Watched in '07 (with spoiler taglines) [most recent: The Queen]

Submitted by diaskeaus on Tue, 01/09/2007 - 06:56
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  1. 1.01.07 - Children of Men: A government official helps a terrorist organization transport an illegal alien pregnant with the world's first baby in 18 years, across the border of a country dealing with the effects of massive worldwide infertility, ethnic uprising, and civil war. 5.0
  2. 1.04.07 - Half Nelson: A middle school teacher in the inner city medicates his increasing depression with crack, while his star student riddles out where she stands in the world of drugs and crime. 3.0
  3. 1.04.07 - Les Choristes: A burned-out composer takes on the job of supervisor at a school for dangerous boys in the backwaters of France and forms an inspirational, voluntary choir out of his students. 5.0
  4. 1.08.07 - Flirting Scholar: A famous painter trained in magical kung fu courts a wealthy maid of an opposing household. 3.0
  5. 1.09.07 - Ghost in the Shell: Solid State Society: Section 9 takes up a case about a government project involved in the abduction of children through brain-washing technology. 4.0
  6. 1.10.07 - Little Miss Sunshine: A quirky family finally admits to being quirky through the experience of a roadtrip. 3.0
  7. 1.10.07 - Snakes on a Plane: To prevent a witness from testifying against him, a criminal rigs several cages of poisonous, exotic snakes to take over an airplane crossing the Pacific. 2.5
  8. 1.10.07 - Idiocracy: A military librarian takes part in a top secret hibernation experiment and accidentally wakes up 500 years in the future when humankind has degenerated into idiots and finds himself the smartest man in the world. 2.5
  9. 1.11.07 - Postmen in the Mountains: A father, retiring from his job as a postman, accompanies his son on his first postman tour through a mountainous area of Hunan. 4.5
  10. 1.11.07 - Aeon Flux: 500 years in the future, a tyrannical government rules over the fledging survivors of a worldwide virus, while an assassin uncovers the secrets behind mankind's demise. 3.5
  11. 1.12.07 - The Covenant: Four descendants of the magically endowed Salem witches, must deal their insane, long-lost "brother," another magically endowed, more powerful descendant of a Salem witch. 4.0
  12. 1.12.07 - Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest: Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann, engaged to be married but arrested on charges of treason, attempt to clear their names by finding a lost treasure held by the enigmatic Captain Jack Sparrow, who is attempting to exorcise an ancient curse by finding the heart of a sea-demon. 4.0
  13. 1.13.07 - The Producers: Two conniving Broadway producers seek to steal two million dollars from investors with an elaborate accounting scheme by releasing the worst show ever, which backfires and turns out to be a hit. 3.5
  14. 1.13.07 - Pan's Labyrinth: During the latter days of the Spanish Civil War, a young girl and her mother flee to a mountain villa engaged with remnants of the losing communists, while the girl has visions of herself being the princess of a fantasy underworld, required to complete three tasks before she can return to her immortal home. 4.5
  15. 1.14.07 - M.A.S.H.: During the Korean War, a group of smart-alec mobile army surgical hospital officers widdle away their time by questioning authority, playing golf, football and pranks, and plying their trade on the front line, while walking the tight line between professionalism and juvenile behavior just enough to get by. 4.0
  16. 1.15.07 - Howl's Moving Castle: A young girl, transformed into an old woman by a cruel, selfish and jealous witch, runs away and becomes the maid of the wizard Howl in his magical castle, while the wizard battles inner demons and tries to stop a a war between the magical kingdoms and the machine. 4.5
  17. 1.16.07 - Origin: Spirits of the Past: Genetically altered sentient plants, buried deep within the core of the moon, break out and destroy earth's civilization during a period of nuclear war, and three hundred years later a boy accidentally awakens the hibernating daughter of a scientist who built a machine to eradicate the mutant plants as well as all life on earth. 3.0
  18. 1.18.07 - Apocalypto: During the waning days of the Mayan empire, a village chieftain is abducted as a human sacrifice by a Mayan raiding party, but due to a series of miraculous events is able to escape, attempting to return home to his pregnant wife while evading and killing an elite party of warriors who hunt him. 4.5
  19. 1.20.07 - Death of a President: A fictional documentary about the assassination investigation of President George Walker Bush. 4.0
  20. 1.21.07 - If Only: A boyfriend is given a second chance after he dreams his girlfriend dies in a car accident, and fights against her fated death. 3.5
  21. 1.22.07 - The Painted Veil: A distant doctor and his immature wife move to Shanghai during the Opium War, and while there the doctor takes on a job of treating cholera in a rural, mountain village and the two of them wrestle with the effects of an extra-marital affair, anti-foreign sentiment, and their own love for each other. 4.5
  22. 1.22.07 - Flags of Our Fathers: After they are shipped home to sell war bonds for a bankrupt America, the three surviving soldiers who planted the famous American flag on Iwo Jima struggle with war memories and life direction. 4.0
  23. 1.23.07 - The Pursuit of Happyness: The true story of Chris Gardner, a down-on-his-luck medical scanner salesman in San Francisco, who takes on an internship at Dean Witter while homeless with his son, working tirelessly day and night to pay motel bills, IRS late payments, and the standards of basic living. 5.0
  24. 1.23.07 - Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events: An eccentric and murderous actor attempts to steal the fortune of his distant relatives, three brilliant child heirs to an enormous fortune, by arson, murder, and deception. 4.0
  25. 1.24.07 - Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas: After being framed for stealing the sanctified Book of Peace, a thieving and skillful rogue sets the sails of his god-crushing pirate crew toward the mythical land of Tartarus to steal back the book from Eris, a goddess of chaos, while accompanied by the flighty and headstrong Marina, the betrothed to Sinbad's best friend Prince Proteus, who offered up his own life in exchange to the executioner's block if Sinbad does not return in ten days to Syracuse with the holy object. 4.0
