2007 Film List (1 Viewer)

[Chris Atkins]

Yes, Seth, it is worse than that, but like you I enjoyed it in a weird sort of way. There are some cool moments and the main character is compelling (and cool) enough to make a much better film in the hands of a more accomplished director.

Could you believe the amateur nature of some of the direction? Every "clever" moment (such as the bumper sticker on the semi) has been done a 1000 times before in other films.

 

[Seth Paxton]

Exactly. People sometimes question direction vs overall film, as in isn't it all the same. This is a great example of how it is not. Every shot that wasn't CGI (and therefore possibly out of his hands to create/decide) was as stock as a shot could get. Plus the choice of visual tone, cartoon colorful ala Spider-Man, was a huge mistake IMO.

There were some poor edits on the storytelling side of it as well, like why GR didn't pursue Memphisto each time. There doesn't seem to be an escape, GS just heads on home it seems. Poor editing to me.

But under all that I was thinking that this is a good GR storyline, it does setup well as an origin story, and really Cage isn't that far off the right mix of brooding and sarcastic (when they didn't overplay it, which they did plenty). I wasn't as mad as I should have been because I guess I expected even worse, and honestly I enjoyed this a lot more than the original FF4 film which maybe helped it's status in my head.


Yet when I reflect on it there is just no reason why Daredevil, Elektra and GRider should have been handed over to a Xanadu caliber director. Of course they also put the briliant X-Man franchse in the hands of hack Ratner. Go figure.

I know Marvel likes to get this stuff out and I realize that even a good director like Lee can have a misstep, but I'm worried that they are going to kill the goose that laid the golden egg by being too careless with their characters. Throw in Punisher as another half-effort that should have been much better.

 

[Chris Atkins]

A buddy and I were complaining about Marvel movies a few weeks ago, and by our count the last really good movie that Marvel released was Spider-Man 2. Since then, they've released 7 (!) films that disappointed us in one way or another.

 

[Adam_S]

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - 3 of 10

Easily the weakest of the five Harry Potter films, OOtP manages to be both lifeless, charmless and overall spiritless by the numbers romp through a convoluted storyline.

Worse than that, it's lost the sense of fun, and is just dull, literally nearly a chore to sit through, saved by a few good moments.

First the positives: To my surprise, the performances were the outstanding strength of this film, Radcliffe is like a completely different actor, as is Grint, Hermione simply wasn't given much to do in this film, which was dissappointing but made up for by the superb performance by Evanna Lynch as Luna Lovegood--she was the definite standout exceptional quality of the film. Also well handled was when Harry and Sirius team up to duel, and Occlumency was pretty well done as well. Umbridge was adequete, but so many of her important scenes were horribly botched by the execution it's hard to appreciate how delicious a performance she delivered. Dumbledore and Voldemort's fight had some neat moments but was overall a letdown. the scenes with Dumbledore's Army were outstanding.

The negatives are almost too long a list to bother with, I could say everything else, but that wouldn't be entirely fair.

Biggest negative was the dialogue Harry was given to say to 'repulse' Voldemort from possessing him.
A close second was the completely inadequete directing, editing and cinematography. Besides a fairly bland look, the film was cut very poorly, it may be by ten or twenty minutes the shortest of the five films, but it definitely felt twenty or thirty minutes longer than any of the other films, this was partially because there was utterly no panache or life to the staging, blocking or general composition, so nothing was communicated in the dynamic between foreground and background, layered reactions, meaningful nonparticipants in a scene etc. In short there was absolutely no gravitas or sense meaning or purpose to 95% of the film (the only parts that contained that were the DA scenes). It honestly came as a shock everytime there was a consequence for an action in the film because the consequence so often seemed to have no cohesive connection to earlier events. It's hard to tell if this is the case of the director's inexperience with what to do with a 'real' canvas rather than simply a postcard or if it was overcontrolling on the producers part with a director with less personal muscle, experience, opinions or vision. I'm guessing it was a mixture of both, but I would lay the primary burden for the film's failure at the feet of David Yates, his editor and his cinematographer.

Scenes that were so badly botched I don't want to go into detail about what all was wrong with them.

