Movie reviews. Also, Comps in movies: they BOTHER me.
On a movie-watching spree again.
So far, I've watched... let's see, what've I watched in the last month or two?
Battlestar Galactica -- Blew my mind. ♥ I watched it over at Vicki's house. It was the original one, where the war got started. Captain Apollo and all that. If you like sci-fi, SEE IT. :D ...somehow, it vaguely reminded me a little of Hunt for Red October.
Dark Water -- Jennifer Connelly, yay! It wasn't bad, but Hollywood remakes of Asian horror films are never as good as the original, and this one made me really want to see the original. I get the impression that a lot of it would be far more effective with the original setting. Something about seeing stuff set in Asia makes the particular quirks of the supernatural elements that those movies have all the more believable -- it's the culture and history. You don't go looking for Native American traditional spooks in India, and you don't expect the forces of... IDK, the apostle Judas? ...to show up in... Japan? It just doesn't really seem to work right. Maybe that's biased, but it's sort of like seeing Hindu gods being invoked alongside Greek ones (and not in the Shin Megami Tensei way of doing it) and it just doesn't quite... I dunno.
the Perfect Creature -- The cover made me expect something like a lower-budget Underworld takeoff. Not that I have any particular love for Underworld, but meh. I was pleasantly surprised. The budget wasn't set all on special (crappy) effects on the vampires, it was poured into the settings. The great settings. I wanted to say it was almost the sort of vibe I got from reading about the Vampire: the Masquerade games, but I'm going to have to go with saying it was far more... steampunk. Almost modern-day, at that. They had handguns and televisions, but we're talking about genetic manipulation in the... what, the 1800s, complete with what was very clearly a DNA spread. Not the kind where it's a diagram of the chain itself, but where they take the chemical to cut the chain at certain key gene sequences, and put the dyed sample in an agar mold and run a current through it, to get the bars to separate out so they can see what's what, like they use for paternity tests today. ....I forget what that's called offhand. Good movie for anyone looking for a break from the Twicrap that infests today's vamp fiction. (I'd also suggest 30 Days Of Night -- and note that the graphic novels are better than the movie.)
The Crow -- I kept thinking of one of my OCs, Poet. :| Loved the movie, though. Great stuff!
Stardust -- Another great one to go alongside the 10th Kingdom, the Princess Bride, Ella Enchanted, the Labyrinth, Dark Crystal, Gulliver's Travels, and... and why is my brain blank right now for other titles? Oh well.
The Crying Game -- Definitely an interesting one. Even if TVTropes already spoiled it for me, it was still enjoyable. I think my sister Steph'll love it.
The Return -- Another case of covers being somewhat deceiving. I was expecting something more like The Ring, with all the straight horror fare, but it wasn't. It was a lot more tame, a lot more realistic. I think. Kinda. Could've been better written. I'm still not sure exactly why the second guy was after her; the first was just an asshole. And the alternate ending they tried claiming was "too shocking" or something, on the cover, was... actually better, imho. And not "too shocking" at all.
Hamlet -- Mel Gibson did well in this one. I loved the settings and props and everything. Very authentic feel to it all. And they kept it all in old English, too. I loved it so very much....
Cliffhanger -- It was okay, but through it, I've discovered that I don't really care for Sylvester Stallone.
Murders in the Rue Morgue -- Poe. Total classic. Well done, too. Is it bad that throughout it, I kept eyeing the lady's cloak/coat thing and thinking I want one of those?
Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Whitechapel Vampire -- or some title like that. (It's currently hiding from me somewhere on my shelf...) For some reason, the actor's portrayal of Holmes just wasn't quite how I'd imagined him, when I was reading some of those stories. He came off as kinda... snobby. I always got the impression he was more just vaguely annoyed that everyone else didn't put two and two together, at most. Maybe that's just me.
Cello -- I've watched this one several times now. ♥ If you like good scary movies, like... in the sense that the Sixth Sense was creeptastic, the first time you saw it, as opposed to how Hollywood seems to confuse "scary" for "sickening" (I'm thinking of the Saw movies. UGH!) then you'll probably love this one. I kept drawing connections between it and Silent Hill, but if I say how, I might spoil something. Starts off a little slow, builds up... by the end, I was sitting there glued to the screen. Again. (Korean, for reference.)
