Reviews

Yes it isn't Matt Damon, that's right. It's an attempt to prolong an excellent series. Okay so let's watch the movie. I scanned the reviews before I saw the movie and went in thinking I'd be disappointed. After the bloated Dark Night, and the slightly less bloated Total Recall I expected to be checking my watch 90 minutes in as I did with those offerings, but when Bourne 4 ended I felt disappointed that it was ending. It is very fast moving, the action is excellent, the script is a brave attempt to weave the previous films into a new take on the series and I didn't find it poor, clichéd or in any way offensive.

The acting was very good except for one scene where Rachel Weiz went distractingly over the top but she was otherwise so good that that was easily forgiven.

What's wrong with the movie? I couldn't tell you. It went past like a freight train, was very entertaining and what else can you ask for?

Why did they bother remaking this - and remaking it badly? Did we really need a reboot of this series? Who makes these decisions?

It seems like only yesterday I saw the first version and from memory it was far more entertaining and less painful to watch. This is not even better CGI. The script was labored, the acting was dull, the action scenes lifted it momentarily but it really felt like it had all been done before and was more fun.

Why bother making it - why bother seeing it?

Yawn.

Yawn.

Yawn.

For the first hour I was enjoying it. It had an actual story (a fairy story but why not?), the characters were not unbelievable, the actors seemed to have a grip on their parts (Charlize Theron had a half-nelson on hers but she's good to look at), the pacing was great, the visuals were just right, and everything looked set for a fine time.

Then what happened? The dwarfs happened. They started off well too. But then it seemed like someone got cold feet and decided a Grimm's Fairytale was too grim for a modern audience. Suddenly we're into an Avatar-like CGI fairy land, and the plot has gone into a sub-Avatar 'life force meets she who will do right by it' dead end. We get a mystical white hart out of Harry Potter, we get the dwarfs recovering from their lumbago and constipation because Snow White is among them, we get another mind-numbing drivel-powered subplot that seems to be meant to encourage the down-trodden masses to rise against their oppressors. We get wee little fairies who were taking their stage directions out of 'Hook'.

What happened to the story? Oh, here it is, Snow White eats the poisoned apple in a great scene that put some life back into the thing, but then we were off into 'Lord of the Rings' and 'Braveheart'. Dudes, I was saying to my popcorn, keep your heads down because this has started to seriously suck.

Then between some other random scenes that did nothing to restore any sense of hope the Prince/Dukes' son kisses Snow White but it's a revivification fail. Then the Huntsman kisses Snow White and she comes back to life in time to tell the Duke to get off his butt and risk the lives of all his subjects in some more LOTR/Braveheart scenes. Oh, here are the dwarfs again. Ah, the showdown between SW and Evil Queen. What point are they making here? Hard to tell. Don't suck the life out of virgins? Don't be nasty to people? Stay away from mirrors? The EQ dies. SW becomes a Good Queen.

Phew, so far by my watch we could easily have done without 45 minutes of gratuitous drivel and plagiarism from some much better movies, but maybe the director has just been setting us up for the big spectacularly mushy happy ever after ending.

Omigod, it's more drivel. Fine, fine, come on buddy lets do the needful now and get SW with the Huntsman and end the thing. But no. The last scene is a digitized loop of happy undowntrodden masses shouting let's hear it for the queen and I guess we're supposed to be intrigued wondering who SW chooses for her husband. Why are we supposed to be wondering that? My guess is that they had a better ending but polled it and found that some of the test audience liked SW pairing up with the Huntsman and some traditionalists wanted her to end up with the Prince/Duke's son, so they split the difference. Yawn.

Not many movies made over 50 years ago stand the test of time. Part of the problem is changing tastes, different idioms, more (or less) sophisticated tastes, jaded palate, addiction to TV-driven entertainment, and evolution of the cinematic arts. This movie, however, somehow survives the natural attrition of time and still entertains in all aspects despite its age.

I am not sure if it's the clever script, the wise direction, the pacing, or the storyline but Mr. Blandings 1948 touches every base, involves and entertains without any need to retrogress one's tastes or standards.

