My Favorite Movies

What can I say... This movie has everything. Music. Murder. Mayhem. Madness. Transvestites. A homage to science-fiction whilst taking a completely new direction in basically every genre besides western, this film blew my mind when I first saw it and it still blows my mind today.

I love this movie.

Time travel? The 1980's AND the 1950's? CHRISTOPHER LLOYD AND MICHAEL J. FOX?
I'm there!

Kick-ass Tarantino revenge-action with a great character in The Bride.

Incredible.

Okay, when I watched this I had that feeling, you know? That feeling you get when you know you're going to enjoy every single minute of the movie before you. It started and I don't know how, but immediately it did everything right. I haven't felt that way about a movie since I saw Battle Royale a few months ago.

So there's this guy, and he's very awesome, has a charming voice and the letter 'V' is definitely in his top 5 letters. And V has this, well, vendetta, against these vicious people who screwed him and many other people over royally when testing a new biological weapon which eventually became known as the St. Mary's Virus which 'coincidentally' happened to wipe out over 80, 000 people and then 'coincidentally' this new politician is elected and brings about a cure, and 'coincidentally' brings order to the country at the cost of freedom. Oh yeah, and he brought about the virus in the first place. Cha-ching.

The story is slightly vexing yet incrediby interesting, the main character vivacious, the sets and cinematography a visual treat. Dialouge-wise, this may be the most well-spoken film since...let's say Pulp Fiction. Every line from every character seems to be of the utmost importance. And then there's Hugo Weaving as V! The man has one of the best voices in the business, and it truly shows as V never shows us his actual face, so Weaving must create a character simply with his words and bodily gestures, and achieves it magnificently -

"Voilà! In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of Fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished. However, this valorous visitation of a by-gone vexation, stands vivified and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin van-guarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition. The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta, held as a votive, not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous. Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose, so let me simply add that it's my very good honor to meet you and you may call me V."

One hell of an awesome vampire Tarantino/Rodriguez flick.

It could be the awesome soundtrack, the extremely quotable lines or Dana Carvey, but this movie is one I could watch over and over again.

The greatest Batman movie? ...Nah.
The best in my books? Of course!

Amazingly sad and moving.

My...brains...

I watched the trailer and couldn't believe just how awesome this looked. Today... Today was July 23rd, and this movie was released today here in Australia. Don't get me started on how ridiculously long we had to wait. But let's not start this review on a bitter note. First off - Sam Raimi. Just the name sends a shiver through the spine of any self-respecting horror fan. I need not mention his classic films, honored in my own DVD collection and no doubt many others. Honestly, the first movie of his I watched was in fact Spider-man. Hey, I love Spider-man, have done since I was a kid. When that came out, believe me I was first in line. When the sequels came out, I was first in line. But by the time they came out, I was a fully-fledged Raimi fanatic, having rented a load of his movies. Bruce Campbell's chin still knocks me out. So, where was I today? I didn't line up at all. I bought my tickets online so I could reserve the seats I wanted. Nothing was going to spoil my day, you hear? Nothing! Especially not some snotty little kid who thinks he can get away with sitting in my seat. Regardless, that didn't happen, and I brought a bunch of my friends along who know all too well of my, erm, genre obsession. I had been waiting for this moment for months, and it was finally here. When the lights went down I'm pretty sure I squealed... But don't hold me to that.


The first sequence came and went and by that point I was almost bursting with excitement - why? I was scared shitless. How could this happen?! Within 10 minutes Raimi twisted my nuts off. I don't know, maybe because I was so willing to buy into it and immerse myself so completely or some combination of the two; it didn't matter. I have never been to a horror film at the cinema that actually scared me thoroughly for the entire duration (with a few bits in the middle to giggle at). This... This is why I love horror, it's as simple as that. I was absorbed. I was intrigued. I was scared. And I loved it.


Do yourself a favour - see it. If you have, welcome to enlightened side of humanity.


Oh, and in brief... The ending... Left me speechless. I assure you.

Both are great films, Planet Terror is just a little better. But what an event watching them.

Brilliant splatter-fest from a Lovecraft story. Amazingly funny with a great performance from Jeffrey Combs.

Hell yeah.

I must confess. I absolutely love The X-Files. Love it. My X-Files series stands holy in the TV section of my DVD collection, along with The Twilight Zone and Spaced. And I rented this movie expecting the conspiricies to deepen, the plot to lengthen and to see little green men.
This movie fulfilled all my expectations and cemented something in my mind; Chris Carter is a genius.

