HONOURABLE MENTION
HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE
Overall an interesting film but though it's story is good and it's ending tragic, it lacks the magic of it's predecessors, and though it's a dark movie, it seems to sap all the colour from the film, which was a positive thing about the previous movies. Didn't match up to either Order of the Phoenix (My personal favourite) or Prisoner of Askaban (which had the tightest and best written story). Still thoroughly entertaining.
5
Okay I'm gonna get hated for this but I genuinely think this was not that bad a movie. It was fun, it had great action, a heartfelt story and a CGI Arnie in the buff again.
Pros: The setting was a great idea, the casting was brilliant, Sam Worthington did a fantastic job as Marcus Wright. They really conveyed much of Cameron's original themes about the strength of humanity over machines from the first one and at the same time the ability for machines to grow and understand beyond their original programming if they're given a human heart (quite literally in this case). The comedy was light but funny when it was there and it didn't overdo it. There were numerous references to the preceding movies which I liked. The machines were spectacular in their variety, it could have been just T600s prowling the landscape but it wasn't there were huge machines, water machines, motorbike machines, flying machines. They also had a good soundtrack for the most part continuing the use of the Terminator motif. Plus the T-800 could have made me crap my pants.
Cons: When James Cameron made Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day, he showed us a future that was bleak and dark. For the most part they did this well but the PG-13 aspect of it really killed the atmosphere. They tried to go dark and all but it just infuriated me. Where were the skulls being crushed by slow moving machines, the decimated char-grilled remains, Cameron gave us a fearful atmosphere, McG just gave us a rather bleak looking one. They didn't incorporate the full Terminator theme which really carried a lot of emotion, I don't know if that was licensing rights but I really missed it, especially when the ending came around, they only had the initial motif. The writers had problem, originally the story was meant to be Marcus Wrights, but Christian Bale wanted to play John Connor and get a bigger part for playing him, so the did. But they failed to find the balance that a true ensemble film needs. It seemed like a Hero's Journey movie without a specific hero but an ensemble cast. Compare that to Jonah Nolan's previous work on The Dark Knight and you'll see what I mean. I think that they needed to give John Connor a little more presence on screen and Marcus Wright a little more explanation about his emotional change.
4
Another controversial decision after the changed ending but it still had the same meaning that he original one had, in fact it was probably a better one than the original (blasphemy? sure why not).
Pros: Stellar performances from a bunch of unknowns. Every actor was great in this and the director clearly knew how to get a great performance out of them all. Top marks for Zack Snyder. The film was very Neo-Noir in it's presentation and the blend of sight and sound was unlike anything I'd seen since 2001: A Space Odyssey, another trademark Snyder carried over from his previous epic "300". The storyline was gripping, the sets imaginative and the costumes were given a modern look to them whilst keep what was meant to look silly look silly and what was meant to look terrifying actually look terrifying. The blue wang didn't distract me much, unlike other people who have got some serious homophobia issues they need to work out and Carla Gugino did spectacular job as Sally Jupiter and is hot as the first time I saw her in Spin City. I had never read the Graphic Novel before this but I did afterward and I can understand the changes that were made. Like The Dark Knight the previous year, Watchmen showed us a whole new look on Graphic Novel adaptations. The Dark Knight was a loose adaptation of various Batman comics, keeping a Dark tone but with an original story and doing a fantastic job, Watchmen gave us an accurate depiction of the graphic novel pretty much to the letter removing only what in a live-action movie would seem TOTALLY ridiculous, the first iflm you learn in film school is that an audience will believe anything in the first 35mins but if you introduce something crazy afterward, you'd better be ready to get slapped in the face with a "This is bullshit!" cry from the media. That's what Giant Squid would have done. Another thing is that they made this an "R" rated movie, they weren't trying to impress kids and sell toys like they do with most Comic Book movies they were trying to impress adults and it was marketed to them as such (another great plus about The Dark Knight too even if i was PG-13).
Cons: Okay so at times the CGI wasn't perfect but I didn't mind that. I would have liked to have known a little more about their backstories, how the HELL did they become such good martial artists? I mean like seriously? Doesn't anyone question why in the name of God they became like an army of Batman clones in their fighting style yet Bruce Wayne had to spent 20 years treking through Asia learning from criminals, psychos and nutjobs to become who he was. I think the detonation of Manhattan was very underplayed. In NBC's Heroes it was a HUGE event and the explosion was ripping through the city you felt that 8 million people just died. In Watchmen, not so much. Boom... ouch... that's about it.
