realize that it probably is worth finding a way around the problem that doesn't involve sending Damon in to certain death and loosing alot of time and money.

All this would have been solved if they just showed Damon activating a locking-mechanism on the door before he went in, but we then see the switch flip back on its own due to poor maintenance of safety features for the workers (which is alot more plausible, reinforces the theme of the rich/bosses not spending any money on the workers to ensure their safety) and doesn't require any moustache-twirling. Plus it would actually create some tension in the scene. As the scene is in the film we see Damon be reluctant to go in, but I assumed since the film doesn't show any safety feature of any kind, I guess there's no danger for him once he goes in. He doesn't open the door or reset whatever he is doing and start over. Atleast cut back and forth between Damon and the safety switch, maybe the switch is mounted on something that vibrates from another machine somewhere, and it's shaking enough to cause it to spring back into normal mode. As it is the scene is so flat, Damon goes in and then the door just closes and it's very unceremonious. Particularly since this is the scene that sets Damon off on the path he takes for the rest of the film.

I will always have a special place in my heart for Twilight since it brought us this:

The Master (2012) - 8/10

Not my favourite Paul Thomas Anderson film, but despite being fairly episodic in structure, and with a very loose narrative in general, this is superb filmmaking and for me a very riveting movie. The use of music means that moments without dialogue still have a rhythm to them. It has a focus on emotional depth for the main character. Everything else does seem superficial, what our main character doesn't see or hear or experience, we don't know too much about as an audience. With lesser actors this would be pretty hard to sit through, but considering the actors they do have, I can't fault PTA for it one bit. Joaquin Phoenix needs to be seen in this.
Contains several mesmerizing scenes, and most of the film has a tension and air of unpredictability that keeps me glued.
The cinematography is stunning, beautiful movie.

The Suspect (2014) - 5/10

This was one of those "pick a film at random" viewings.
Guy get's arrested on suspicion for bank robbery, but not all is as it seems.

Starts out pretty bad, but gets better and better, while the annoying elements at least become less grating, if only because you get used to them. Really bad score and music, I think this would have played alot better without it.
Can certainly be missed, but it has atleast one or two good ideas, and a twist or two that are hard to predict. Ultimately first time writer/director (per his IMDB) Stuart Connelly doesn't really pull it off, and some moments are kind of "...eh...". Overall though not terrible by any means.

Zero Effect (1998) - 6/10

Had this in the queue for a while.
Bill Pullman plays Sherlock Holmes under a different name. That's basically the film.
It has a unique way to it. Has a feeling of noir despite being quite bright and daylight-y overall, with voice-overs, briefly referencing previous cases the detective has worked on.

Worth seeing for Pullman alone though. He basically plays a quirky guy who switches from asshole to savant, charming to unremarkable, and he really gets those different character traits across directly to the audience, and the movie doesn't just rely on other characters reactions to sell his abilities. From one scene to another Pullman really feels like a different character.

Reindeer Games (Dir. Cut) (2000) - 6/10

Per recommendation from Squiggly.
Above-average thriller. Ben Affleck gets mistaken for guy who worked at Casino, and Gary Sinise and small crew forces him to help them rob the place, despite not really knowing anything about it and having to pretend to be the other guy to avoid being killed.
Uneven both in film structure and characterization, with Affleck's character feeling sometimes a bit too on-the-ball for someone who is just winging it, and the movie isn't very layered or deep.
Still, above-average direction by John Frankenheimer, often classy use of deep-focus and tightly framed camera work, and some old-school action.
You can never really take it as seriously as for example Ronin (same director), but as a thriller it held my attention firmly.

Also Charlize Theron at times very naked.

And Affleck aswell, if that works for you.

I watched it close to when it came out. Such good writing, and just a really nice atmosphere in that film. It's so non-abrasive. It's like a hug from a Golden Retriever on a warm summers eve.

I'd recommend it.

Escape Plan (2013) - 6/10

Stallone and Schwarzenegger try to escape from prison.
This movie feels like a pretty standard thriller, part modern thriller sensibilities (think the Guy Pearce movie "Lockout"), and part throwback action movie structure since the veterans are in it.