Dementor attack
travel to Grimmauld place
Grimmauld place and introduction of the Order
The Trial
Detention with Dolores (could they have gotten this incredibly essential scene even more wrong if they actually tried to do it badly?)
Attack on Arthur and aftermath
Christmas
Azkaban/Bella
Dumbledore's escape
Hagrid
Fred and George's grand exit
OWLs
Centaurs
Hall of prophecies
End of battle in the veil room
the toned down battle between Dumbledore and voldemort
Harry possessed
explanation with Dumbledore
exit Hogwarts, return to real world

And of course traveling in time a good ten years from the period of Goblet of Fire to the period of Order of the Phoenix was a very neat trick as well, amazing how the last one was set in 1994/5 and this one was set in 2006-7 era.

Failing to capture the essence of the growing complexity of the trios interrelationships, something Goblet of Fire did perfectly, was also an enormous and disappointing step backwards.

The script was adequete, but it was gallingly obvious which dialogue was from the book and which was adapted simply because Jo's dialogue still contained the charm and wit that is basic and integral to the books, that most of the rest of the dialogue was either, flat, trite, or hideously embarassing was completely a let down. Thank goodness at least he's gone for the next movie.

A very disappointing experience that shows Columbus was a much more accomplished director than Yates, or at least, Columbus had respect and genuine pleasure in the material that he communicated to the audience, and while he wasn't a genius, he could construct a scene successfully on the big screen, something sorely lacking in both the dramatic and action scenes of this movie.

How exactly do you name the movie order of the phoenix and then not bother to explain a damn thing about the titular order in the movie. I feel genuinally sorry for people who have only seen the movies but have no context from the books, I want to expalin to them that the book really isn't bad like the movie is, that in fact the book is tremendously an excellent piece of character driven literature.

I'm actually only vaguely interested in seeing Half Blood Prince now, while I could barely wait to see Order of the Phoenix, following each piece of news with excitement, and if anything, my anticipation for book seven has lessened somewhat due to the sour taste currently left by a bad movie and a bad adaptation.

Word of mouth on this film will be tremendously bad, WB can stop worrying about the Black Saturday coming up in their second weekend when the book is going to be released, the book is going to completely crush the movie because the movie doesn't have the strength to stand up to the books, not when the quality gap is as tremendously massive between movie and book as this movie has managed. I think it will struggle to get past 220 million domestic and that WB should be thrilled with anything over 200 for this flick.

 

[Brook K]

That is savagely disappointing to hear, but also not unexpected since I thought they sucked out much of what made Goblet of Fire a terrific book experience in its translation to film. That we're "stuck" with Yates for at least one more film is even more depressing. Still, I'll be there Sunday morning, which is pretty much what WB is banking on.

Ratatouille is wonderful. A beautifully made, emotionally enveloping film about art wrapped in kidpic clothing. Can't say enough about Peter O'Toole's performance here. Only some slight pacing issues and a couple of jarring story points (like the virtual love at first sight romantic story), keep it from my highest rating. A-

FF2 is somewhere between so-so and "kind of entertaining". The characters have grown on me, even if I still feel Reed is terribly miscast and Jessica Alba's Susan is just "off". The film gets the character interactions right and the feel that this is a real family/team and I really like Chiklis as The Thing and the chemistry with Alicia, even if the film barely scratches the surface of the potential of that story. However, Dr. Doom is even a 10x worse miscasting than Reed, and fails to ever feel threatening. The film could have used at least one more action sequence as what we saw in the trailer is really the best the film has to offer. Too much of the running-time is spent on wedding plans and the army general with a hate-on for Reed.- B-

Plus not showing Galactus at all terribly neuters the finale. Whee, look, it's a roiling CGI cloud!!! Watch out Earth, here comes a cloud!!!


I've got Ghost Rider coming from Netflix.

 

[Adam_S]

well there were a variety of circumstances going down yesterday preventing this from being an ideal screening experience, nevertheless, we were pumped to see it. But quickly deflated.

So much of the film felt like a best of reel of the book. What I liked about Goblet of Fire is they pared it down to the core story, and I felt really nailed the dynamics of the trio's relationship for the first time, even though it was a massive set of changes from the book (apparently many people think I'm crazy for liking Goblet of Fire and same people love OotP, so what do I know).

To be fair a 3 of 10 is far too harsh, 5 of 10 or a six of 10 is more fair (I'd give Chamber of Secrets a 6), because the film did have good qualities, but the pace of the film conflicting with the cram absolutely everything in no matter what mentality (which we haven't seen used since Sorcerer's Stone)
just put me so off that I started noticing other things.