I've seen the leads in other movies and they were fine, but this is an exception.

It isn't ranked very high on the list of great comedies but in my opinion it is superior as a work to The Philadelphia Story and the other also excellent comedies of the period.

This movie works on many levels and despite my expectations (that I would have to condescend to enjoy it), I found that it exceeded them.

There are many great scenes in here: the well digging, the cupboard, the breakfast in new york, the love scene, the drive, the bathroom scenes, the list goes on...and on.

This is just a great movie that shines above all the remakes and truly shines in its own right as a great piece of film making.

Even more than 50 years later...

Definitely recommended.

I went into this with high expectations as the saying goes, along with my two friends; we even hung around to catch the late nite session because strangely our cinema complex only had two showings a day of this hot new release. Huh?

We were three of twelve people sitting in the theatre. Huh? Apparently on opening day earlier in the week, due to all the hype that has apparently infected the IMDb ratings, the admission lines for this film had caused a minor traffic problem. Where was everyone? Regardless we three certainly expected two hours of lively entertainment and hunched down in our seats. We overlooked the first thirty minutes and the awful soundtrack. We glanced at each other as we went into the next thirty minutes: 'Nice camera work,' one of us said. By the one hour mark I was wondering when the movie was going to get going. Yes, there was Ryan Gosling, he's okay for an automaton, maybe that's the character. There's a sort of clichéd love interest - single mother with young son. Yawn. Oh, here's some sort of Goodfellas type character. Hmm, OK. Gosh the dialogue is sparse but maybe that's a good thing because when the actors do speak it sounds pretty lame. Oh, here we go, something is going to happen now. Ah, someone is killed. A scene in a strip club. That's original. Violence and gore. Right. But when is this thing going to take off? Check the watch. Probably another 30 mins to go. Hmm, well may as well see it through. Oh, it's over? That's a pleasant surprise. Great let's get the hell out of here.

'What was that?' one of my friends asked.

'It was one of those movies where all the good stuff is in the trailer,' said the other.

We all agreed.

The plot is dullsville. The acting is robotic. The night cinematography is technically excellent. None of the characters are likable. The dialogue is clichéd. The pace is labored. The sound track is awful. Hypnotically bad.

At least by the end of the movie I'd solved two mysteries - why there were only two sessions for a new release and why people stayed away in droves after the opening. Obviously people are voting with their feet.

It seems that the consensus of opinion is that this is another masterful work by the Coen Bros, but it left me disappointed. In a nutshell it felt to me that they never got the movie together.

The story has some intriguing elements - the young girl seeking revenge, her character, her choice of Rooster as the hunter; Rooster himself; the Labouef character and his contrast with Rooster; the nature of the villain (before he is seen);and the usual thrill of a chase. But somehow all these fine elements didn't ever seem to come together - I kept waiting for it to happen and it never did except in the most slap-dash and corny way. Even the last scene failed to ring true: it was possible to suspend disbelief over Mattie's character for the sake of letting the young actress show her stuff and the director to add a curious dimension to the character, but in the end I didn't care about her at all.

There was a real tension being built up to the confrontation with the villain but from then on the move just seemed to run out of gas and depend on clichés to get it thru to the down-beat ending.

Cinematography was excellent, script was good, cast was good, but somewhere in there the directors lost interest and failed to do a professional job of making a movie.

This is a very remarkable movie. After the first 30 minutes I felt I had had more pleasure than usual from a film. This was an odd feeling considering how old-fashioned and simple the direction seemed. After an hour I was amazed at how engrossed I was in the story and the characters. I paused the movie several times to reflect on it. The cinematography is minimalist compared to current styles; the direction is out of sight and unobvious; the story is very simple, based on progress through time, but covering in its scope all the important questions of life, death, honesty, honor, and that most difficult to define quality – compassion. It provides a viewpoint on love, friendship, war, peace, victory, defeat, courage, understanding and the human spirit. Quite an amazing tour de force. I understand why Churchhill wanted this banned – it was not the mood he needed to bolster his own position and rally the population, yet it is more honest than any of his speeches, and more human than he ever succeeded in being. War is a horrible thing. Life is a glorious thing: I think that is the message of this movie.