I didn't think George A. Romero could get any more awesome.

Judd Nelson is badass!

Greatest super-hero of all time.

Absolutely ingenious. I love Wes Craven.

YYEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

This movie can be summed up in one word: shpadoinkle.

What can be said about this movie that hasn't been said before?
Essesntially, it's f*cking funny.

A great gothic comic book-ish film from Rodriguez and Miller.

BRILLIANT

I was lucky enough to have visited the set of Wolverine whilst it was in production. Believe me, I'll never forget the thrill of watching Logan elbow Gambit in the face in person, or myself shaking hands with Liev Schreiber...with his super-long fingernails on. Hell, I got to advise the editor, Nicholas De Toth, on which take should be used in the final cut. I consider myself super lucky, and admittedly might be a little biased towards the movie.
But holy hell. I thought it would be incredible, but I wasn't prepared for the unstoppable onslaught of action my eyes beheld the night of the premiere.

To be fair, I wanted a little more Gambit and Deadpool. They're great characters (and Taylor Kitsch is a really cool guy), and they had the chance to use them a lot more. They didn't, but that's fine - Freddy Krueger was best in the first Nightmare, and he isn't around for much. It made me appreciate the screen time they had.

Being a feature film, it's obvious that they can't explain, explore and probe every single moment in Wolverine's life as depicted in the comics, and some die-hard X-Men fans seem to think it's blasphemy to leave out a few details. Well, more than a few. But do you expect to see the tale of Wolverine told exactly the same as it was? I didn't. It's a movie, not a comic, another issue isn't going to be on newstands next week so the story can continue. They have to squish down to 2 hours or so, and with that, the screenwriters did really well.

In case I haven't said so, the action sequences totally blew my mind. Any person who has fantasies of running with a cool jacket on with explosions firing off everywhere, and you must do something super-cool and uber-dangerous to save yourself (I know I have) will find their dreams coming to life on the screen (the helicopter bit is the best example). True, a lot of CGI is used. I usually don't care for CGI, really. For example in Diary of the Dead. Decent movie, CGI was completely unnecessary. I was pining for Tom Savini to return. But in Wolverine's case, there's really no alternative. It fits. It works. It looks great.

All in all, a smashingly entertaining movie that's going to have a place in my collection as soon as a 2-Disc Edition hits the stores.

Oh, and for the people who downloaded the unfinished workprint...Why? Why would you do that, what is the bloody point? It was missing about 20 minutes of footage, some special effects, I mean...I don't know what the hell was running through your mind. This is a movie that has to be seen on a big movie screen. And you ruined it for yourself. You may have saved your money but I assure you, you didn't gain anything.

Side-splitting.

Oh, I love rock n' roll.

Great, funny kids flick.

Great, great stuff.

Hugh Grant is hilarious, and a greatsoundtrack from Badly Drawn Boy.

Thouroughly entertaining stuff from Jackson...But King Kong is just a gorilla, not a monster.

A contender for the best in the series.

This movie is... brutal. That's putting in kindly. I can't imagine the kind of controversy and general uproar this movie would have caused when it was first released. This kind of graphic violence had never (subject to opinion) been displayed previously so realistically.
This film just so happens to be the debut of my favourite director in the whole galaxy - Wes Craven. He's openly admitted to not knowing jack squat about movie making when he and Sean Cunningham trudged out into some nice place full of trees with a handful of actors and proceeded to capture hell on film. Maybe that's why it looks so... raw. It's convincing enough to be a snuff film (almost).
When I first watched it, I wasn't encased in some sort of cocoon of terror. I wasn't about to run screaming from my, er, blanket. But I had to shut my eyes and keep repeating 'It's only a movie...It's only a movie...'

