Letterboxd — Your life in film

Watching this movie almost immediately after the first one (or if you know the first one REALLY well) is the best. There are so many tiny jokes connecting the two movies... though there's enough recapping that I'd suspect none of it is really lost if you watch the movies far apart.

This movie is just a ton of fun. It had been awhile since I'd seen it, so I'd forgotten a lot of the smaller jokes (I was thoroughly amused this time around by the town name "Hill Valley"). So much fun to rewatch it.

This is a worthy addition to the Star Trek movie series. It's fun, light-hearted, has plenty of nods to the original series (both movies and TV) and, best of all, my very favorite actor Benedict Cumberbatch is the villain. It's always hard for me to see the Star Trek movies as a movie series and not just long episodes of a TV show, so it's not going to stick with me for a terribly long time, but it was definitely a fun viewing.

How it entered my Flickchart:
Star Trek Into Darkness > The Apostle
Star Trek Into Darkness < The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
Star Trek Into Darkness < 12 Angry Men (1997)
Star Trek Into Darkness > Judgment at Nuremberg
Star Trek Into Darkness > The Player
Star Trek Into Darkness > Children of a Lesser God
Star Trek Into Darkness > Chaos Theory
Star Trek Into Darkness > Hitchcock
Star Trek Into Darkness > Bolt
Star Trek Into Darkness > Sunday in the Park With George
Star Trek Into Darkness > Lolita (1997)
Final spot: #724 out of 1927.

Oh, this movie was so ridiculous, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. I think part of that was due to the fact that Jeremy Northam is very likable in it. I was rooting for him the whole way through. The plot gets very silly very quickly, but I can overlook silly in sci fi a lot more easily than I can anything else. If you have a fondness for goofy conspiracy theory sci fi, you'll probably enjoy this too.

How it entered my Flickchart:
Cypher > The Apostle
Cypher < The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
Cypher < The Dresser
Cypher < Foolproof
Cypher > Coraline
Cypher > Captain's Courageous
Cypher > The Madness of King George
Cypher > Hysteria
Cypher < Cry-Baby
Cypher > Dark City
Final spot: #847 out of 1926.

I'm not entirely sure what I just watched.

I really, REALLY loved the first half of it. A lot. Its quirky humor brought to mind Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (which I also loved). But then, as the story went on, it got less and less funny and more and more confusing. And it wasn't unfunny BECAUSE it was confusing - I was all prepared for that. The jokes just stopped happening. The quirkiness faded away. And now it was suddenly taking itself weirdly seriously, and it just wasn't funny anymore.

It felt like the writers ran out of ideas halfway through, tossed in a bizarre half-hearted way to wrap it up, didn't both writing any jokes for the second half, and then said, "I guess we're done." I really want to read the book now and see if that gives me the same feel.

This could very possibly be a movie that would grow on me. Like I said, I LOVED the first half of it. If the second half had been as good as the first, I'd have easily given the movie 4 1/2 stars. Unfortunately, though, it ended up being quite a disappointment.

How it entered my Flickchart:
John Dies at the End > Minority Report
John Dies at the End < The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
John Dies at the End < The Dresser
John Dies at the End > Judgment at Nuremburg
John Dies at the End > The Player
John Dies at the End > Children of a Lesser God
John Dies at the End < Journey to the Center of the Earth
John Dies at the End < To Rome With Love
John Dies at the End > City Lights
John Dies at the End > Vicky Cristina Barcelona
John Dies at the End > The Other Boleyn Girl
Final spot: #745 out of 1925.

This review reportedly contains spoilers. I can handle the truth.

A very mellow crime thriller by today's standards, but an engrossing one. The story moves along at what feels like a realistic pace. I thought it was fascinating that the most gripping scene (for me, anyway) was a scene where everyone working in this case just simply reports on what they've found. I felt like I was truly following the ins and outs of what it was like to work on this case. Along with the mystery/crime/thriller aspect, it's also a very human story, especially the opening and closing scenes. I didn't *love* it, but I was impressed by it and would certainly recommend it.

How it entered my Flickchart:
High and Low > Minority Report
High and Low < Zoolander
High and Low > The Dresser
High and Low < Once Upon a Mattress
High and Low < Elf
High and Low > The Man Who Wasn't There
High and Low < How to Steal a Million
High and Low < The Thing
High and Low < Seven Chances
High and Low < The Secret of Santa Vittoria
High and Low > Au Revoir Les Enfants
Final spot: #690 out of 1923.

This review reportedly contains spoilers. I can handle the truth.

Well, this movie certainly wanted to say *something*. It didn't really work, though. Too many stories-within-stories-within-stories for any of them to really capture my attention, and the extremely preachy scene at the end made me roll my eyes and say, "Oh, okay, so this was the message that they wanted to get across." It's not a good enough story to get away with that kind of preachiness. Super disappointing.

How it entered my Flickchart:
The Words < The Edge of Heaven
The Words < Miss Rose White
The Words > 101 Dalmatians (1996)
The Words > Rich and Strange
The Words > Don't Look Now
The Words > Stalker
The Words > The Enemy Below
The Words > Happy Gilmore
The Words < The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
The Words < Saboteur
The Words < The Omen
Final spot: #1450 out of 1922.

This certainly is creepy. I'm not sure it's going to stick with me as much as I had hoped, but it really is a very entertaining creature horror. And, who knows, maybe it WILL stick with me - that creature was certainly one of the creepiest things I've ever seen on film. I think my issue ended up being that I didn't connect to any of the characters, so any moment when they weren't actively fighting the creature was not so interesting for me.

How it entered my Flickchart:
The Thing > Minority Report
The Thing < Zoolander
The Thing > The Dresser
The Thing < We're Not Married!
The Thing < Stranger Than Fiction
The Thing > The Man Who Wasn't There
The Thing < Crossing Delancey
The Thing < To Sir, With Love
The Thing > Seven Chances
The Thing > The Pianist
The Thing > The Exorcist
Final spot: #683 out of 1921.

I watched the remake of this last year. Since they are pretty similar, I'd heard that whichever one I watched first would probably be the one I liked more. That is definitely the case here. Watching the story unfold this second time was not quite as wonderful for me, and the performances didn't capture me as much. It's tempting for me to downplay it because it wasn't *transcendant* the way Vanilla Sky was for me, but it was still a really excellent movie. The story is fascinating, the acting is good, and the ending is really interesting to watch.

How it entered my Flickchart:
Open Your Eyes > Minority Report
Open Your Eyes > Zoolander
Open Your Eyes < Pan's Labyrinth
Open Your Eyes > Kiss Me, Stupid!
Open Your Eyes < Spirited Away
Open Your Eyes < Adaptation
Open Your Eyes < The Birdcage
Open Your Eyes > Walk, Don't Run
Open Your Eyes > Man On the Moon
Open Your Eyes > Kramer vs. Kramer
Open Your Eyes < Trainspotting
Final spot: #347 out of 1920.