Shutter -- This one too. So good. So very, very good. Thank you for prodding me to watch it sooner than later, Mart! Another great Asian horror movie, about a photographer who keeps ending up with ghosts interfering with his photos, and... nnrgh. I won't spoil it! (Thai, I do believe.)
Premonition -- not the Hollywood title, but another Asian horror film. A guy sees a newspaper clipping telling about something horrible that happened... that hasn't yet happened. That's how it starts. The incidents continue, and... I don't want to spoil it either! (Japanese)
Voice -- Another creeptastically beautiful horror movie that kept me hooked. And I think I want a copy of the song that's featured so much in it. (Korean)
Marebito -- "What is this I don't even--" ....yeah, I... what? Definitely a trip. Kind of felt more like an art film, than a horror movie. Would probably be a lot scarier if I were high at the time. (Japanese)
Neighbor No. 13 -- Wow. Just wow. It's about a guy who moves into apartment 13, and... it's not the apartment that's so scary. It's something happening with him. The beginning has some scenes that take place in some bizarre, otherworldly area (inside his mind, apparently) which make so much more sense as the movie goes on, and... it's very well done. Don't expect anything too Silent Hill-ish. It's almost a little more of a slasher, but done right. (Japanese)
The Phone -- A really good ghost story. I was expecting something a little more like what I know of One Missed Call, but it wasn't quite that. Definitely well suited to its setting. (Korean, I think? I don't recall, it's been a while now.)
The Eye -- I loved it. Very well done story, builds nicely. The way they worked everything together was absolutely great. And then I heard that Hollywood remade this one too, and it made me sad. I almost want to see the remake just to see how much it fails compared to the original. (Chinese)
The Eye 10 -- ...they turned it into a series, and kept the title the same. I think it must've happened like with the Evil Dead/Army of Darkness stuff, since the tenth movie is somewhere between light horror and dark hilarity. Mostly the latter. The impromptu dance-off scene had me laughing so hard... and my brother wants that on his iPod. (Chinese again)
The Ring -- I watched the Hollywood version. Like with Dark Water, there are so many things in it that I can tell would've worked better in its original form... though they did a pretty good job with localizing it. My main gripe actually happens to be tech-related, kinda like with computers in movies. They made a big fuss about the technical aspect of duplicating the tape and all... but they totally failed regarding the whole tracking issue, for VHS tapes. There is not a whole half-the-original-picture's-width area that's present in the tape's data but cropped off on the right side of the screen.
Hostage -- Mmmm, Bruce Willis makes everything better. Great acting as always! He's one of those few actors that I can never say I've seen them do anything I really haven't liked. And this one was just... great. Action/suspense as seems to be usual for him.
Perfect Strangers -- A movie about a lady that's kidnapped to an island by a guy who's obsessed with her even though he doesn't even KNOW her, and... it was ridiculous. Not bad, but... what.
Identity -- It was great until the end. The explanation sort of ruined it, but not entirely, and the ending itself was... I'm not too sure what to make of that.
Runaway Jury -- Suspense. Nicely done. Court case against a big gun company, impossible odds, clever tricks up certain people's sleeves... well written, pretty well directed. I liked it.
Alone In The Dark -- MY BRAIN, IT HURTS. Couldn't sit through the whole thing, and I tend to like some of the campy old horror movies. This one was just... all sorts of awful, and the worst game-to-movie scifi/horror adaptation thing there ever was. Don't bother even downloading it; it's not worth the bandwidth, let alone the money at the rental place, or the time it takes to watch it.
1408 -- actually pretty good. I think I liked it quite a bit. Well done, for a change, Hollywood! :)
COMPUTERS IN MOVIES/TV: UGH. Okay, so I can understand that you want to have to find a balance between getting the point across to viewers easily and quickly, and making it believable, but... a few things.
One. You know where they always take security camera footage, or an old blurry photograph, and run Sharpen filters on it to bring out magic details like license plate numbers in people's rear view mirrors? This totally blows suspension of disbelief away, for anyone who's into art on the computer much. Sharpen filters do not work that way. There is no way to bring tiny details like that out of where the information is simply not stored at all. You cannot enlarge a two-pixel-by-two-pixel piece of photo into a 200x200-pixel image and "sharpen" it until you get anything readable, or a photo of your suspect's face. The answer is NO.
