Mazes and Monsters (TV 1982)

Mazes and Monsters is one terrible made for TV movie. Supposedly about Tom Hanks going crazy while playing Dungeons and Dragons (though they couldn't use the copyrighted name cause its basically one of those "D&D is the devil" stories), its terribly written, cornily acted, and the visual quality is basically shit. Tom Hanks is his usual genial self, but he doesn't have much to work with. I cant believe I used to think this movie was good... of course I was 9 last time I saw it. But it still holds a special place in my heart, so I can't give it too low a rating. 5/10.

More DC Comics Animated One-offs

All-Star Superman (2011) starts with Superman trapped into being poisoned by Lex Luthor. His final days involve super-battles with a number of super-foes, finally revealing himself to Lois, and Luthor gaining Superman's powers for a day. Good animation and quality voice work in this one. The relationship with Lois was fleshed out nicely, but I really liked the scenes between Luthor and Clark Kent where Lex discusses his antagonism with Sups. 8/10.

Superman/Doomsday (2007) was just OK nothing more. I remember getting the graphic novel of this story back in the 90's when it first came out, and newspapers were running articles titled "The Death Of Superman". It ended up being a weak comic writing wise, and this movie is even weaker. Choppy, relatively cheap looking animation, with the storyline thinned out to the point of being melodramatic and anti-climactic. 5/10.

Justice League: The New Frontier (2008). This was a pretty fascinating concept. Basically a Watchmen like origin story of the League set at the height of the Cold War circa 1960, with an H.P. Lovecraftian enemy bringing the heroes and the world together. Neat animation style with character designs following the golden age comics' look and feel. Unfortunately it included the jingoism of the era. Not to mention a horribly miscast Jeremy Sisto as a gravelly Batman. All in all a pretty neat concept, but not done as well as it could have been. 6/10.

Justice League: Crisis On Two Earths (2010) has the Justice League going to a parallel dimension to battle evil versions of themselves alongside a good Lex Luthor. It felt kind of long, but the battles were above average. Some nice character touches on Bats and J'onn J'onnz, with the latter even getting his Martian freak-on with the parallel president's daughter. Having the parallel superbeings "Crime Syindicate" being modeled after and talking like the New York mob was a nice touch too. However, the voice casting was abhorrent. William Baldwin as a wispy voiced Batman? Mark Harmon as a stiff throated, slightly nasally Superman? Ugh! Good thing there were quality fights where not much talking was done. Plus the whole parallel Superwoman trying to make Bats her boy-toy thing was pretty cute. I liked it as a whole, but would've rated it higher with better voice work. 7/10.

Cowboys & Aliens (2011)

5/10. No surprises in this genre mash-up blockbuster.

You can read the synopsis of this film on basically any movie site, as it was one of this summer's biggest films.

I like Jon Favreau, I like Daniel Craig, I like Olivia Wilde, however this film was just too silly, I couldn't suspend my disbelief enough to go along for the ride. I blame this on the writing. It is my understanding that Cowboys & Aliens was in development hell for a long time, and went through many rewrites (this is evidenced by the writing credits), but even super-writing team Orci, Kurtzman and Lindelof couldn't save this exercise in ridiculousness. Favreau's directing was crisp, but if you're going to combine two drastically different genres into one film, you need an exceptional script to make it believable. This one fell flat.

I would not recommend this film to anyone, it was just a below average outing upped a notch by all the money they put into it. Even the actors seemed like they weren't really trying.

As an aside, I would like to vent my frustration with the new all CGI monster's that seem to all look the same in today's movies. I call them the "J.J. Abrams Monster", as I feel it all started with Cloverfield. Tell me the alien from Cowboys & Aliens below doesn't look like some rehashing of an Abrams monster from, say, Super 8. Who knows, maybe I should blame Andy Chung.

Citizen Kane (1941)

5/10. I watched Citizen Kane for the first time today. I must say it was a disappointment. Most likely this is because I had built it up in my mind my entire life. Loving movies, you can't not know about Citizen Kane's greatness in history.

As there are already so many reviews and studies of this film I'll just give my wholly subjective opinion.

I honestly didn't care for it. The movie made me feel four out of ten stars, but I'm bumping it up to a five simply because it is such an artistic feat. I can see it's groundbreaking style, it's camera work, special effects, dialogue and acting that was a grand avante-garde departure from it's contemporaries. However, despite all of this it left me feeling empty.

