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2003 Film List - Page 7

post #181 of 601
8/15/03 at 5:39pm
Ouch! I like you're taste in horror, Matt. I'm anticipating this less and less now.

I updated with a few:-

Down with Love - which I simply loved. Charming and just a whole 'lotta fun: 1/2 out of

Cradle 2 the Grave - Just awful its boring, loud and no fun.

American Wedding - I liked it quite a bit, probably the best of a series i'm not overly fond of. Seann William Scott is the best thing about the film again, his timing is spot-on. out of
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post #182 of 601
8/16/03 at 5:49am
Updated with May - what an excellent little film. The performance from Angela Bettis was terrific. I was just on Rotten Tomatoes reading the little blurbs about the film, there are a few reviews that say things about it being a better than average slasher film. I must admit, there was not one time during the flick that 'slasher film' came across my mind. To me it felt much more than that. A moving and at the same time disturbing film. I loved it.
1/2 out of
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post #183 of 601
8/16/03 at 7:13am
Updated with Kevin Costner's Open Range.

~Edwin
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post #184 of 601
8/17/03 at 1:38am
Thanks for the kind thoughts, Nick. I'm really glad to hear you loved May! It's definitely my favorite "horror" film this year. I agree completely that there is very little slash in this film. It basically flows like a dark character study and is very very far from the other Scream-like slashers.

I hope you like FvJ more than I did. It had some great moments in it, but I just could not get past the poor film-making that went into it.
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post #185 of 601
8/18/03 at 8:52am
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post #186 of 601
8/18/03 at 12:53pm
I saw Irreversible last night. Excellent filmmaking, this is a powerful and utterly disturbing piece, like most people have said it is so hard to watch. I would never recommend this film to people who only watch films for entertainment and nothing more. 1/2
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post #187 of 601
8/19/03 at 10:16am
Let me re-iterate: Loews Copley Place sucks. It is, unfortunately, on the Green Line between where I work and where I live, cheaper than Kendall Square (especially with those Loews Weekday Escape tickets), and occasionally the only place in town where something plays.

The Secret Lives Of Dentists is Alan Rudolph's most watchable movie in a while. To a certain extent, he just gets out of Campbell Scott's and Denis Leary's way and lets them use their respective brands of sarcasm, but he also knows how to use the rest of his cast (including a great Hope Davis), and keeps the movie grounded even during the fanciful parts.

Buffalo Soldiers, as insane as it is, may not quite be nutty enough. It resorts to narration to drive its point about just who joins the army during peacetime home, and never quite comes together as an above-average movie. There are, however, some very funny sequences (especially if you like black comedy). ¾
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post #188 of 601
8/19/03 at 7:29pm
updated with Daredevil, Bringing down the House, and Open Range, brings me to 23 2003 movies
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post #189 of 601
8/20/03 at 2:27am
Freddy vs. Jason was lots o' fun. It embraced the genre elements instead of poking fun at them which was refreshing. It's an old school 80's slasher - lots of blood and boobs, none of the namby pamby cutaways and speeded up ultra dark action scenes that plague the horror movies of the last few years. The Freddy v Jason battle delivers in epic blood-spurting fashion. B+
Special A+++ to the plastic surgeons involved
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post #190 of 601
8/20/03 at 5:28pm
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post #191 of 601
8/21/03 at 12:15am
Added the good-not-great Laurel Canyon and the very good All the Real Girls.
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post #192 of 601
8/21/03 at 3:50pm
Updated with the mostly-great Open Range (8.6/10) and the cute, quaint, funny at times but mostly-disposable Freaky Friday (5.6/10).
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post #193 of 601
8/22/03 at 12:20am
Added the awful My Boss's Daughter and the so-so yet oddly endearing Jeff Daniels flick Super Sucker.

Also added the infamous Caligula to my retro section. So nasty was the film that I immediately followed it with a Shrek chaser.

Just....ew.
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post #194 of 601
8/22/03 at 12:34am
I've never seen Caligula, I think it might even be banned over here.

I updated with Tears of the Sun - my lord I loathed this flick. Bruce Willis really needs to learn how to make his face do more than one expression. Bad Script, awful casting, and in general it is filmmaking by-the-numbers.