This is my vote for the whole series. Considering the oh so lame movie offerings since the first JP I found this entire series very entertaining and definitely worth watching, if only for the excellent story premise and cinematography. #1 was clearly the best because it didn't talk down to the audience and demanded attention. The second and third in the series took a little too much for granted, too inclined to lean on the proved, successful moments of the first and so not innovative in any way. Yet, there are more high points than low points, and they are each excellent examples of the film-maker's craft. They all carry you away to a whole different plane, professionally and enjoyably, and apart from Avatar and a few other exceptions like LOTR,early Harry Potters, perhaps a couple I haven't named, few other movie series have been as well constructed. Michael Crichton's imagination lives on beyond him.

Having recently worked through a dozen or so samurai films, including Kurosawa's generally brilliant offerings, my taste had become fairly attuned to the genre and although several were very good the style was beginning to wear thin. Until Hidden Blade. This is an exceptional film; original in story, characters and direction. The plot is quite simple: a samurai whose father's disgrace has reduced the family in status, lives with a maid and a servant. He is in love with the maid, and she with him, but the social conventions and their own decency prevent this from becoming anything more than a tender friendship. The samurai's sword school companion gets himself into trouble and finally their sword-brother relationship leads the plot to a climax. There are several fights, a background of western military training being given to the samurai in this area, but above all that is the compassion and decency of the samurai and his maid. There is not a wasted moment in the direction; the scenery is beautiful; the acting is very engaging; the story seems to move at a gentle pace but it's impossible to take your eyes off the screen - one of those truly well- made movies where the technical excellence is so understated that you know only that you're being swept along with the story. Highly, highly recommended.

Fast-paced, stylish, great sets, good action, and enough brain teasing to cater to the not yet dead-in-the-head, but is it Sherlock? I guess it is now...

It says in the trivia notes that Downey Jr studied Granada Television's Jeremy Brett's characterization of the great sleuth. I'm glad he didn't study him too closely because I much prefer Downey as Holmes. If the image of a lean, ascetic, high fore-headed, aquiline-nosed, drawn-cheeked, somewhat saturnine detective has to be banished, why not go all the way and replace him with someone Conan Doyle never had in mind in a million years but who is at least charming.

I suppose it all comes down to casting and this was cast by current box- office appeal, with no regard to the fictional characters. The best or the most glaring example of this is Rachel McAdams who seems to have wandered off the set of a contemporary romantic comedy into London of the 1890s. Her presence in every scene is like having one of the period characters suddenly put a cellphone to his ear and take a suck at a Starbucks cup. The set design is fantastic: London of the time must've looked a lot like this, and although the clash exaggerates the time warp effect the sets win in the end, and with the excellent supporting cast make the movie credible, while Downey and Law do their best to make it in-credible - but that's what we're paying for after all.

If you want the real Sherlock, and envision the character as Conan Doyle imagined him, read the books. If you want 2 hours of amusement go see this and you won't be disappointed.

That's the scary part - the word of mouth on this movie had filled the theater on a Monday night - first time I've ever seen that in my local cinema. And yes it really is a terrible movie if you have any - ANY - expectation of seeing something you can think about. I think for anyone with any intellect at all the only way to enjoy it would be to turn off the volume and just fast-forward thru the truly awful "sensitive" scenes (that made me yawn heavily) and admire the CGI - and really you don't need much of an intellect to do that - however it's a higher level than where this movie is pitched. It's actually a low grade soap opera with stunning special effects - so thoroughly "American" right down to the divorced father, disaffected son (in fact I counted 5 father-and-son subplots) and the mindless blonde with a dog (although she was supposed to be Russian) that the movie was really about the end of American civilization because no one else got a look in - but no - wait! It wasn't the end of American civilization because all the dweebs who were spoiling the movie by their unbelievably corny dialog and 'life values' ended up being the progenitors of the new planetary civilization. Horrifying thought right there. That is the real disaster but the movie ended before that could be explore in any meaningful way. Too bad. But as i said - the cinema was full...

