Category: Movies

Watched “Taking Lives” in the cinema. Overall it a good movie and worth seeing. But there was something missing. Something, that you can’t put your finger on. After a bit of thinking and talking to Olga, I think I got it. Basically, the whole movie is focused on Illeana (FBI agent played by Angelina Jolie) and Costa (serial killer, played by Ethan Hawke). Both performed very good. There were few other people in the movie, like Costa’s mother and few cops. But relationships between all of them are not touched at all. No history was talled although the feeling is that there is plenty of it going on. It starts to look that director’s cut is much longer then the resulting movie.

I was in a mood for a movie, but all theatres were occupied by “Day After Tomorrow”, “Troy”, and “Van Helsing”. But when I have to go, I have to go. :) The best IMDB retated film that I haven’t seen yet that was in the cinema, was “Win a Date with Tad Hamilton!“. Considering the quality of comedy-romance films recently, and the amount of them pushed down to us from Hollywood, I didn’t want to go too much, but had to anyway.

The film turned out much better then I expected, but not better enough for me to call it’s IMDB rating of 5.6/10 unfair. It is a typical, predictable, light movie as many others. The guy behind this film is Robert Luketic, who has less then 5 movies under his belt, with “Legally Blond” being one of them. You get the idea. Most of the cast was also new to filmmaking and acting business alltogether. There were only two people who pushed this film up from 2/10 to 5.6/10 – Topher Grace (Pete, the guy who’s silently in love) and Ginnifer Goodwin (Cathy, blonde’s friend). If it wasn’t for them, the movie would have been a total disaster.

We’ve went to see “The Day After Tomorrow” in the cinema today. Short story: it’s an excellent movie and everyone should go and see it while it’s on the big screen.

Long story. This film was created by the same guy who did “The Patriot“, “Godzilla“, “Independence Day” and “Universal Soldier” – Roland Emmerich. This time, though, he got everything right – story, cast, acting, sound, special effects – everything. There is a lot of action and suspence in the movie. Although it seems that most of the catastrophy takes place in the first half of the film, there is always something that keeps you glued to the screen (more catastrophy, complicated leg wound, wolves, whatever).

And there is scale. No. Scale. No. SCALE. Yup. Like this. I mean how often do you see a movie where there is a really global problem which wipes out few major cities? It happens. How often do they kill the president of the USA in the movie? It also happens (example: “Mars Attacks!“). But how often both of these (and some more) happen in the same movie? It was the first time for me.

So, with a solid 8/10 (Hazard gave it 9/10) this movie is a must see, but a must see on the big screen. This kind of scale is not something a TV can handle.

After few pints of beer I’ve watched “The Ninth Configuration” on DVD at hazard’s place.

It’s a nice film, but a bit too long to my taste. There are few rather obvious points running through out the movie and I think they were focused on at too much. This film is no sci-fi as it claimed by IMDB, but more of a drama and quite a few of comedy in.

The story is interesting and somewhat original. Shooting is good too – there is style through out the film, and there is lots of it.

Bottomline: it’s a good one to see, but I doubt I’ll want to see it a second time.

Just watched “Casino” on the DVD. It’s not the first time I see this movie, and it’s not the first time I like. It is rather long running 3 hours, but overall it is a very fine piece of cinematography. The story is somewhat typical. It’s about a street gang getting cooler and more powerful and then screwing it all up. Both Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci have a few films that go over similar lines. The acting, on the other hand, is good and the movie holds a certain suspense. Sharon Stone was good too and the way she changed over the cause of the movie is unbelievable, but predictable. :)

Bottomline – it’s a good crime movie to have in the home collection and watch it once in a few years.