My Favorite Movies

Just plain brilliant.

It's really a remarkable piece of film-making, this one. It's incredibly slow for the most-part, but somehow it's never boring in spite of it. All the slow pace does is add to a sense of constant dread and highten how much shit a character is in during the heart-racing moments.
Almost every character in the film is very clearly moribond from the word go, and those which aren't are in an almost spiritual sense.
Everything about the film is perfect apart from the ending feeling somewhat unsatisfying. I realise that the ending achieves everything the Coens wanted as film-makers, so I can't really fault it, it's just my personal taste.
Every shot in the film is beautiful which is mostly due to a haunting, yet gorgeous landscape they chose to set the film in. The cast are all great without exception, the writing is wonderful and the lighting really struck me with how good it was, which means something because normally lighting is one of things I can happily not pay attention to in a film.
I'm only rating this 4 stars because I rate based on my personal enjoyment of a film and not necessarily it's actual quality in terms of film making. Because of this, I'm now going to include another rating in my reviews based on how good the film is on a film-making level. I suppose I ought to make it so my overall score is the happy compromising number between the two.

Personal enjoyment: 8/10
Actual quality as a film: 10/10

A bit of a mess, but an incredibly enjoyable one. Yes, scenes are much longer than they need to be, and that means I'm in no hurry to re-watch the film, but not once was I actually bored and the ending itself is genuinely glorious -particularly it's complete disregard for historical accuracy which means that you genuinely don't see any of it coming. In fact, I'd say the ending is Quentin Tarantino's biggest moment of genius.
The cast is bizarre, but they all do a great job. I love Diane Kruger who proves that German women can be attractive and the more I think about it, the more gutted I am that Simon Pegg had to drop out last minute.
Whilst Tarantino's writing is up for debate (personally, I love it), there's nothing to it; he's a fantastic director. His choices of music are all brilliant (David fucking Bowie among other things), the cinematography is great, etc, etc, etc.
I loved it and I found it very funny -but I think it takes someone who gets pretty much all of Tarantino's in-jokes to appreciate a film like this.

Personal enjoyment: 9/10
Actual quality as a film: 9/10

Wow. It's been a while since I saw a film THIS good.
Everything in this film is fantastic. The cast are uniformly outstanding, even the lead child who is easily on par with the adults.
The story is very relevant to today as it shows the origins of alot of racism today. I suppose there's a good chance this film wont travel abroad very well for this reason, it's relevance is extremely localised to England.
Obviously there's a great moral behind this film too albeit not at all subtle. THIS is how you make a movie addressing racism Crash.
The film itself looks beautiful. It's shot on low quality film which applies the 1983 feel amazingly well but also gives the film a lovely trance-like feeling combined with the dingy reality of it all; it's a contradiction in terms, but it works. The locations only add to this. They're all grimey, deralict suburban English areas, but at the same time they're all incredibly visually stimulating. There's something about rundown areas that appeals to my visual sense, so I might be biased on this one.
Even the music was great. Quite understated, but hits the emotions it wants to hard.
All in all, this film really, really struck me. I've seen alot of really well made films recently, but none I've been this happy to get behind and actually enjoy myself.

Personal enjoyment: 9/10
Actual quality as a film: 10/10

What this film does magnificently is that it weaves a jigsaw puzzle of pieces of film which are out of order which you slowly but surely piece together and things start to make more and more sense towards the end of the film, by which point you're perfectly content with what happened.
It creates a real sense of disorientation which is part of putting together a magic trick. Keep the audience distracted. The film mirrors a magic trick (quite intentionally) from the word go.
The cast are all extremely competent and you can have alot of fun star-spotting (OMFG IT'S BOWIE!!! I F'ING LOVE THAT GUY!). The film is also shot nicely and has all the usual nice trimmings such as music and so forth.
What it does best though is plot. It's a fairly paint-by-numbers twisty thriller, however, it's execution, mostly with it's disoritentation that can only be pieced together right before the end that I already mentioned, more than make up for it. It's very good.

