I did not expect to like this one as much as I did! While I would say that the bucket for vampire movies is getting too crowded, I will certainly not fault an entertaining one for this!
The characters are rather quirky and it's shot mockumentary style (like The Office) which might be off-putting for some but you have at least give them credit for going through a variety of jokes here! Oh, and let's not forget Stu! Everyone loves Stu!

This was a big miss as a sequel... as established early on in the movie the character of "Borat" is pretty much dead as he is part of pop culture now so he can't do the same stunts as before. To work around this issue we are instead introduced to his daughter who travels with him while Sacha is mostly going around in throw-away disguises akin to his recent "Who is America?" show (which was already plagued by similar issues). Unfortunately they did very little to help ground this in reality. Borat as a journalist had a reason to travel around and have a camera on where as in the sequel it feels quite unauthentic and often scripted. The "charm" Borat had is also mostly absent as he was mostly just in narritive driven scenes (making the Giuliani scene the "climax" AND releasing the movie with this deliberate timing only did it a big disservice imho). Did I chuckle in some scenes? Sure... but as a complete package it was just really disappointing and hollow.

You have to admire Noé for the way he just fucks with conventions as he pleases and stages lengthy camera rides just for the fun of it. The film sets up a huge cast of dancers pulling off some crazy vogue shit and lets them slowly but surely decend into a feverish hell. I was not without doubts while watching this( and he does let his bad boy hang out) but I ended up just enjoy the hypnotic ride. It's definitly nothing substantial but a big step up from "LOVE".

"pumpkin + tower"

This simple google search locating key players in the story tells you heaps about the thoughtful writing here.
Anyways, I saw this movie already when it was still called Seconds (http://trakt.tv/movies/seconds-1966)... Instead of exploring the theme like any good sci-fi thriller would do we get stuck with bland action scenes. It's all cookiecutter resulting in a boring and predictable movie. There are also a plethora of plotholes to nag at.
Those expecting at least vibrant direction by Tarsem will also be disappointed.

Unlike some people I didn't see anything mindblowing in the movie... I figured that much from the first minute. Guess who did the score? Hans Zimmer. How can you tell? When the fucking Inception tune is horning. What further could you do to alienate me right away? Adjust the colors so that some of the people onscreen have orange skin!?
Well, the good thing is that it isn't riding too hard on the white guilt but still, even the "nice" slave-masters are inheretly immoral. Can't say much about the adaptation as I'm not familiar with the source material but we don't really get much from Solomon's character except for the odd nod that he is a superior slave or at least entitled given his background (as wrong as this sounds)... There was the lack of weight of the 12 years as we can't keep track of time except for the nature changing and but it's still rather episodic.
The acting is one of the better parts although the movie would have benefited from a lesser known cast. Brad Pitt was totally out of place (he was the Producer w/e) and for example Danno's little song was more a bad joke than anything thanks to his general persona.
Despite some good scenes I just never really got into it so the whole affair felt longer than it should have been. This is basicly my Lincoln of 2013.

Fun and slick movie but the second half wasn't the the kind of story progression I wanted to see. Also totally terrible fourth-wall speech there.

Solid movie and pretty looking (+1 rating for that). Glad to see that Shinkai is moving forward and for once not doing "teenage romance" nostalgia. 5cm/s & the Place Promised in Our Early Days while pretty looking just didn't work storywise for me. Voices of a Distant Star was fine (only read the manga though). Props to keeping the story relatively short instead of bloating it.

I was reluctant to see this because of superpowers but did anyway... While I'm very aware of it's positive reception I don't really share that sentiment. It starts out somewhat OK but certainly works around it's budget in quite early on. Where it probably went really wrong for me is the reception of the little main girl as she struck me as an ungrateful little brat and had that annoying stare all the time. As the story went along it felt like TV tier clichés thrown together the ice cream truck was esp. cringe and it jumped all over the place from her being the key for liberation of the "Freaks" to just saving mommy. Thank god she is a Mary Sue so all works out fine and got daddy killed to get her mommy instead...