Two. Tapping random keys on the keyboard, to make things happen on the screen. DOES NOT WORK. Look, I love keyboard shortcuts as much as the next geek, but some programs just need a mouse. Period. No one can easily use a Windows-like GUI with their keyboard alone, and no one would when mice are like $2 at the thrift stores. I cannot believe that with four swift keystrokes, someone could easily and naturally bring up a certain part of the grid on that image and zoom in on it, then with another two keystrokes, run it through the database for a match. Try harder, people.
Three. Video calls to people. At least some canons get it right, that the picture isn't always crystal clear and in high-def and realtime. Blurry it up a bit, like a low-quality JPG, please. Give it a quarter-second or more lag. But even if you don't? For the love of everyone that's ever used even a text-based IM program, let alone Gizmo (Google Voice now, I guess?) or Skype, at least have a contacts list up, when they start a call. How about a moment of "dialtone" or even the message "Calling" or "Waiting for reply" or something, before the other person's picture pops up on the screen? Bonus tip: If you haven't talked to them in a year, why would you even have their contact info loaded so conveniently, and in such a quickly accessible way, in a program that they very well might not even use? I mean, programs for stuff like this can change a lot in a year, you know?
Four. We use computers too. If you're not running Windows 95 or 98, don't show us a Windows 9x Blue Screen Of Death for a sec when your computer stops working in the movie. For that matter, a laptop that gets water-soaked and shorts out should not have its programs crash and then BSoD on its user, it just goes blank and is off. And it's probably unusable after that without taking it to a repair shop to exchange shorted boards for working ones, but that's another issue. (I'm looking at you, 1408. Give a Win 9x BSoD on a Windows XP computer, when it gets water poured on it? Really. I think not!)
....
I'm sorry, but some things can really break that whole suspension of disbelief factor you kinda have to have, for most media.
And Dexter: I love you. But for a show where the main character is a blood splatter analyst, how can you excuse trying to claim that someone being AB- means they have a hard time receiving blood transfusions? They can receive any of the four blood types, so long as it's also negative. If you want the character to have difficulty finding a donor, they'd be type O, probably O negative, for added difficulty/rarity. That's ninth grade biology, if not earlier, thanks. :| ...but other than that, and some minor computer-stuff-related nags, it's a great series, and I'm hooked.
So far, I've watched... let's see, what've I watched in the last month or two?
Battlestar Galactica -- Blew my mind. ♥ I watched it over at Vicki's house. It was the original one, where the war got started. Captain Apollo and all that. If you like sci-fi, SEE IT. :D ...somehow, it vaguely reminded me a little of Hunt for Red October.
Dark Water -- Jennifer Connelly, yay! It wasn't bad, but Hollywood remakes of Asian horror films are never as good as the original, and this one made me really want to see the original. I get the impression that a lot of it would be far more effective with the original setting. Something about seeing stuff set in Asia makes the particular quirks of the supernatural elements that those movies have all the more believable -- it's the culture and history. You don't go looking for Native American traditional spooks in India, and you don't expect the forces of... IDK, the apostle Judas? ...to show up in... Japan? It just doesn't really seem to work right. Maybe that's biased, but it's sort of like seeing Hindu gods being invoked alongside Greek ones (and not in the Shin Megami Tensei way of doing it) and it just doesn't quite... I dunno.
the Perfect Creature -- The cover made me expect something like a lower-budget Underworld takeoff. Not that I have any particular love for Underworld, but meh. I was pleasantly surprised. The budget wasn't set all on special (crappy) effects on the vampires, it was poured into the settings. The great settings. I wanted to say it was almost the sort of vibe I got from reading about the Vampire: the Masquerade games, but I'm going to have to go with saying it was far more... steampunk. Almost modern-day, at that. They had handguns and televisions, but we're talking about genetic manipulation in the... what, the 1800s, complete with what was very clearly a DNA spread. Not the kind where it's a diagram of the chain itself, but where they take the chemical to cut the chain at certain key gene sequences, and put the dyed sample in an agar mold and run a current through it, to get the bars to separate out so they can see what's what, like they use for paternity tests today. ....I forget what that's called offhand. Good movie for anyone looking for a break from the Twicrap that infests today's vamp fiction. (I'd also suggest 30 Days Of Night -- and note that the graphic novels are better than the movie.)
The Crow -- I kept thinking of one of my OCs, Poet. :| Loved the movie, though. Great stuff!
