The Hills Have Eyes – Have I bashed this one yet? It ties Mothman Prophecies for the worst movie I’ve ever sat through. 1/10 Add The Whole 10 Yards to your “List to Miss” along with Sentinel
Fahrenheit 451 – Yeah, so it’s 40 years old, so what? You have to get back to the classics sometimes. It’s a cautionary tale of the future where books and independent thinking are forbidden. A ‘fireman’ whose job it is to burn books begins to question his government’s reasons for banning literature. Don’t expect anything flashy, but it’s still a good story. 7/10
Lucky Number Slevin – Loved this one. Not a big Hartnett fan, but I thought he did really well with this. Lucy Liu as the loveable ‘girl next door’ Morgan Freeman and Sir Ben as crime bosses, the add a little Bruce Willis as a ‘World Class assassin’ and you have a killer cast. It moves along nicely, good action, some humor, and keeps you guessing. About the time you figure out what’s going on, the director reveals it (my only real complaint is that some of it he beats you over the head with… yeah, I get it, this guy shot that guy, move on now) The style works well – the flashbacks had a look that I liked for some reason. It’s not quite The Usual Suspects kind of “WTF is going on??” but pretty close. It does have a few peripheral moments that you won’t see coming at all.
Check out the deleted scenes on the dvd. There’s an extended version of one of the scenes with Freeman and Sir Ben that’s just impressive. I can’t decide if I want to give this an 8 or a 9 out of 10, so I’ll give it an 8.5
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang – Have I really not mentioned this one yet?? This and Lucky Number Slevin were probably two of my favorite rentals so far this year. “…wetter than Drew Barrymore at a grunge club.” and “Don’t worry, I saw Lord of the Rings, I’m not gonna have this thing end 17 times” — I think I actually had to pause the movie at least once because I started laughing so hard. I thought Kilmer’s dry sarcasm went well with Jr’s scatterbrained attitude and attempted bravado. Fun movie to watch. 9/10
District B13 – Something entertaining from the French. The two lead actors are stuntmen, so the whole movie is basically one long action/fight sequence. The acting is horrid, and the story is pretty lame… but if you want to see some good fight scenes and Parkour on film, give it a look. 5/10
X-3: X-Men – The Last Stand – A pretty solid X-Men movie. All the ‘deleted scenes’ and ‘alternate endings’ that the commercials keep mentioning? Mild after-thought. Seriously, the ‘alternate endings’ are just stupid fillers where only a few seconds have been changed. The deleted scenes are pretty much the same thing – just a few seconds erased or changed here and there. If you saw it in the theater, don’t bother picking up the dvd for ‘all the extras’ 7/10
Tsotsi – It won a ton of Best Foreign Film awards in 2005. It’s a powerful story of change and redemption set in South Africa. If you’re not a big fan of foreign films, you probably won’t like this one. I give it a 7/10 though.
Speaking of powerful, I watched United 93 last week too. Wow. I was worried it was going to sensationalize or exploit the tragic events of 9/11 but it was very much the opposite. If you poke through the credits on IMDB you’ll notice that many people even played themselves. The film was done without any kind of political undertones or trying to assign any blame. It was also very respectful of those involved – every person on flight 93 was represented in the credits, but never named in the film. It was a very emotional and chilling account of that day, and is supposed to be a very accurate portrayal. I can’t even give this one a score… you can’t really rank a film where you shudder as the final scene cuts to black.