Kung fu of 8 Drunkards - That featured some of the stiffest, least-acrobatic drunken boxen I've ever seen. Everything about the story is about as half-baked as a crummy clay wine pot. The film's redeeming factors were two secondary villains that used the panther and eagle styles and a cute girl who looked like Miki Saegusa from the Heisei Godzilla films, if Miki used the snake style.

The Innkeepers- This is the second Ti West film I've seen, and the second Ti West movie I liked more than I probably should. It's being killed on IMDB but I enjoyed it a great deal. I think there are some great moments that reflect my young adult life working boring minimum wage jobs that are spot on (taking out the leaking trash and putting up with a**hole costumers).
Not many shock scenes but the director knows how to build tension. The headphone scene is gripping, one of the best moments I've ever seen in a ghost movie.
The movie is a character driven film, does not rely on the standard 'give them a scare and gore every ten minutes' genre stuff. I watched it once and listened to both commentaries. Good stuff.

The House of the Devil - Keeping with the Ti West theme, I put this on my Netflix queue specifically because of its promised pairing of Mary Woronov and Tom Noonan. Since this is a low budget outing, neither Noonan nor Woronov are in the movie much, but both actors know why they have been cast in this movie and deliver on the creepy. The movie rests mostly on the shoulders of a young actress, Jocelin Donahue, who dominates the vast majority of scenes, and Ti West's direction. West says that he is going for a 70s horror vibe and claims to set the movie in the early 80s. In the first act, he accomlishes his first task rather well. While the pacing is slow, there is a developing thread of creepiness that runs through it all and that holds my attention. We understand that the main character needs money for an apartment and to afford college, her friend is actually quite smart and actually becomes the doomsayer of the movie when she tells Jocelin's character to not get involved with a job as things turn threateningly creepy. Noonan arrives on the scene and confesses that that babysitting job is actually a ruse and he wants someone to care for his aging mother while he and his wife go out. Woronov has a brief scene that gives her little to do, but because she is Mary Woronov, she manages to give this nothing scene some dramatic weight.
The third act is also pretty good as the film devolves into final girl syndrome, but at least, in this case, the final girl is quite smart, even taking the gun that is dropped.
Where the movie falls short is the bloated second act where numerous opportunities arise for something to happen, I kept anticipating that something would happen, and nothing does. There is not even a sense of escalating dread. I guess one has to give Donahue credit - she does everything she can to be entertaining, but where there should be a rising sense of paranoia on her part and things beginning to fall apart - well, nothing does.
In that sense, maybe its a perfect 70s horror movie. I've seen plenty of them that do that trick. Its just disappointing because West did a lot of cool things in the first act and third act that show he was capable of making the middle a bit more interesting than it was.
I do think, though, that he may be a director to watch.

Interesting; one of the reasons I loved this movie so much is that I found the middle section incredibly compelling and scary to watch. I definitely got a sense of escalating dread from it, and, for me, that was one of the main reasons the movie was so effective--it has one of the best slow burns I've ever seen in a horror film, giving the viewer just enough to let them know the worst is coming, but holding back the fireworks for as long as possible. I can see how the movie would disappoint if you didn't get the tension from the middle section, but I thought it was terrific. (I also liked The Innkeepers, but thought it suffered a little from not quite holding together as well as House Of The Devil did.)

I hope you don't mind, but in keeping with my suggestion on the other mini-review thread, I've copied, pasted, and responded to your remark on the Reader Review thread.

You saved me a step!

I think it's great that we are reinvigorating the Reviews forum while at the same time opening not one but TWO micro-review threads! People better get busy...

Ninja in the Dragon's Den - The fighting here is excellent. We have stilt-fu, ninja tricks, Legendary Superkicker Hwang Jang Lee, a house of traps fight, and much more. The dubbed dialogue is also pretty funny.

There's something missing from this film, however, that keeps it from being perfect. I'm not sure what it is, but there's a lack of dimension to Conan Lee's character, who, for the record, looks A LOT like Jackie Chan (I assume this was intentional). We see the students at the school he studies at in one scene, but for all the time he spends there, both them and his teacher are strangely offscreen. It gives the film a strange, impoverished vibe to it (as if they didn't have money to hire extras for more than one scene). Also, it's even stranger for Conan Lee to waltz around with the same hairstyle Jackie Chan had in Drunken Master, even though the film is set in the Ming Dynasty.

