Unofficial Tex Murphy

Never mind Twilight, if you are interested in a vampire film with a, how should I call it, companionship story (or even if you're not, actually), I cannot possibly recommend enough Let The Right One In. I saw it at the Fantasia film festival last summer, and was happily surprised to hear of its dvd distribution a few weeks ago.

It's basically about a pre-teen vampire moving into an apartment with an older man who appears to be taking care of the vampire, doing its killings and collecting the blood, and the friendship that builds between them and another young boy living in the same apartment building.

It's well paced, both slow when necessary and filled with gory and pleasant scenes to step it up just before it drags, the scenery is beautiful and the score is great. All in all fairly well crafted. I just noticed it managed to earn a spot in IMDB's top 250, for what it's worth, a pretty rare fate for an indie Swedish film. I believe an American remake has been announced, but seriously don't bother waiting for that.

I´ve recently seen the Wrestler with Mickey Rourke and it left me very, very impressed.
From my point of view the film is definetely worth all the critical praise, and Rourkes perfomance really is on an incredible level of intensity.
It´s a very unusual film and i´d surely not call it a wrestling film, but rather a very careful and intensed (at times very disturbing and generally not sugarcoating anything) character study of someone, who once was something, and now is nothing but a stranded wreck, desperately trying to get through his days and nights.

Really glad i finally got to see it.

Just saw knowing.

It was a pretty good movie, so long as you like out there endings.

Some of the disaster scenes were pretty disturbing, not in a gore fest kind of way. They don't do close ups of it... I can't give away details though without spoiling it.

The movie does have a small problem with trying to decide its genre, each third taking a particular style and feel, the first being a thriller, second being sci fi ish and the last part kinda of apocolyptic. It kind of flows nicely into each other though.

In particular, Nicolas Cage's acting was great. His acting ability is pretty hit or miss depending on the movie, and this movie he hit it dead on.

This movie also managed to leave me very unsettled and actually scared the crap out of me at times, mainly because the last disaster seems so plausible, and could actually happen. This type of disaster seemed much more plausible, in my opinion, than the climate change did in Day After Tomorrow. (another good movie) That movie seemed less plausible because that small drop in temperature to me did seem like it could have such a devasting effect on the earth. The disaster in this movie on the other hand.... yea. Very possible and could happen so suddenly we wouldn't even know it.

Anyway, I am not going to say anymore, as I don't want to spoil it.

Took my son and his little girlfriend to see Monsters vs Aliens in 3D last weekend... Not a bad movie, especially in 3D, I don't think it would have been as good as regular, so if you're gonna go see it, make sure you see the 3D version...




Edited for a typo...

Well, we don't go to the movies as much as we would like, so this post is a little late. We saw The Incredible Hulk (Ed Norton) the other night and we thoroughly enjoyed this version. Very well done, great cast, awesome special FX, and so on. Look forward to another installment, maybe with Iron Man?

500

500??

Did you see 300 one and a half times?

Clueless.

Last movie I saw was Watchmen....again. For the many-ith time.

That would only make it 450, Jen

-Fred

Fred Buer wrote:That would only make it 450, Jen

-Fred

SO CRITICAL! YEEESH!

Frankly Fred, I'm disappointed

~Keck

He's Frankly Fred, I'm Fredly Frank. It's all about gettin' yer facts straight!

-Fred

Man, is there so little to talk about???

Watched Quantum of Solace last night and we enjoyed it - to a certain degree.

First, like Star Wars and Star Trek, we believe there is no such thing as a bad James Bond movie. Yes, some are definitely better than others and this is one we would rate as two and a half stars (out of four). Good action, great FX, some really cool characters, LOVE Judi Dench as M, and so on. However, too many, WAY TOO MANY bad guys! We found it a bit confusing and scattered. Still, it had enough JB action to qualify as a "good" movie.

BTW, my fav JB movies of all time in order of appearance on the big screen are:
Goldfinger

Live and Let Die

License to Kill

Goldeneye

Casino Royale (New version)

Interesting, isn't it? One from each of the five actors who portrayed Bond more than once.

What's also interesting is that 3 out of 5 were portraying Bond for the first time in this list. Connery, being the first one to portray the character, was truly comfortable in Goldfinger, and his interest somewhat diminished after it. As for Dalton, he came around at the worst possible time, the late 80's being what they were, for James Bond as well as everyone else. He did a good job with License to Kill, all things considered.

It seems there is great care put into refreshing/rebooting the franchise with each new actor, but the writing and producing diminish their effort in the following installments, until it needs to be refreshed again.

Interesting observation, Frank, and quite accurate. I never thought about it that way but it certainly makes sense. Guess we'll have to wait until the next Bond film.

BTW, I thought I heard that Craig was NOT going to do another Bond film. Has anyone heard this rumor and, if so, is there any substance to it?

My understanding, when he took the role, was that he was signed for 3 movies. With those contracts though, you never know if he could replace it for any other movie produced by Sony, or Broccoli's company. The third one could also be optional, like they did with Brosnan.

I've heard contradicting statements. One thing he did say is that he didn't want to go on about the Vespa story. To him, the circle was complete. He commented they had prepared the field with their villain organization so that the franchise could be taken anywhere from here. What one could read from this is also that the ground is fertile for anyone else to carry on, so who knows.

It's a tough spot he's in. He's managed to build a solid career on the side, but how many Bonds can he do before getting tagged for good? No one ever survived Bond, except Connery, and it took him decades. He only returned to us with the grey hair and the beard.