Personal enjoyment: 8/10
Actual quality as a film: 9/10

A brilliant piece of work that I want to revisit right away (quite a rare thing for a film to make me do). It's incredibly intelligent, well written, works as a great slice of satire and Nic Cage is in it which adds some humour.
It does an outstanding job at exploring metaphysical ideas and comes together beautifully from what I expect was a situation as hopeless for the writer as depicted in the film (maybe not QUITE as hopeless, but you know what I mean). Very good, basically.

Personal enjoyment: 9/10
Actual quality as a film: 9/10

Simply put, fucking incredible.

The funniest film I have ever seen, hands down. It's not the best comedy ever, but it is the funniest.

A beautiful little film. It somehow takes the feeling of being an outcast, genuinely sweet romance, exploration of ethical grey areas and the Guillermo del Toro vein of horror and expertly gels them into one film that somehow works.
It's what vampire films should be which is pretty much the opposite of what the current 'popular trend is' in spite of the plots being very similar (yes I am slagging off Twilight).
I waited a long time to see this and it didn't dissapoint.

Personal enjoyment: 9/10
Actual quality as a film: 9/10

I watched this as a child and sort of enjoyed it a bit but not quite due to not really getting it. Tonight I re-watched it at a restored HD screening at a cinema and I fell in love. It's magnificent.
Full of hilarious moments, often bizarre little touches that were obviously down to John Landis just dicking around. But also incredibly well crafted in terms of the story-telling and the amazing use and inventiveness of many of the shots.
Also, the main woman is hot and you get to see her boobs.

Personal enjoyment: 9/10
Actual quality as a film: 9/10

I was expecting this to be one of those well-made films that was good but I didn't really click with but my God, something about it really sucked me in. It's a classic for a reason.

The best silent film I've ever seen.

It's sort of THE action film.

This film holds the honour of being the 2nd (of many) anime films I've endured and have actually really loved. (The other one is Grave of the Fireflies). This is a genuinely heartbreaking at times piece of anti-war-art. It has compelling characters and doesn't shy aware from the horrors of war.
The animation sucks as is the case with most anime, but I am a firm believer that animation is just gloss. A film can't be made or broken by it, just enhanced. This film is good enough for it's quality to shine through in spite of the animation.
It's fantastic. 2nd best anime movie I've ever seen.

Personal enjoyment: 9/10
Actual quality as a film: 10/10

Absolutely incredible. Beautifully shot and beautiful in tone and message. There's so much to take in from it all, I know I'd have to watch it again to catch everything.
It's also educational (in an interesting way) for those of us not that familiar with Buddhism.
Brilliant; the best film I've seen in ages.

Personal enjoyment: 9/10
Actual quality as a film: 10/10

A masterpiece, pure and simple.
Near the start of the film, we hear a character talk about his distaste for opera and how he prefers movies. This subtle sense of very French humour somewhat sets the tone for the film, at least it's lighter side.
The film itself deals with a very mundane and overall very sad storyline simply about love and a man going off to war only for his girlfriend to marry someone else.
It's the music that elevates it a notch. Whilst the lyrics (and I'm pretty sure this isn't just because I don't speak French) are really nothing special (they don't even rhyme), they just flow like normal dialogue, and at times that's annoying, however, at others, it really just serves to emphasise the emotion at hand.
Something about the film's tone just makes it beautiful. I've heard it refered to as like a fairy tale within the real world, and whilst I can see why people would use this as comparison, I'd say it's more of a dream on the surface and a nightmare underneath. It's quite a bizarre blend of fantasy and underlying sadness. All in all, the film is a beautiful masterpiece. Shame it's French.

