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A Field in England (2013)
It had a lot going for it but it didn't quite get there
I liked it, but I tend to like these types of movies and this genre. I thought the black and white lent itself well to the story. I think it would have been a disservice to the movie had it been in color, especially the modern HD color film.
I think I got a lot out of the movie because history is my thing. I could see how this illustrated the madness of the English civil war. It also touched on a variety of things that were going on during that period of time from the religious to the superstitious and so forth.
That said, it wasn't much of a horror film. I think that it lost the horrific quality due to the stroboscopic effects. I think that Wheatley was onto something with this movie, but it didn't quite go far enough. Not that I would want this to be say a slasher film, but I feel like the suspense and terror could have been cranked up a notch or two without losing the purpose of the film.
I'm glad I watched it. I'm not sure I'd watch it again, mostly because I had to look away during the stroboscopic sequences due to my epilepsy. If I didn't have epilepsy, I'd probably watch it again in due time.
The Lone Ranger (2013)
I knew it'd be different, but the movie needed about one more revision
This movie was interesting. There were moments where the political messages within were necessary and worked for the movie and others where it made you feel like you were watching propaganda, which we probably were. The biggest issue the movie had was that it had too much of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise in it. I went in expecting that type of flavor, but if you think of it as a chili, it was a chili that had its spices out of balance but it wasn't a bad chili and was still edible. The thing with the kid would have been good as book-ends, I'm not sure how I feel about it being interjected into the story line periodically, although I suppose it shows us that an over one-hundred- year-old (ghost?) man is not the most reliable narrator.
Do I regret paying $7.50 to go see it? No. Did I learn stuff from it about writing? Yes. Did I enjoy it? Yes.
I just feel that it could have been better. These writers can be better, we've seen them be better.
Will I watch it again? Definitely. If it ever comes on my TV or we still have Netflix next year, I will definitely watch it again. I just wish it could have been better, because the elements were there to make it better.
The Following (2013)
Great show. Great acting. I want to like it and I just can't, which is a bit sad.
This show should be my thing. I really thought that it would be my thing. The writing is good for TV dramas, the plot is clearly an AU on Sherlock Holmes, it also pulls in literary references and I have a liberal arts degree. And yet, I can't care about the characters. I love Kevin Bacon's acting, but I don't care if Ryan Hardy succeeds. I'm no stranger to my favorite characters having questionable morals, but I find our two serial killers and poser to be whiny and annoying. I want to enjoy Carroll like I enjoy a good Moriarty reference and he just doesn't seem quite right, even when ignoring the obvious nods. The suspense falls flat. There's something about this show and its characters that's too dishonest, not in moral or character, but just in terms of story telling. I really, really wanted to like this show and for the first few episodes I did, but last night I realized I just don't care, and that makes me a little sad.
The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)
Cartoonish in a good way. I had fun.
If the Raimi trilogy was about Spider-Man in reality, then this is about turning the comic into reality. This is most evident during the battle between Spider-Man and Dr. Connor where the special effects look very much like moving comic panels. This movie also seemed to highlight what separates those from generation Y born in the 80's and those from generation Y born in the 90's. This is very much Spider-Man and Peter Parker is very much Peter Parker, however, there are marked differences between Maguire's Parker and Garfield's Parker that come down to the movies trying to relate to the teenagers comprising the audience in their respective runs. I think that if I was ten years younger, this movie would have spoken to me on the level that Raimi's movies spoke to me on, but I'm not a teenager anymore and so there was less to relate to this time. It still made for an enjoyable movie, however, and I am looking forward to its inevitable sequel.
Cruise of the Gods (2002)
rather nice
I wasn't sure what to expect from the summary, but I wanted to watch something with Rob Brydon in it and I really picked a good choice. The movie played out like a fortune play where the main character starts at a certain level, either peaks/troughs, and the ends either just a bit below or just a bit above where he was at the beginning. It was a bit predictable in places though and sometimes you could guess where it was going, but not so much that things became boring and dull. Everyone did a fantastic job acting. I also like the integration of a cheesy 80's scifi show to help illustrate the points the movie tried to make about character.
The First Men in the Moon (2010)
Not a movie to be taken too seriously
Going into things, I expected this movie to be weird and maybe on occasion rude, but I was surprised to find it had a quiet straight-forwardness about it instead. It was not bad, but it wasn't really a movie I would watch again either. I can see the kind of atmosphere that Gatiss was trying to set up when he adapted the story, and I think that the atmosphere he set worked very well with the rudimentary CGI in the film. I was a bit dismayed to see that the old man version of Bedford looked almost exactly like the old man form of the Tenth Doctor from that one episode with the Master in Doctor Who. You would think there could be some variation in the costuming department, or maybe they reused the prosthetic to save money. Either way, it was a nice little movie, though not very memorable.
