Tuesday, February 15, 2005

........ are coming!

The Saxons are coming!
King Arthur - the directors cut
Training Day is tight "get your squabble on", Tears of the Sun was ok for an action romp, Replacement Killers had Chow Yun Fat in and that makes it automatically watchable. So Faqua is a decent director. King Arthur, though, is just boring. The actors have no charisma, the action scenes are relentlessly mundane - quick edits and gore do not make a good battle scene and the storyline is dull. It's ironic that the story is all about destiny and being all you want to be and all people are born equal, except its about a king and takes place in Britian, a the very model of classed society.
"You men are free but do what i say because I'm king!"

The English are coming!
Timeline
Its obvious why this crashed at the box office, the French are the heroes at a time when french fries (arguably the unhealthiest food) became freedom fries. It also didn't help that movie was lame.
The dude from 'the fast and the furious' goes back in time to help billy connelly have a film career. Now 'fast and furious' was essentially Keanu Reeves' 'point break' but with cars instead of surf, Reeves was in 'Bill and Ted's excellent adventure' which involved guys going back in medieval times to save people. the art of film making has gotten worse.

Modern Society is coming!
The Village
A picked the 'twist' ending when i saw the trailer a year ago so my large ego was sated! behold my plot twist deduction powers - "lost is based around people from the future using an island as the basis of a reality tv show, where the survivor wins a playstation V" -ahem. Anyway, i like M. Night's work, its atmospheric, very hitchcockian/early scorsese, sometimes a little detached but he knows how to use his characters to advance the story. This is a good film but it hangs on the twist too much for it to be enjoyable on repeated viewings, unlike his other films. Adrien brody's character though was dumb. i hope M Night just makes good films and forgets about having to put some forced 'twist' into his plots as some sort of gimmick (he didn't in Signs and that's my favourite one of his films)

Mystical all powerful artifact is coming!
The Medallion
Much better than I expected. Yes I love Jackie Chan; only Fantasy Mission Force and Around the world in 80 days are actually crap, some movies are watchable, but most are great. What helps is the Lee Evans is funny, Claire Forlani ( sigh claire forlani is in leather at HOT, the fight scenes are ok and jackie doesn't try too hard at being cute. Now I have to track down 'accidental spy' - i fear my luck may run out.

Hot latin chick is coming!
Woman on top
Valentine's Day treat. One of my top 10 films. Penelope Cruz is hot, the music is great, the direction creative and the cinematography inspiring.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

You like sucky sucky films. I am saddened.

Medallion:- "you are really highbinder, you like to bind high, and stuff, but we'll change it to medallion for some reason."

"but we can't decide which ending to use, AAARRGH!"

"I'm going to do a crappy fake torture scene, hee hee hee."

the village:- "eeek! you can't hurt me, I'm blind!"

I rest my case

-LFW

Mark Selan said...

dude, DUDE Owen Wilson is so in 80 days! He plays one of the wright brothers.
Owen is gold in everything, even that movie where he runs for 90 minutes. And the shanghai movies are good.

Frank - I'm glad they went with this ending, except for the silly superfriends final shot.

Anonymous said...

Actually, you are probably right mark, I am sorry for criticizing your tastes like that.

And was that owen's brother next to him in 8o days?

-LFW

Anonymous said...

There are so many bad Arthurian films! Pity about Clive Owen (who's a decent TV actor).

The best King Arthur film has to Excalibur... wait, no... Monty Python and the Holy Grail is! They're kind of companion pieces.

Doug, the director of The Village is going to be directing a film of Life of Pi. I hope it's good!

Cheers,

Ian T.

Mark Selan said...

Frank - yeah that was Chris Wilson as the other Wright Brother. And please criticise my taste, its more fun.

IanT - Excalibur is ok and i have never seen a monty python film in its entirety so i'll have to just nod and agree.