  26. 1.24.07 - Mulan II: The Hero of China, free-spirited Fa Mulan along with her recent fiance General Chang, transport three of the Emperor's sheltered but honor-bound daughters, to the local nation of Qigong for an alliance of arranged marriage to protect against the warmongering Mongolians, while Mu Shu, Mulan's jealous and selfish guardian spirit, makes plans to break up their romance in order to secure his own place as master of the family's spirit temple. 2.0
  27. 1.25.07 - Still Life: During a period of reconstruction of the Three Gorges Dam area as thousands of homes and buildings are demolished to retrofit the dam to hydroelectric power, two separate people from Shanxi province simultaneously travel there searching for their former spouses, a coal-miner whose purchased wife ran away from him sixteen years ago with his daughter, and a young woman who hasn't seen her philandering husband for two years. 4.0
  28. 1.27.07 - Happy Feet: An outcast penguin, born disabled tone-deaf but with a special gift for dancing, escorts a broken, dying prophet to the Forbidden Shore to prove to himself, his love, and his family, that the fish disappearing from the world is not because of fate, but because of strange aliens living beyond the ice. 4.0
  29. 1.27.07 - Myth: Jack, a well-known archaeologist, dreams of himself as an ancient, legendary Qin general, who falls in love with the Emperor's concubine and must stop a coup d'etat, while in the real world he unravels the mystery of his dreams through a series of adventures, including searching the tomb of an Indian king for a priceless levitation-inducing meteorite, and discovering the lost burial site of Emperor Qin; his old nemesis, a greedy tomb-raider, follows him, hoping to find the immortality pill of legend. 3.0
  30. 1.28.07 - The Prestige: After a magician accidentally kills the wife of his partner in a show, the two become rivals, cleverly sabotaging each others' work and both slowly becoming monsters in the process, eventually leading the husband of the slain wife to seek out a futuristic device developed by Nikolai Tesla in order to fulfill his dream of pushing the limits on magic and science, and claim revenge on his nemesis. 4.5
  31. 2.28.07 - Ghost Rider: Record-breaking, too-cool-for-you stunt biker Johnnie Blaze, must fulfill his end of a trick-bargain with the devil, for his father's life, and hunt down the devil's own power hungry and rebellious son, as the invincible Ghost Rider. 3.5
  32. 3.01.07 - Marie Antoinette: A philosophically-modern retelling of the teenage queen of France, who along with her husband the king, lead their country into civil war through their wildly uncontrolled spending and worldly flings, and their rebellion against the strict system of Versailles culture. 3.5
  33. 3.01.07 - The Science of Sleep: An insomniac artist who lives out his dreams in real life, falls in love with his neighbor, an eccentric but insecure composer who struggles with her feelings for him. 4.0
  34. 3.03.07 - Shinobi: The five best magically trained warriors of shadow ('shinobi') of feuding villages battle it out under an imperial decree meant to eliminate the threat of war they posses on a land finally brought to peace after hundreds of years of war. 4.0
  35. 3.03.07 - Straw Dogs: A brilliant but distant American astrophysicist and his beautiful but bored English wife move into the idyllic Cornish countryside after he flees the draft, but after a gang of local thugs gang-rape her in her home, things spiral into a nightmarish vision as enmity against the husband after shielding a former child molester turns into an extermination murder spree in defense of his house and honor. 4.0
  36. 3.04.07 - Shaolin Soccer: An aged and disabled ex-soccer superstar, with the help of a charismatic, visionary but poor Shaolin monk, put together a soccer team of former monks and rise through the Chinese Cup, eventually to battle Team Evil, coached by the nefarious, treacherous and rich nemesis of the coach of the Shaolin team. 4.0
  37. 3.08.07 - The Last King of Scotland: A young, idealistic Scottish family doctor moves to Uganda to help in a mission, but after treating the newly christened president to a wound, becomes the personal physician of the enigmatic and cruel dictator, and as the country dissolves into civil war, he discovers how far the human soul can fall into deprivation and seeks to leave. 4.5
  38. 3.11.07 - Failure to Launch: A thirty-five year old yacht broker who still lives with his parents in a relationship stasis after his fiancee died six years before, dates a professional interventionist hired by his parents who specializes in moving out men still in their parents' homes, but after he finds out her true motives and breaks up with her, she realizes she is in love with him. 3.5
  39. 3.11.07 - Fast Food Nation: Detailing three stories all connected with the fast food industry (a restaurant cashier, an illegal immigrant couple at a meat packing plant, and a marketing executive for the company), this liberal soap-box intersperses ideas from Schlosser's best-selling book, family drama, and philosophical monologues, with the intent to portray the terror and grossness of the American beef slaughtering industry in a subtly Sinclairian fashion, without the rigid acuteness or sublime intent. 3.0
  40. 3.12.07 - Re-Cycle: A famous and best-selling novelist who is known for her realistically drawn characters, after meeting with a former lover and being haunted in real life by a thrown-away fictional character from an old draft of a novel, is transported to a borderworld of the dead, in which the abandoned rule among the shadows in a place of ever shifting and vanishing reality, and is led to the mystical exit known as 'The Transit' by her long-dead child, through a series of lands home to nightmares and forgotten beauty. 4.5
  41. 3.13.07 - The History Boys: Two history teachers at a high school in Yorkshire, one an aging and practical but misunderstood, oft-quoting educator, and the other an academic trainer in his first year of teaching, prepare a special class of intelligent boys for entrance to Oxford, while dealing with homo-erotic feelings for their students, trying to find meaning as teachers, and chatting about the philosophy of history and quoting famous, old-time movies. 3.5