3
Now I normally hate Clint Eastwood as a director, he's very preachy and always trying to grab an Oscar with every movie. It's okay to do the Oscar types every so often guys but to have your "Annual Grab for an Oscar" routine it gets very old very fast, I didn't like Million Dollar Baby and I didn't like Gran Torino (OPEN YOUR ****ING MOUTH EASTWOOD YOU SOUND LIKE BATMAN!) Invictus however, was simply
SPECTACULAR!
Pros: Great cast, good direction, very good cinematography and it's about ****ing time someone did a Mandella movie, he's like the most important figure of the Post-War 20th Century! Matt Damon did a great job as did Freeman who is always an absolute powerhouse actor. Overall a fantastically crafted and heartwrenchingly emotional film.
Cons: I'm still bitter about South Africa wining the World Cup in 2007... IT WAS IN DAMMIT! IN! Also although Damon's performance was great, I did think he needed to work on the accent a little because he wasn't very clear sounding. No I'm not being racist I can understand South Africans fine.
2
Hilarious and fantastic movie. Comedies rarely get this much universal praise because of the fact that humour doesn't translate well. On the other hand, being hungover and not remember what the **** happened last night, is a VERY universal theme... I'm surprised Shakespeare never did that...
Pros: Hilarious, witty and universally applicable. Who here hasn't gotten completely trashed and woken up thinking, who and what the **** did I do last night? I for one have a had several nights like that. Yet throughout all the hilarity the movie keeps a plot going. It reminds me of Superbad or the first American Pie (even though I think the sequels were funnier), in that it tells a story whilst having great gags and laughs, not just laughs after laughs. I've found the mark of a good comedy movie is one you can quite literally remove all the jokes from and have a pretty good drama. I mean imagine this movie as a drama; three guys get drunk and drugged up in Vegas and have to find the missing friend whilst being chased down by a Chinese mob boss? That's pretty ****ing dramatic, but it's also the recipe for great comedy. Mike Tyson and the Tiger were a great part too that really made me laugh.
Cons: Not Heather Graham's best performance, perhaps because she was underused. I also think that this movie does try a little hard at times to get the jokes out when it really doesn't need to. In retrospect however this movie is still a classic.
And now the moment you've all been waiting for........ if you've been bothered to read all this.
1
I make no secret that I'm a Trekkie. But this movie was one of the best crafted movies of the last ten years. Even if you don't consider it a masterpiece, you can't say it's not an enjoyable movie. In my eyes, this movie is FAR better than George Lucas' prequels, even Revenge of the Sith, in my opinion even better than the original Star Wars. (not Empire or Jedi though).
Pros: What can I say that hasn't been said already. The acting is great, the direction is great, the cinematography is great, the effects are inch perfect, the writing is great, it techno-babble is at a minimum the story focuses on the characters. It's sharp fast paced and goes a million miles an hour with the action scenes not just there for gratuitous purposes, they are there to advance the story almost every time (except perhaps the snow monsters though they were incredible cool and scary as shit!). Leonard Nimoy did a great job returning as always, Zachary Quinto did a full-on fantastic job as Spock. Green alien sex is a plus in my books. Chris Pine as James Tiberius Kirk is great, he's not Shatner's Kirk but he doesn't stray far from what made that character great in the first place, he's a hero, he's dashing, he's a womaniser and... he... doesn't... talk... like... THIS! The Enterprise was beautiful and as for the soundtrack? This is by far the BEST SOUNDTRACK I've heard in my lifetime. That's saying something because I'm a big movie soundtrack fan and I listened to this and was in awe, even the old school Star Trek OSTs which were great, don't match up to this. Wrath of Khan is the only musical score that comes close (Horner did win an Oscar for Titanic several years later.) I think Giachinno deserves the Grammy he's been nominated for and give him that damn Oscar too!
Cons: The villain Nero has a great back story that I've now read it but they just brushed STRAIGHT past it all, which frustrated me. It would have been nice to see Nero and Old Spock , the true nemeses of each other go face to face for a moment. The physics at times is a little dodgy at times too.
Sidenote: My only problem isn't so much of a con, so I'm not including it as one, but it's that this movie was not as good as The Wrath of Khan (which I think is as good as any movie out there and is in my eyes the ultimate way to use a sci-fi premise), it's themes were epic it's stories were great and the characters did undergo a great development, but at times the characters seemed too archetypal, possibly because the actors did such a good job of being the roles. It was very Hero's Journey in it's story telling, but Khan was Hero's Journey as well as being an intimate character study too. However it was still a fantastic, action packed, emotionally driven , very well told story, let the sequel go above and beyond it.
Top 5 Movies of 2009
Originally Posted by Killin Vapor
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