Personal enjoyment: 9/10
Actual quality as a film: 10/10

I'm torn between this and Toy Story for best Pixar film ever. I think this might be the better of the two, but Toy Story has a nostalgia-factor advantage.
This is probably the most mature family film I've ever seen, certainly from Pixar. It touches on mature subjects and does them very subtley -to the point that it'd go over the heads of many children, which personally I like -the film isn't dumbed down. It's also fantastic in that Pixar are finally at a point where people are letting them do whatever the hell they want because they're Pixar. This film is suicidal from a studio point of view (aimed at children but the main character is an old man?, etc).
It has several inspired concepts in it (such as dogs who can talk thanks to special collars that translate their brainwaves into English for them -sort of like the baby-translator in that episode of 'The Simpsons' for instance) -these sorts of concepts often make a film for me. Doug is one of the best characters in anything ever.
It's funny, touching, the animation is gorgeous, the music is lovely, it's writing is impeccable. I really can't praise it enough. It's the best film of the year so far.

Personal enjoyment: 10/10
Actual quality as a film: 10/10

Dissapointing if I'm honest. The plot is above average but not really movie-quality, except for the subplot which is good, the animation is fit (and widescreen, woo!), the music and voice-acting and everything else are bang on par, but frankly, it's not very funny. I sniggered alot but there were no belly-laughs. That said, how clever this film gets with it's time travel and the fantastic twist at the end all make up for it if you persevere. It's not as good a movie as the greatest TV show ever deserves, but we have at least 3 more to look forwards too, hopefully they'll get better. That said, it still rocks.

I know there are about 500 million different cuts of this -I saw the most recent one.

I adored this film up until the beginning of the end (an action sequence followed by the end-end). Everything began to drag and then I was left thinking "That''s all I get for an ending? Fuck you".
Then I gave the film 10 minutes to set in and I realised that everything that needed to be there was there. It's great. It lost out on being one of my favourite films of all time due to the lack of a hugely satisfying ending, but it's still a film I respect a lot. There's a lot of depth to it and there's not really anything else that I can say that hasn't been said a million times before.
Oh, and now I get Red Dwarf: Back to Earth more.

Personal enjoyment: 8/10
Actual quality as a film: 9

I'm annoyed at Colin Firth. I wanted Sharlto Copley to be my favourite performance of '09 but now it's bloody well Colin.
This film was absolutely sublime. The writing, the acting, the music, the cinematography, the editing, pretty much every aspect of it came together beautifully. It's very art-house at times, but it works well. It's the best 'gay' film I think I've ever seen.

Personal enjoyment: 8/10
Actual quality as a film: 9/10

It's a very disturbing and yet very entertaining piece of work. Brilliantly written and directed, beyond some slightly iffy "what the hell are you on about?" moments (which I expect are due to the translation in the subtitling process). Even the acting isn't half bad (basing this purely on visual acting, I can't really judge vocal acting when it's in a foreign language).
Anyway, it's a simple story, but one that suprisingly is fairly untouched. It's also executed brilliantly.
The music was terrible in places, but this is a low budget, 80s affair. Any horror film to achieve any level of disturbing, particularly without resorting to gore deserves alot of praise.

Personal enjoyment: 8/10
Actual quality as a film: 9/10

Simply put, this film is an absolute triumph. This is quite easily Tim Burton's 2nd best to date after Ed Wood (keep in mind that he didn't direct The Nightmare Before Christmas).
Musicals are incredibly hard to adapt into film. You have to keep the visuals interesting as people have long drawn out conversations through song. On stage, we're happy to sit and look at people singing for 10 minutes at a time, but on screen it's a different story.
The cinematography is amazing. Whilst alot of CGI has obviously been utilised, it gives the film that Tim Burton quality we all know and either love or hate. Personally, I love it.
The performances are uniformly outstanding (although my favourite has to be Sacha Baron Cohen's). Whilst none of them are particularly amazing singers, Tim Burton has filled the film with fantastic actors. Broadway actors can sing great, but few are that great at acting and fewer are this good at acting whilst they sing. And rest assured, Johnny Depp is nothing like Jack Sparrow in this.
The music itself is very forgettable and barely stands out, but that's the beauty of it. I honestly fell in love with the score because it doesn't try and be catchy or be good music. It exists purely to serve the purpose of the storyline and in doing so it never goes off-track with a 'show-stopper' or random little melody thrown in just to soudn nice. It's 100% focused on the emotions and scene at hand. It's almost a refreshing take on musicals in general.
All the other technical aspects such as costumes and lighting are faultless too.
I also have to credit Tim Burton for not watering down the violent nature of Sweeney Todd in the slightest. Whilst I wasn't too keen on how he'd gone and cast all of his best friends in roles that already belonged to many stage actors, I now see that this was the best way to do things. In order to make this work as a film, Tim had to make it HIS film and he's created what is possibly a masterpiece amongst musicals. Certainly one of the best musicals of all time and one of the best films in a long while. I'm sure plenty of die-hard fans of the stage-show will hate it for cutting songs and editing bits and casting not being to their tastes, but when viewed in it's own right, this film is nearly perfect.
It looked like Tim Burton was losing it slightly with his films quality dropping slightly in recent years, but he's back on form, possibly even better than ever? I eagerly await both Frankenweenie and Alice in Wonderland.

