Archive for Release Year: 2009

34 posts from 30 September 2024 to 16 March 2016.

  • Surrogates

    Surrogates might be a mishmash of every sci-fi film in the last decades, but then it takes large cues from Snow Crash too.

  • The Lovely Bones

    Peter Jackson does Life Is Strange

  • A Perfect Getaway

    A thriller that cheats.

  • The International

    I have seen this several times now over the years, and it never fails to impress, even when you know the twists. Bourne with much less action and more evilness.

  • The Pink Panther 2

    Should be named “The Pink Panther: You Too?”

  • District 9

    Wikus is the real everyman. A dumb bureaucrat who keeps fucking up.

  • Up in the Air

    Oh, American comedies. Predictable as ever, emotionally manipulative, gratuitous nudity. Still, this is quite charming, like a puppy that wags the tail at you while you can see the poop in the distance.

  • Jennifer's Body

    Bog standard high school horror film, of course it’s a thinly veiled selection between those who have sex, and those who want to. Not sure why I even bother…

  • State of Play

    An old-school political thriller that screws everything up at the eleventh hour. It wrapped everything up cleanly, but then in the last scenes pulls a fast one, and turns the plot around. Why?

  • Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant

    The protagonist is such a such a charisma black hole, he is billed third, and the “sidekick” was capable of playing both roles. The amount of squandered talent is staggering.

  • The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

    God wants, Gilliam dreams, the Film is shot. Like stretching The Brothers Grimm into the present and into the religious.

  • Fantastic Mr. Fox

    Wes Anderson translates his style to stylistic “bad” stop motion. It works as well as his human-starring films, the emotional rollercoaster remains.

  • Watchmen

    Hooked by the intro, this hits the floor running but runs out of steam in the middle part. The perils of having to explain the origin stories of all characters, and the mandatory sex scenes.

  • Push

    Push, push, give me yeyo… Baby’s first X-Men. Ends with a sequel hook, just to crap all over the already mediocre plot. Did not see that coming…

  • Invictus

    Clint Eastwood pulls a Ron Howard in the Obama years. It’s incredible that the director of this hagiography of Mandela, pacifism and race relations is the same guy that spoke to an empty chair. Schizophrenic.

  • Carriers

    Can you do a zombie film without zombies? Yes, but it’s just The Happening with less killer trees.

  • Como Desenhar um Círculo Perfeito

    This title resembling a YouTube tutorial hides a muddled bunch of nothing with some French music as soundtrack. That imagined osmosis could make up for the lack of everything else.

  • Mother

    Psycho Marple. Just like all criminal Bong Joon-Ho films, the whodunnit appears to be a very complex web of motives and suspects, but turns into a nearly throwaway situation, completely random and unpredictable.

  • Horseman

    Random Ziyi Zhang in an American Nordic noir ripoff (directed by the dude from Smack my Bitch Up and produced by Michael Bay, a match made in hell). Too many characters just appear out of nowhere, and die in the next scene.

  • The Haunting in Connecticut

    What the heck is this? The Christian Rock cover of the greatest horror hits. Let us soil ourselves to provide Christians with their vanilla terror.

  • Whiteout

    White Noise…

  • In the Loop

    A feature-length The Thick of It series, about war and walls (either Gaza or some local council). Has familiar faces on similar situations, but they get fucked in less time.

  • The Canyon

    One of the 127 ripoffs, this has an eloped couple. It came out the year before, so it’s technically in the clear, I guess. Rates pretty high on the cosmopolitrometer, I would say a 7.

  • My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done

    David Lynch produces a Werner Herzog film. It’s much weirder than you can imagine, just full-on craziness.

  • The Young Victoria

    Just here for Emily Blunt, this is a very short and narrow look at a small part of Victoria’s life, focused exclusively on palace intrigue, not even a glimpse into the outside world.

  • Solomon Kane

    An origin story. How did a philanderer, murderous wretch privateering in the name of Glorianna, a guy that sailed under Francis Drake, turned into a pilgrim warrior-monk? By watching pilgrims die at the hand of raiders while his vow of peace remained unbroken.

  • Angels and Demons

    The one with Ayelet Zurer as the CERN scientist. Langdon gets some lascivious looks but not even first base so far.

  • Inglourious Basterds

    Oh my lord, a bit part for Léa Seydoux? Mike Meyers in a non-comedic role, post-The Love Guru? Fucking Eli Roth, man! What kind of crazy casting is this?

  • À Deriva

    Damn, Vincent Cassel can talk passable Brazilian Portuguese, with a strong accent. Not a bit part either, a large role. Not sure how much is ADR, but he definitively dubbed himself. This is actually a Bildungsroman for the real protagonist, the older daughter. Quite a reactionary tale.

  • Drag Me To Hell

    Whoa, the tone of this is all over the place, it’s too serious and dramatic for a comedy horror, but too silly for a proper drama. Tries to have it’s farm cake and eat it too. No wonder Sam Raimi moved to Marvel films, where this kind of appeasement to everyone is their bread and butter.

  • The Road

    It’s not that bleak, actually. They find “plenty” of food (and eventually lose it), there are several bands of marauding cannibals, but also regular people too. Just like the real world, with much less people.

  • Public Enemies

    A less focused, 1930’s Heat. There’s not just one cop and one robber, it’s a lot of robbers with distinct allegiances and a boatload of cops (and even some bureaucrats like Hoover). It’s still better than The Untouchables, but doesn’t hold a candle to any of the Scarface films.

  • Shutter Island

    I guess Scorsese is the real monster. What’s he doing, dipping his toes into stuff he knows nothing about? Or does he direct every script that comes up to him with violence against woman?

  • A Serious Man

    That’s some esoteric shit. If this is an autobiography of the Coen brothers, were they the perma-high kid who goes through the motions at the bar mitzvah?