* out of **** , and I feel a still feel little too generous.
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post #195 of 601
8/22/03 at 5:52pm
Updated with the so-so Laurel Canyon (***½/*****) and the fantastic Swimming Pool (****½/*****).
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post #196 of 601
8/23/03 at 1:08am
When I got back from the airport, the kids were watching Shrek. Frankly, I'd rather see Caligula, though obviously not with my children.

Open Range was surprisingly excellent. It achieved a moving, even elegiac melding of the post-modern western with traditional, classic elements. I knew I was watching something special when Boss and Charley first walked into town. It felt like a cancer, the town an encroaching, civilizing evil stain on the beauty of the land and open sky. Far from "slow", I thought the pacing fit the movie perfectly. My one complaint is that there weren't enough scenes with Michael Gambon's villain and he didn't feel like an equal or greater adversary. A-
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post #197 of 601
8/23/03 at 2:09am
Pirates of the Carribean - ooh
Camp - boo
Johnny English - eh...
Capturing the Friedmans - wow
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post #198 of 601
8/23/03 at 9:49am
Updated with the slow but good Spider (***½/*****).
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post #199 of 601
8/23/03 at 10:21am
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post #200 of 601
8/23/03 at 7:08pm
Updated with the very good All the Real Girls (****½/*****).
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post #201 of 601
8/23/03 at 10:56pm
Updated with the ultra slick The Italian Job (****/*****).
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post #202 of 601
8/24/03 at 11:32am
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post #203 of 601
8/24/03 at 9:23pm
Updated with Niki Caro's Whale Rider.

~Edwin
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post #204 of 601
8/24/03 at 11:13pm
Irreversible
7 of 10
For those who accused Memento of using reverse-order scenes as a gimmick I give you a film that actually does use it as a gimmick. The script gives us very little reason to see this film unfold backward other than perhaps to make the viewer disoriented at the beginning. At times it begins to touch on parallels and themes playing off the "earlier" scenes, but it never really goes far with them, at least not far enough to warrant this narrative method. Any emotional impact would be just as strong if not stronger were this film presented in forward time order.

I put the rest of my review in the review/discussion thread.
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post #205 of 601
8/25/03 at 8:09pm
Updated with 2 theater releases : S.W.A.T which I found quite solid. And also American Wedding 1/2, which wasn't as good as the previous entries but fans of the series won't be disappointed.

Also updated with a TON of Netflix rentals seen for the first time.

Raymond
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post #206 of 601
8/25/03 at 9:56pm
Dark Blue had a good premise tying it to the events leading to the outcome of the Rodney King beating verdict. However, what should have been a tense filled climax instead turned into yet another conventional cop story with a melodramatic ending.

In my view, Narc, another cop drama from late 2002 with Jason Patric and Ray Liotta has better acting, is more gritty and has a much tighter story.

~Edwin
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post #207 of 601
8/26/03 at 10:26pm
Just a bump, since this isn't a sticky anymore. Updated with a screening of Q, The Winged Serpent that I saw last night.

DJ
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post #208 of 601
8/27/03 at 5:36am
Updated my list with one of the year's best (Raising Victor Vargas) and one of the year's worst (Grind), plus a few annoyingly bad DTV titles (Infested, Midnight Mass) and Richard Harris in A Man Called Horse goes into my Retro bin.

Oh and Jackie Chan's stupid Medallion flick too.
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post #209 of 601
8/27/03 at 9:26pm
House of 1000 Corpses
2 of 10
I agree with many of the main complaints I had heard regarding this film, namely the idea that Zombie has actually used every single convention he had been complaining about in the first place.

This film does nothing but perform shoddy theft of other films, primarily Natural Born Killers (using mixed media to invoke some emotional response, yet here it is 1/10th as effective), Texas Chainsaw (gee, weird family torturing a girl who escapes only to...), and various other far campier films.

IMO, Zombie is a guy who might have in his mind what he wants, and that vision might in fact be more interesting than the typical films being made, but he is sorely in need of some real education in the art of feature direction and/or screenwriting. Some of the abstract concepts in the film COULD have been very powerful. Instead its a silly mess that often undermines its own tension.
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post #210 of 601
8/28/03 at 5:24am
Updated with Stephen Frears' beguiling Dirty Pretty Things.

~Edwin
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