1. Inglourious Basterds
2. Star Trek
3. Avatar
4. Moon
5. (500) Days of Summer
6. District 9
7. Watchmen: Director's Cut
8. The Hurt Locker
9. GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra
10. Terminator Salvation/The Hangover
Honorable Mention: The Road.
Note: I have not yet seen the following from this past year: Where the Wild Things Are, Away We Go, Zombieland, Paranormal Activity, Up, 9, Sherlock Holmes, Funny People, Drag Me To Hell, Up In The Air, A Single Man, Invictus, Brothers, Precious, The Fantastic Mr. Fox, An Education. I'll update this list accordingly as I start to make my way through these films over winter break.
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Monday, December 21, 2009
Top 10 Albums of the Year
1. AFI - Crash Love
2. Silversun Pickups - Swoon
3. Muse - The Resistance
4. Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
5. Them Crooked Vultures - s/t
6. Mastodon - Crack the Skye
7. Megadeth - Endgame
8. Third Eye Blind - Ursa Major
9. Dream Theater - Black Clouds and Silver Lining
10. The Black Dahlia Murder - Deflorate
Honorable Mentions to Owl City - Ocean Eyes and Julian Casablancas - Phrazes for the Young
I'll do a top 10 movies of the year once the year is officially over. I can tell you right now that if Avatar doesn't completely blow my brain wide open Inglourious Basterds is going to be #1.
2. Silversun Pickups - Swoon
3. Muse - The Resistance
4. Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
5. Them Crooked Vultures - s/t
6. Mastodon - Crack the Skye
7. Megadeth - Endgame
8. Third Eye Blind - Ursa Major
9. Dream Theater - Black Clouds and Silver Lining
10. The Black Dahlia Murder - Deflorate
Honorable Mentions to Owl City - Ocean Eyes and Julian Casablancas - Phrazes for the Young
I'll do a top 10 movies of the year once the year is officially over. I can tell you right now that if Avatar doesn't completely blow my brain wide open Inglourious Basterds is going to be #1.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Assorted Movies Reviews
Now that I've finished watching Six Feet Under (most emotionally gut-wrenching show ever by the way), I decided to catch up on all the movies I've meant to watch and never got around to. There are a lot of them, so I figured that every 6-10 movies I'd do a post with mini-reviews and ratings for what I watch. I'm trying to vary them by genre, so odds are it will be six reviews of very different genres.
X-Men Origins: Wolverine: 4/10
If not for the fact that it's X-Men, this would have been like a 2 or 3. For such a good cast, they really missed the mark here. The action is boring, the story is ridiculous (which is ok, it is a comic book movie after all), but worst of all, the special effects are atrocious. I'm talking fresh-out-of-film-school-low-budget bad. For a movie with a pretty sizable budget, I am appalled that the effects were as terrible as they were. Obvious and poorly modeled CGI, terrible use of green screen, even the goddamn environmental bullet hits looked bad. I didn't think it was possible to make a bullet hitting dirt look bad, but they succeeded. Here's hoping X-Men Origins: Deadpool is better.
Sidenote: The unnecessary cameos by a few fan-favorites (Gambit, Emma Frost) were just garbage. Poorly integrated, made no sense, and miscast.
The Girlfriend Experience: 6/10
Steven Soderbergh's low-budget art house movie about the life of a high-class New York call-girl. This is a total non-movie. No plot really to speak of, very wooden acting (which was probably on purpose), no resolution, just a camera following this call-girl and her boyfriend through a few days in their lives. However, it kept my interest for the whole thing and is definitely worth watching once. It is short enough (72 minutes) that you wont feel like you wasted your time. Had it been longer, it probably would have been boring, but somehow it was not.
Hellboy: 5.5/10
Hellboy 2: The Golden Army: 6.5/10
The first Hellboy is plagued mostly by a weak-ass, incoherent story and an inability to flesh out a bunch of interesting characters. Guillermo del Toro still hasn't found his visual style yet either, so the visual design isn't all that great either. Still fun to watch and really, really well-casted.
Hellboy 2 on the other hand, pretty much goes the opposite direction. Characters are fleshed out much better, the plot is interesting and easy to follow, and the visuals are phenomenal. The set and character design this time around are cool as hell (one particular scene shot with leaves falling constantly is amazingly well-done). However, the cast isn't nearly as good. David Hyde Pierce is sorely missed as the fish-dude Abe, especially considering how much bigger Abe's role is this time. John Hurt is missing this time around (for obvious reasons) and his lack of presence is felt as well. There are way too many scenes were I thought "oh man, this is good, but would have been so much better with [some other actor]. Still a big improvement over the first.
