Letterboxd — Your life in film

This movie looks bad — and in an objective sense, it really is kind of bad. But man, I still kind of dug it. It's a total mess, especially once the hour and a half movie starts diving into a half-dozen subplots. But there was something so good-natured about the movie that I cheered. It's a Christmas miracle!

When the movie isn't getting into bloodshed, it's quite good. Well-shot, taut court intrigue, some genuinely introspection. And then the wire-fu, CGI-bloated action happens and it feels like a totally different, totally lame movie. Thankfully, the movie only has two moderately short action set pieces. The talking is more exciting than the swordplay.

The scariest thing about this movie is that it cost three million dollars to make.

You'd think that following nine two- or three-star Michelin restaurants would easily fill up 90 minutes, but you'd be wrong. The film *looks* great, and the raw material is fascinating, but...by the one-hour mark it really starts to drag its feet. The film tries to remain agnostic about the Michelin Guide's worth; commitment one way or the other would've made the film a bit more compelling.

This wasn't the film I was expecting. But really, it was the film I needed.

The scene that summed the whole film up: Jackie Siegel chastises her children for neglecting their pet lizard. Upon discovering the limp body of the dead pet, one of the children says, "We had a lizard?"

I still can't figure whether Mark Hamill's character was supposed to be English or not.

This is the first M:I movie that felt like it hinged on something other than Tom Cruise. Even if the other members of the team felt like minor variations on archetypes.

But Brad Bird...keep directing live action movies. The action scenes popped, even with a ho-hum script dragging behind.

I had a lot of fun with this. There's a lot of talent behind the film, and the pacing really works. In some ways, it feels a bit like Raiders of the Lost Ark (which makes sense, since Raiders is a direct descendant of Tintin).

The motion capture stuff actually looks great here, too, and the times the movie shifts away from reality work great considering the pulpy content. Too bad American audiences didn't latch on. This is the sort of thing I could watch over and over and not get bored.

This is too scary* to be a drama, and to much of a drama to be a horror film. I appreciate when movies try to blur the line between genres, but Hellgate also blurs the line between bad movie and OK movie. The cast phones it it (Hurt in particular looks bored), the script is boring, the scares a jumbled collection of J-horror and zombie movie discards. Something about the movie kept me from hating it, though...maybe the purdy Thai locations?

*This movie is not scary.

It's slick and stylish, but it worked for me. I thought the ensemble cast did well, and I appreciate how Soderbergh keeps the pace moving. I think I would have liked it even more if we got to dig into the characters a bit more, but hey — they were fleshed out with only so much screen time divided among them.