Perhaps that was Welles' intention. Perhaps it was meant to be a jumbled confusion of imagery and half remembered dreams... I don't know for sure. This is the only movie that I've ever marked higher than I subjectively felt it rated...

Would I watch this movie again? Probably. Would I watch it repeatedly and study it? Probably not. I'd prefer to study The Trial, Welles' masterpiece in his own book. An opinion of which I share. A film which I actually liked.

Perhaps I've been so conditioned for the "Hollywood Narrative" that I completely missed the train on this one? I just don't know.

I may post more on this film later. But as it stands as a first impression, I'm sticking with my above rating.

Hugo (2011)

5/10. This review is a little late as I actually saw this movie three days ago on Thanksgiving Day with my sister and her fiancee. We saw it in 3-D as was intended and none of us really cared for it.

The story follows an orphan named Hugo who lives in a 1930s Parisian train station, and his efforts to find his place in the world. In the process he meets famed silent film director Georges Melies, and is introduced to early cinema.

This was really a labor of love by director Martin Scorsese. The sets are stunning and steampunk, and the recreations of early silent films are engrossing. However, the pace of the film is so unbearably slow that it will not be able to hold any child's attention for more than five minutes. It is also a preachy film, extolling the greatness of film preservation and the history of early cinema. It is quite poorly written, especially for a Scoresese feature, and the acting by all involved is expressionistic at best and tragically bad at worst. But as I stated before the pacing is the trick, and it will leave most viewers with boredom through it's majority.

Overall, this is a feature that rates simply as "okay" in my book, had it been tighter and shorter, it would have been much more enjoyable. If all you care about is 3-D effects and fantastic set design, then this is for you. But not even it's generous embellishments in that area can save it from being a visually stunning borefest.

Even my sister who is a film preservation major and serious movie buff disliked this film, so I'd have to recommend a pass on this one.

Hobo With A Shotgun (2011)

5/10. Slightly above average grindhouse throwback. Rutger Hauer is the titular Hobo who dons a shotgun for some gory vigilante justice in a crime riddled city.

The only reasons I rented this movie is my love of grindhouse cinema, Rutger Hauer's draw, and the cover art for the DVD release.

Slightly fun over the top movie, but didn't quite capture the 70's and 80's grindhouse feel ala Troma or Corman. It was silly and it knew it, this film didn't take itself seriously at all which is a must for good exploitation cinema. IMO to have good grindhouse shlock you need to be unintentionally silly, but serious in tone, while at the same time understanding that some might not take you seriously. This movie was just too over the top for it's own good. Also, not enough nudity which is a requirement of good grindhouse.

As a side note, this is probably among the best films I've seen to come out of Canada.

Pan's Labyrinth (2006)

5/10. I'm not really sure what to make of this movie. It certainly wasn't what I was expecting. It was much much darker than I pictured it being from what little I'd heard about it before hand.

Basically a fairy tale set against the backdrop of the Spanish Civil War in 1944. That's all it really is. I'm sure there are deeper meanings and metaphors than I got out of it, but they were lost on me.

I guess you could compare this to a David Lynch film with a classical narrative structure, as it was apparently very personal to Guillermo Del Toro, the director, and it was very surreal in parts. So while I'm sure Del Toro loved it, and others around the world appeared to have loved it as well (at least judging from it's IMDB score), I was just kind alternating between being appalled and apathetic about this story. It really didn't live up to it's hype to me. To sum up how I feel about this movie: "meh".

Brick (2005)

5/10. Gritty film noir involving students of a suburban California high school. Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Brendan, a high school loner who navigates the school's cliques to find out who murdered his ex-girlfriend.

At first this film comes off as silly. High school kids, getting mixed up in overly serious situations, bantering back and forth like criminals out of an Edward G. Robinson movie. But, if you suspend your disbelief, and overcome the extremely poor sound mixing, and are able to understand what they are saying to each other, this throwback to California noir of yesteryear ends up being pretty entertaining.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt wasn't too shabby in one of his first post Third Rock starring roles. Though I've seen better work on his part, he did the best he could with what was given.

I probably would have rated this film higher if it just weren't for the fact that these are kids in this movie. I'm sure people have heard that films are all just about playing dress up or pretend. Well that's what Brick came across as being. Like a shined up version of some high school play, like Dawson's Creek without all the "issues" or doucheness. It was entertaining enough though, I only cought myself looking at the clock a few times, plus I finished the movie, which is more than I can say for some other indie films.