Category: 4 stars

Good movies are reviewed in this category. These films are not necessarily masterpieces, but I enjoyed watching them. I would probably watch most of these films more than once. Have a look around for suggestions on what to grab for your Saturday evening.

Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan

Borat

I think that Sacha Baron Cohen is one of the most talented people in today’s comedy.  I’ve seen and appreciated much of his work.  If you aren’t too familiar with it, among other things, he is mostly famous for creating three characters which appear on a number of shows and television programs – Borat, Ali G, and  Bruno.  Each one of those characters is very different from the others, and all three are very different from Sacha Baron Cohen himself.   My favorite one is Ali G, which I mentioned a few times on this blog.  Other ones are funny too, but they don’t get me laughing as hard as Ali G.

One of these characters was taken as far as a full featured movie – “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan“.  I was trying a bit to avoid watching this film, because, although as funny as the character is, I thought it would be a bit too much.  After listening to a few friends of mine, who strongly recommended the movie (and referred and quoted it way too often), I decided to finally rent and watch it.

I’m glad I did.  It was indeed much more than I expected out of it.  Borat is a character who does a lot of exploration in cultural differences and stereotypes.  In this movie there was as much space for those explorations as one could get.  And he utilized it all.  It was unbelievable at times.  Sometimes Borat goes so far that it is impossible to believe that scenes weren’t done in the studio with hired actors.  After reading a bit about the movie after watching it, and after seeing a few interviews at YouTube, it seems that those scenes indeed took place as part of Borat’s life and not as staged movie scenes.  All I can say for that is – WOW!

I strongly recommend this film, if you aren’t easily upset by all sorts of humor (including toilet jokes, discrimination, sexual themes, slavery and human rights, etc).

Strong 7 out of 10 with extra points for bravery and hard work and sensitive areas.

Doomsday

Doomsday

With all the movies coming out of the Hollywood these days, one needs some set of mental filters (aka stereotypes) to pick good films and avoid all the rest.  But, as with any other area of human life, stereotypes can heal and harm.  According to the set of movie stereotypes in my head, I was totally going to avoid the movie “Doomsday“.  I’ve heard that it was about some virus outbreak, sealed contaminated area, and a bunch of people going in to find the cure.  That’s all I knew, and that sounded a lot like something along the lines of “28 Days Later“, “Resident Evil“, and many other movies.  Those movies, they aren’t bad, but I’ve seen enough of them.

Luckily, my friend and colleague Igor likes this type of movies a lot.  So he managed to persuade me to go and see “Doomsday”.  And I’m glad he did.

The story of the film was very much like I expected it.  But, we weren’t there for the story, were we?  It’s how one tells the story.  And in this type of films, it’s all about how you show infected people, their mutations, human flash, body parts, horror, black humor, and the rest of the visual effects.  “Doomsday” was pretty good in this regard.  I’d say it was a little bit more bloodier than it needed, but no serious complains in this department.

All that is not very important however.  Because “Doomsday” has something that so many other movies don’t.  It has the spirit.  The atmosphere, if you will.  And it suits it very well.  It is a very rock-n-roll movie.  So much rock-n-roll, that it is much closer to punk rock in its spirit (and literary, most of the characters appear to be some serious fans of punk rock music).

Doomsday scream

There are a few places in the movie, which are either boring or a little bit too far fetched, but, gladly, they are very few and very short.  In most of it, the film provides excellent entertainment and positive energy boost.  It is mostly funny, and hilarious at places.  It has excellent special effects and strong characters in it.  There are a few memorable quotes, including some very peculiar ways of using an F* word (the film is very British in its nature).

So, if you like uncensored punk rock with lots of fun, if you are not easily destabilized by motion pictures, if you don’t truly belief that people in the movie suffer in pain or die in pieces, if you welcome the creativity of the creator even if it is a little bit out of your bounds sometimes, if you enjoyed “Mad Max” trilogy and darker (non-romantic) side of “Waterworld” than I strongly recommend to watch this movie.  You won’t regret it.

7 out of 10.

Mr. Brooks

Mr. Brooks

A random pick off the shelf this time – “Mr. Brooks“.  Once again, I’ve been proven to miss lots and lots of nice movies that were released in the last two or three years.  Gladly, I am catching up.

This film features some of those actors, who I know very well, appreciate, but will try to avoid.  I don’t know why I am not a bigger fan of either Kevin Costner or Demi Moore.  They are both very talented and all, but somehow I find myself trying to skip a movie if it has one of them in it.

Since I took a random movie of the shelf, I wasn’t checking the cast or the pictures at all.  I have to say that I should do it more often, since I tend to end up with better movies than those that I pick after careful consideration.

Acting, story, and photography are the strong sides of this film.  7 out of 10 (or 7.5 if you like fractions)

I Am Legend

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.

Cloverfield

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.