The review post

Its been a few long, tiring weeks at work, so much so that I am struggling to finish off the book I am reading. This also means that there have been fewer movies watched between my last review post and this.

The wife has asked me to blog about other things, but I cannot resist a few reviews.

Before we move on, I seem to have caused distress from some of my posts earlier. If you are one who has felt offended by what I have been writing, then I guess you will just have to live with it :)

Here come the movies

Where the wild things are

This is a movie about a lonely kid, who runs away from home and seemingly lands up on a fantasy island, where there are wild creatures whom he befriends and who make him their 'king'.
Each creature really is a person that the kid knows in real life and the creature takes their characteristic.
So what we have is a kid building a world from the figment of his imagination. Not a bad idea, its from a book after all. However the kid they have cast in the main role is psychotic. So I intensely disliked him, which meant that I did not think too highly of the movie either.
It could have been that I was drawing parallels with the brilliant Pan's Labyrinth(Which has a very similar plot).
Watchable, if you don't hate the kid, like I did. But please watch Pan's Labyrinth instead, its definitely a much better movie.

Fantastic Mr. Fox

A fantastic stop animation movie, with George Clooney as the thieving Mr. Fox who has mended his ways to lead a quiet family life, or has he ? :)
Brilliant soundtrack and some really fun characters, as Mr. Fox decides to raid the farms of 3 dangerous farmers, who in turn decide they want vengeance!
Please watch.

Half Past Dead

What do you get when you mix Steven Seagal with a movie with a tagline that goes 'The good, the bad and the deadly' ?
A crappy 'action' movie that generally makes no sense.
That's all I have to say about this movie. Don't judge me for watching this movie. It was coming on TV at the same time as I was looking at the TV screen.

Manhattan Murder Mystery

A superb Wooddy Allen movie, about a couple who seem to be undergoing a mid-life crisis, thanks to a routine life and boredom, just as they are drifting apart, they encounter what seems to be a murder of a neighbour and off they go to solve the mystery, this is set in Manhattan and hence the title.
Very well made movie and Diane Keaton and Woody Allen get together with their weirdly wonderful chemistry.

Date Night

Very similar to Manhattan Murder Mystery in terms of the plot. A couple leading a content but boring life, decide that they need to get some excitement back into their life by going out on date to a posh new restaurant in the city. Having taken somebody else's seating reservations, they get into trouble with the mob and bad cops, who mistake them to be a couple on the run, who have stolen some mobsters flash drive.
Steve Carell does a good job as usual in this mildly entertaining fare which is great Saturday afternoon/evening watch.

Shattered

A man and his wife have an accident, the man loses his memory, but things do not seem to be what they are as he struggles to get back to his old life. A web of deception and deceit (I love this phrase) seem to cover his new life.
I must mention this movie for one scene which most of us would inadvertently have watched time and again.
Which is the accident. This clip of a car breaking through a wall on a dark winding road and crashing into the hillside with glass shattering, was used by most Hindi mystery/detective serials of the late 90's!

Taken

Brilliant fast paced action movie about an ex-spy rescuing his daughter who has been kidnapped in Europe by sex-slave traders.
Awesome action sequences and Liam Neeson make this movie a must watch!

Wanted


Pathetic and Unwanted.

How to train your dragon

Easily the best animated movie in a long long time! Dragons are the most hated creatures in Berk, village of viking warriors, where the kids are trained to fight and kill dragons. Hiccup the main protagonist is a contradiction of sorts to his father who is the village leader. However Hiccup does manage to trap the most fearsome dragon of all 'Night Fury', but ends up befriending the dragon, to soon realise that these beasts are misunderstood by humans.
Wathing it in 3-D was a great experience in itself. Fantastic animation and pretty good story line makes this one of my favourite animation movie.
"This is Berk. It snows nine months out of the year, and hails the other three. What little food grows here is tough and tasteless. The people that grow here, even more so. The only upsides are the pets. While other places have ponies, or parrots... we have dragons. "
- Hiccup

The other man

Liam Neeson plays a quiet unassuming family man, who is tortured by a conversation he had with his wife before she left, where she tells him that if she fell in love with another man she would just go away. He soon discovers pictures of his wife's lover (Antonio Banderas) on her laptop and the rest of the movie is about finding out who the man is. Both Liam Neeson and Antonio Banderas have likeable characters and it is a decent movie with a nice little twist in the end :)