Stardust -- Another great one to go alongside the 10th Kingdom, the Princess Bride, Ella Enchanted, the Labyrinth, Dark Crystal, Gulliver's Travels, and... and why is my brain blank right now for other titles? Oh well.
The Crying Game -- Definitely an interesting one. Even if TVTropes already spoiled it for me, it was still enjoyable. I think my sister Steph'll love it.
The Return -- Another case of covers being somewhat deceiving. I was expecting something more like The Ring, with all the straight horror fare, but it wasn't. It was a lot more tame, a lot more realistic. I think. Kinda. Could've been better written. I'm still not sure exactly why the second guy was after her; the first was just an asshole. And the alternate ending they tried claiming was "too shocking" or something, on the cover, was... actually better, imho. And not "too shocking" at all.
Hamlet -- Mel Gibson did well in this one. I loved the settings and props and everything. Very authentic feel to it all. And they kept it all in old English, too. I loved it so very much....
Cliffhanger -- It was okay, but through it, I've discovered that I don't really care for Sylvester Stallone.
Murders in the Rue Morgue -- Poe. Total classic. Well done, too. Is it bad that throughout it, I kept eyeing the lady's cloak/coat thing and thinking I want one of those?
Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Whitechapel Vampire -- or some title like that. (It's currently hiding from me somewhere on my shelf...) For some reason, the actor's portrayal of Holmes just wasn't quite how I'd imagined him, when I was reading some of those stories. He came off as kinda... snobby. I always got the impression he was more just vaguely annoyed that everyone else didn't put two and two together, at most. Maybe that's just me.
Cello -- I've watched this one several times now. ♥ If you like good scary movies, like... in the sense that the Sixth Sense was creeptastic, the first time you saw it, as opposed to how Hollywood seems to confuse "scary" for "sickening" (I'm thinking of the Saw movies. UGH!) then you'll probably love this one. I kept drawing connections between it and Silent Hill, but if I say how, I might spoil something. Starts off a little slow, builds up... by the end, I was sitting there glued to the screen. Again. (Korean, for reference.)
Shutter -- This one too. So good. So very, very good. Thank you for prodding me to watch it sooner than later, Mart! Another great Asian horror movie, about a photographer who keeps ending up with ghosts interfering with his photos, and... nnrgh. I won't spoil it! (Thai, I do believe.)
Premonition -- not the Hollywood title, but another Asian horror film. A guy sees a newspaper clipping telling about something horrible that happened... that hasn't yet happened. That's how it starts. The incidents continue, and... I don't want to spoil it either! (Japanese)
Voice -- Another creeptastically beautiful horror movie that kept me hooked. And I think I want a copy of the song that's featured so much in it. (Korean)
Marebito -- "What is this I don't even--" ....yeah, I... what? Definitely a trip. Kind of felt more like an art film, than a horror movie. Would probably be a lot scarier if I were high at the time. (Japanese)
Neighbor No. 13 -- Wow. Just wow. It's about a guy who moves into apartment 13, and... it's not the apartment that's so scary. It's something happening with him. The beginning has some scenes that take place in some bizarre, otherworldly area (inside his mind, apparently) which make so much more sense as the movie goes on, and... it's very well done. Don't expect anything too Silent Hill-ish. It's almost a little more of a slasher, but done right. (Japanese)
The Phone -- A really good ghost story. I was expecting something a little more like what I know of One Missed Call, but it wasn't quite that. Definitely well suited to its setting. (Korean, I think? I don't recall, it's been a while now.)
The Eye -- I loved it. Very well done story, builds nicely. The way they worked everything together was absolutely great. And then I heard that Hollywood remade this one too, and it made me sad. I almost want to see the remake just to see how much it fails compared to the original. (Chinese)
The Eye 10 -- ...they turned it into a series, and kept the title the same. I think it must've happened like with the Evil Dead/Army of Darkness stuff, since the tenth movie is somewhere between light horror and dark hilarity. Mostly the latter. The impromptu dance-off scene had me laughing so hard... and my brother wants that on his iPod. (Chinese again)
The Ring -- I watched the Hollywood version. Like with Dark Water, there are so many things in it that I can tell would've worked better in its original form... though they did a pretty good job with localizing it. My main gripe actually happens to be tech-related, kinda like with computers in movies. They made a big fuss about the technical aspect of duplicating the tape and all... but they totally failed regarding the whole tracking issue, for VHS tapes. There is not a whole half-the-original-picture's-width area that's present in the tape's data but cropped off on the right side of the screen.