Personal enjoyment: 10/10
Actual quality as a film: 9/10

Wow, amazingly twisty mystery movie.

A fantastic exploration of morality and its flexibility as well as the grey area between right and wrong that's usually ignored. Dustin Hoffman is fantastic as usual, and on a more simplistic level, it works as quite an effective horror film. I can't imagine the upcoming remake will be half as disturbing or provacative despite being a hell of a lot more graphic.

Now I have to quote a comment I just read about the film that made me laugh:
"It's like Home Alone for grown ups."

Personal enjoyment: 8/10
Actual quality as a film: 8/10

For my money, the best film of 2010. It's incredibly well made. The direction is astonishingly good -the film is just brimming with little touches and details. The film's overall look is also gorgeous, so top notch marks for all of the technical aspects (cinematography, editing, production design, etc). The story is engrossing, has a lot to be read from it and actually brings ballet to life. Good acting, also. It's my favourite Aronofsky film by a mile and I'm fairly sure that I'm going to grow to like it more with repeat viewings.

Personal enjoyment 9/10
Actual quality: 9/10

A beautiful film.

This film is an absolutely terrific dark comedy and in many ways is the best film I've seen so far this year.
Colin Farrel is fantastic in his role as a hitman who shows genuine distress over an event in his past. He really does it well. Brendan Gleeson who I don't think I ever encountered prior to this film is also fantastic. But best of all is Ralph Fiennes who is outstanding as the traditional cockney gangster boss character, but plays it with his own little spin and turns it into an absolutely hilarious character.
The script is also outstanding. Not only does the dialogue flow really energetically and naturalistically in a comedic way, but the way everything comes together within the film -not one thing isn't there for a reason -is just remarkable.
The setting itself is a nice looking backdrop for a film, I must say, and whilst the cinematography isn't anything special, the film just looks nice thanks to Bruges. The score is also quite good.
This film ought to mark great things for the future of it's writer/director. It's a real gem of film and deserves to be given a chance by all.

Personal enjoyment: 8/10
Actual quality as a film: 8/10

This film really reminded me of the great Universal horror films of the 30s and 40s, but with a lot more punch. It's pretty much the original version of 'Drag Me to Hell', except a lot more atmospheric and it doesn't play any of it for laughs. It's one of the best pre-70s horror films that I've seen.

Personal enjoyment: 8/10
Actual quality as a film: 8/10

It's suprisingly funny and nice to see that full on spoofs can still work. This film is in the mould of movies such as Airplane! (though toned down quite a bit) as opposed to in the mould of crap like Epic Movie.
So yeah, it's quite funny, though a little patchy. A lot of the humour comes from bizarrely cast performances and the star-spotting that comes with it.
Altogether it's a decent comedy and worth you're time if you're not after anything with any depth.

