a quick and dirty movie review quartet

[danny_galaga]

Seen a few movies of late. Heres four:

1) Have you heard about the Morgans

Very slow start. gets a bit better somewhere along the line. It's always fun to see Sam Elliot. You know he's always going to be a sagely, dusty cowboy. And i can't believe how good Mary Steenbergen still looks in jeans. She must be about 60    Hugh Grant is not very good outside of Bridget Jones and Four Weddings i think. Maybe he should retire and invest his money...

3/5



2) Old Dogs

Some genuine belly laughs from this one. A few silly moments, but quite enjoyable. If you liked Wild Hogs, you'll probably like this. I was delighted, and saddened to see Bernie Mac for the last time.

3.5/5



3) Sherlock Holmes

I knew it would be a bit silly. And it was. The minuses are many. But some of the plusses, in my mind are quite important. For instance, in the 80's in 90's it became quite fashionable to make Holmes a junkie. You would see him tournaquet himself and inject heroin. This was a nonsense of course. In this movie, it came back to the original poison of choice. Or was implied anyway, which was laudenum. Watson says to Holmes at one stage "You do know what you are drinking is used for eye surgery?" Supposedly. It's been a long time since i read the books, and i might have been too young to recognise the implications.

Another nice touch was the fact both men actually had HAIRY ARMS! Hollywood has this strange obsession with actors shaving waxing. Thankfully, it was remembered that any man shaving or waxing in the 19th century would be a transvestite 

Laws Watson was better than Downeys Holmes in my opinion. When i saw Guy Ritchies name in the credits, it immediately explained the rather vicious un-sherlock holmes like fights. CGI was great in recreating 19th century London.

3.5/5



4) Its complicated

I quite enjoyed this one. Haven't seen Baldwin in much lately. Maybe saw a little TOO much of him in this! Martin hasn't featured a lot either. Nothing special, but everything seemed quite well balanced and paced. After the mess of 'The Morgans' it was good to see something well put together.

3.5/5

my score for recent movies you may have seen:

  5/5 - Michael Clayton, In Bruges, Gran Torino, Mary and Max

4.5/5 - Taken, Iron Man, Reign Over Me

  4/5 - Traitor, Bedtime Stories, Sunshine, pineapple express

3.5/5 - 300, Max Payne, You dont mess with the Zohan, Yes Man

  3/5 - That new Indiana Jones flick, Disturbia, That new TMNT flick,

2.5/5 - Angels and Demons

  2/5 - The Love Guru. Note: My 2 is probably someone elses 1. Just leaving room for worse!

[hypernova]

After the mess of 'The Morgans' it was good to see something well put together.

How was "It's Complicated" only a half star better than "Morgans" then?  It sounds as though "Morgans" got a higher score solely because of Mary Steenburgen looking good in jeans.

[Ginsu Victim]

Just got back from watching Sherlock Holmes. I really enjoyed it. 8/10

[danny_galaga]

After the mess of 'The Morgans' it was good to see something well put together.

How was "It's Complicated" only a half star better than "Morgans" then?  It sounds as though "Morgans" got a higher score solely because of Mary Steenburgen looking good in jeans.

3 is kinda my minimum without feeling totally ripped off. Since I'm normally seeing mainstream movies at the cinema, most of them are at least tolerable. My lowest score so far is 'Love Guru at 2/5' and 'Angels and Demons' at 2.5/5. I have a fairly broad range of interests in movies so it's quite shocking something can get to the cinema and disappoint ME of all people!

In a way, anything below 3 in my mind is reserved for real stinkers, which is rare. If i were to rename the scores and name 3 as 1, and 3.5 as 2 etc, and using negative numbers for the stinkers, then 'It's complicated' scores twice as high as 'Morgans' 

[AtomSmasher]

After the mess of 'The Morgans' it was good to see something well put together.

How was "It's Complicated" only a half star better than "Morgans" then?  It sounds as though "Morgans" got a higher score solely because of Mary Steenburgen looking good in jeans.