  42. 3.14.07 - Silk: A dying, diabetic Japanese physicist searches for the secret of living as an immortal ghost after death using anti-gravitational science as a method of trapping "ghost energies," while his new partner, a Taiwanese hot-shot police investigator, tracks down the truth behind the identity of a tormented, murdering ghost child whom the physicist's team has captured in a small apartment. 3.5
  43. 3.16.07 - The Nativity Story: A richly textured and gorgeously filmed retelling of the pregnancy of Mary from engagement to the birth of Jesus, with sparkling era set pieces and lush music, accompanied by a dryly melodramatic (but talented) cast, humor out of sync (and misplaced in the form of the three kingly stooges), and a script with torrid one-liners, Biblical inaccuracies, and contemporary philosophical and social commentaries about the present day imposed on characters who couldn't care less, and realistically, shouldn't. 2.0
  44. 3.17.07 - Casino Royale: In this prelude to the Bond series, James tracks down the elusive and wealthy Le Chiffre, a terrorist sponsoring banker and accountant, and through blunder after blunder, including savagely killing villainous but undeserving middlemen, losing England's treasury at a poker table, being poisoned and killed, getting tortured, quitting the M16 service, and then getting betrayed by the woman he falls in love with, comes to define himself as the iconic James Bond. 4.0
  45. 3.18.07 - 300: A celebration of blood and death in slow-motion battle more suited to a video game than a film, this excessively poetic and hyper-blown masculine melodrama about the fall of the warbred king of ancient Sparta and his three-hundred finest under the cryptically fashioned blades of a fantasyesque Persian army led by a tyrannical and demigod-like Xerxes, in the end falls under its limp dialogue and dead-end resolutions, while trying to maintain its high budget through a veneer of sweaty and well-built male bosoms and foil-like adversaries. 2.0
  46. 3.23.07 - Bridge to Terabithia: In this vision of romantic youth, two talented, imaginative, and lonely children on the cusp of adolescence become best friends and create a fantasy world in a nearby woods filled with strange monsters and unearthly beauty, while dealing with their own problems at school with bullies and their distant familial love, but after the girl drowns in the river that leads to their "kingdom," the boy must find his own strength through his grief. 5.0
  47. 3.27.07 - The 40 Year Old Virgin: After a late night poker game, a 40 year old computer store worker (who because of a series of teenage mishaps has grown afraid of love and regressed into an adulthood of comic books, video games, and boy fantasies) is challenged by his colleagues to find a woman and have sex, and so after meeting a customer and dating for about a month, decides to consummate and get married. 1.5
  48. 3.28.07 - In Good Company: When a veteran floor manager of advertising sales for an athletic magazine is demoted to salesman and is replaced by an insecure but talented young 26 year old, who then begins to sleep with his college bound daughter in rebound to his broken marriage, he and his new boss learn to work together through layoffs, a changing business model, and confusion over the sexual relationship, and eventually find peace through brokenness and friendship. 4.5
  49. 3.31.07 - Spirited Away: In this psychedelically strange ghost-filled coming of age story, after a curious but strong-willed girl discovers her parents transformation into giant pigs because of eating the promised food of ancient and lost spirits at an abandoned amusement park, she is rescued by an enslaved dragon river prince under the spell of a greedy, bulbous-nosed bathhouse owner, an unscrupulous witch who then puts the girl to work in the herbal soaking tubs to wash unclean and polluted "gods," but after an angry monster enters the bathhouse invited illegally by the young girl and cannibalizes itself on the workers, she must not only gather the strength to save its soul from itself, but the fledging prince from the clutches of the witch-hawk in order to save her parents from being killed as meat. 4.5
  50. 4.07.07 - Crying Freeman: This story isn't as much about the plot as it is about the central character, a Japanese artist with uncanny talent who is abducted by a mystical Chinese sect and brainwashed to be a graceful and silent killing weapon, but after he takes on a witness to one of his murders as a lover instead of killing her, he must not only fight to protect them from the anger of his sect, but also finish his mission and destroy a Japanese assassination society with a blood feud against his own. 3.5
  51. 4.10.07 - The Last Mimzy: In this pulp sci-fi fairy tale, one contrivance after another tells of how an ordinary brother and sister, while vacationing at a weekend beach home, discover a futuristic nano-technological box filled with a stuffed rabbit named Mimzy that is alive through the power of Intel nanochips from the Earth's distant future, and powerful rocks that have the ability to sustain and power a portal through time, and as the children's brains change to a sort of post-human state in order to send the rabbit back home into the future and thus save it from a polluted human state of chaos with the purity of the past, they face repercussions from their family and government, while being supported by the son's science teacher, who after his visit to Nepal dreams of spinning mandalas and floating light. 3.0
  52. 4.14.07 - River of Souls: More extended episode than film, this shortly executed romp into the Soul Hunters of the Babylon 5 universe contains poorly drawn portraits of well-known characters without conflict, antithetical caricatures of what should have been feared individuals, and a glimpse into a past world that is too much forgotten in lieu of the heaving bosom of Tracy Scoggins and a kindly-painted Martin Sheen, who is seen less as a mystery and more as an overall nice guy, without even the sacrificial implications of his eventual demise, while hanging over everything is the clichéd threatened destruction of the station. 2.5
  53. 4.14.07 - Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby: Beneath the crude humor, juvenile-delinquent content, and chaotic homoerotic-insinuating jibes, lies the story of a child who, wishing for his absent father's love, races his way to become one of the best Nascar drivers in history, but after a terrible car accident, learns to piece his life back together and through the power of family, becomes a decent man and forgives the demons of his past. 3.0
