schulen Blog

Peculiar.

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Shoot 'Em Up (2007)

Imagine if the big ending in Hot Fuzz got turned in to an almost-2 hour movie, but more ridiculous.

Then make that movie a whole lot stupider and you get this one.

It wasn't bad... I guess. It was well made. Roughly every action scene had a gimmick and each one was clever. Mostly, though, the movie was fucking weird. Weird that it got made, weird that someone could think of it in the first place... everything that happened was weird...

If it had been half an hour shorter it might have played as a brilliant satire on modern action flicks... but it was too long, the plot (while retarded) was too talked-about, and the score was too serious. At some point in between writing scenes about sniping babies and having sex during giant firefights, he tried to make things make sense. And, again, it was just fucking weird.

Posted Sunday, September 09, 2007 1:36 AM by schulen | with 1 comments

Unexceptional, but good.

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3:10 to Yuma (2007)

This flick is solid all the way through. Great performances across the board, well paced, and well shot.

It's just not great. It's a middle-of-the-pack film with a wonderful cast, but it never rises to the level of it's talent. It lacks flare - visually, while competent and well shot, there's nothing especially interesting. The acting, which, again, is the only exceptional part of the film, simply doesn't have an interesting-enough story, engaging-enough screenplay, or cleverly-staged-enough scenes to make this movie as good as I wanted it to be.

Entertaining, nonetheless.

Posted Saturday, September 08, 2007 11:40 AM by schulen | with 0 comments

Different flick, great flick.

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Halloween (2007)

This isn't a remake as much as it is a genre pic... it just so happens that Halloween IS the genre. It manages to give you the backstory without being sympathetic, convenient, or trite (Hannibal Rising couldn't pull it off) and when we cut to 15-years-later, it's the Michael everyone knows, done about the best as it's been done since the original. Whether it was worth making is arguable, but it's definitely worth seeing.

Posted Saturday, September 01, 2007 11:06 AM by schulen | with 0 comments