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Movie Mini-Review Roundup IV

Oh man, its been a long time since I did a round of movie mini-reviews. I thought I had done one more recently, but my last one was in 2013. So now the list has ballooned even more than I mentioned then, so much that I have over 50 films in my general list, as well as special lists I've built and am still working on. So time to work on getting these caught back up. I would say I'm going to do this with 20 films every Saturday for the next several weeks, except I'll be out of town both of the next two Saturdays so the next one won't be until after that

the hobbit
I was not a fan of the Lord of the Rings saga. That I have established. I particularly went to see The Hobbit because I wanted to see it in HFR, because I'm one who prefers higher framerates on video than the 24 FPS standard (I also run my 120hz TV in mode to prevent it from doing 3:2 pulldown on movies, which also weirds out people). on that aspect, I thought it was pretty decent, but there were some CGI sequences that weren't rendered at the right framerate and were really obviously jerky during the movie. on the general movie aspect, I enjoyed The Hobbit itself more than I enjoyed the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy put together. I do intend on buying this film, but when the price on the Hobbit trilogy drops because its extremely expensive.

snow white and the huntsman
this film takes a nice dark look at the Snow White tale. Kristen Stewart play Snow White, though, and since she barely knows how to show any emotion in her acting I can only think of one time in the whole movie that I remember her smiling

brain twisters
I had this saved from IMDB as something I needed to watch, but I don't remember how I found it. this is one of the early films to cash in on the idea that video games can be really bad for you. was somewhat amusing to watch just for the old early 90s campiness of it

lockout
I don't particularly remember not enjoying this movie, but I don't actually remember much of watching it. so not very memorable, I guess

super 8
this is a nice JJ Abrams film about a bunch of kids that come across the wreckage of a spaceship and an alien. with Abram's stellar cinematography, worth a watch 

heart string marionette
not the first indie film by M dot Strange. this one's more cohesive then his first work was in some ways, but still a very strange movie. I enjoyed watching it, but I wouldn't be able to speak for anyone else. I hadn't actually heard about this one before seeing it, I just happened upon it as he had the whole film on his Youtube channel for a limited time 

conan the barbarian
aka Ronon the Barbarian, as the only other role I know Jason Momoa as is Ronon Dex in Stargate Atlantis and they're pretty similar characters as far as watching him fight goes. also has Ron Perlman as his father and he's always worth watching. I don't actually remember the end of this film, though, I know I watched it but I had to rent it twice because the first time I watched it my PS3 died in the middle of the movie and I had to get a new one and disassemble that one to remove the disc, and that's pretty much the most memory I have of the film because of how much an ordeal that was. I do remember enjoying it tho

hobo with a shotgun
so I guess this was originally a fake movie trailer made for a Quentin Tarantino film, then turned into an actual movie about a homeless man coming to an extremely corrupt city and deciding that it needs justice and order. kind of a silly over the top movie, but it was rather amusing to watch for that aspect

mission impossible: ghost protocol
while I liked MI3 enough that I bought it (used), in generally I'm not a big fan of the MI series and only decided to watch this one because of Simon Pegg's addition to the cast. which he was a good role at least. 

the hunt for red octoberso I watched this film because I was told I needed to read The Hunt For Red October, but I found Clancy's writing style to include so much minute detail that it was such an incredibly bland read that I couldn't finish it, and decided to watch the film instead. the film was quite enjoyable 

stolen
so Stolen is pretty much a weak copy of Taken, with Nicholas Cage being the father who's daughter is in trouble. and a heist plot thrown in as well to water down Taken some more

the raven
film about a serial killer who patterns their kills after the works of Edgar Allen Poe, so they call in Poe to help them figure it out. it was okay watching it, but I pretty much had forgotten pretty much all of it since then except some detail about being at a newspaper press when someone actually asked me if I'd seen the film earlier this week

wreck-it ralph
the trailer pretty much tells you everything you need to know: theyve combined together the entirety of video game history, crossing multiple companies IP's (something basically that could only be pulled off by Disney) to make this brilliant film. I haven't gotten around to buying this yet but it's definitely one I will be purchasing. just recently got confirmed it was receiving a sequel


time traveler: the girl who leapt through time
this is a live action take on the Girl who Leapt Through Time novel's concept, following its own stand-alone story unlike the animated film's rough connection to the novel, but starring the actress that voiced the protagonist in that animated film. I think I found this on Netflix at the time, whether it's there to be able to watch now though I don't know

oz the great and powerful
while the Oz works have been in public domain for a long time, there's not that many other takes on it other than the MGM The Wizard Of Oz (the only ones I can think of offhand are The Wiz, Return to Oz, and Tin Man) as compared to, say, Alice's Adventures In Wonderland or other old properties would get, which is a shame because from just the summaries I've read there's a lot of rich lore to the series and it reminds me a lot of a western version of Gensokyo from the Touhou series, which has quite a rich fanbase contributing a lot to it. and it's probably because other places are afraid to do it, because, while MGM doesn't own the Wizard of Oz property themselves, they do own all the iconography that has become synonymous with the series since the MGM film, even to the details such as the witch's skin color. nevertheless, Disney would be of course the ones able to take that challenge of restrictions on full force, and I thought it turned out splendidly. this is also a film I had planned on buying, but just haven't yet

event horizon
LIBERATE TUTAME EX INFERNIS. this horror film from the late 90s about an experimental FTL ship stars Sam Neill and Laurence Fishburne I thought was an excellent take on the concept of the unknown of experimental space travel going wrong. I found this film was great, and I had purchased it after seeing it.

the oxford murders
Elijah Wood and John Hurt star in this film about a university student and his professor working to solve the clues left by a serial killer. It was an interesting film to watch, but I seem to remember it seemed to be on and off point back and forth at times 

the andromeda strain
I had seen the 2008 miniseries before and reviewed it previously, so decided I needed to watch the original after that. notable in the film is very early use of computerized visual effects, which was in its infancy in the film industry at the time. worth a watch 

chain reaction
honeslty on initial look in the list I don't even remember anything about this movie other than it was an odd combination of roles from Morgan Freeman and Keannu Reeves. refreshing the plot some more on Wikipedia I remember it was pretty underwhelming, because their descriptions of the technology described werent very good and the film mostly spent time with the people on the run from industry mongols as it was supposedly going to be a energy sector disruptor, and I recall being not very impressed by the film 

die hard 5
now I thought this was an okay film, but if you ask most people they say it's not much of a Die Hard movie. that's because, as it establishes in the opening sequence of the film, wheras in all the rest of the Die Hard's John McClane just happened to be the right man in the wrong place, but this movie's opening sequence establishes he specifically went to Russia looking for trouble (and by trouble we mean his son who is in trouble). and then through the movie he tries to deny that to himself and the audience by repeating "I was supposed to be on vacation!" over and over as the action's happening


Date posted: 08 August, 2015
Tags: movies
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