Summarize and Rate the Last Movie You Saw

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Killswitch

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21 Jump Street - Expected fun, it delivered. Actually lol'd a few times, I don't know when I did that last time I watched an American comedy. Skinny Jonah Hill is kinda awkward, he should have stayed fat. also, johnny depp.....yeah didn't see that coming 3.5/5
 

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This Must Be the Place (2012) 5.5/10
Nutty cult film with Sean Pean as a washed up rock star tracing his fathers roots. It is an odd ball road movie which just too arty and weird for the sake of it, Penn's performance is mostly very self indulgent and the plot is a bit all over the place. However there are still some very strange and wonderful moments and the odd charming scene.

Into the Abyss (2012) 8/10
Touching study of life on death row and one case of a triple homicide and the impact it has on the families of the victims. It takes a look at the religious aspects of life and death, and throws open strong questions about the motivation and what leads people to do such things. It is a very engrossing and at times haunting watch.

Fair Game (2010) 7.5/10
Complex conspeciey threoy thriller, with a tense atmosphere a well paced script and two convincing performances from Naomi Watts and Sean Pean.
 

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Italian Job

Watched this for the first time today. It is a heist film about a group of thieves who plan to steal back gold bars from a former ally who double crossed them. Good, enjoyable film standard heist film but with a strong cast. They did a good job of making each character very different with a clear personality and the casting reflected that very well. One thing that I couldn't stand was how they would stake out the house in a huge van and they would sit fifty metres away right in view of anyone that left the house, plus the house had professional security and anyone with half a brain would have figured out what the van was up to.

7.5/10
 

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Macbeth (1948) 7.5/10
Orson Walle's weirdly thriller and full blooded version of shakespheres text is at times a little too ambituis, not least because of the small buget, however it is very well acted, the director is sound and malodramtic tone grips you. If you don't know a lot about the story you maybe lost with this version, but it defaintly does something interesting with the story and is unforgettable.
 

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Scott Pilgrim vs. The World - 6.5/10

I really wasn't sure whether to give this a 6.5 or 7 out of 10. I went with 6.5. When I was channel flicking and found this just starting, I wanted to turn it off, since I initially thought that the odd style of the movie was going to drive me insane. I managed to get over that and watch it all the way through. It wasn't bad. The sheer originality of the film had won me over by the end.

Overall though, there's things about the movie which undermine it; Cera playing the same role he's played for the past five years, and the tired and thoroughly overused "outrageous (gay) best friend". When you consider that a movie lives and dies by the laughs that it generates, and that Cera/Gay best friend are the supposed foundation for the majority of laughs in the movie, I found it hard to really appreciate the humour. It felt like the same comedies that hollywood has been pumping out since 2006, but with that strange comic-book style.
 

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The Pirates! in An Adventure With Scientists 2.5/5
After hearing rave reviews of this film, I was curious, but those expecting another Chicken Run will be disappointed. The jokes are mostly bland (even though a couple hit their mark) and the decision to make historical figures like Charles Darwin and Queen Victoria the villains (not to mention making Jane Austen a gold-digging ditz!) are questionable to say the least. Darwin's motivation is also borderline insulting to the great man, and overall this ends up dragging the movie down, and nullifying the complex nature of characters like the Pirate Captain, who is layered and far from the usual milquetoast picture-perfect hero most films tend to give us. There is also a running gag about a female crewmember disguised as a man (via scruffy fake beard) which is immediately made pointless by the existence of an ACTUAL female pirate, Cutlass Liz. Overall, unlike with Chicken Run, it's hard to see just what the fuss was all about with this one.

Talk Radio 4/5
A one-man tour-de-force by Eric Bogossian as an outspoken radio shock-jock. Most of the movie is spent watching Bogossian's character demean, deride and cuss out callers, casually brushing aside Nazi death threats, cries for help, and the usual assortment of loonies. On the fringes of this powerhouse performance is a strong supporting cast, with John C. McGinley delivering his usual brilliance in the few moments he has to shine. However, much like in the play that inspired this adaptation, the focus here is on Bogossian's Barry, and director Oliver Stone knowingly gives him semi-free rein, keeping the camera trained on him as he paces around the studio or sits at his desk randomly cutting off particularly obnoxious callers. Bogossian succeeds in making the viewer care for someone who is quite evidently an asshole, and even though nothing much happens outside of Barry having conversations with listeners, the film manages to be engrossing. The ending is surprising as well, topping off a movie well worth watching.