  54. 4.14.07 - A Call to Arms: Really just a pilot to the early ended Babylon 5 television spin-off, Crusade, following the advice of a ragged, thieving, but shapely "Lady of the Lake," assisted and guided by a bald-headed and futuristic "Merlin" technomage, the bravado John "King Arthur" Sheridan steals the newly built Excalibur battleship and hunts down a series of clues about burnt out planets, and returns home to attempt a futile defense of Earth from the angry and lizard-like Drak, who mercilessly poison the Earth after their planet killer is destroyed by an act from Sheridan's buddy, a "Lancelot" who throws himself onto his own sword to save his little girl from the monsters of her dreams. 3.0
  55. 4.28.07 - Alatriste: This film shows the progression of heroic kill-for-hire Portuguese soldier Diego Alatriste serving Spain during the latter period of the European imperial wars, showcasing moments in his bloody life of varied importance, including adopting the son of a slain friend and taking on jobs from various peoples in power, while giving glimpses into his son's bespeckled passionate affair with a lady in the court, and his own affair with a famous actress, until both women betray their men and leave them as husks to be filled with Spanish honor and the blood of battle. 3.5
  56. 4.28.07 - My Neighbor Totoro: An overworked father takes his two young daughters to a small farm to breathe some fresh air and wait for the prognosis of their sickly mother in a countryside clinic, and while there they are befriended by the King of the Forest, a kindly, rabbit-like furry giant who takes them through a dreamscape of innocent beauty, but when the lonely siblings receive a telegraph from their mother about her health, the younger, vivacious Mai is lost to grief and to her older sister, who then calls upon the help of her magical friend and his leaping transportation, a catbus, to find her sister and discover what happened to their mother. 5.0
  57. 4.29.07 - Night at the Museum: A creative but failed entrepreneur takes on a night watchman position at the Museum of Natural History, but little does he know, at night the exhibits come to life, and when the laid-off, former guards decide to steal the precious artifacts from the museum, he must save the exhibits from destruction with the rising sun, recover the magical artifact that brings them to life with the help of his historical friends, and prove to himself and his son that he is worth something. 1.5
  58. 4.30.07 - Porco Rosso: A crack Italian navy pilot who was turned into a pig by a mysterious spell and who witnessed the gates of the afterlife now lives the life of a renegade in the Adriatic Sea on a small, lonely island and spends time at an inn on a rocky isle cove that houses pirates, ruffians, and mercenaries, but must duel the American plane-for-hire who shot down his plane, regain his honor, protect the life of the young girl who rebuilt his plane and pay off his debts for the new plane. 4.5
  59. 4.30.07 - Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes: Perhaps the quintessential Burrough's retelling of the King of the Jungle from the wild to civilization on the silver screen, this film tells of how a young boy was orphaned in the jungles of Africa to a family of gorillas, raised as a creature of the wild, and then found by a zoologist and trained in the rudiments of speech and etiquette, introduced back into Scottish society, inherits his family's estate, marries, and then after he saves his childhood ape-father from the cages of scientists and helps him escape, decides to return to the jungles to live after the father figure is shot by a city guard. 4.0
  60. 5.4.07 - Equilibrium: In the dystopic city of Libria, the top killer of an elite military arm known as the Clericks whose job it is to seek out people who have committed sense crimes and execute them in the name of public order, begins to have doubts about his job, and after a series of flashbacks, dreams, and having to execute his own partner, decides to join with the underground resistance, destroy the leadership structure of the city, and give the resistance leverage to begin their war. 4.0
  61. 5.5.07 - The Insider: The true story of a disgruntled ex-corporate vice president (of research, specifically) of a tobacco company, who, threatened by his old company to keep quiet, blows the whistle on their illegal and inhumane drug experiments by telling all for the television show 60 Minutes, but when CBS pulls the interview off the air, the newsman who pulled the ex-corporate lackey into the mix, blows the whistle on his own news agency, trying to save the honor and reputation of the scientist who lost his family and his life through the episode, and through it find redemption in his actions. 5.0
  62. 5.9.07 - Curse of the Ring: A special effects laden retelling of the love story between Siegfried and Brunhild, the two legendary Germanic heroes, of how Siegfried met Brunhild and they fell in love and found a meteor which they forged god-like weapons, of how Siegfried killed the dragon Fafnir and took his cursed horde and how Brunhild waited in her icy lair for his return, and finally of how Siegfried was magically tricked into falling in love with another woman, setting the stage for a series of betrayals in which in the final moments all of the actors are dead and revenged, leaving the country of Burgund to an uncertain future. 3.5
  63. 5.9.07 - Next: A magician who can see into the future, who dreams about a mysterious woman he meets in a diner, realizes that he is the only one who can stop a nuclear bomb from decimating Los Angeles. (And there's a lot more, but I'm not even that spoiler-happy, as telling what happens doesn't actually impact the actual story.) 4.0
  64. 5.10.07 - The Host: A river food vendor, along with his father, sister and brother, fight a mutant fish that lives under a bridge, to reclaim the vendor's daughter taken captive, while dealing with government scientists and a so-called viral epidemic. 4.5
  65. 5.10.07 - Hot Fuzz: A gung-ho London cop is reassigned to a small, idyllic village famous for their low crime rate, but soon discovers a string of continuing "accidental" deaths that lead to a murdering and self-righteous neighborhood watch that controls the town. 4.5