Truth be told, this movie firmly held my interest. I mean, it's shot, edited and produced like any modern thriller, but the story is actually engaging, the one-liners for me avoided the "wink-wink" cringe territory. You know how in The Expendables movies whenever they would stop the action for a second for the "tagline" moments for each actor? Part of you were like "ok, they got that in there, nice" and part of you was just slightly cringing at how forced it always is? Well, this movie at one point has Arnold grabbing a machine gun and going to town, and rather than going "Ehh, see what we did there? ...Ehh?", the movie sort of builds up to it. You see Arnold moving, and you see the machine gun, and the movie allows you to think "oh... I wonder if he can get to that...". It sort of builds up your anticipation for a second rather than just blatantly _doing it_. And once it happens, I won't lie, I got a grin from ear to ear. Partly because of the inherent fan service, but mostly just because it was kind of glorious. Close up of the eyes, slow motion, helicopter blades wooshing past.
The bad guy who runs the prison is great, it's Jim Caviezel btw. He perfectly balances the "we need a quirky colorful villain because Die Hard! so give him a bunch of weird hobbys and ticks" aspect which is there, but he's also subdued and also just a bit weird and a douche, basically. He doesn't become rabbit-petting Bond-villainy at any point. I really enjoyed him.

Directed by Michael Håfström who is a fellow Swede. The movie has a 6.9 on IMDb so generally the reception to it has been very warm, I'd never heard of it myself.

I'd give this  a very strong recommendation actually. Story on paper is standard, production is what you'd expect cinematography and music-wise for a modern middle-of-the-road thriller, but to me it is firmly planted on the good side of the spectrum, it was engaging, pretty hard to predict (though after it's over you can count the references to 90s action films). Arnold speaks German for a portion and it's cool hearing him deliver natural dialogue.

After Earth (2013) - 4/10

(get used to these expressions, they don't change for the entire film... Ambien is a hell of a drug).

Not at all horrible. But completely lifeless and dull, like they purposefully made a movie that is as uncinematic as possible, that doesn't translate, captivate or engage an inch beyond whatever medium was used to capture the images.
They could have told the story in 15 minutes, it's just a single storyline, A > B > C > The End. Jaden Smith is not good in this movie. I watched it after a long day at work so I was semi-comatose, and that's the energy level you need to get through it.

Muddled messages. Scene: Watch out for nature, it's trying to kill you at every turn! Next scene: Look at the beautiful nature! No real point or definition to anything, like if a good movie took an ambien that now just slurs it's words. Obligatory bossfight at the end has no tension or suspense. Not worth it at all.

(I saw that the youtube channel "Your Movie Sucks" has posted part 1 of a breakdown of it. Will probably be hilarious and informative even if you haven't watched the film: http://www.youtube.com/user/YourMovieSucksDOTorg (lots of awesome breakdowns of movies, Plinkett style, and similar style and sensibilities).

Riddick (2013) - 5/10

Nice seeing the character again. Good world-building. But the story is basically the first film all over again. Feels a bit too Green-screeny. Didn't bore me, but the script isn't strong at all. Too many cliches and not violent enough to grab your attention.
If you like the character it might be worth it, but you could give it a miss.

The Bourne Identity (1988) - 5/10

The original Richard Chamberlain Mini Series. Overall very dated. Unless you want to specifically get a different point of view of the material compared to the Doug Liman film, skip it. It's from the 80s, feels like it's from the 70s.

Superman (1978) - 7/10

Watched it fully engaged for the first time in a long time. Overall great, some ideas or plot structures have not aged too well but some beats are still used in similar movies today which is interesting.
Christopher Reeve rules. That is all.

Hard Rain (1998) - 6/10

Hadn't seen this 90s action-thriller before. Directed by Mikael Salomon, who previous had been DP on The Abyss (cause water?). Slater needs to stop people robbing his money transport during a huge rain storm.
Impressive logistically and pretty grand in scale, it starts like an Emmerich film where you can see the obvious writing as the characters are introduced and given quick personalities and small one-liners to try and establish some definition.
I was luke-warm in the first 20 minutes or so, but the longer it went, the better it got. What starts out feeling kind of cheap expands more and more until finally you have whole houses with the actors in the being ripped away by the storm and floating around, and the movie becomes more of a straight actioner. Feels John Woo, in the Broken Arrow era, which is very 90s, but also kind of endearing.
Some cool miniature stuff, some spectacular matte paintings breaking some records according to trivia.
If you haven't seen it it will probably be a pretty cool addition to the 90s action library. Just give it time to move past the clunky character work and there's some good stuff here.

Red 2 (2013) - 5/10

I already kind of forgot it. Not bad, but it feels like an unnecessary continuation of the first film. The first film is just enough of charm and quirk to be good, and I'm not sure I needed more of it. Plus no Karl Urban is, I think we can all agree, a terrible omission.

I saw a 25 second clip on Craig Ferguson and it spawned an inner monologue where I was pretending to be the Director of Photography of the film and explaining why they shouldn't do what they just did... I guess it maybe wasn't confined to those 25 seconds?