I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass...And I'm all out of bubblegum.
So goes one of the best lines in the history of lines, from one of John Carpenter's greatest efforts, They Live. Now this movie seems to be the last in what to me was the Golden Era Of Carpenter (1974-1988), starting with Dark Star, and every film until this, and then he made Memoirs of an Invisible Man. Granted, I haven't seen that in a long time, but the general consensus is that the nineties were not kind to him. A few misfires here and there, but hey, I love the hell out of Escape From L.A and Vampires, didn't so much like Ghosts of Mars. But The Golden Era? Every film he made was consistently good, and none have disappointed me thus far (I have only Prince of Darkness left). And They Live was no exception.
Our story begins with Mr. Never-Actually-Named-In-the-Movie-But-Referred-To-As-Nada-in-the-End-Credits, a drifter trying to find an honest days work and a place to sleep. And he finds a job and Frank, played by Keith David, sets him up with a place to stay, for a little while at least. The very best thing about the movie at this point is the music, with John Carpenter and regular collaborator Alan Howarth creating a western-style theme that appropriately fits Nada's loner lifestyle. And...it sounds pretty badass. If I could have my own theme music that played whenever I walked anywhere this theme would be one of the top contenders. Anyway, the TV starts picking up signals of this bearded dude desperately attempting to tell whoever is listening about "they", and apparently "they" are not very nice. So Nada stumbles upon some sunglasses inside the headquarters of the group that are sending out aforementioned signals, and these sunglasses do two things: One, they look pretty cool, and Two, they show you a few people for what they really are - aliens come to our planet to feed off our consumerist needs and use our resources for their own purposes! Oh, dear sweet Lord, no!
What's really clever about this movie is Carpenter's apparent distaste at not only television but what America had become by the 1980's, people only driven by money and material desire. Our main heroes are poor and have no need for such things. Our villains are rich and...scaly-looking. The sunglasses behold signs for what they are, proclaiming 'OBEY', 'SUBMIT', 'MARRY AND REPRODUCE', 'WATCH TV', 'JOHN CARPENTER IS THE MAN' and other such things. The opening credits claim Screenplay by Frank Armitage, but this Frank Armitage is none but John Carpenter himself, assuming the pseudonym of the main character in the H.P. Lovecraft tale The Dunwich Horror.
The story is great, the special effects very fun, the score brilliant, the overall enjoyment factor very high. I can't recommend this movie enough.
Right, now to Prince of Darkness...

80's horror/western/romance doesn't get better than this.

Damned hilarious.

Honestly, who does not want to be Snake Plissken?

It's still funny.

Pretty good, really. Not as lame as you'd think.

Just then I was half a millimetre away from giving this 5 stars, but then I reconsidered for a fraction of a second and gave it 4 and a half.
Oh, the movie was brilliant, there's absolutely no doubt about that. It just loses half a point because 1) It ended too soon, and 2) I wanted a little more closure to some of the stories.
But this film is very very very close to getting 5 stars from me.

Richard Matheson defies all logical measurements of awesome.

Honestly? I thought I wouldn't like this film. I've been disappointed by modern Dario Argento before (Phantom of the Opera) and I knew of a lot of the bad things that were being said about this. But...



This is Argento we're talking about, here! And this film is absolutely insane. Insane, I tell you! Everything about it screams 'Argento', with innovative and interesting camera shots (two come to mind; one, when Sarah is walking with her colleague down the hall to inspect the urn, and the camera just starts at the end of the halls and speeds towards her for no reason whatsoever. What a delight. The other, when Sarah is inspecting the old house near the end and there's a very long take following her throughout, with an abundance of colour and lighting that yes, is remniscent of Suspiria and Inferno). This film is more coherant, and the surreal fairy-tale-ish mentality is absent, with more focus on the story (yeah, I was surprised too) but this doesn't detract from it really, and the scene at the end alone makes up for any gripes about wonderful and horrific imagery.

I was prepared to not like this, but Argento, you've re-affirmed my belief that you are indeed, a master of horror cinema. Suspiria is your masterpiece, but in terms of your Three Mothers Trilogy, this is a welcome and satisfying conclusion on the same level as Inferno.

A brilliant, darkly funny and absorbing piece of gothic cinema. Even better if you've seen Nosferatu beforehand.

Genius filmmaking. Writer/director Oren Peli deserves a LOT of credit for crafting a film such as this.

Now, was there a reference to The X-Files, or is that just me?

Whoa. COOL!

A hauntingly beautiful film. Why hasn't Lucky made more movies? I was so intrigued by this film, so inexplicably mesmerized, that I almost forgot where I was. The time absolutely flew by. And I watched this just past midnight, and I was tired. But I was also hooked.

Now for some reason, the critics up yonder at RT.com, well a few of them anyway, kind of dismiss this as just an "above average slasher film." That statement bothers me. Why? Because it is so much more than an above average slasher film. I'd reconsider before even calling it a slasher film, it's more so a psychological character study - and a brilliant one at that.

If you haven't seen this, find some way to do so. This movie deserves so much more, and I think, will be remembered as a horror classic in the next few decades.

Just...awesome.