This week in movies

8:39 am, March 11th, 2010 | No Comments »
Posted in boythings, mooovies, roundups, whinging by Jarod

I’ve been watching a few movies of late. Lets have two quick reviews.

The Hurt Locker
Now I’ll be honest here… I really really don’t understand the hype. To me it’s just another Hollywood war movie glorifying war. Jarod’s rating? 2 inconceivable bomb defusings out of 5. I can’t embed the trailer, but if you’d like to waste your bandwidth, head here.

Men Who Stare At Goats
This is a very very strange movie. I saw this after watching the documentary of the same name a few days earlier and I’ve come to the conclusion that to see them the other way around would be disastrous. Always get to know the truth* behind a story before watching the Hollywood movie based on it.

It would be fair to say it’s a modern day, semi true HotShots. I give Men Who Stare At Goats 3 conspiracies out of 5 (if only for Ewan McGregor constantly talking about Jedi Warriors).

* I use the term truth loosely here. Cause lets face it, we’re talking military conspiracies here.

Tron Legacy
Not so much that I’ve watched it, but more so that I’m still eagerly awaiting it’s release later this year. Another official trailer got released yesterday…. so enjoy!

Movie Review: Cloudy with a Chance of Meat Balls

11:24 am, December 22nd, 2009 | 4 Comments »
Posted in boythings, idiotbox, mooovies by Jarod

A few weeks ago Liz and I watched Cloudy with a Chance of Meat Balls.

We like the occasional kids movie, having also watched (and liked) Up and a few others (which I can’t remember just now). I can safely say that Sony’s attempt at a Pixar’ish feature film was up there with the best.

Now, as I suck at analysing things and developing those thoughts into prose, this movie review will be written in ever popular bullet points. Firstly, the parts Liz and I enjoyed:

1. The animation and special effects. After diving into Modo in the last few weeks, I was flabbergasted.
2. The adult in jokes. The comedy works great on both adult and kid level.
3. The main character’s monkey… Steeeeeeeeeeeeeevee.
4. The mayor and his ever increasing waist line.
5. The cartoonic look and feel.
6. The town’s cop, voiced by Mr T. Brilliant I say. Brilliant.
7. The Gummy Beaaaaaars.

Now the parts that weren’t that great:

1. The predictable love story that took too much of the front seat.
2. The way the ending made us tear up slightly (though Liz will never admit it).
3. The (fairly) predictable story line. Aside from the small details, you always knew what was going to happen.
4. The way the weather reporter chick was a geek, but pretending she wasn’t. We got it the first time guys.

As there are 7 yays to only 4 nays, Cloudy with a Chance of Meat Balls can be considered a good, almost great movie. Jarod and Liz recommended.

A little bit cool.

11:11 am, March 12th, 2009 | No Comments »
Posted in girlthings, local, mooovies, photography, roundups by Liz

Keith Loutit’s ‘Little Sydney’ videos are quite entertaining. They are thousands of tilt-shift photos (or tilt-shift-esque – I can’t figure out if it’s done in post production or not) are stitched together to create short videos of some aspects of life in Sydney.

The latest is of the Mardi Gras:

You can go to his Vimeo page to see more.

The Dark Knight

5:10 pm, September 5th, 2008 | No Comments »
Posted in boythings, geekery, mooovies by Jarod

Over the weekend Liz and I finally got around to seeing The Dark Knight. Not only did we see it but we saw it in Imax style. Well, when I say style I actually mean the cinema was tired, old and run down, but by golly it had a big screen. Only getting there 20 minutes before the screening time meant we ended up sitting too close to the front. This wasn’t so much of a problem that you were too close to the screen, but more so that you had to crane your neck up at some ungodly angle to see the top half of the screen. Yep, it’s that big.

The IMAX film is nice. The extra whiff of crisp in the scenes shot on IMAX film was very noticeable. That and the additional vision top and bottom makes the IMAX stuff a trend I’d like to see continue in Hollywood… even if it means I have to pay $25 for the privilege. Expensive, but IMAX film is nice.

Oh yes, The Dark Knight. In the first few weeks of it screening in cinemas I was tricking my brain into not believing all the hype. Telling myself that my friends that saw it 4 and 5 times in the first few days only did so due to some sort of mental deficiency. But I’m very pleased to say that it lived up to all the hype and more. The storyline and acting: brilliant and mesmerising. Cinematography and lighting: emotive and captivating.

I won’t attempt to analyse the film, there are a stack of people out there that have done a far better job than I ever could. This was just my way of saying its good to see that several hundred million dollars in the right hands can still create a two and a half hour long masterpiece. Oh, and the definition and size of IMAX screens rocks my socks.

For the record, The Dark Knight gets 5 out of 5 bats.

Hancock Movie Review

6:28 pm, August 6th, 2008 | No Comments »
Posted in boythings, idiotbox, mooovies by Jarod

Over the weekend Liz and I watched the movie Hancock. You know, the one where Wil Smith plays a drunken superhero guy? Yeah that one.

Apart from a bit in the middle section where Liz and I both turned to one another and did a bit of Rove’s ‘What the?’, it turned out to be quite a good blend of action and storyline. Once you could look past the obvious flaws in the ‘What the?’ moment, the fast paced action and well edited ending really sucked you in.

Also worth a special mention is the empathy the viewer feels for Hancock. Can’t say I often get sucked into this sort of kind of thing, but at times I wanted to jump into the screen and help poor Wil work stuff out.

In an arbitary and no doubt be a short lived feature on this blog…. Jarod gives Hancock seven hundred and twelve stars.

Batman is Badass

9:02 pm, July 18th, 2008 | No Comments »
Posted in boythings, mooovies, photography by Jarod

Like, I’m talking seriously badass. Liz and I watched Batman Begins last night and my god is that version of Batman ever badass. I’ve only ever seen the old George Clooney versions of Batman, and quite frankly they’ve got nothing on Christian Bale (or Justin Hamilton).

This was all in preparation to go see Batman: The Dark Knight which everyone’s raving about. If it’s anything like Batman Begins I’ll walk out of the cinema happy (and wishing the projectionist stopped the film a million times so Liz can explain the plot to me).