  67. (opinion reviews will now be included, interspersed with synopsis reviews)

  69. 5.14.07 - The Spirit of the Beehive: A glowing and frightening account of the daughter of a Spanish don who reacts to her father's distant love, her mother's affair, her sister's ruthlessness, and her society's madness, by finding meaning and thrill in the unknown magic of her imagination, in her search for a mythical Frankenstein's monster whom she believes lives in the fields and forests of Castillan Spain. 4.5
  70. 5.15.07 - Charlotte's Web: A spring pig, adopted and nursed to health by a young farmgirl, is relocated to a barn with a super-intelligent spider who can spell words in her webs, and uses these to save Wilbur the Pig from a definite Christmas porking, until the farmer decides to enroll his famous pig to win the County Fair. Although the CG was gorgeous and top-notch, the cast like so many recent graphic-fests, was dry and uninspired, and the story slogged through without the charm it so deserved. 3.0
  71. 5.16.07 - The Fountain: A doctor who is trying to create a cure for cancer using the sap from a rare South American tree to cure his wife's illness, has flashbacks and flashforwards to lives he led in search for a cure for death: as a Spanish conquistador who is searching for the tree of life as a promise to the Queen of Spain, and as a mystic space traveler who is traveling with a dying tree to the distant nebula where the Mayan land of the Dead, Xibalba awaits. I don't understand what all the mutterings were about: it wasn't a fantastic movie, but it wasn't terrible either, and if anything, the story was touching. And dang it, but Hugh Jackman really can cry. 3.5
  72. 5.29.07 - The Queen: After the death of the glitzy and showy ex-royal Princess Di of Wales, the royal family of Britain goes through a unique process of grief, which although nearly destroying the respect for the monarchy (and give or take a few contrived lines) comes out in the end as a heroic venture into an admiration of the human spirit and how an ordinary woman put into an extraordinary situation (the Queen) battles with her duties, unrequited feelings of anger and betrayal, and eventually takes a brave stand to support her citizens in their own special form of celebrity grief. 4.0
Author Comments: 