Personal enjoyment: 7/10
Actual quality as a film: 7/10

An absolutely fantastic super-hero film and welcome proof that the genre hasn't been milked dry yet. I can see how many people would be put off of the film by the liberties it takes with how plausable things are, but at the end of the day, this is a comic book movie set within the Marvel universe. If you can accept that, then there shouldn't be any problems. It is sci-fi after all.
Robert Downey Jr. is absolutely fantastic in his role. Many reviews have said that he makes the film and whilst moreorless everyone involved here deserves praise, it is somewhat true. With someone less brilliantly cast in the lead role, the film certainly would have dropped down a few levels.
The pacing is super-fast which means there's never a chance to get bored, but in spite of this it's actually got quite a meaty running time. At times it's predictable, but who cares when it's this much fun?
As it stands, I wouldn't say the film is better than Spider-man 2, but it's probably better than the first Spidey film and certainly is better than 3 (and I actually like 3).

Personal enjoyment: 8/10
Actual quality as a film: 8/10

The best (theatrically released) documentary I have ever seen. Now, I haven't seen many, but still, I loved this.
It's essentially a very sad, yet hilarious character study into a man with obvious, serious, deep-routed psychological issues and possibly a mental illness (who I also think might have been a repressed gay) going mad out in the woods with some fascinating nature-footage thrown in.
There's really very little to dislike here. Yes, the main subject of the film is a bit questionable, but the film doesn't really ask you to like or dislike him. It's ultimately a slice into a rather harrowing life, but a fascinating one too. If only all documentaries were this engaging and flat-out good.

Personal enjoyment: 9/10
Actual quality as a film: 9/10

Just plain brilliant.

Exceptional.
Christopher Nolan is an incredible film-maker and this ranks among his best work. The plot is wonderfully inventive, interesting and original whilst drawing on lots of cinematic familiarities to allow your brain to have something to hold onto whilst the rest of the film mindfucks you to hell. There's also a lot of depth to it -not particularly metaphysical as you may think -but emotional depth. All of that is structured perfectly and more importantly, interestingly, in true Christopher Nolan fashion.
Add onto that, that pretty much every technical aspect of the film is spot-on. The acting is top-notch from a great ensemble cast, the cinematography is great in its own dark and brooding way, the special effects are brilliant and the editing is also very good. The only weak link is the fact that Hans Zimmer's score is exactly the same as his score for The Dark Knight. But even that complaint is very minor because it works and it suits the film.
One of the best things about Inception is that it doesn't talk down to the audience whatsoever and whilst this seems to be turning some people off of it, anybody with a brain should find something to enjoy in it. It's not a masterpiece, but it's bloody close.

Personal enjoyment: 9/10
Actual quality as a film: 9/10

I saw this waaay back in 2000, but never again until last night. I forgot how much I love this film. It's not the greatest movie ever made by any stretch of the imagination, but it works as a kind of comfort film, I enjoy it as much as I would a masterpiece and I don't know why. It's the same way I feel about "Unbreakable".
The film is really quite original for giving 1 actor 80 minutes to keep the audience entertained purely by himself. And Tom Hanks does an incredible job. And then there's Wilson. "The Wilson scene" is honestly, to me, one of the most heartbreaking scenes ever captured on film.
The film's ending does kind of meander off from the fantastic-ness of the main body, but it's not bad enough to bring down what a great film the rest is, and the themes and ideas hinted at throughout get cemented into place.

Personal enjoyment: 8/10
Actual quality as a film: 8/10

I am really quite dumb-founded by the mixed reviews this film is getting. I love it. It's far from perfect but there's so much to love. The visuals are not only gorgeous but really inventive too... such of the imagery is insanely good. Most complaints seem to call the film's plot and characters shallow. I couldn't disagree more. The characters each embody a certain aspect of the soul they were created from, this makes sense. Some are likeable whilst some aren't, no problems there. The plot is fantastic and has a lot of depth. Not only is the whole 'humanity is extinct' thing cool, but it's a genuinely interesting exploration of humanity on a philosophical level. The machine 'villain' that essentially destroys the world represents human intelligence (it's built from the scientist's own mind after-all) without a soul to guide it and ultimately ends up a thing of evil. There's lots going on.
Certain aspects don't quite work but more than enough does for it to be furiously enjoyable. Plus, it's always brilliant to see animation that isn't aimed at children. Thanks to the film's 12 rating, it didn't have to shy away from showing that humanity was extinct. Dead bodies and bits of skeletons and so forth are somewhat abundant. A very good film in my opinion, certainly dicks all over Coraline which people have been bumming all year despite not being that impressive beyond visually.