The premise is simple and the movie takes place in a warehouse: one man has been given the killer of his son to exact vengeance, but that's not really how it is...

The acting was good for the most part - the script was fine, the direction was solid and the story line was fine with small doses of suspension of disbelief. But hey it's not a documentary.

Maybe the denouement could've been a little more clear but it worked.

Quite gory and a lot of violence so this definitely isn't one for the family video night until the kids are asleep.

Enjoy.

I thought I was the only one of our family of five who was finding the movie extremely labored and boring but afterward my kids made their group pronouncement: "That sucked." We were all looking forward to a couple of hours of comic relief, coke, and popcorn but the movie was hard work of the forced laughs kind - and after half an hour no one was trying anymore.

There seems to be a formula for making the second of a series that goes something like 'sit around and figure out what was good about the first one and then grind away at those things until they bleed or turn into dust'. Last week we saw the latest StarTrek and it was a very pleasant surprise, NITM was not pleasant and it was not a surprise. Sometimes it's hard to decide if the script is at fault. The movie lost me in the first twenty minutes because it just dragged up plot cliché after cliché - so much I began to think it was made for TV not for cinemas. Ben Stiller did his thing and was not funny doing it. There were about 5 independent jokes during the whole movie that brought a few chuckles out of the audience, but for the rest of the time it was more an insult to one's intelligence than entertainment. My advice is skip it and see it if you are bored one night in a year or two.

I have given this 10 because it's flawless. The script is amazing, the cast is superb, the direction is perfect, the story is completely gripping and believable, and the final scene is stunning. Jeff Bridges does a fantastic job as the president - an engrossing performance. I always feel it's the mark of a great actor when you just have to watch them - can't take your eyes off them - when they appear in a scene. In fact all the leads have this same quality and it is brought out admirably by director Rod Lurie. The story is the confirmation process for a female vice president, who is being witch-hunted by the chairman of the confirmation committee for past sexual indiscretions. Immensely satisfying cinematic experience.

If you like suspense, awesome acting, and an exceptionally well-made movie, see this one.

No complaints at all about this gripping movie. The plot is original compared to the usual cops versus bad guys trash that often gets pumped out. The story centers around an international bank that makes its profits by supplying weapons to combatants in the various conflicts that cover the planet. Clive Owen is an Interpol guy trying to bring the bank down. The script is excellent, the acting is very good and the photography is above par for this kind of film. Excellent direction. This movie doesn't try too hard, is free of the clichés that often serve instead of fresh ideas and has a great shoot-out where the surprises and action keep you on the edge of your seat without trying to overwhelm with gore and jerky camera work.

Go see it, you'll enjoy it.

I saw this because of the reviews on this site. I had seen the trailer and dismissed it as another DC Comics/Comicon/X Men/Dark Knight/you name it wanna-be and I've seen enough for a while thanks. But the reviews were up there at 8.5 so I spent my bucks and went along expecting to be surprised. I was surprised by the amount of gore. The sex scene surprised me too. It also surprised my kids. Unfortunately those weren't pleasant surprises - and I am definitely not a prude but the sex and so much violence were so blatantly gratuitous that I really wondered what the other reviewers had seen in the movie. The plot was indecipherable for the first 15-20 minutes then finally one of the characters explained something and I got the general idea - ex-super (but not really super) heroes with character flaws...um... retired because of a law forbidding the wearing of masks. Richard Nixon was in there somewhere, too. And now in 1985 - the 'now' - of the movie...with Nixon still President... um right - someone was killing the ex-superheroes. But then the next character explained something else and I lost it again. Meanwhile one of the ex-superheroes isn't ex because he's building some energy thing to save the world while Russia and the US are about to destroy each other... he glows blue and talks like an announcer in a shopping mall and he wants to live on Mars.... It makes me weary just trying to sort that much to write it down and that's just the back-story, sort of... Wow. Well, anyway, I thought it was all just way over the top, way over-produced, some occasional good acting but way too gory, way too jarring for no good reason at all, way, way WAY too corny in the last 20 minutes. And just really a waste of good popcorn. One reviewer compared this movie to Brazil and that prompted me to see it. He must have meant the country because he couldn't possibly have meant the movie.