I'll probably see it in imax this weekend maybe, hopefully with a better crowd or better experience, but chalk me up as very disappointed, initially.

 

[Chuck Mayer]

There is still time to save yourself, Brook.

Seth, you and Chris were much kinder to GR than I was. I've seen student films with more panache than that. Sucked.

I rarely post in here, but I did recently see Badlands for the first time. It's a year older than me. Almost all of the Malick details are there. Beautiful film. I'm stocking my Netflix with old unseen goodies, and Badlands was top of the list.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

I'm going to go through your critique of the movie because having experienced mingled feelings myself with the picture, I think your posts are a great outline for me to shake out my thoughts.
Goblet of Fire is easily my favorite of the five movies. It was the most seamless adaptation even though huge chunks of plot were left at the wayside; it came together as an organically cohesive whole. It was also the one movie that let the universe intermingle without Harry as a strict pivot point. There were all sorts of minor side plots playing out on the fringes, which I loved. So much was thrown out that comparisons ceased being possible. After four films, it was like Kloves finally conquered the material. He's back for HBP, and Yates is eager to go in a livelier, "sex, drugs, and rock and roll" direction with it. If he can hire a decent editor, we might have hope.

 

[Adam_S]

That's cause he's not in a fight for his life, he and voldemort are just waving their wands to make pretty colors. Voldemort doesn't try to kill him in the fight, he never uses Avada Kedavra, and so Dumbledore can't call on his impressive resources to defend himself creatively. Including my favorite image from the book, Fawkes sacrificing himself.

Also, the fight in the book, while more explosive and cinematic, also had the Vader/Kenobi element from the end of star wars. I've always said that duel is the second best in all six words because they both know that the other is so good that they're playing a mental and verbal chessgame with each other. Voldemort and Dumbledore definitely do that in the book, and all that subtext was completely lost in the film. I really wanted to hear Dumbledore calling him Tom.

I'm not too upset about losing everything else in the department of mysteries from the book, but I would have liked to have seen them in passing, rather than just the endless running around in the scary blue white glowglobe room. It was the sort of soundstaginess of that set that sucked a lot of the magic out of the ministry of magic for me. Likewise for the Veil room, it just felt so random because there was no set up to it, like everything else in the film it was radically disconnected from most everything else in the film.

One of the things Cuaron did brilliantly is he gave constant little nudges (where did Hermione go...) and plants that later paid off. For instance, the camera move that follows Harry and Hermione out of the medical wing, down the hall, flies through the clock and picks them up outside to pan towards them running towards the destination. This could be a gratuitous shot, but it pays off thirty minutes later when we get the reverse shot, picking them up outside, running in, coming through the clock mechanism to pick them up running down the hall. Not only does this give us the visual spatial information of what exactly their goal is and what they're doing, but the clock makes for a nice visual underscoring to their time-centered activitives. Newell did this as well, giving extra time to Diggory and nudging us back towards him again and again so that his death meant something meaningful (rahter than just the average joe midshipman getting killed this episode). Those sorts of nudges and plants are one of the things Rowling excels at writing, and it was tremendous to see that cleverness on the screen as well. There were ample oppurtunities for similar moments in the book Order of the Phoenix but they were just largely ignored outside of obvious condensing moments (Sirius shows Harry the picture of the original Order and Cho, rather than a random extra, betrays the Order) in the film.

I will say that Sirius' falling through the veil was so much better than I imagined that I'll even forgive the filimmakers getting the curse leading into it all wrong.

 

[Adam_S]

Hot Rod - 5 of 10

Hot Rod is deeply indebted to the comedies of Chris Farley, Adam Sandler, Will Ferrell and unfortunately of Napoleon Dynamite. This is basically their kind of comedy without their kind of star power. Basically Rod is a smalltown guy who craves the respect of his step father and idolizes his dead, stuntman father. Rod actually tries to live his dream everyday by being a stuntman that largely fails at any stunt he tries. Then his stepfather only has a few weeks to live and Rob tries to use his skills to put together the money so they can afford the operation that will save his life.

There is some comic gold in this film, but it is largely held back by the structural inadequacy of the writing, poor story development and an extremely slow first half. There's not really three act's so much as there are two. The film improves immensely in the second half, and you're used to the comic stylings so it's not as horrendously unwatchable as the first half. There are some excellent comic beats in the film, but overall not worth seeing in a theatre, much more of a DVD renter, imo.