Death at a Funeral (2007)
slow to start but enjoyable once it hits its stride
When I first read the description, I was skeptical, but I enjoy Rupert Graves, so I dove on in. The movie admittedly started out a little bit slow, but that makes sense since it's the start of a funeral and characters are coming together. However, once things picked up, everything just took off and I enjoyed every moment.
I also enjoyed how everything just came together for this film. Half-way through I was thinking about what a hot mess it was. Not in terms of the movie itself but in terms of the situations within the movie. I was hoping that the movie would not lose its focus and allow these incidents to give it a weak ending. Luckily, it did not and the ending, while a tad predictable in places, was very good and very funny.
I wish that I'd watched this film sooner. It'll definitely be worth a another watch if it ever ends up on my TV.
Maurice (1987)
nicely done
This was a wonderfully put together movie. The actors were good, the writing and pacing was also well done. I also liked that the love story was presented as any other love story. I've seen movies, like for example Brokeback Mountain, where the homosexuality becomes a crutch and the movie expects you to like it solely based on that merit alone. Maurice, however, took the subject of homosexuality and used it to its advantage as a tool instead of a crutch. It used the sexuality of the characters to create more dramatic tension. It was a nice treatment. One quibble I had with the movie though was that the kissing scenes were rather more like face rolling scenes, very kind of funny when they probably should not have been. I have seen these types of kissing scenes between two men done much better in other films, but at the same time this film is dated 1987, so that might be part of it since kissing styles evolve each decade in movies.
I'm glad that I took the time to watch this movie. It was a good story and gave me things to think about, which is something I enjoy about good movies.
Archipelago (2010)
Stereotypical, middle of the road art film.
I've seen a lot of art films. I've seen worse than Archipelago, but, frankly, I've also seen better. The film was slow and sleepy, which does come hand in hand with the genre, but sometimes the quiet scenes of silent life used to transition were predictable at times. The dialog suffered as well, becoming rather stereotypical family drama in an art film. The mother is of course bordering on divorce from the father. The son is spouting typical movie youth ideals. The sister is just kind of there and apart from one real stomp off, she did not lend much to the story, which I think was a bit sad because it should have been a story about the mother, sister, and brother rather than just the mother and the brother. Some of the potential that we saw in the mother at the restaurant was lost in the rest of the film. It seemed to suggest that perhaps she suffered from something like an OCD, but that was really the only evidence we seems to see or hear of it. Or maybe she was just trying to be impressive because she knows how broken the family really is. It was not very clear, but again, that comes with the genre.
I liked the movie, but I probably won't watch it again. I don't need all the answers, but the types of art films that I return to are ones that leave me to quietly think over what I saw because there was mystery and some answers, and Archipelago is not that thought-provoking.
The Avengers (2012)
This is what super hero movies need to be doing, they need to be thinking not just going with the tried and overdone.
I've been watching super hero stuff since I was first introduced to television, and I have to say that this is the best super hero anything I've ever seen. First, the writing was very tight and suspension of disbelief was not a challenge. The acting, directing, and editing were also examples of the best in the genre. The movie knew its audience, what we've seen, what we've experienced and seemed to set out to make a super hero movie that was everything you could want from a super hero movie without being your stereotypical hero movie.
The Avengers are not perfect and even straight edge Captain America has his own faults. They come together because they have to and they want to. Mark Ruffalo is the best Banner/Hulk anyone could ask for, so if he gets replaced in the next movie, the people behind the replacement would be crazy. He is what all the Hulk movies needed to make the character work both as a person and a monster.
My biggest quibble with this movie is the same quibble that I had with Captain America (2011) and Thor (2011). These three movies seem like PG movies on hyped up violence, and part of me wonders if they couldn't have been excellent with a PG rating. Did we need the PG-13 violence? I think in Marvel's Avengers, the level of violence works despite the rest of the plot being rather PG. In Thor and Captain America, it cut into the atmospheres of both of those movies, but it seemed to work for this movie.
Whitechapel (2009)
History meets crime meets a lot of things I love about TV
I watch a lot of crime dramas. I also did a final paper on Jack the Ripper for my high school forensics class. These two facts led me to this program. At first, I wasn't quite sure what to make of it. It seemed to be teetering between "Well, why keep watching?" and "I have to know what happens next!" in the first two episodes, but by the third episode, I was hooked and by the end of the second series, I was sold completely especially as it branched out into historical parallels. This program got me on the historical parallels because well, frankly, I have a History degree. This is my field.