Hostage -- Mmmm, Bruce Willis makes everything better. Great acting as always! He's one of those few actors that I can never say I've seen them do anything I really haven't liked. And this one was just... great. Action/suspense as seems to be usual for him.
Perfect Strangers -- A movie about a lady that's kidnapped to an island by a guy who's obsessed with her even though he doesn't even KNOW her, and... it was ridiculous. Not bad, but... what.
Identity -- It was great until the end. The explanation sort of ruined it, but not entirely, and the ending itself was... I'm not too sure what to make of that.
Runaway Jury -- Suspense. Nicely done. Court case against a big gun company, impossible odds, clever tricks up certain people's sleeves... well written, pretty well directed. I liked it.
Alone In The Dark -- MY BRAIN, IT HURTS. Couldn't sit through the whole thing, and I tend to like some of the campy old horror movies. This one was just... all sorts of awful, and the worst game-to-movie scifi/horror adaptation thing there ever was. Don't bother even downloading it; it's not worth the bandwidth, let alone the money at the rental place, or the time it takes to watch it.
1408 -- actually pretty good. I think I liked it quite a bit. Well done, for a change, Hollywood! :)
COMPUTERS IN MOVIES/TV: UGH. Okay, so I can understand that you want to have to find a balance between getting the point across to viewers easily and quickly, and making it believable, but... a few things.
One. You know where they always take security camera footage, or an old blurry photograph, and run Sharpen filters on it to bring out magic details like license plate numbers in people's rear view mirrors? This totally blows suspension of disbelief away, for anyone who's into art on the computer much. Sharpen filters do not work that way. There is no way to bring tiny details like that out of where the information is simply not stored at all. You cannot enlarge a two-pixel-by-two-pixel piece of photo into a 200x200-pixel image and "sharpen" it until you get anything readable, or a photo of your suspect's face. The answer is NO.
Two. Tapping random keys on the keyboard, to make things happen on the screen. DOES NOT WORK. Look, I love keyboard shortcuts as much as the next geek, but some programs just need a mouse. Period. No one can easily use a Windows-like GUI with their keyboard alone, and no one would when mice are like $2 at the thrift stores. I cannot believe that with four swift keystrokes, someone could easily and naturally bring up a certain part of the grid on that image and zoom in on it, then with another two keystrokes, run it through the database for a match. Try harder, people.
Three. Video calls to people. At least some canons get it right, that the picture isn't always crystal clear and in high-def and realtime. Blurry it up a bit, like a low-quality JPG, please. Give it a quarter-second or more lag. But even if you don't? For the love of everyone that's ever used even a text-based IM program, let alone Gizmo (Google Voice now, I guess?) or Skype, at least have a contacts list up, when they start a call. How about a moment of "dialtone" or even the message "Calling" or "Waiting for reply" or something, before the other person's picture pops up on the screen? Bonus tip: If you haven't talked to them in a year, why would you even have their contact info loaded so conveniently, and in such a quickly accessible way, in a program that they very well might not even use? I mean, programs for stuff like this can change a lot in a year, you know?
Four. We use computers too. If you're not running Windows 95 or 98, don't show us a Windows 9x Blue Screen Of Death for a sec when your computer stops working in the movie. For that matter, a laptop that gets water-soaked and shorts out should not have its programs crash and then BSoD on its user, it just goes blank and is off. And it's probably unusable after that without taking it to a repair shop to exchange shorted boards for working ones, but that's another issue. (I'm looking at you, 1408. Give a Win 9x BSoD on a Windows XP computer, when it gets water poured on it? Really. I think not!)
....
I'm sorry, but some things can really break that whole suspension of disbelief factor you kinda have to have, for most media.
And Dexter: I love you. But for a show where the main character is a blood splatter analyst, how can you excuse trying to claim that someone being AB- means they have a hard time receiving blood transfusions? They can receive any of the four blood types, so long as it's also negative. If you want the character to have difficulty finding a donor, they'd be type O, probably O negative, for added difficulty/rarity. That's ninth grade biology, if not earlier, thanks. :| ...but other than that, and some minor computer-stuff-related nags, it's a great series, and I'm hooked.