----------
Stardust - 9 of 10 (this has the potential to improve on future viewings which are definite)

There is a village in England called Wall. It's named Wall because there is a Wall there, a Wall that separates our world from the world of Stronghold. This wall is guarded day and night by the citizens of Wall, but about a 150 years ago a young man made it past the guards for a night of revelry in the nearest Stronghold town. Nine months later his souvenier of that night shows up on his doorstep, Tristan. Twenty odd years later Tristan has a lowly job working in a shop, and is in love with the town beauty Victoria, who tolerates him but is more interested in humiliating him than in Tristan himself. Meanwhile the old king of Stronghold is dying, and in setting his surviving children a task/quest to win the throne causes a star to fall. Tristan and Victoria see it and Tristan pledges to return with the star to demonstrate his love for Victoria and win her hand in marraige. Tristan's off and away, but the bloodthirsty brothers are also after his star (Clair Danes) as is vicious and evil witch.

This film is so amazing it's hard to communicate how perfect it is. How immensely funny, how charming and witty it is while being perfectly logical, serious and consistent (but also very magical and captiviating) with the strange and wonderful world of Stronghold.

Robert DeNiro deserves an oscar nomination for one of the most sidesplitting comedic performances of recent years. Alan Arkin has nothing on how great DeNiro is in this role. He takes an already great movie and makes it even more stratoscopically pleasing, the audience was virtually dying with laughter and delight in all his scenes. Absolutely incredible.

The effects are tremendous and the final battle is absolutely wonderful. When you get to the last one on one sword fight and while you're trying to pull your jaw off the floor you're also laughing, gasping and cheering all at the same time.

I wanna see it again ASAP, I want to know if it's as good on repeat viewings as the Princess Bride, and I'd say if you like or love Princess Bride you're definitely gonna enjoy Stardust.

Adam

 

[Brook K]

Ghost Rider - Can't say I wasn't warned...Actually this is not awful, just pretty mediocre. It has it's moments here and there, I liked how the Penance Stare was filmed and the baddies were actually credible unlike say, the FF movies. However, putting aside the so-so script, corny dialogue and uninspired direction, the whole project is flawed by Ghosty's look. A too-small flaming head on a broad-shouldered (was this Cage or a stuntman?) person just looks silly. - C

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - I probably agree with many of the points the two Adam's made above, and yet the whole thing worked for me exceedingly well. This was by far my best experience with a Potter film. Despite cutting out loads of material, it get's to the heart of the book and the core of the characters in a way that the other films never quite managed. It also is one of Gary Oldman's finest performances, doing a great deal with his limited screentime. Yes there could have been more of many things (Snape is always criminally underutilized given how Rickman just inhabits the character, Luna, the still-banished Doby, the Longbottoms (I would have cut the Trelawny scenes to see Frank and Alice in the asylum), and the Prefect material would have been a great scene for Ron and given him a little more to do in the movie), but the material we have is emotionally resonant and true to the spirit of Rowling's creations. I feel much better about The Half-Blood Prince and Yates now, then I did going in. - A-

Bridge to Terabithia - Not much to say that hasn't been said about this quality family film that deals with friendship and loss. I like how much it engaged my kids, my daughter read the book the next day at camp, and my son is still asking questions about it three days later. A small criticism is that the final scenes felt rushed and didn't come off nearly as well as the earlier scenes in the film. And not to sound too much like George, but despite my generally positive feelings about it, 4/5's of the film is very good, this doesn't feel like a film I want to revisit. - B+

King: Man Of Peace In A Time Of War (2007, Henry Stephens)
Hour long documentary spends 35 minutes or so on a brief, but not insubstantial, overview of Martin Luther King's life and career, interspersed with "talking head" interviews with various political and entertainment figures (Jesse Jackson, Colin Powell, Laurence Fishburne, Eriq LaSalle, etc). The last portion of the film is an archival interview with King appearing on the Mike Wallace show and discussing his views on Vietnam and other social issues of the time. Compelling material, though I was hoping for a more focused treatment of King's involvement with Vietnam issues. - B

 

[ZacharyTait]

Added the following to my list:

Ocean's 13: 3 1/2 Stars. Breezy adventurous followup to Ocean's 12. I knew what the payoff was, but the journey was so much fun. Bring on, Ocean's 14!

License to Wed: 2 Stars. Mostly unfunny movie that gets saved from movie hell thanks to John Krasinski's performance. He consistently made me laugh, something that Robin Williams didn't do. I found the kid annoying. How can you have a scene set in Jamaica and not show Mandy Moore in a bikini? For Shame!