The real strength of the show is in the actors. First, Penry-Jones, Davis, and Pemberton make a strong core. You have the rookie/leader, the experience cop/family man, and then the intelligent/semi-creeper tropes mixed and played so well. The strength in acting carries through to the secondary characters. They become believable people, which sometimes gets lost in other crime dramas. That believability of the team, however, makes up for the somewhat lack of believability in the foes the team faces. This is where that fine line occurs. The show is wonderful, but sometimes the foes or story line circumstances push the boundaries of believability.
The Madness of King George (1994)
Wonderful acting but unfortunately slow-paced. I have no regrets watching this however.
This movie was something I wanted to see when it came out in 1994 and I was only nine years old, so of course Mom didn't allow it. I remembered the movie tonight and got a hold of it. I think that had I watched the movie that young, ratings aside, I would probably have appreciated Rupert Graves' handsomeness more than the tale the movie was trying to tell me, so I'm glad I waited.
The movie was horribly slow-paced at times. It could have used a rewrite and a tightening up of the script. However, the acting from everyone was wonderful and anyone else playing King George III might not have saved the movie from its script. I also felt moved by the predicament of having a nervous system condition that IMDb claims I'm misspelling when I'm not misspelling it in an age where modern medicine thinks that giving you boils will cure something and modern psychiatry is locking people (some of who aren't actually legitimately mentally ill) in an asylum.
If you're looking for something that is somewhat thought provoking, has wonderful acting, and is set during the Regency, this would be a movie to consider. On that note, if you do not have patience for a slow script, occasional too much dumped on you at once before meandering again, then reconsider.
NCIS: Naval Criminal Investigative Service (2003)
With any other set of actors, this show would be so blah
To be honest, sometimes I'm confused on how this is consistently one of the highest viewed programs on TV. The writing is okay, sometimes a tad melodramatic. There are always a few sleepy episodes a season, but you know, it's easy to skip them and stay abreast of the overall story lines. However, what makes this show work and keep me watching the non- sleepy episodes are the actors and the way they gel together on the screen. Eventually, some of them will have to come and go as we've seen in other seasons, but the strength of casting is really what makes NCIS keep from being a rather stale ride. Despite each character fitting into a kind of stereotyped box, each actor finds a way to break the box. I don't always come back for the story lines so much as I come back to check up on the characters. I want to know how Gibbs is doing overcoming his issues. Is Duckie going to be taken for another ride by a woman with ulterior motives (well, more like will he NOT be taken for another ride because two was one too many)? How's Ziva's transition going (because it seems to still be happening)? And so forth. I want to know the end to these characters' stories. That is what makes NCIS a show I return to when it's not boring. That's its strength.
House M.D. (2004)
enjoyable at first but after the honeymoon was over, occasional viewings
House M.D. is essentially two programs. The first few seasons posed the question, "What if Sherlock Holmes was a doctor?" and then proceeded to give us a medicine program unlike others. It had some medical tropes at first, but did not rely on them. I loved that about the show. It was intriguing and fun. Then there was the drama with the hospital board and things began to slip into medical show drama tropes and it became an entirely different program. There was a focus on sex and not so much the focus so much on the medicine and mystery. When it came time for House to choose a new team, I was open to it, but it just gave the writers an excuse to amp up the stereotypical medical drama aspect and let the mystery flail around. I admit, though, that the characters are strong, and I find myself occasionally returning to the show for the occasional episode if the character story sounds entertaining. However, the basic story lines through many episodes and the story line that puts a series together effectively are not my cup of tea more times than not since the fourth season. However, the first two or three seasons were amazing, Laurie, Leonard, Edelstein, and Epps are so effective as actors. If typical medical drama is your thing, you will love this program. Unfortunately, it's not my thing.
Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
A fun ride with some "Dude, seriously?" moments here and there.
I have yet to miss an episode, which is quite rare for me, because with most TV shows I watch, there's always an episode description that puts me off or I get five minutes in and I can't get any farther into the writing of the episode. That's not to say Hawaii Five-0 is flawless, there are some quibbles I have with it here and there, but above all else, I don't take it seriously. It's flashy, fun, and occasionally melodramatic. However, luckily, the melodrama isn't all-permeating, and the show is not stuck on melancholy or misery like so many shows nowadays seem to be, though it's not without its serious episodes. There are a lot of entertaining actors on this program, not just the main four actors, but some secondary characters can be quite good and you look forward to them recurring. It might not be a show for everyone, but this show is definitely worth a try for those who haven't tried it yet.