Nearing the end...
New Moon
I was pretty disappointed with this one. Considering I became unhealthily obsessed with the first Twilight film and New Moon is my favorite of the books, I thought this would be great. I gave it a 3 rating which is probably generous.
I think the main problem with the movie was two-fold. It was too long or rather it just dragged. The second problem is that the greatest part of the book, all the exciting reveals, lost all their wind in the movie. Part of this is because I read the book already and part of this is because the trailer pretty much reveals the entire story. I knew Edward leaves Bella, I knew Jacob is a Werewolf and I knew that Edward would try to kill himself. All the suspense and excitement is gone.
Here's hoping Eclipse is a bit better : /
Surrogates
First, Bruce Willis with a weird plastic face is freaky. Second, the phrase mindless action film comes to mind. There were some good ideas in this movie and then some stuff that just didn't make sense. I don't really understand why you'd want your actual body decaying from lethargy just so you could have a weird perfect plastic body. It's kind of like living in the Matrix vs. living in real life. Sure it's nice, but it's not real. Also, the whole mechanism that somehow protects the actual bodies but allows all the surrogates to fry, just seems way too easy. It was alright.
Sicko
I always try to take any film of Michael Moore's with a grain of salt. The topic of this movie is obviously extremely relevant to the current political issues so I was really interested to see this. It has some really compelling stories of people and some astonishing incidences.
The one that really hit me was when they visit Cuba and go to a pharmacy to find that an inhaler that costs $120 in the US, costs only 5 cents in Cuba. This may or may not be an exaggeration or even a rare case but I've experienced this myself. I have a prescription that costs around $50 dollars a month in the US, with insurance $40. Living in Ireland, I found that the Irish equivalent of my prescription costs 5 to 10 euro here, or in other words no more than 15 dollars.
Whether Moore embellishes or not, I still have no doubt that the American healthcare system is very broken and hopefully it will be resolved soon.
Zombieland
Funny with great characters. I expected the story line to be slightly more unique but the characters were enough to really make it shine. I only wish I could have known all of the rules.
Planet of the Apes
This is one of those classics that took me a very long time to see. Even though I knew the "twist" ending prior to watching I still really enjoyed the film. It's really a critique of man in many ways. We see ourselves in the way the apes behave, beating man, denying truth, holding religion above all else even when it causes violence etc but we also see ourselves in Taylor's ancestors who destroyed our earth with war. Neither the humans or the apes are right, but then again we're really both of them.
Movie Count: 172
402. The Wire: 407 Unto Others
403. The Wire: 408 Corner Boys
404. The Wire: 409 Know Your Place
405. The Wire: 410 Misgivings
406. The Wire: 411 A New Day
407. The Wire: 412 That's Got His Own
408. The Wire: 413 Final Grades
409. The Wire: 501 More With Less
410. The Wire: 502 Unconfirmed Reports
411. The Wire: 503 Not for Attribution
412. The Wire: 504 Transitions
413. The Wire: 505 React Quotes
414. The Wire: 506 The Dickensian Aspect
415. The Wire: 507 Took
416. The Wire: 508 Clarifications
417. The Wire: 509 Late Editions
418. The Wire: 510 30
419. Glee: 111 Hairography
420. Heroes: 411 Thanksgiving
421. Heroes: 412 The Fifth Stage
422. Glee: 112 Mattress
423. The Office: 612 Scott's Tots
424. 30 Rock: 407 Dealbreakers Talk Show #0001
425. Gossip Girl: 311 The Treasure of Serena Madre
TV Count: 425
Books
The Book of Evidence
Book Count: 14