 

[Seth Paxton]

Yeah, Malick is amazing. The New World was my favorite 2005 film.

Stocking the Netflix list...ugh, reminds me of why I'm not at HTF as much, stupid S&S challenge. I feel guilty if I don't knock off a S&S flick, but half the time I worry about the film being too arty or draining. Half the time they are very enjoyable, but sometimes not so much.

At times I just say "F it, I'm having fun", but then another disc from the S&S shows up and I feel like I shouldn't watch anything but it so the other 4 just sit there.



Adam - I had a totally different reaction to Potter

Harry Potter and the whatever it is #5
9 of 10
First the bad, too much story for too little film time. This creates a Columbus effect as you can clearly see how huge portions of story have been squeezed in with poor choices like dialog interjections or forced scenes from out of nowhere. That does impact it's flow as a film. Either make 2 films or suck it up and punt some major portions out and let the book fans be damned.

However the story itself was the most impressive yet in my mind. The tension and conflict has improved during the series. So that countered the choppiness of the script fairly well for me.

Then you have the standard top-notch effects and some really choice acting from people like Fiennes and Oldman and I think you have a pretty great ride. I really enjoy the performances of all the kids, though obviously Hermione and Ron have their roles diminished for this film which is a drawback.

It helped that the film pushed aside it's choppy approach at the end and instead spent a long period of time with the final showdown battle. That left me with a good feeling about the film as I headed home which always helps.


Knocked Up
9.5 of 10
Brilliant romantic comedy, great drama and meaty character issues that remain constant throughout the film yet don't intrude on the wall to wall comedic efforts. Rudd and Rogen riff off each other like Vaughn and Favreau in Swingers; nearly all my favorite scenes featured the two of them together.

For me it was a notch above 40 Year Old Virgin, it just had more consistantly high level comedy. Both are heavily dependent on pop culture references and perhaps that's where 40 YOV beats it out because it does a better job of creating it's own comedic references, mostly thanks to Carrell. But otherwise Knocked Up is dialed in the entire time.

The mushrooms bit...brilliant.

 

[Adam_S]

I rewatched the ending of Order of the Phoenix the other day and it is very well done, and I like it more. the earlier parts of the movie do have that Columbus effect, which I attribute more to the novice screenwriter than the novice HP director--the same mistakes were made by Kloves on the first movie as well. What was great about Goblet of Fire is that they did punt great sections of the book and the fans be damned, and I wish they had done that more with Order of the phoenix, or at least given the scenes some time to breathe earlier in the film, but everything from the detention/torture up until the ministry felt rather perfunctory, and only then did the film really slow down and allow us a chance to see and hear and care with the characters and get involved.

 

[Jose Martinez]

From what I've seen so far at a movie theater:

01. The Diving Bell and The Butterfly ***** / *****
02. Once ***** / *****
03. No Country for Old Men ***** / *****
04. There Will Be Blood ***** / *****
05. The Great Debaters ***** / *****
06. Eastern Promises ***** / *****
07. Juno ***** / *****
08. Beowulf ***** / *****
09. Bridge to Terabithia ****1/2 / *****
10. American Gangster **** / *****
11. The Brave One **** / *****
12. Away From Her **** / *****
13. Charlie Wilson's War **** / *****
14. Atonement **** / *****
15. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford **** / *****
16. Michael Clayton **** / *****
17. In The Valley of Elah **** / *****
18. 300 **** / *****
19. Transformers **** / *****
20. The Mist **** / *****
21. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street **** / *****
22. Grindhouse **** / *****
23. The Simpsons **** / *****
24. The Bourne Ultimatum **** / *****
25. Stardust **** / *****
26. I Am Legend ***1/2 / *****
27. Across The Universe ***1/2 / *****
28. Into The Wild ***1/2 / *****
29. The Kingdom ***1/2 / *****
30. The Lookout ***1/2 / *****
31. The Hoax ***1/2 / *****
32. Zodiac ***1/2 / *****
33. Live Free or Die Hard ***1/2 / *****
34. Ratatouille ***1/2 / *****
35. Harry Potter and The Order of The Phoenix ***1/2 / *****
36. I'm Not There ***1/2 / *****
37. Elizabeth The Golden Age *** / *****
38.Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End *** / *****
39. Knocked Up *** / *****
40. Sunshine *** / *****
41. 3:10 to Yuma *** / *****
42. Spider-Man 3 *** / *****
43. National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets *** / *****
44. Before the Devil Knows You're Dead *** / *****
45. The Golden Compass *** / *****
46. 1408 *** / *****
47. Resident Evil: Extinction *** / *****
48. The Last Legion *** / *****
49. Shooter *** / *****
50. Superbad *** / *****
51. Rush Hour 3 *** / *****
52. Arctic Tale *** / *****
53. Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer **1/2 / *****
54. Blades of Glory **1/2 / *****
55. The Darjeeling Limited **1/2 / *****
56. Rescue Dawn **1/2 / *****
57. Shrek the Third ** / *****

