Grizzly Man - Man, I really liked this movie. This might actually be my favorite Herzog documentary thus far. The story of a man who lived in the wild with bears, who thought of himself as a conservationist and as someone who tried to help protect them and was eventually eaten by them. In addition to the man's story being touching and sad (the scene in which Herzog listens to the audio tape of his death will stick with me forever, I think), there is some really fantastic footage of the bears.
Resolution - Not entirely sure this should be categorized as horror, but that's initially why I watched it. A guy commits to getting a friend to sober up while the two of them are out in the middle of nowhere be essentially handcuffing him to a metal pole inside an abandoned house. Strange things happen, like them finding a VHS tape with them on it as if someone had been recording them, and it all leads to a very different ending than you might expect. The movie is a little slow and drags a bit, but it's smart and the ending is pretty great. For fans of stuff like Blair Witch or Kill List. I enjoyed it quite a bit and would like to see it again at some point.
Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky - Not normally something I'd watch, but Mads Mikkelsen plays Stravinsky, so I had to. It was pretty decent. Mads plays the same kind of stoic, emotionless character he usually plays, fine by me, and I thought Anna Mouglalis did a good job as Coco Chanel. Not something I would feel like I needed to see again, but worth watching even just because now I can snicker when Hannibal makes reference to something Stravinsky said or did.
Darkman - Hadn't seen this in... I don't know how long. Good fun. Such a Sam Raimi movie.
Excision - Extremely surprising. I thought it looked kind of crappy, but I read some reviews that were really positive and decided to give it a shot. Really glad I did because I thought this movie was pretty ****ing phenomenal. There's a moment about... halfway into the movie where you can kind of tell where it's headed, but when you get there it's still a surprise. A nice bizarre, ****ed up little movie. Will definitely buy this at some point.
High Kick Girl - A movie about a high school girl who goes around kicking people. The plot is as bad as you'd expect, but my problem with this film was that the fight scenes weren't as good as I'd expected. Part of that was that this was very clearly an amateur production. You could see that her foot was not actually making contact with the bad guy's face every once in a while. So where I was expecting something like the movie
Chocolate, which is amazing, this was nowhere near that level. The actress, Rina Takeda, should be worth watching in future films with bigger budgets and, hopefully, a more professional crew.
Byzantium - Teen vampire angst, but well done and interesting. I enjoyed it a little more than I had expected to.
Jack The Giant Slayer - Pretty meh. I liked Ewan MacGregor in this a lot, but not much else. Ian McShane mostly just looked ridiculous, so I hope he got paid a lot of money.
Now You See Me - I kind of hated this movie. It felt so... hmmm... arrogant and in love with itself. It felt to me like this movie thought it was so goddamn clever, even though the vast majority of the "magic tricks" are CGI and there isn't a single surprise in the whole film, except for the "twist" ending which made almost zero sense to me. For having such a good cast, this movie really fell on it's face. The fact that they managed to make Melanie Laurent kind of annoying is a magic trick all on it's own, but not the good kind. And what was with all those ****ing crane shots? Was all the swooping and sweeping with the camera really necessary? Man, **** this movie. I hated it.
Frozen - Watched with my 1 year old nephew. It was ok. Not as funny as I'd been led to believe.
The Place Beyond The Pines - Mostly enjoyed this, but it was really long and probably not quite as emotionally gripping as it seemed to think it was. Definitely liked Mike Patton's score a lot.
Touch Of Evil - If you can get past the idea of Charlton Heston playing a Mexican without any type of accent and the fat prosthetics Orson Welles wore, this was a pretty damn good little movie. The cinematography was gorgeous. I watched it on TCM and I don't think it was the director's cut, so I'll have to seek that out at some point.
Trance - I really liked this movie. It's a little convoluted and confusing at times, but it pays off pretty well and it's honestly not like any other movie I've ever seen. Very colorful and a lot of the shot selection was interesting. It seems to me like Danny Boyle does his best work when he works on smaller movies like this.