I was reluctant to see this movie because on paper it looks like an arthouse chore. Luckily it isn't at all.
We follow the cynic and self-proclaimed "it-man" of the high-class nightlife in Rome; Jep, through his episodic encounters in the city. Because of the death of his one true love (who married someone else) he starts to reflect on his life and what the Great Beauty in it is (or was).
The movie showcases beautiful cinematography, editing and score and has a diverse set of actors. There is also plenty of often subtle humor to be found in the scenes and dialogue making it everything but dry.

A truely unique documentary. Not only does the director talk to some of the people responsible for mass murders of commies in Indonesia but he also enlists them in a project to make a movie about their experiences. They then go on and even mix together diffrent genres (musicals, ganster film, etc.) for their story. This gives it a rather surreal vibe but it underlines the thinking of the perpetrators. The way they openly - without regret - talk about their past actions is disturbing. Needless to say there is a climax to the movie and it's all captured with just the camera rolling. I now might also know how "sick to the stomach" sounds like. Well worth for some astonishing scenes and it only occasionally drags on.
As of now, there seem to be three different versions: a 115 minute cut for the festival release, a directors cut of 159 minutes (the one I watched and belive is really the real one (matches RT)) and another one that is unfinished and apperantly is shared in Indonesia (official screenings are not permitted there). The last one has some credits/scenes in it which were removed for the "proper" release for security reasons (many credits have been listed as anon).

At this point "Dread Central presents" is code for really bad flicks for me (excluding international imports)... Yes, the creepy mute clown idea isn't bad (and would fit in with other iconic horror characters) but somehow this ended up way worse than the already weak anthology he spawned from. The script is absolute garbage. Nothing is made off the "Halloween" setting and you can really tell that they had no idea how to get to 90 minutes because not only is it full of dumb clichés but they also bring in characters when they need a quick kill. I was bored out of my mind before the the mid point and I can only stomach so many "UHHHH, I STABBED HIM ONCE, LEFT MY WEAPON THERE AND NOW I'LL CERTAINLY RUN TO SAFETY AND HE WILL TOTALLY NOT COME BACK" moments > lmao at the terrible wooden plank scene. There's a surprisingly gory kill in there but the rest cannot even shine there due to editing/FX.

I was well aware that this "Death Note" was going to be a liberal adaptation of the source material but by the midpoint my patience ran out: whhhhhyyyy u do dis? This is coming from someone who associated the name "Adam Wingard" with good movies (up until Blair Witch anyways) and is not only here because of the anime avatar... He pretty much added insult to the injury by adding misguided gore effects, neon-lightning and picking the wrong songs to cue.
According to interviews the IP has been passed around in the industry for a while and has been rewritten a bunch during this (and it shows). So who exactly at Netflix figured this would reach a broader audience than the anime already did when they're replacing the core dynamics and traits that made it popular outside it's medium in the first place? Really disappointed with this... it's just a half backed adaptation restrained by it's need to keep the characters while going for a direction that doesn't really lend to them (the note could have fallen into the hands of ANYONE, no need to butcher). 90 minutes is also way to short as the flow is terrible.

Uhm yeah, some people belive this movie can be used to raise social awareness from internet predators (which was part of it's intent according to the director).. I would not do that with this movie. According to comments at IMDB some folks even showed this to their teenage kids?!

While it's true that the last 22 minutes are effective, it's mainly for the reason that this is some sick shit. What builds up to this is horrible dialog from stupid teenagers who don't look their age (Megan is supposed to be 13/14).

It's an OK movie if you're down to watch something in this vain but in the end it's just torture porn based loosley on ideas from "true events".

As good as the gore was... the script was just horrid. Everyone kept reciting the same lines, the characters were one-note and everything about the townspeople was just absurd. Why is everyone up in arms about something that doesn't really concern them from 40 years ago? How they dealt with Michael was also dumb... it's like Judy Geer's character wasn't listening to her mom at all. The 2018 effort was OKish as it dealt with Laurie's trauma but this really had nothing to show for it.

Enjoyable for the visuals and setting (which is thanks to the comics I guess) but loaded with tons of issues; bad chemestry from the leads, story gets worse by the minute, needless exposition dumps, plot holes, predictable, shilling social commentary (6 million... like really wow?) and a side story for Rihanna that adds nothing to the movie except runtime.