Before I agreed with my Chinese stepdaughter to go see Australia, I worked thru three or four pages of these reviews to get an overview, but strike me lucky with a drunk dingo if most reviewers didn't either hate it or love it. The only the way out of that was to go and see it for myself. So I did.

Being Australian I have learned not to take cinematic depictions of my country seriously. I was ready to be amused and embarrassed in equal parts. The first ten minutes replaced the smirk on my face with a smile of surprise: the opening was great. Original even. The narration by the kid worked pretty much. Visually the movie grabbed me like a Darling River croc and didn't let go, even later when I wanted it to let me go. Nicole Kidman as the caricature of a twittery English woman was slightly irritating but you can get used to anything if you have to watch it long enough. Hugh Jackman brought a welcome sense of something or other and I happily accepted that this movie was going to be a sort of overlarge, sort of cartoonish offering with great visuals and iconic characters and events. Not to be taken seriously but enjoyed for what it was. A MOVIE.

So I enjoyed it. I admit the last hour got a bit slow and predictable, like the last six tinnies from your third case of Fosters. I thought the heroes and heroine did a bit too much running into each other's arms like, and the director was serving up cinematic clichés like a barmaid with three arms, but if that got up your nose you just had to tune out the dialogue and watch the pretty scenery.

By the end credits I didn't feel like leaping to my feet and singing Waltzing Matilda or beating myself over the head with a fossilized goanna because my great-grandparents were a bunch of bigoted drongoes who mistreated the indigenous peoples. After all, we said we was bloody sorry, didn't we?? I got out of the theater as fast as I could because at 2.5 hours Australia is almost as long as a wet week and that's too bloody long when a large coke has been doing a tour of your plumbing.

Was it an epic? Nah, not unless you really want to call it one for personal reasons. Was it really, really bad? Nah. Some bits were really really good, and on balance it was no worse than a lot of other offerings.

Was it worth seeing? Yes, no worries. If you can develop amnesia and go into the cinema forgetting every movie you've ever seen you might even love it madly. Otherwise, just accept the fact that it was made to make money so it tries to appeal to every conceivable part of the viewing spectrum.

Was it worth seeing twice? Only with the sound turned down.

First, I want to say that some time ago I learned to distrust critics and instead read the reviews here on IMDb. I've never been misled, even when an equal number of viewers liked and disliked the same movie because that let me know there was a matter of taste in play, and that's fine. Sometimes a movie pleases everyone, but that's so rare I cant really think of one. People have different tastes and that's good. But the value of IMDb reviews is that they are based on a genuine response to the movie - not a bias, or some other agenda.

For example, the Fox critic Roger Friedman listed this movie as one of the worst of 2008 - without having seen the movie. That's right. He rated it without seeing it. It was a classic and reprehensible case of bias and perhaps even bigotry since he was engaging in Tom Cruise bashing which is usually practiced in conjunction with dissing Tom's religion.

So I don't trust critics to tell the truth or give an unbiased review.

I saw Valkyrie and enjoyed it immensely. I've studied the Hitler period and was familiar with most of the events but the movie educated me while it thrilled and entertained me. It is a movie I was happy to take my teen-aged children to see because it also educated and entertained them. I thought the cast did a great job. The script was outstanding and the direction excellent. Tom Cruise gave a dimension to Von Stauffenberg that deepened my understanding of the events. The supporting cast were brilliant.

I highly recommend it.

