Films in 2010 - December (24 / 192)

Kick-Ass - brilliant, loved it, real piss-take on the typical superhero film. Cage was hilarious, the whole cast was great. 4/5

*Road Trip - it was on TV, I was bored, it's even worse than I recall. 0.5/5

Loose Change 911 An American Coup - another poorly made conspiracy doco about the 9-11 attacks. Actually has a few interesting points but is clearly made by a kid cobbling vision together and with a really bad voice over. Once again doesn't provide any evidence whatsoever for many of the crazier theories, though the ones about the buildings being already rigged to blow are scarily plausible. 1.5/5

*Catfish - still a good film, showed it to the housemate who kept trying to guess what was going on. 3.5/5

Brooklyn's Finest - one of those cops and drug dealer films that you just know won't have a happy ending, and of course it doesn't. Great performances and a pretty good script though. 3/5

The Aviator - had not seen this before and really enjoyed it, Blanchett was absolutely marvellous. 3.5/5

Megamind - quite funny and well voice acted (though Brad Pitt's vpice didn't fit is role), loved the Superman jokes. Still not sold on 3D, it didn't add anything to the admittedly already brilliant animation. 3/5

Predators - dumb, stupid fun with absolutely no surprises. Laurence Fishburne was bloody funny. 2/5

The King's Speech - Brilliant, brilliant, BRILLIANT film. Not perfect, but brilliant. Rush is getting all the Oscar buzz but it should be Firth as he was just perfect in his role, I couldn't take my eyes off him whenever he was on screen. Helena Bonham-Carter was perfect as well. 4.5/5

*True Crime - classic Eastwood thriller. I read the book ages ago and saw the film soon after, still an enjoyable film to see despite already knowing the ending. 3/5

The Fourth Kind - your basic alien abduction thriller with the twist of using "dramatisations of real footage", ahem, yes. It was interesting and fun, had a few tense moments but overall kinda ho-hum. 2.5/5

Shrek Forever After - quite dull, deriviative, all been done before and really lackluster, saved only by a few random laughs. I really hope the planned 5th and 6th films don't come out but this still made plenty of money so I suspect they will. 2/5

Bigger Stronger Faster - interesting doco about 3 brothers in the sport of power-lifting and their struggle with using anabolic steroids. Goes into some fo the scientific scare mongering as well as analysing famous people using them, doesn't really give a definitive answer but is fascinating all the same. 3/5

Despicable Me - deploringly predictable and not as good as many reviewers made out, watchable but rather meh. 2.5/5

Skyline - great concept, damn good execution, deplorable script, atrocious acting, some pretty good special effects, and ending that is just vomit worthy in its stupidity. 2/5

Robin Hood - actually quite the enjoyable romp. Some silly bits but I enjoyed the humour and the set up (clearly this begs for sequels) though was weird seeing American actors do British accents (for some reason not as weird as Aussies doing them). Crowe doesn't destroy the film. 3.5/5

*How To Train Your Dragon - just as much fun the second time around. 4/5

The Princess and the Frog - I can see what Disney tried to do here by moving the action to New Orleans, and it works, but just not well enough for me to be more than reasonably entertained by this relatively traditional Disney fare.. 2.5/5

Armadillo - fascinating embedded doco as we follow a squad of Danish soldiers sent to Afghanistan. Visceral, interesting, scary, real, eye opening. Not the best Afghan War doco, but up there with the best. 4/5

I'm Still Here - Joaquin Phoenix is without a doubt one of the most brave and versatile actors of the modern age, this film is raw and funny and sad and depressing and ultimately, despite the fact it's not "real" really quite a fascinating look at the Celebrity Machine. 3.5/5

Hachi: A Dog's Story - just a wonderful, poignant, well crafter family film with a beautiful and bittersweet message. Makes me want to see the original. 4/5

The Ghost Writer - a writer is drafted to finish the memoirs of a Tony Blair-esque ex Brit PM but all is not what it seems and the mystery of what his predecessor was up to opens up a whole can of worms. It's well made but really, Polanski needed someone to take a look at the script for him - the obviousness of the twist gets figured out far too early (well I did anyway) and so the rest of the film becomes a bit of a paint-by-numbers game, but having said that it's still an enjoyable film to watch. He just made the clues far to obvious or overt. Still an interesting film but yeah, definitely has script problems. Oh and why he cast Kim Cattrall in a British role I'll never know, what a mistake that was. 2.5/5

*Alien 3 - really not sure why this film gets such a bad rap, I've always liked it though it is very similar to the first film. 3/5

*Alien Resurrection - some fun scenes and great effects let down by quite a poor conclusion. 2.5/5


So a pretty good year in film with the standout being THE ACTRESSES. Managed to almost hit 200, almost as good as my Project 365 attempt in 2009.

So far in January I'm up to 18 films by the 18th, maybe I can get over the previous record of 209 in 2009, time will tell.

God this blog is pointless, I dunno why I bother updating it...