Year: 2004

Is there a better way to spend the last couple of days of the year rather than doing things that you wanted to do for a long time now? Certainly not. That’s why I rented the three Star Wars episodes that came out long time ago. I was going to fill in these blanks in my movie watching education for some time, but never managed. Today I started with “Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope“.

Of course it is not as easy going and exciting to watch as many nowadays movies, but it was still shocking and impressing. With some scenes I couldn’t believe my eyes. Not many people dare to repeat things today that George Lucas did back in 1977. Excellent special effects, costumes, ideas, and technological innovations.

The movie is worth every second of the time. Digital remastering of the DVD did it some good too. I cannot imagine what would have happened to me if I watched this in the cinema back than… when it was still 1 year before I was born! :)

9 out of 10. Watch it if you haven’t done so yet.

One of Martin’s special skills is finding totally unknown and burried movies, which are actually good. Today I’ve got one of those films from him – “Control“. It is one of the most burried movies that I have ever seen. There is no poster on IMDB, no rating (awaiting 5 votes), there are no DVDs or videos at Amazon. Google search for images does not come up with anything useful either. I guess there are many films that are hidden deep under. But this one has a really nice DVD cover and excellent cast (Ray Liotta, Willem Dafoe, Kathleen Robertson) printed on top of it.

The film itself is interesting, with nice plot twists, excellent acting and some good soundtrack. I wish there was more action and suspense to it, but it was good even as it was. I also liked how nicely the movie raised a whole bunch of phylosophical issues without going too deep into them.

Being one of the first people voting for this movie, I’ll give it a good 8 out of 10 (7.5 actually, but wha the heck!).

I’ve just watched the “Straigth Shooter” on DVD. There is something strange about this film. It looks and feels like something of mid-70s. Picture quality, sound, choice of music compositions, photography, camera work, lights, and everything. Even the story and character development are very 70-ish. Never-the-less, the film was done in 1999.

And that puts me in the situation where I have to decide if I liked it or not. For the measures of 70-ies this film is very good. It is dynamic, interesting, and has good special effects. On the other hand, as a movie made in 1999 it sucks big time. It was supposed to be an action and a war crime with special ops and stuff, but according to today’s standards it is very slow and boring without much to look at.

Until someone will prove to me that it is a really old film or explain to me what was so great about making a movie that was 30 years late, I’ll give it a 5 out of 10.