This movie is everything that is wrong with the horror movies that are put up in cinemas for easy cash grabs.
I always found the first one to be quite stupid (that fucking drawing of the little boy as superman in the astral world that is actually just made up of DEAD FUCKING PEOPLE) but the second one actually upped my opinion of it. Needles to say that this turd crushed any further expectations.
I guess it's still positive reception probably comes down to people finding Darth Maul to be scary (or sorry, "Spooky").

While it starts out sort of alright the story takes the easy and generic route leading to a foreseeable ending that isn't satisfactory.

Seeing that Mark Duplass is in this movie it's save to call this is "mumblecore found-footage"... if you're expecting something else you won't like it very much. The movie does a good job for most of it's runtime keeping the weird tone up (besides the annoying attempts at jumpscares), the finale however lacks the punch it needed.

I mainly put this on my watchlist because I read the score was done by Ben Frost and mostly forgot about this. Given the recent release of the OST I was reminded of this and thought I would give it ago, knowing that it is artsy and not too many people dug it. While it isn't anything superior I found it intriguing during it's runtime. It's like a fusion of arthouse and a softer Tokyo Decadence. I also had a strong desire to listen to "El Tren Fantasma" afterwards instead of Ben Frost lol.

Not sure if I would have liked it more or less if I didn't know who was attached to this. A tech-possession movie sounded really cool but the "mind-space" idea was underused and felt detached which can be said about a lot of stuff in the movie. It has little time for genuine interactions between characters and instead prefers to fill the dialogue with info dumps "let me show you what I have in the garage" :face_with_raised_eyebrow:), tension and horror are pretty much absent (they had every excuse to blend realities here) and the final third just poked holes in any of the remaining logic the lore (and story) might have had...

Dang, should have figured that Mohammad did the score for this (since I almost own their whole discography)! I feel like their Involvement is an integral part of the movie actually working as moody and slow as it plays out. I'm not sure if I'd recommend the movie as despite me liking it somewhat, it also feels like it offers little else than the atmosphere for the time being.

Another good movie from Hosoda but it needed to be longer. Certain aspects are left aside making it feel incomplete and slightly disjointed at times.

This one goes on top of the pile of pretentious seinen with a bit of obligatory edge. No idea why this needed to be two hours long because it's main theme is nothing new and despite info dumping little is done with it making the whole experience rather boring.

Man, what a let down... They had a great setting to work with but it didn't get above a half baked mythology. The movie dedicates a lot of it's runtime to the groups trip without much out of the ordinary happening (just the occasional jumpscare)... I didn't find the cast to be very interesting for that and once it was judgement day o'clock it didn't get any better. It's not a big budget production resulting in some very medicore creature effects and lots of no-show from the broken Google Glass or the leads impaired eyesight. All the action is set underground in dark places with as generic shit possible.

Turbo Kid is a feature-length adaptation of a short submitted for the ABCs of Death series. Sporting not one but three directors it's a very competent debut. I only saw one of their shorts a long time ago which was Bagman but that already set my expectations high for midnight fun! The cast is strong and the story inventive & fun. They also took the time to actually build the future this movie takes place in.
It's a mix of retro homage and glorious gore but I sometimes felt these two don't necessarily go together that well. Still a lot of fun!

There isn't quite someone as Miike, keeping busy with tons of movies every single year. "As the Gods Will" is an adaptation of a death game manga of the same title. Each round is based on a traditional game or at least inspired by one. The violence has a good mix of humor to it while still keeping it 'real'. For most of it's runtime the movie is entertaining, there is however no conclusion to the story. Sort of like Gantz there is a global scale to the events but you won't get it from this alone. The movie also closes on another stage of the game, be it endgame or not.

The Goose Is Loose. If you're up for style over substance - ehr fucking everything... you'll have a great time. Otherwise, not so much.

All I can think here is "Wasted potential". The movie was certainly well shot but it doesn't go anywhere, has an unimpressive twist and ends silly. It could easily double as a commercial for sports shoes which sounds rather dismissive but give me at least something here!

How have I not heard about this? Not only an anime this year but also two live-action movies? The big question is always if they're going to skimp out or not, especially (NSFW) http://i.imgur.com/3nFzrdk.png. I'm looking forward to it as the story is quite good https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amMR_8YDJgc :)!