Observe and Report: 4/10
I honestly don't know how I feel about this movie. It wasn't really funny, but I don't know if it was necessarily supposed to be. It wasn't very compelling either. The characters were mostly stereotypical (sans one awesome character, a food court cashier) and for the most part the movie was pretty boring. Maybe I just didn't get it, but I don't have much to say about this movie.
Friday the 13th (1980): 6.5/10
A classic slasher movie that I never got around to seeing. It feels a bit dated today and isn't really scary, but it creates a good atmosphere, the kills are cool and the twist is pretty damn cool (even though I had been spoiled ahead of time). If I had been alive in 1980 and seen the movie then, it probably would have scared the pants off me. The only thing that hurts the rating is the desensitization of today's youth.
GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra: Fun as fuck/10
I feel like I can't give this movie a numerical rating, due to the fact that it has flaws that I couldn't care less about and that I watched the movie wearing nostalgia goggles. Despite a stupid love story (that is the 3rd or 4th most important story, so it stays in the background), the movie is balls-to-the-wall, in-your-face, over-the-top and completely ridiculous, which is exactly what I wanted from a movie based on a series of toys from the 80s. Why this succeeds where Transformers fails (and oh boy does Transformers fail) is that the lameness of this movie is the correct kind of lameness: over the top acting, ridiculous and asinine weapons and gadgets and Dennis Quaid. Transformers had sex jokes. Way to go Michael Bay. The casting in this movie was perfect. Absolutely perfect. It really felt like GI Joe should and I had a blast watching it. Oh hell, I give it a 9/10.
X-Men Origins: Wolverine: 4/10
If not for the fact that it's X-Men, this would have been like a 2 or 3. For such a good cast, they really missed the mark here. The action is boring, the story is ridiculous (which is ok, it is a comic book movie after all), but worst of all, the special effects are atrocious. I'm talking fresh-out-of-film-school-low-budget bad. For a movie with a pretty sizable budget, I am appalled that the effects were as terrible as they were. Obvious and poorly modeled CGI, terrible use of green screen, even the goddamn environmental bullet hits looked bad. I didn't think it was possible to make a bullet hitting dirt look bad, but they succeeded. Here's hoping X-Men Origins: Deadpool is better.
Sidenote: The unnecessary cameos by a few fan-favorites (Gambit, Emma Frost) were just garbage. Poorly integrated, made no sense, and miscast.
The Girlfriend Experience: 6/10
Steven Soderbergh's low-budget art house movie about the life of a high-class New York call-girl. This is a total non-movie. No plot really to speak of, very wooden acting (which was probably on purpose), no resolution, just a camera following this call-girl and her boyfriend through a few days in their lives. However, it kept my interest for the whole thing and is definitely worth watching once. It is short enough (72 minutes) that you wont feel like you wasted your time. Had it been longer, it probably would have been boring, but somehow it was not.
Hellboy: 5.5/10
Hellboy 2: The Golden Army: 6.5/10
The first Hellboy is plagued mostly by a weak-ass, incoherent story and an inability to flesh out a bunch of interesting characters. Guillermo del Toro still hasn't found his visual style yet either, so the visual design isn't all that great either. Still fun to watch and really, really well-casted.
Hellboy 2 on the other hand, pretty much goes the opposite direction. Characters are fleshed out much better, the plot is interesting and easy to follow, and the visuals are phenomenal. The set and character design this time around are cool as hell (one particular scene shot with leaves falling constantly is amazingly well-done). However, the cast isn't nearly as good. David Hyde Pierce is sorely missed as the fish-dude Abe, especially considering how much bigger Abe's role is this time. John Hurt is missing this time around (for obvious reasons) and his lack of presence is felt as well. There are way too many scenes were I thought "oh man, this is good, but would have been so much better with [some other actor]
Observe and Report: 4/10
I honestly don't know how I feel about this movie. It wasn't really funny, but I don't know if it was necessarily supposed to be. It wasn't very compelling either. The characters were mostly stereotypical (sans one awesome character, a food court cashier) and for the most part the movie was pretty boring. Maybe I just didn't get it, but I don't have much to say about this movie.
