Recently watched movies!

[king_ghidorah]

[MouthForWar]

[king_ghidorah]

[MouthForWar]

[king_ghidorah]

[MouthForWar]

[king_ghidorah]

[lhb412]

Peter Pan (2003)

Holy crap this is a good movie. Apparently it was a huge bomb when released. It's actually a very emotionally complex film (full of subtext that is left out of most adaptations) and beautiful to look at, hell, probably the best looking fantasy film of the past decade that wasn't directed by Guillermo del Toro. I was especially taken by how selfish and destructive Pan is, and if we didn't know that he just didn't know any better he could be taken as malevolent. The highlight, though, is Jason Isaacs in the duel role of Captain Hook/Wendy's Dad (yes, you are invited to Freudian territory).

[jellydonut25]

[king_ghidorah]

[MekaGojira3k]

[jellydonut25]

I'm gonna have to come back to this argument when I am less tired and cranky from reading posts by Dr. Kain...

[MouthForWar]

First Blood- Its hard to imagine the day when the character John Rambo actually meant something outside of cartoony action movies, but these days did exist... many, many years ago. But his first film was actually a very well made and very potent film about the very real mistreatment of Vietnam veterans when they got home and the the struggles they had to go through to reintegrate into society after the war. The Rambo in this film is unhinged, suffers from traumatic flashbacks that cause him to act irrationally, and in all honesty, he's broken and left totally INSANE after the war. He's not painted as a good person, but rather a very sympathetic man with a lot of mental problems that came from the trauma of war. His breakdown in the end is Stallone's finest acting by far. He starts out talking about how he's been mistreated, then the whole thing just turns into a near unintelligible mess of Nam stories. This Rambo has more in common with Travis Bickle from Taxi Driver than the burly "run away from explosions," stereotypical action hero type that starred in the mindless sequels. This is the kinda guy that will have flashbacks and get into a fist fight or shoot up a couple occupied buildings just to distract a couple cops, with no concern for civilian life... he was more like the tragic Nam hero you would read about in the papers, who finally snapped from post traumatic stress and did something crazy. Like Godzilla, the first Rambo film packs a real punch both in terms of its message and on an emotional level and you have to kind of separate it from what followed. The Rambo sequels are dumb fun to an extent (well, with the exception of part 3), but First Blood is in a class all its own. In fact, when I watch it, from now on, I think I'm gonna switch to the original ending (where he commits suicide), because I honestly like that ending more anyway. Also, a great score by the always great Jerry Goldsmith. If you associate the Rambo character with what he became later, you really should see this film and see what the character originally meant. I honestly have no idea how those sequels even HAPPENED, considering that the character is totally insane and tragic in this movie and just another Hollywood action hero in the sequels.. ITS SO WEIRD, HOW DID THAT HAPPEN?! Anyway, I highly recommend this movie to anyone that hasn't seen it.

[MekaGojira3k]

[king_ghidorah]

[jellydonut25]

[Rodanex]

[jellydonut25]

[MekaGojira3k]

[jellydonut25]

[MouthForWar]

[jellydonut25]

Akira - first time ever. i think this is kinda one of those cases where hearing how absolutely amazing something is sets it up for a bit of a downfall.

don't get me wrong, great flick, really REALLY cool...buuut...there were certain parts and scenes and characters that just didn't seem to gel with the rest and didn't make a ton of sense. I know that's because they crammed a 2000+ page manga into a 2-hr film but (keep in mind I've never read the manga) I get the feeling there were things in the movie they could have left out (like some of the resistance/revolution stuff that was really not super necessary aside from introducing Kei) while highlighting/explaining other things more (like the distribution of power in Neo-Japan and some more background on the original testing) to make a more cohesive film.

overall, i walked away thoroughly satisfied, but i also can't help but think i could have been BLOWN AWAY and just never quite got there...came close, no doubt.

[king_ghidorah]

Red State

Wow. Well first of all, I didn't think this film was the train wreck some had made it out to be. There are really some hard core Kevin Smith bashers out there apparently. It's a medicore film but it's not horrible. I like the way it was shot and the young teenagers weren't as annoying as I thought they would be. I expected much more Smith-ian dialogue in this movie but I was pleasently surprised to find that Smith really seemed to be trying to do something new.

It felt like two movies spliced together, the first half of this movie being pretty darned good, while the second (a standard shoot em up) seems...I dunno, there's just a lot of it that I don't buy but I can see what Smith was trying to do.

All in all, put your personal feelings about Smith aside, and don't expect much from this film and it's not a bad hour or so. The way the movie ends actually caused me to laugh which is pretty rare for a film. The final line of dialogue, spoken off camera, is pure old-school Smith.

[MekaGojira3k]

Went out with the ladyfriend and her family. We were going to see Arietty, as our theater assured me we'd be getting it this Friday. No such luck. We ended up seeing This Mean War instead. Bane vs. Kirk, and it was kind of alright. I laughed during it, and generally had fun. It was okay.

[king_ghidorah]

Pan's Labrynth

I love this film, sadly my gf did not lol.

Stir of Echoes

Not a bad ghost flick. I think there's not enough Kevin Bacon films in the world.

Princess Mononoke

One of my favorite Miyazaki films, which means it's one of my favorite films ever.