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[Matthew]

You'll be happy

[Rob Pegler]

Hobo with a Shotgun: Undeniable proof that fake movie trailers should be left as such, and not adapted into feature films. I understand what they were going for (over-the-top grindhouse parody/black comedy) but it didn't work for me. At least the girl was cute.

Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale: A Finnish "dark fantasy" in which a mining company working in the arctic circle digs up an ancient book containing the frozen Santa Claus - not the jolly guy in the red suit, but the vengeful old pagan spirit the legend was (partly) based on. Pretty soon reindeer are turning up slaughtered and children are vanishing into sacks, and a local kid has to convince the adults what's going on and save the town. It takes a while to get going and suffers from a rather preposterous ending, but well worth a watch.

[Matthew]

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest - A good conclusion to The Girl Who... trilogy. It's interesting in that it's protaganists are very sympathetic without being very likable. In Lisbeth's case, she's been so horribly abused it's an understandable defense. Blomqvist comes across as an arrogant ass who uses the people around him shamelessly. He is only partly redeemed by the justice of his cause. Very good but not great.

Blackhawk Down - Excellent movie, very intense and moving.

[frank]

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Pretty good.

[Timothy W. Long]

Drive. This movie was not what I expected. I thought it was another fast action car movie ... the name and all. Good drama, more than a hint of noir, weird 80's synth music but it works. Just check it out.

[Matthew]

Winter's Bone - Excellent! One of the best I've seen in a long time.

[Rob Pegler]

Empire Records (rewatch after 15+ years). Yeah, I think we'll file this one under "guilty pleasures" (where all 90's teen flicks belong). But hey, it's still a fun little flick.

[Matthew]

The Kite Runner - Not fantastic but very good.

[Rob Pegler]

Ironclad. Plays a little fast and loose with history, but that's not its biggest problem. After a promising start it drags like crazy in the middle and then descends into cliches near the end. Still, good cast - you can't go far wrong when you've got Charles Dance, Brian Cox, Jason Flemyng and Mackenzie Crook in your movie, and Paul Giamatti (as usual) steals the show. I was also impressed with its unflinching dedication to proper blood and gore - the scene were King John starts hacking limbs off his prisoners was a breath of fresh air in the age of over-the-top gore porn.

[Rob Pegler]

Conan the Barbarian (the new one). Pleasantly surprised. I've avoided seeing it because I believed all the bad press, but finally decided to watch it based on the recommendation of a couple of the staff at my comic shop, who told me it was "brilliant".

I don't know if I'd go that far (and Howard's Conan it ain't) but based purely on its own merits it's actually a bloody good film. It's a proper sword & sorcery action flick and never tries to be anything else. Momoa's a merciless ass-kicking savage with a heart of gold, the good guys are likeable and the bad guys loathesome, the storyline is just silly enough to still be entertaining, and it lives up to its R16 rating with a decent amount of sex and some seriously brutal fight scenes - the violence made me sit up and go "Oooooooohhh!!!" about half a dozen times throughout the film, which is always a good sign.

And here I was thinking it was going to be another King Kull. Serves me right for listening to the naysayers, I guess.

[Rob Pegler]

Colombiana. Could have been fecking brilliant, but meandered back and forth between "plodding" and "stupid" instead. At times it seemed to be cobbled together from leftover bits of Nikita and Leon, in  no particular order.

On the other hand, Zoe Saldana is sex on a popsicle stick and spends about 60% of the movie only halfway dressed, so I'm going to give it an 11/10. 

[Matthew]

I didn't like Conan much and hated Momoa's performance, but I went in with higher expectations I think.

Alphaville - A bizarre dystopian film noir sf/detective film by Jean Luc Goddard. The description makes it sound better than it was. I found it kind of a WTF experience.

[Rob Pegler]

I didn't like Conan much and hated Momoa's performance, but I went in with higher expectations I think.

Well, I was never going to go in with high expectations, but I gave it a chance based on the enthusiastic gushing of the comic shop guy (and girl). The guy actually said something like "People go to see a Conan movie and expect Shakespeare, of course they're going to be disappointed."

Personally, I wasn't even expecting Howard. I went in thinking it would be another Kevin Sorbo PG-13 wankfest - but when a movie opens with an unborn baby being narrowly missed by the sword that kills his mother, you know you're in for something a bit grittier.

If this film didn't have 80 years worth of baggage attached to it, I think more people would just appreciate it for the fun fantasy action flick it is.

[Wardog]

The disappointment for me - other than them claiming a Conan movie and it wasn't - was that the book they wrote to go along with had a much better story arc that included Momoa's grandfather as the one who trained him to fight and make war after they killed the village.

I did enjoy it as a bit of stabby-stabby and hawt nekkid grrlz, but I can expect Howard when I go to see something proclaiming Conan and this didn't have it. Momoa was just the dancing monkey on the screen and did a fine job with what he had, I blame the team behind the camera, and even more the studio.

[Thom Brannan]

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

fun! getting darker. i liked it for that. though, one thing i have against the series is the same thing i have against the Superman movies, or the four 007 movies in a row where SPECTRE was the organization behind the bad guy. ominous stuff, happy stuff, more ominous stuff, lackeys and Death Eaters, then Harry vs Voldemort. i hope the sixth movie (i don't remember what it's called) has something more going for it.

The Man With the Golden Gun

more fun. i'm maybe warming to Roger Moore as Bond. maybe. so far, in his two appearances, it's only felt like Bond was in any real danger (by his demeanor) was at the end bit of each movie. i'm just glad there were devices or gadgets or fucking whatever for this one. the spinning-saw/superduper magnet wristwatch in Live and Let Die was blah. fun also to see Christopher Lee as yet another bad guy, this one with three nipples. and evil midgets! well, one.