6/10
I don't think this movie has aged particularly well. What was (intentionally) shocking and controversial in the 90's is pretty tame today, and Stone's eclectic direction is more distracting and annoying. The first half of the film is entertaining, but the last half (after Mickey & Mallory's capture) is a pretty sharp decline. Disappointing.
8/10
Really spellbinding movie about one bored and alienated man's sleepless night. He cooks a gourmet meal, plays around with his sleeping wife, seduces his maid, makes art and finds a gun that may have belonged to John Dillinger. On its surface a pretty boring movie where not a whole lot happens, but I found it pretty captivating.
8.5/10
Was fortunate enough to see this with a live orchestra and 25 minutes of restored footage. I thought it was pretty great. The morals and themes are a bit tepid together but, considering this was 1926, it was undoubtably pretty risqué for its time. The effects were also surprisingly impressive.
9/10
Definitely a lot of fun, and some fantastic visuals. I find Nolan's movies often tie themselves up into knots but Inception avoided that admirably right up until the end when I suppose he just couldn't resist the temptation to leave things somewhat open-ended. Wasn't a fan of that. I thought the dual stories sat together somewhat awkwardly and took a long time to gel, and I was never really invested emotionally in the characters. But I guess it's easier to talk about what I didn't like. Otherwise it was a really great, really fun, really interesting movie that, in a perfect world, is what all summer blockbusters would aspire to be. I didn't love it, but I liked it a lot. I'm sure people keep waiting for the Nolan Midas touch to wear off, and it certainly had potential to here...but nope, not yet.
8/10
Actually a lot better than I thought it would be. The acting is pretty top notch (the German doctor in particular is like some weird Klaus Kinski/Tommy Wiseau hybrid), there's a good amount of suspense and tension throughout, the gore is as brutal as you'd expect...basically it delivers, which is more than most Fantasia movies have done for me this year. It's also surprisingly witty and totally depressing. As far as torture porn goes, it's pretty well up there in my opinion.
3/10
Incredibly disappointing. Why are we still making exorcism movies when it was all said and done (better) back in 1973? Just a note to the filmmakers, when you do a movie shot "handheld" style, as soon as you use non-diagetic music, you've completely betrayed your film. Additionally, your "cameraperson" should be filming the action as honestly as possible. Instead his filming (i.e. what we see) is so obviously directed, with the possessed girl shot from obtuse angles, through holes and behind fences, with reaction shots of the father and priest thrown in, when any sane person actually filming it would have trained his camera dead-on the possessed girl writhing around on the floor.
Finally the ending to this movie is one of the biggest cop-outs I've seen, almost felt insulting. Don't be tempted by the great poster when this comes out in a few weeks...total dud.
6/10
Kind of interesting action/horror starring Sean Bean in full Boromir mode as a knight searching for a first a way to quell the Black Plague that's ravaging his homeland, and eventually a necromancer. There was a lot of potential but I thought the film was mostly flat, although the way it juggled the characters and their morals (and the inevitable "who are the real good guys" moment) was well done. I dunno, I just think it mostly missed the mark and was pretty forgettable all told.
