When I am looking for a movie to rent or watch in the cinema, I usually check a few things about the title - IMDB rating, cast, director, genres, awards, etc. I try not to read any reviews or plot descriptions, but everything else I usually do. Why am I doing this? Because there are so many crap movies out there that are not worse spending any time or money on. However, there are a few actors, who are like good brands. If I see that actor on a DVD cover, I will rent the movie without any other additional information. I might not even check the title of the film, or try to remember if I saw it before or not.
Denzel Washington is one of such actors. So, when I saw his face on a box of “Deja Vu“, I rented it right away. And, once again, I was right. The film is excellent. It has all to it - excellent story with a lot of twists, excellent acting, suspense, action, great photography, humor, food for thought, and so on and so forth. An extra point goes to those people who picked the cast. Everyone was good. But Paula Patton was really beautiful. Really.
If you are sensitive to spoilers, then don’t read this paragraph. There was a scene in the movie, where an FBI surveillance team is spying on this lady. They are watching her on a huge screen. She is at home, getting dressed or something. But the way she moves around, the way she looks, the way she smiles, it’s so beautiful that they are all stunned. They are watching her in silence for a few moments. Almost without blinking. Well, when the scene is over, I realized that it was like I was there, together with them, watching her. Truly amazing. It was a long time since I watched someone like that in the movie.
Anyway. The film is really good and if you like other Denzel Washington movies with action, drama, and crime, “Deja Vu” is truly recommended. 9 out of 10. Solid.
I went to see “I Am Legend” with a few friends of mine. Some of them saw the film before a few times, but decided that it was worth another view anyway. That pushed my expectations up a bit. But. The film was indeed worth it.
Here are the things that I liked, in no particular order:
Will Smith. He is a good actor. It just that most of the times he has to do those rather simplistic roles. But in this one, you can see the talent. He does really good.
Visuals. There are some really cool images in the film. In fact, it’s the visuals that create the bigger part of this movie. There is some excellent photography, which could have been easily transformed into still images and paintings.
Drama. There seems to be no shortage of movies about viruses, zombies, and the end of the world. However, so many of them fail to create the drama around the events. Broken families, numerous victims, and blood rivers seem to be present everywhere. But rarely they are used to create the horrific sense of sadness and pity.
Of course, there were a few things that sucked in this movie. I’m not going to go through the details on these, since they aren’t worth it. However I’d like to mention the zombies. I think that the choice of rather cartoon-ish characters was wrong. More “realism” in this area could have made the movie almost perfect.
I’d give it a strong 7.5 out of 10, and a recommendation to watch it, even if you are not a fan of the sci-fi end of the world horror. It’s pretty good.
I wasn’t ever a big fan of “Alien” movies. Space horror is not something that turns me on. However I remember enjoying the “Predator” flicks. Especially the first one with Arni. When they mixed the two, it was sort of interesting to see how it will all come out. And the trailer was excellent. But the film was somewhat boring, even though it had its momentss.
The Requiem part sucked though.  The good parts aren’t visible because of the constant mix of night, darkness, shadows, absence of lights, smoke, fog, underground catacombs, water, and a bunch of huge objects obstructing the view. And just to be on the safe side, scenes are cut at every half a second. That’s about the good parts.
The bad parts are shiny obvious. The biggest of them is acting. I know, I know, I’m not supposed to expect any great acting out of a sci-fi space thriller sequel. But what this movie had doesn’t even qualify for acting. I have a suspicion that even Keanu Reeves could do better than that (and we saw speculations of that it is possible to replace Keanu Reeves with wooden plank). I mean, where do they even find actors like this?
Then, there is the Achilles’ heel of all horror movies - common sense. This film had the smallest fraction of common sense you can see in the horror movie. People, evacuating from the town in a hurry, are waiting in the traffic jam on the freeway, while the second line is empty. A soldier popping out his head of the armored military vehicle to see what’s going on with this shooting outside in the middle of ambush. One predator calling another one for help after an accident, and that other predator going into almost full scale war with aliens, without ever calling for any more help. Alien inserting eggs into women at the hospital for them to give birth to more aliens only a couple of minutes later (previous parts of the movie seemed to have a rather longer period with eggs growing and stuff like that). The list goes on. And of course it is possible to find explanations for each one of them, but that will hardly help the feeling of things happening in the way that they aren’t supposed to happen.
As I said, I’m not the big fan of either the genre or these particular movies. But I think I can realize a good piece of entertainment, when one is offered. And in this particular case, I don’t think it qualifies. Rating: a weak 4 out of 10. Feel free to express you disagreement in the comments.
The other day I watched “Cloverfield“. It was slightly boring, as it was supposed to be, assuming it was filmed somewhat amateurish. It was a bit tiring on the eyes as well. The “Blair Witch Project” kind of tiring. It had some suspense in it, and even some special effects, but it was missing something. I can’t put my finger on it just yet…
Overall, it was pretty good. If you decide to watch it, I’d recommend to get it on DVD or something and watch it on smaller screen (TV/computer). It really doesn’t need all the size of the cinema screen. And it won’t tire your eyes as much.
Directed by: Garth Jennings Genres: Adventure, Comedy, Sci-Fi Cast: Bill Bailey, Anna Chancellor, Warwick Davis, Mos Def, Zooey Deschanel, Su Elliot, Martin Freeman, Stephen Fry, Richard Griffiths, Dominique Jackson, Simon Jones, Thomas Lennon, Mark Longhurst, Kelly Macdonald, John Malkovich IMDB raintg: 6.8 My rating: 8.0
Olga and I went to the cinema today to see a long awaited “