Friday the 13th (1980): 6.5/10
A classic slasher movie that I never got around to seeing. It feels a bit dated today and isn't really scary, but it creates a good atmosphere, the kills are cool and the twist is pretty damn cool (even though I had been spoiled ahead of time). If I had been alive in 1980 and seen the movie then, it probably would have scared the pants off me. The only thing that hurts the rating is the desensitization of today's youth.
GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra: Fun as fuck/10
I feel like I can't give this movie a numerical rating, due to the fact that it has flaws that I couldn't care less about and that I watched the movie wearing nostalgia goggles. Despite a stupid love story (that is the 3rd or 4th most important story, so it stays in the background), the movie is balls-to-the-wall, in-your-face, over-the-top and completely ridiculous, which is exactly what I wanted from a movie based on a series of toys from the 80s. Why this succeeds where Transformers fails (and oh boy does Transformers fail) is that the lameness of this movie is the correct kind of lameness: over the top acting, ridiculous and asinine weapons and gadgets and Dennis Quaid. Transformers had sex jokes. Way to go Michael Bay. The casting in this movie was perfect. Absolutely perfect. It really felt like GI Joe should and I had a blast watching it. Oh hell, I give it a 9/10.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Music of the Year - Quick Summary
This is a quick overview of my top albums of the year thus far. I might do a more in-depth write-up once I get some more time at the end of the year.
1. AFI - Crash Love
Absolutely brilliant. Their best album and Davey Havok's best vocal performances. How many singers can say that about their 8th album, 14 years after their debut release?
2. Muse - The Resistance
Phenomenal album that is dropped to #2 by Matt Bellamy's weak vocals, which are normally stellar. Still probably Muse's best album.
3. Silversun Pickups - Swoon
Sophomore release from California rockers does everything their debut release did but better. Frontman Brian Aubert's riffs will burn your goddamn ears off (and they did when I saw them live from the front row this past August. Not kidding, just about went deaf), and his vocals have only gotten better.
4. Mastodon - Crack the Skye
Mastodon moves towards a more melodic metal style and in the process crafts one of the best metal albums of the decade. It's really too bad that there were other career-defining albums this year, otherwise this would probably be #1.
5. Megadeth - Endgame
Asinine, albeit hilarious lyrics drag this one down a few spots, but Endgame shows that Megadeth can still shred their asses off, unlike another certain 80s thrash metal band with a semi-recent record.
6. Third Eye Blind - Ursa Major
Third Eye Blind's fourth effor evokes images of their self-titled debut, which was one of the best albums of the 90s. The single, Don't Say A Word, plants itself among their best songs.
7. The Black Dahlia Murder - Deflorate
Great album from one of the better modern metal bands out there.
And the two most disappointing albums of the year were Pearl Jam's Backspacer and Paramore's Brand New Eyes.
1. AFI - Crash Love
Absolutely brilliant. Their best album and Davey Havok's best vocal performances. How many singers can say that about their 8th album, 14 years after their debut release?
2. Muse - The Resistance
Phenomenal album that is dropped to #2 by Matt Bellamy's weak vocals, which are normally stellar. Still probably Muse's best album.
3. Silversun Pickups - Swoon
Sophomore release from California rockers does everything their debut release did but better. Frontman Brian Aubert's riffs will burn your goddamn ears off (and they did when I saw them live from the front row this past August. Not kidding, just about went deaf), and his vocals have only gotten better.
4. Mastodon - Crack the Skye
Mastodon moves towards a more melodic metal style and in the process crafts one of the best metal albums of the decade. It's really too bad that there were other career-defining albums this year, otherwise this would probably be #1.
5. Megadeth - Endgame
Asinine, albeit hilarious lyrics drag this one down a few spots, but Endgame shows that Megadeth can still shred their asses off, unlike another certain 80s thrash metal band with a semi-recent record.
6. Third Eye Blind - Ursa Major
Third Eye Blind's fourth effor evokes images of their self-titled debut, which was one of the best albums of the 90s. The single, Don't Say A Word, plants itself among their best songs.
7. The Black Dahlia Murder - Deflorate
Great album from one of the better modern metal bands out there.
And the two most disappointing albums of the year were Pearl Jam's Backspacer and Paramore's Brand New Eyes.
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