PS. It's some time since I wrote this review and I took thirty minutes tonight to read the other reviews on this movie, not surprisingly they are mostly very positive and unanimous in praising it. Interestingly, the critics, including the one named above, who trashed the movie without even seeing it, obviously did so in an effort to kill it at the box office. While many other reviewers noted this too, I'd like to point out that those critics and possibly some of the people who 'dont like Tom Cruise because of his weird religion' are actually following the same path that made it possible for Hitler to kill off millions of Jews who also had a 'weird religion'. Considering the historical background of Valkyrie I find that quite ironical.

Amazing how many people liked this. Just a bad third installment. Why try to wedge a boring, lifeless love story in the middle of an already unbelievable plot? Don't ask me. It really didn't work and made the action sequences come like commercial breaks in a soap opera. The script sucked. The direction was strange - none of the action sequences had any suspense whatsoever, as if they were just being slammed thru to get them done. The editing was out of a box labeled 'Copied from the Bourne movies'. The performances, well you don't watch these movies for the method acting but you should be able to get some help with the suspension of disbelief. Nu-uh. One long yawn. Skip it and hire #1 and watch that again. It'll will be more rewarding.

Like a previous reviewer I don't know why this had a limited release. It is MUCH more value for ticket money than a number of other recent offerings and its faults are minor compared to the good qualities.

The story is basically a sci-fi plot but since the lead character's space ship crashes in the Iron Age, among Vikings, you can understand that most of the movie takes place with Viking themes and scenery.

The basic plot is quite sound and for the first 40 minutes the movie is VERY gripping. It tends to go a little flat at the end of the middle act and the start of the third act but effects, gore and very tense action compensate for those not too engrossed in the intricacies of the story. A pity about that because it looked like the story had more to offer and was chopped up somewhat to fit in a bunch of set pieces. I realize this is now making the movie sound a little lame: it isn't Lord of the Rings, but it is definitely worth the price of the ticket. See it expecting to be entertained for about 95% of the time and you wont be disappointed.

Maybe I don't know what constitutes a good movie but this one drove me out of the theatre after the first thirty minutes. The camera work was of the new wave jerky hand-held style which is meant to make the thing more immediate or dramatic or something but just gives me a headache. The acting, if you can call it acting was way over the top, basically just expletive driven rants punctuated by tense expressions. The characters were cookie cut - the domineering father, the good brother/bad brother, the broken marriage/love non-interest with lame dialogue "I have to do this for me",etc etc etc. After the first thirty minutes I asked myself "Do I know what this is about and do I care? Do I really want to sit here while it rolls on to the predictable end?" I answered myself and walked out.

I was surprised to find this movie listed in the top IMDb movies so I decided to watch it again - and eventually agreed wholeheartedly. It really is a very well scripted and well crafted movie. The surprise is that it's a franchise and technically a no-brainer. Batman will always attract viewers so why bust a gut making it better than good? However this is a cut above the average movie and really does belong in the same company as Zhivago, Gandhi, and Godfather. In several ways it is better than some of its company because it benefits from the modern improvements in film-making. But aside from the staging, budget and computer aids that make the action so real and engrossing the script is excellent, the performances are some of the best of the actors involved, the direction is almost perfect and the editing has been done carefully and with a real eye to quality and audience understanding and appreciation. I can think of over a dozen movies off the top of my head that have recently aspired to the whole effect that Batman Begins achieves apparently without effort. It is almost embarrassing and sacriligeous to say that this 'blockbuster' episode in a worn-out series outshines many more earnest cinematic efforts but in fact it truly does.'Blockbuster' usually equates to big effects that disguise weaknesses of plot, characters, and pacing but this move exceeds where others falter and fail. If you haven't viewed it recently I recommend seeing it again for what it is - quite the contemporary masterpiece.

I saw this recently and remembered how good English TV drama can be. Denholm Elliot's Smiley is so good that I didn't even feel urged to compare it with Alec Guinness'. They both took the character on so well that in each case it was a very complete performance. They both captured the deceptively calm and inoffensive persona - and the sharp biting anger that seems to come from nowhere. The story is good, the mood and supporting cast are all tops. Some of the answers to the mystery can be picked up early on but who cares? The entire production is so well crafted that it's a pleasure just watching it all roll out scene by scene.