Personal enjoyment: 8/10
Actual quality as a film: 8/10

A slow-burner. Very dull for the first hour and drags a lot. But then it all comes together in the 2nd half and you realise that everything in the first hour had to be as it was to set things up.
There's some brilliant messages in it and some of the nicest cinematography I've ever seen. There's an amazing shot that lasts for an insane amount of time and is certainly on par with, if not better than, any of the really long shots in Children of Men. The constant soft focus and things obscuring the frame worked really well too.
Oh, and good acting.

Personal enjoyment: 8/10
Actual quality as a film: 9/10

This is one of those true 80s action flicks. It's great. It could have so easily been a PG family film but no, with the 80s being what it was, they went full out with the violence and it only ups what a cool film this is.
That's basically how I'd sum up this film. "Cool". It's a friggin' cyborg policeman in a dystopian future, short of zombies, what more could you ask for?
Acting, writing? Bah, who cares. There's nothing wrong with them, but what this film is about is the action and the special effects which are both great and to top it off it has a great little, dark sense of humour.
Overall, it's basically the same premise as The Six Billion Dollar Man, but way more badass.

Personal enjoyment: 8/10
Actual quality as a film: 8/10

A return to form after Knocked Up. I'd put it on par with The 40 Year Old Virgin which basically makes it fantastic. If anything, it's slightly better.

This film is amazeballs. It's a genuinely interesting and unique concept and a film that juggles so many things at once. I guessed the twists and who was responsible for the bomb right away but that doesn't matter because the film isn't reliant on its twists and nor is it a whodunnit. It's about the lead coming to terms with things and aspects of his life. It explores a lot of metaphysical ideas in a lovely, metaphorical way.

It's thrilling, it never stops being entertaining and it's genuinely incredibly touching. I need to sleep on it really, but as it stands, it's just inching ahead of Submarine for my favourite film of 2011 thus far (and Submarine was fucking fantastic so that's saying something).

This film is just another reason why David Bowie is awesome.

9/10 (I'm being generous, but screw me, I'm in a good mood).

This film is incredible. I'm a big fan of films that are so bad that they're good, but this transcends the lot. It's fascinating.
Most films that are hilariously bad produce maybe one laugh every 5 minutes. Troll 2 is the The Simpsons of bad movies in that it's so densley packed and layered. There's literally at least a laugh a minute. It's constantly hilarious and constantly unintentionally so. Even the things that are intended as jokes in the film are funny for the wrong reasons.

I really can't say much more about this film other than you have to experience it for yourself. It's amazing. Do it.

Personal enjoyment: 8/10
Actual quality: 2/10

David Cronenberg is a fucking genius. This film is incredible.
It's dull, dingey, slow paced, and as such is extremely hard to watch in many ways and I'm sure many people will be turned off as a result. However, I found myself trapped in it's glare like a rabbit in the headlights of an approaching car. I couldn't break away from it's monotonous sense of gloom and it builds to a fairly powerful ending (although I saw aspects of it coming I must admit).
You have to be able to 'read' a film to enjoy this. It's much like the stuff of David Lynch but with some grounding, which I why I think Cronenberg is a vastly superior film-maker.
I'm not going to dwell on acting or music or anything because none of that particularly struck me, it was all decent, but none of it was anything special (sorry Ralph, sorry Miranda). The art design and direction are what shine through in this film and keep everything perfect.
This is a filmed nightmare, just a somewhat of a dull, yet mezmerising nightmare. Not a "scream in terror" nightmare. It's really a masterpiece on it's own terms.

Personal enjoyment: 7/10
Actual quality as a film: 10/10