Regarding Henry 3.25/5
Not much happens in this quiet tearjeker about a man who loses his memory after getting shot. The film tries hard to establish Harrison Ford's Henry as a cad (he's a lawyer! He has slicked back hair!), but the character never acts like anything more than the average overworked, short-tempered person. He is strict but kind to his preteen daughter (for once, a child character who is not cloying or precocious, and actually feels like a real little girl), he makes parenting mistakes and crass jokes, but overall he is far from evil incarnate. Later on, the movie compensates by making that most amateurish of all mistakes - telling instead of showing. By this time, however, it is clear how it will all turn out, and the plot point in question becomes somewhat moot. The film does win massive brownie points for portraying real people, with real reactions (there are no long-winded morality speeches or huge fights here, replaced with quiet tears and angry silences) but these flaws, coupled with the fact that the story is not really that interesting, make it no more than a moderately entertaining Sunday-afternoon-on-cable viewing.

Home Team 2/5
I liked this movie the first time around...when it was made by Disney and called The Big Green. This is literally the same movie, with the same sport (soccer), the same outcome, and even the same leading man (Steve Guttenberg, who elicits the same reactions from the kids as he does from the viewers)! The difference is that this time, the setting is not a country-town middle-school, but an inner-city boys' home. Other than that, the film painfully and painstakingly goes through every. single. sports-comedy cliché, to the point where one starts wondering if the moviemakers are for real. Overall, kids' sports comedies are usually a huge guilty pleasure for me, but this one won't be knocking Rebound or Bad News Bears 2005 off the top of my list anytime soon.
 
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The Dicatator

I am a big Sacha Baron Cohen fan and I have watched him ever since Da Ali G Show. I thought that Ali G Indahouse was funny and Borat was genius but I never bothered to see Bruno. With the Dictator I wanted to see it based on the trailer because it looked good so I went on the weekend to view it and honestly I was disappointed. They put basically all the funny bits in the trailer, the only ones they missed were the Wii Games which was hilarious but no-one else in the theatre seemed to understand the significance of it and then the final wrap up was funny. Other than that the helicopter and the race were the only other really funny bits. I find that he went too childish with his humour in this one which is a shame because he has shown that he is much smarter than that and can produce better comedies. Overall it was okay at best but I wouldn't bother watching it again.

5/10
 

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I could never stand SBC, apart from his voicework as King Julian in Madagascar. He almost ruined Sweeney Todd for me, fortunately he dies early on, LOL.

Puss in Boots 2.25/5
I was looking forward to this one, and maybe that's why I was ultimately so disappointed. The animation is luscious (possibly the best ever in an animated movie), but the story is weak, convoluted and meanders all over the place, losing itself in all sorts of side roads it did not need to take (there's at least three potential plots in this movie, all rushed through in favour of a weaker, cookie-cutter one). Puss may have stolen the show in Shrek 2, but he is not a strong enough character to carry a movie, and neither are the rest of the cast here. There are a few chuckles, but overall nothing special. Considering I was let down by both this and Pirates!, I believe I may be getting too old for animation. Then again, considering I still like stuff like The Lion King, How To Train Your Dragon, Chicken Run, and most of the Pixar output, maybe animated movies just haven't been that good lately.
 

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Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993) 7.5/10
Enjoyable Woody Allen comedy which smartly pays tribute to film noir/murder mysteries. It is also all the better for letting the excellent Diane Keaton shine as the lead over Allen. It does drag in the middle where it seems to run out of ideas, but the closing stages are really funny, and do a decent job of keeping you guessing on if their realtionship will work out.

Le Dejeuner sur l'Herbe (Lunch on the Grass) (1959) 7/10
Mostly sucessful if slightly boring at times Jean Renoir comedy about classes and the sexes divide. It is visually stunning, with some effective music, it works best as full on farce with some artistic flair, but at times seems to get carried away with itself, with pointless characters and over long scenes. Not one of his best, but still very enjoyable.
 

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The Fan (1996) 4/10
Rubbish thriller with Robert De Niro as obsersive baseball fan, who following the breakdown of his marriage and realtionship with his son becomes dangerously involved in the fortures of his favourite player played by Wesley Snipes. It is totally predictable, the characters lack any substence, you have the normal rushed, over the top direction by Tony Scott and a lame rock n' roll soundtrack. There is no tension and the film takes some contrived turns along the way.
 

Kiffy Lube

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The Devil Inside

This movie is all over the place. It's about exorcisms which take up a majority of the movie. The storytelling jumps around like a jack rabbit. The pace never seems to even itself out. Usually, I like Horror movies that escalate to things not just do shit for no reason. However, for the most part I still enjoyed it and it had some great reactionary moments. I jumped a couple times mostly because these scenes just happen. Also, I was a fan of how everyone was dying though. Most of the deaths were to people actually built up. I hate it when random people die in Horror movies just for another scene. This all went out the window, though when the three main characters died in a car accident at the end. Just all of a sudden after the out of control format just comes to a screeching halt. I guess if wasn't for being interested in this type of stuff I'd probably give it a lower rating. Some new things were done at points I hadn't seen before as well.

