Taken 3: Was going into this thinking it would be bad, but it was okay. Better than the second at least.
I, Frankenstein Decent action flick for free on Netflix. Haphazard collision of Underworld + Mary Shelley + Michael Bay, but it worked for me. It only has a superficial connection with the original work, in fact, the story is generic enough to where they could have called it anything. 6.5/10
Kingsmen This is basically two movies awkwardly pasted together. One is what the trailer shows, and the other is a shock action/comedy like Kickass. Personally, aside from the often awkward transition between the two 'movies' I did still enjoy the content and the way it was done. Although I found a few of the scenes and lines that were there for shock value were unnecessarily over done and made the whole thing jarring at times due to how different the other side of the movie was. Anyway, the action was well done and the comedy was fairly refreshing. So overall I liked it. Watching this in the cinemas also felt awkward, not because I'm a prude or anything but because I could tell that a lot of the people around us (including those who took kids!) were seeing it for what they thought the movie was based on the trailer. Maybe I'm over sensitive to the feelings of others, but I couldn't help but feel that a lot of people didn't know what they were in for. 7/10
I was also surprised by how good this was. Colin Firth plays against type and did a great job, so did his protege. The kid looked like a younger him by the end of the film. Sam Jackson was excellent as an over the top villian too. A tongue in cheek 60s era Bond homage combined with Tarintino-esq fantasy violence. Can't go wrong. 7/10 seems dead on.
RoboCop 2014 There was too much going on. New stuff, nostalgia stuff, action stuff, ethics stuff. It got boring.
Dinosaur 13 Reasonably interesting documentary regarding the discoveries and legal battles of a South Dakota for-profit fossil hunting company. The main focus was on an almost complete T-Rex skeleton that they excavated and purchased from a tribal land owner whose land was actually held in trust by the government, but most of the protracted court battles really didn't have anything to do with that particular find. That was one of the weird aspects of the documentary: they kind of glossed over a lot of the fossil digging on federal lands that the government prosecuted them for. The documentary tried hard to make them look completely innocent, but I ended up feeling like they had probably known that some of their digging wasn't entirely legal. However, it was obvious that the government's actions in the original seizure were completely over the top, and that the judge doing the sentencing in the later court case had an axe to grind with the defense.
Dawn of The Planet of the Apes I thought it started rather poorly but I was satisfied by the end. 6/10.
It was entertaining. It's getting a bit long in the tooth, going rated R would've helped. It still made fat stacks of cash so you know Taken 4 is coming. I'll be there to watch. 5/10 - good enough when bored
Blue Ruin A beautifully shot drama/revenge film. Really well acted - if you're after something a bit slower and more thoughtful, I'd recommend it.
Nightcrawler Jake Gyllenhaal plays a creepazoid who goes around at night filming crime and accident scenes and selling the footage to TV news. The lines start to blur between observer and participant when he withholds evidence about a murder from the police so he can get more footage to sell by following the killers around. Pretty well acted and with good atmosphere, but it all never really built up to much and I felt let down at the end. 7/10 Jacob's Ladder This was a seriously creepy film. It was supposed to have been the main inspiration for the Silent Hill video games. About a guy trapped in limbo who was the victim of a bizarre experiment on soldiers in Vietnam. Very trippy and nightmarish. 8/10
Whiplash Holy crap. This guy was to music teachers what R Lee Ermey is to drill sergeants. Some great one liners in this movie. 8/10
A Walk Among the Tombstones It kind of reminded me of 8MM with Nic Cage. Unfortunately the pacing was bad and a lot of it was boring. I also didn't see the point of the annoying black kid sidekick character.
Birdman Some good acting and cinematography. But the self-indulgence and pretentiousness were off the charts, and the ending was dumb. The long scenes with no cuts with 1950's beatnik drum music playing in the background get very tiresome. I felt like it turned into exactly what it initially seemed to be mocking: Hollywood actors taking themselves and their "art" much too seriously.
The Theory of Everything Stephen Hawking's overly religious first wife was annoying. I was actually happy when he finally left her and all of that God bullshit for his nurse who jerked him off to Penthouse. His wife was also probably cheating on him with the choir teacher. This movie is a pretty good example of why you don't get married young, even if you think you might be dead tomorrow.
Eddie Redmayne as Stephen Hawking was the better actor. He was perfectly cast and was totally beivable in the role. Michael Keaton plays a hack actor who is just known for one superhero role, birdman. Also perfectly cast because that's keaton in real life. Problem is that he's still kind of a hack actor. It's Edward Norton who steals the show in Birdman. Birdman was a weird movie and I'm still not sure how I feel about it. It was simultaneously mocking something but it also seemed to be the exact thing it was mocking.
I just picked up Birdman and Tale of Princess Kaguya on Blu-ray this weekend. I'll watch them as soon as I get a bit of spare time.
Chappie. Seriously the best film I've seen in years. Maybe it's got some issues if critics are to be believed but not one of those "issues" was apparent to me while watching.