3 is kinda my minimum without feeling totally ripped off. Since I'm normally seeing mainstream movies at the cinema, most of them are at least tolerable. My lowest score so far is 'Love Guru at 2/5' and 'Angels and Demons' at 2.5/5. I have a fairly broad range of interests in movies so it's quite shocking something can get to the cinema and disappoint ME of all people!

In a way, anything below 3 in my mind is reserved for real stinkers, which is rare. If i were to rename the scores and name 3 as 1, and 3.5 as 2 etc, and using negative numbers for the stinkers, then 'It's complicated' scores twice as high as 'Morgans' 

I tend to go the other way with my reviews and generally go from 1 to 4.5 because a horrible movies are fairly common, but truely great movies are extremely rare.  I generally only give 5/5 to movies that will still be remembered in 10+ years as being a great movie, which means I often years without giving anything a 5/5.

[Xiaou2]

 
Personally, I hate movie ratings with a scale of  1 - 5.

 That Range is far too shallow to make any real assessment of a movie at all.

 Tell me what your rating in a range of  1 - 100.  Then Ill better know where
these movies stood.

[AtomSmasher]

Personally, I hate movie ratings with a scale of  1 - 5.

 That Range is far too shallow to make any real assessment of a movie at all.

 Tell me what your rating in a range of  1 - 100.  Then Ill better know where
these movies stood.

multiply by 20 and you'll have your answer
Personally I find rating between 1-100 far too much to be a good rating system.  You can't really say what makes a movie a 86 instead of a 87, but limiting the rating system allows you to put movies into subgroups of other movies roughly just as good, which is all that is needed.

[Ginsu Victim]

I like using "x out of 10" for rating movies. (Giving half point values where needed)

Also, I don't rate movies by comparing to other films. Even though I gave Drag Me to Hell a 10/10, that doesn't mean I'm saying it's on par with The Godfather part II. I judge according to whether or not I was entertained, if I could follow the narrative, and if the makers were able to put their ideas on film properly (and how well they managed it).

[Loafmeister]

My favorite rating system:

- It's crap
- It's meh
- It's ok (with a smile)
- It's pretty good
- It's freakin' great
- It's friggin' fantastic!

So I guess my scoring is out of 6.

If anyone wants to know more, then no larger scoring would help, reasons have to be provided that mean more than a number to backup the argument (ie: atomsmasher makes a great point about 1 percent difference).

[AtomSmasher]

I just watched a movie that I thought was amazing, and since it's a virtual unknown movie I thought I'd share.  It's called "Ink" and I think it's best described as bizarrely awesome.  It's probably one of the best movies of 2009 and easily the best independent film of the year.  I don't really want to say much about the story because IMO telling anything about the story really is a spoiler for this one, but that might be because I knew nothing about this film before seeing it and realizing what was happening was a large part of why I loved it.
Ultimately I would give the movie a 4.5/5 simply because a lot of the acting wasn't very good, but everything else about it was fantastic.  I highly recommend this movie.  I don't buy movies very often anymore, but I'll definitely be picking this one up.

Here's a trailer for the film so you can get a sense of what it's about.  There actually is another trailer for it which I think is a better trailer, but it also gives away too much of the story, so I didn't want to post it.

[danny_galaga]

Personally, I hate movie ratings with a scale of  1 - 5.

 That Range is far too shallow to make any real assessment of a movie at all.

 Tell me what your rating in a range of  1 - 100.  Then Ill better know where
these movies stood.

multiply by 20 and you'll have your answer
Personally I find rating between 1-100 far too much to be a good rating system.  You can't really say what makes a movie a 86 instead of a 87, but limiting the rating system allows you to put movies into subgroups of other movies roughly just as good, which is all that is needed.

What he said! Which is also why i have that little list of movies ive rated before at the bottom of my review posts. If you see where i'm coming from with a selection of those, then chances are you will agree (more or less) with the latest review. Gives the points some context...