Movie Reviews-February 2008

02/01/2008: War -4-
Cliche-ridden with a predictable unnecessary twist. Yawn-inducing paint-by-numbers blah blah blah..... And lead actors dont HAVE to be drop dead gorgeous, but someone took that liberty a LITTLE too seriously when they thought Statham was our next big action hero. Ugly tree, every branch on the way down...yeah...wow. It wasnt the worst thing Ive ever seen though and some of the direction was OK here and there so it gets a 4

02/02/2008 Claire -9-
What a delightful piece of cinema I stumbled upon! Im really glad that I gave this a chance. Claire was done using only effects and processes that were available in the 1920s (except for one) and it really does look authentic. The fact that I KNOW they wouldnt have made this particular film in the 20s gives it some sort of magical "lost" quality that I thought was really special. What I did find weird though was that there were NO intertitles at all save for one part where a character is reading from a novel. The only non-period effect used was the effect of Claire's milk-white tears which I thought were beautiful. Highly recommended!

02/04/2008 Smokin' Aces -6-
Im not going to waste too much time on a review for this film. It was entertaining. It wasnt terrible. A decent way to kill 2 hours. Next!

02/07/2008 The Day After Tomorrow -7-
Not too bad. Definitely HIGHLY unbelievable on EVERY level imaginable, but entertaining, and dramatic but not overly so. It follows the same ABC formula as pretty much every disaster film, but it works and solidly above average.

02/10/2008 Fists In The Pocket -9-
Ahhh, the madness! I love it. The acting was absolutely superb (of course the dubbing, as always, drove me bananas). Deliciously insane!Im not normally a big fan of Italian cinema, but this one is very effective and intelligent. Worth checking out!

02/14/2008 Shutter (2004) -7-
Pretty engaging. As cliche as it technically was, it still seemed very fresh. There were some obvious horror mechanics involved: scary heightened music, locked doors, that scary Asian staring at you, etc, but it did a good job. The final plot point was rather predictable, but thankfully it still didnt hurt it that bad. I wonder what the remake has in store??? Its probably going to suck