Topic: Michael's random reviews

[GSyren]

You should write reviews more often!

Agreed!

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

You should write reviews more often!

I'll try to. 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Zero Dark Thirty  

Summary:
For a decade, an elite team of intelligence and military operatives, working in secret across the globe, devoted themselves to a single goal: to find and eliminate Osama bin Laden. ZERO DARK THIRTY reunites the Oscar-winning team of director-producer Kathryn Bigelow and writer-producer Mark Boal (2009, Best Picture, THE HURT LOCKER) for the story of history's greatest manhunt for the world's most dangerous man.


My Thoughts:
Kathryn Bigelow ... if she continues with movies like this she may easily become the goddess of entertaining political films (if she isn't already).

There's a reason Zero Dark Thirty was nominated for Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay, the movie is just plain good. It may not be a movie for all audiences (especially patriotic Americans may have severe problems with the rather graphic torture scenes ("I'm not your friend. I'm not gonna help you. I'm going to break you. Any questions?")). If you go see this movie expecting to see a movie that looks like a James Bond or Jason Bourne action extravaganza, you might find yourself sorely disappointed. Zero Dark Thirty is an honest drama. There are no heroes in this film anywhere, just people doing their jobs.

This film is a big intense question mark. It asks us how far a state is allowed to go in its wish for revenge, how many of its ideals can be sacrificed in the name of vengeance?
The film doesn't judge, nor does it give us any answers on the questions. It ends with the biggest question marks of all: Was it worth it?


My Rating: (out of possible 5)

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

American Hustle  

Summary:
A con man (Christian Bale), along with his seductive partner (Amy Adams), is forced to work for a wild FBI agent (Bradley Cooper), who pushes them into a world of Jersey powerbrokers and mafia.


My Thoughts:
This film resembles an All-Star line-up and from the Cast-Role alone it is clear why this flick got so many Oscar nominations.
If all this outstanding personnel could be covenanted it must be a great movie ...

WRONG!

After watching it I now know why from this long nomination-list actually no Oscar went to this production.
Granted, the actors are doing a hell of a job to make us forget we are watching a modernised version of "The Sting". But that's basically what "American Hustle" is: An overlong re-attempt on a genre that has been tried so often that it is full of cliché-roles. It could nevertheless have been a great movie, if David O. Russell would have tried one of two possible approaches (either avoid the clichés, or to overstate them so much that it becomes a caricature), sadly he didn't have the courage to try either side of the road, stayed in the middle, and got knocked over.

It's an interesting watch, even though not for the story, but for seeing this extra-ordinary cast in roles they don't appear in too often (except for Robert de Niro, possibly).

So, "No", this movie didn't get any Oscars, but not (as so often stated) because the Academy hates to give awards to comedies, but simply because the film as such is only mediocre (at best).
Watch the original, watch "The Sting" ... which, by the way, was awarded with seven Oscars (so much for the "Comedy-Theorem").

My Rating: (out of possible 5)

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Carrie (2013)  

Summary:
A reimagining of the classic horror tale about Carrie White (Chloë Grace Moretz), a shy girl outcast by her peers and sheltered by her deeply religious mother (Julianne Moore), who unleashes telekinetic terror on her small town after being pushed too far at her senior prom.


My Thoughts:
This is a remake nobody needs.
It is stuck somewhere in the middle between "Pretty in Pink" gone bad and a half-hearted attempt on the 1976 version by DePalma.
Granted, it is hard to do a new version of a genre-classic and then actually improve the original, or even add a new twist. But what Peirce is delivering here doesn't achieve any of these two basic goals.
Possibly she only wanted to get a PG rating, but managed to fail even on this.
Moretz seems to be overstrained, or at least has watched the 1976 version too often. Her imitation of Spacek's interpretation is (especially in the ballroom sequence) so obvious that it could be funny, if it wasn't that sad.

Unneeded, uncalled for and if it wasn't for the ambitioned acting of Julianne Moore my rating would be even lower.

It seems that Moretz should reconsider her appearances in remakes.
This now is the second time you can see this gifted talent in an (at best) mediocre remake.



My Rating: (out of possible 5)

[DSig]

The other remake you refer to must have been Let Me In which had none of the heart,terror or sensuality of Let the Right One In  What could she have been thinking?

[Achim]

I thought both those films were acceptable when considered by themselves. Carrie was more reasonable as such, since this introduced new audiences to the story who may not know the original film (i am not counting the previous remakes). Let The Right One In felt more weird (or is weirder...?) as the original was only one or two years old at the time, so it seemed more pointless. Yet, it introduced a new audience to the story and maybe had a few people curious about the original.

Personally I prefer the originals.

The other remake you refer to must have been Let Me In which had none of the heart,terror or sensuality of Let the Right One In  What could she have been thinking?

She may have thought "Look at all that money in my account."...? She was surely approached for the roles and had the choice between letting someone else take it or do them herself.

There's that famous story about Michael Caine (actually two, either of which may not be true).
1. Clearly about Jaws 4: The Revenge, it is said that Michael opened the script and when he saw "Open in the Bahamas" he thought, "Cool, let's do this.".
2. This may be about Jaws 4 as well, or maybe that killer bee movie: When asked "Have you seen that film [how terrible it is]?" He answered "No, but I have seen the house it built."

But again, I would not lump in those two remakes in with neither Jaws 4 or that killer bee movie... They are decent films.