6.5/10
 

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Battle Royale 4/5
With a movie which has been hyped as "one of the most violent ever filmed", it may come as a surprise to discover that this is NOT, in fact, torture porn. In fact, it is anything BUT, and therein lies the beauty of this violent, yet earnest study of human nature.

The plot for Battle Royale (or Battoru Royaru, in the original Japanese) is best described as "Lord Of The Flies meets Series 7: The Contenders". When a group of middle-school kids are forcibly abducted to a desert island, given weapons, and told to kill or be killed, they predictably react in all sorts of different ways. Some are scared; some are gung-ho; some try to remain logical and outsmart their captors; nearly all reveal their true colours in the process. And that, in the end, is what this engrossing Japanese film is all about - reflecting on human nature, and how it can be brought to the surface by adversity.

Which is not to say the film isn't violent. Lots of people do die - lots of CHILDREN do die. But those expecting a teen-centric version of Hostel or Saw had better look elsewhere. Despite the hypes, the deaths here are relatively tame (apart from a couple of occasions) and sometimes shown from a distance, or even offscreen. The film-makers are much more concerned with what these kids are *feeling* than with what they're *doing*, and that reduces the violence to something of an afterthought, a mere consequence of the situation these teens find themselves in.

As would be expected, with such a large cast, many of the kids are cannon fodder - only about half get any character development, and that is often rushed or belated. However, our central characters - a couple who staunchily refuses to betray one another, a sexpot with Ramboesque survival skills, a quietly jaded veteran of the 'game' and, later, three gifted hacker nerds - are fleshed out to perfection, to the point where the viewer DOES feel bad when something happens to them, and cheers for every little victory they achieve (even the malevolent tramp). For this same reason, the twist at the end is effective - one is never 100% sure how what happened COULD have happened, and at the same time is left feeling elated that what they THOUGHT happened DIDN'T happen.

Performances throughout are solid, never giving in to the hysterics Hollywood would have brought upon a movie like this. Japanese schoolgirls (one of the biggest fetishes of Internet nerds) abound, but they are never fetishized or made 'kawaii' for 'kawaii' 's sake - much to the contrary, nary an upskirt shot is to be found here, and the characters themselves can sometimes be quite gruesomely violent. Veteran actor of every Japanese movie ever, Takeshi Kitano, puts the icing on the cake, portraying the youths' sadistically vengeful teacher as someone who, in amidst all the horrible things he is being compliant with, still elicits a modicum of compassion, with his impeccable comedic timing (yes, COMEDIC TIMING!) and hinted-at backstory.

All in all, then, Battle Royale is more Lord of The Flies than Saw: The Kawaii Desu Edition, and will certainly please fans of the former more than those expecting the latter. It does deserve to be seen, but for far more than just the overhyped violence.
 
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Pete

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Dawg 2.5/5
A typically silly comedy where a womanizing cad gets humiliated by several women in the pursuit of a million dollars. It would be a typical romantic comedy except that - SPOILERS - the leading pair don't end up together. Instead, it is something more akin to an "emasculation/humiliation" comedy. There are a few fun bit parts, like the radio equipment salesman, and it is also amusing to see what the women in Dawg's past have done with their lives (and barely any went the weepy-depressey-girly-girl route) and to get glimpses of who they are as people (not all of whom still fall for Dawg's bullshit). Overall, however, this is bland, completely unsubtle, and relies on a few unlikely assumptions (such as the fact that someone would not recognize someone else from their past even though a - said person told them their full name, and b - said person has an uncommon foreign accent. Because, you know, getting a coiff and losing your glasses makes you completely unrecognizable). It is also more than a bit dull, and not even Liz Hurley and her scrumptasticous accent can make it any more interesting. If you want to watch Liz in a decent movie of this genre, stick with the far superior Serving Sara.
 

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Cars 2 1.5/5
100+ minutes of Larry The Cable Guy. Enough said. It's been a while since I've had a movie elicit THIS strong a feeling of "end, end, ohmygodpleasewhensitgonnaend". As the Nostalgia Critic would say, "not funny, plus not funny, equals NOT FUCKING FUNNY!". Avoid.
 

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MIB 3

Really good film all of the actors did there jobs wonderfully I could have used a tad more Tommy. I was surprised with how good the one guy did seeing as how he's really just a bit part. I didn't mind the second one but I place this one in front of it as far as quality.

3.5/5

Dark Shadows

Not really what I was expecting only saw this because a buddy dragged me to it. Maybe I'm just getting sick of Burton Depp Carter mix. It was geared more towards kids in my opinion when I was hoping for more of a Beetlejuice of this generation or something. Most of the cast were relegated to roles that could have been done by unknowns.

2/5 and I'm being kind