Based on a rating system devised from The Rabenstranger:

A 5 star system. 2.5 stars is indifference, less than 2.5 are movies that I'd recommend avoiding. 3 stars marks a reasonably good movie and anything higher indicates a movie I really loved.

WB01/12/2007

You ever considered this:
http://www.listology.com/content_show.cfm/content_id.27504
How about it?

diaskeaus01/13/2007

Excellent suggestion, and I joined. Thanks!

WB01/13/2007

Like Alf would say: No Problemo.

Rushmore01/18/2007

Children of Men is really picking up some attention. i saw it back in september in cinema, and to be honest, i liked it, but didn't think much of it, and did not think it would get this much acclaim. its like 165 on IMDB250. its a great film, but i'm suprised. gonna have to rewatch it i think.

diaskeaus01/18/2007

It's an extremely deep film, that touches on a lot of subjects without subjecting the audience to a plethora of necessary extremity, while maintaining a very simple story that operates on a subtle heroic level.

I think the question is, why didn't you think much of it when you first saw it?

Rushmore01/19/2007

well i still liked it. I was impressed by the sets and places discovered in this world consumed by chaos and riots. so i liked the feeling and tone of the movie. however, i wasn't too keen on the acting. also, it felt a little like it could of been a two part series 1hour each episode that could be shown on TV. also

I felt the ending was too open ended. i'm sure we are meant to beleive he died, and thats fine. but i was kind of wanting more from the story, a resolution. maybe thats a mainstream approach, but i wanted to know what happend to her and the baby. so i guess the film succeeded in that i cared for the characters but i felt the way it ended so abruptly, was a letdown.

This being said, its a good film, and a highlight of 2006 for sure, i think i'll just have ot change my mindset going into my rewatch.

diaskeaus01/19/2007

I had a discussion with a friend who said something similar to your reaction. He said that he felt the film was trying to be both mainstream and indy at the same time, as if the big-time special effects and cinematography was trying to bring out this epic story, while the story itself was incredibly simple without much character conflict, more of an art film that had a very narrow focus and tried to be more baroque than actually character-driven.