Cinderella Man

This was another movie where I was expecting it to suck, or at least expecting it to not live up to all the reviews, and this was another movie where I was proved wrong and came face to face with a really incredible movie. Ron Howard and Russell Crowe have made up for ‘A Beautiful Mind’ (FINALLY!!!)

I don’t really know how long I can go on spewing praise for this film – even Renée Zellweger who I think is far better in comedies than dramas was really good. Russell Crowe probably deserves another Oscar, and hey, why not give another to Ron while they’re at it?

One thing in particular that I need to rave about is the fighting in this film. I’ve mentioned before how all these movies are using the camera seizure technique. Well this movie did not. It allowed for wide shots and steady cameras, and man, that really makes a difference. I was actually getting into the fight scenes for once.
-LS

Batman Begins

I went into this movie not expecting a whole lot. In fact, I figured it would suck – especially after that terrible Joel Schumacher film (we dare not speak it’s name). My basic thoughts were: “How bad can it be? I’m in love with half of the cast!”

It exceeded all expectations - by far. The effects were great (and not overused like in some movies *caugh*StarWars*caugh*), the acting was great, the script was great, the scenery was great, and the music was phenomenal (and of course it is when one of my favourite composers – James Newton Howard – is involved. That, and there were four composers in all).

Now the fight scenes were a little… well the best word to describe them would be ‘shaky’. Lately I’ve been noticing that all new films have this camera ‘technique’ where during a fight the camera has a fucking seizure. My theory behind this is that people don’t want to choreograph fifty fights and to get away with using the same shit over and over again they shake the camera around so that all you see is shades of black and blue. The only fight where this worked was when Batman was fighting with the guys on the docks when he first starts up. The only fight where they didn’t use this (obscenely) is the sword fight on the ice, and so that fight is my favourite.

The last fight was boring as all fuck. I couldn’t see shit and was just waiting for them to get back to Gary Oldman driving the Batmobile – that right! Gary Oldman kicks ass! He could have played Batman (and definitely would have done a better job than Val Kilmer).

There was of course the obligatory car chase, but it was a car chase with the BATMOBILE! (Which, is by far the coolest Batmobile to date)

All in all a great fucking movie, go see it – GO SEE IT!!! And to Warner Brothers, make a sequel with this cast! You must make a sequel using this cast!!! DO IT NOW!!!
-LS

Mr. & Mrs. Smith

I wanted to wait until I went and saw some life changing award winning movie to make my first review, but most movies out nowadays suck and I ended up seeing 'Mr. & Mrs. Smith' which I rather liked, so I figured I'd start there.

Like I said before, I liked this movie. It was pretty much exactly what I had expected it to be, though I hadn't really expected it to be good.

It started off quietly enough, a few jokes here and there, of course the audience is just waiting for the explosions to start so after everything was set up it jumped right to Angelina Jolie in a dominatrix outfit.

Once they figured out they were both assasins the movie picked up quite a bit more, but it also tried to add drama in the movie which really didn't fit. It's a comedy, people want to laugh, trying to make them cry at the same time just confusses the masses. So the couple fights, and in a strange life imitates the arts, you have the two of them denying their loves for each other - but of course we all know it's there.

Then came the obligatory car chase, which you must come to expect in an action movie but they always bore me to tears. This one was different though, I'm not quite sure why, maybe it was because of the dialogue, and the humour, or the fact that Angelina Jolie was still not wearing pants, but I really enjoyed this particular car chase.

The ending of the movie seemed a little rushed, and the scene from the preview with Brad Pitt riding a tricycle shooting people has vanished. There was one visual that absolutely killed me, Brad Pitt interogating a teenager who's wearing a 'Fight Club' T-Shirt (if you don't get that, then you don't deserve to live).

All in all, good movie, go see it, or DIE!!! Or something...
-LS

Welcome

I wanted to create a new blog because my real Blog (and LiveJournal) were becoming rather cluttered with movie reviews and I figured being that most of the time I just wanted to write movie reviews anyway, maybe I should make a site where I could do that and not have to also go into what was happening in my life - making for long posts.

So nothing at the moment, but I'm going to try to write a review for every movie I see - I work on my writing whever I can.

Thanks for reading!
-LS