Excellent ****1/2 to *****
Very Good ****
Above Average ***1/2
Entertaining ***
Disappointing **1/2
Poor **
Bomb *

 

[Adam_S]

Hairspray - 9 of 10

Joyous wonderful movie with mostly great songs and absolutely terrific performances all around. Absolutely marvelous, one I'd buy on DVD.

 

[Seth Paxton]

I'm excited to see Hairspray, the reviews really surprised me. Rescue Dawn and Sunshine are the other 2 besides Simpsons that are on the radar right now for me. Waiting on the wife to get some free time.


Transformers
5.5 of 10
Really it is a better film than Ghost Rider I think. GR is just a character I like a lot more and was excited to see done up pretty well (CGI). But the CGI here is really strong too and the choreography of the character movements was one of my favorite aspects of the film...thus the GR comparison.

The acting is also like GR, in that it's all over the place. Some efforts were really strong, Voigt and Torturro especially but also LaBeouf. They often overcome what could easily be groan enducing lines and give bang-up performances.

But that script. It's very, very weak. They've got this great premise (again, like GR) and the basic story has tons of potential, and then it's mostly written out as a series of cobbled together cliched summer gags and action. Honestly at times I really loved some of those cliches, I could get into the ride. But then Bay would rear his ugly head, reach for an even sillier gag, cornier line or needless slow motion moment and spoil the whole thing. The film was running around a 7 for me through the first half, but by the end it's just more Armageddon.

It doesn't help that he's cribbed scenes from T2 (I mean all that was missing was a box of roses), ID4, and even Die Hard 4 (well, DH didn't invent the corny super-hacker lives with grandma gag, but they did beat him to the theater with it this time, and with a funnier casting choice to boot).

A for character art direction and design, A for basic premise, D for the rest of the production. Once again a great film is ruined by giving it to a poor talent. Save the Bay defense, don't even try to tell me that a guy like James Cameron couldn't have made this a 9-10 caliber POPCORN flick, bypassing slo-mos and rag tag team cliches along the way.


ps - I hated that the Transformers themselves were written like group of oddball teens that save the day ala Goonies. Didn't exactly match the elite warriors image.

 

[Holadem]

Sicko :star::star::star:1/2
As funny as it is depressing. I doubt this will affect policy, but it has brought back some of my life priorities into sharp focus. Let's just say that unless thing change, I know where I will not be living my golden years

Rescue Dawn :star:1/2
A bleak dreary lifeless affair that was a chore so sit thru. I nearly walked out several times. Good performances, but a lead to which I cannot relate pretty much kills the movie for me. Just an unpleasant film.

--
H

 

[Seth Paxton]

Man, the reviews have me stoked to see Rescue Dawn. Hate to see such a negative response from you.

 

[Adam_S]

Bourne Ultimatum - 9 of 10

The best action film of the year and improves on both of the previous Bournes. Stunning chases, fantastic fight scenes and an incredibly cogent story (compared to the convoluted first film or the more hyper second) I was on the edge of my seat biting my nails the entire time. There are a lot of spectacular set pieces in the film and overall it's tremendously compelling, I'd like to see it again.

3:10 to Yuma - 6.5 of 10
saw this months ago don' think I posted a review. This is not an iconic, Ford, Hawks or Eastwood style western. It's a more straight up classic representation of the western, more in the vein of Boetticher than anyone else. And it's not a postmodern yeehaw-reinvention like Tombstone or a deconstruction like Unforgiven.
The performances are good but the photography, with Papamichael at the helm completely lets down the movie. Mangold's uninspired direction doesn't help either. The Screenplay and the performances are the biggest strength, but overall just entertaining, but not great.