Skyfall - starts out like You Only Live Twice, ends like Home Alone! My favorite Daniel-Craig-as-Bond film to date. Honestly, I don't know what I should expect out the franchise by now. No more Bond-vs-colorful-operatives-of-criminal-mastermind stories for sure. I expect solid filmaking more than anything and Skyfall delivers. Bond fights, gets laid, drinks, gets shot, and plummets into a river. Woo!

Having finally seen Skyfall - as a balm to having just witnessed the epic grandeur of adolescent stupid that was Breaking Dawn, Part 2, I agree with all the accolades and the criticisms. Overall, this wound up being a dynamite showcase for Dame Judi Dench and I appreciate the attention they gave her. Her name, presence, and considerable charisma forced the writers to make the "M" character more than just a glorified cameo since the day she debuted opposite Pierce Brosnan. In a lot of ways, I respect her as more of The Iron Lady as Meryl Streep could accomplish. And its always a good day to see Albert Finney.

Still an unnecessarily long slog and, yes, the expendable femme fatale was done a lot more slimy. While it has been a part of the Bond "template," the case has been tragic more often than not. The girl encased in gold. The woman killed by Dobermans in Moonraker. The frightened double agent in Live and Let Die - none of these were dispatched with quite the poor taste of the Scotch line.

The length was, typically, ridiculous but was saved in large part by Roger Deakins extraordinary photography. Deakins deserves academy recognition for his work on this - especially for all the gorgeous Shanghai shots. I never thought glass and neon could look so beautiful. (I'll just mention the equally beautiful shots of Scotland - a detail I loved because of Sean Connery's history)

Still, the whole pursuit of the hired killer - which spent a lot of time achieving very little - could have been cut and little of the power of the movie lost.

Final thing - I am really glad to see that the Daniel Craig Bond movies lean on the dramatic side. I'm not that much of a fan of tongue-in-cheek James Bond. It is for that reason I enjoy the two Timothy Dalton Bond movies more than all the Brosnan movies put together, save Goldeneye. By the time Die Another Day arrives, it's very nearly as bad as the worst of the Bond comedies with Roger Moore.

Okay, I lied - one other final thing. I find it interesting that the theme of the movie was concerned with the "old way" of doing things with all the talk about Bond as an aging soldier - after only three movies, the first of which was a re-boot of the Bond character as a naive young spy just learning the ropes. But even then, there was this odd sort of schizophrenia playing throughout where elements of the movie were continuing this thread of re-boot at the same time making Bond, et. al. a bit of a codger.

Went with my gf and her best friends to see a Summit Entertainment released adaptation of a novel they knew by heart.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower: What'd you think I'd say? (They HATE Twilight) This is a great film too. Writer/director Stephen Chbosky wisely held onto his novel so he could get it on screen as he wanted it. The film still has a nice personal feel to it. Superb performances across the board. Logan Lerman's a strong lead. Ezra Miller is both hilarious and poignant. As for the film's wild card, Emma Watson proves that she's indeed a superb actress as there's nothing of Hermione Granger here. Gotta love a film so in touch with Pittsburgh Tom Savini has a small role. (He's hilarious too.) Just one of the best of 2012.

Killer Elite

The most interesting thing about this movie is that it was based on a non-fiction book. Here are some other things to consider:

1. SAS- Pffft. I guess they aren't that tough after all.
2. Jason Statham in 1980 looks just like Jason Statham in 2012! He never goes out of style!
3. Clive Owen comes across as a putz.
4. A good fight scene involving Statham tied to a chair, Owen in handcuffs, and a dapper "British" spy with a hand gun. Guess who wins!
5. Why does this remind me of Statham's part in The Expendables?

Wreck it Ralph: Oh what might have been. Disney misses a truly great opportunity but serves up a pretty good film nonetheless. They create the novel notion that when a bunch of video games are hooked up to the same power source in an arcade, it creates a virtual 'common area' where the game characters can interact and visit one another's games in the wee hours. Whenever a film like this surfaces you wonder how it was limited due to not being able to obtain rights - we have Q-Bert, Pac Man and a few other iconic characters but, you know, no Donkey Kong or Centipede or Dig Dug or...

Now had they just allowed the bad guys from all the games to stage a coup by doing a big game switch, the resulting chaos would have been magnificent. But they instead hatch a familiar Disney 'I want' plot that resolves into the equally familiar 'be happy with who you are' moral. Sara Silverman was born to voice the brattish character from 'Sugar Rush.'

Holiday weekend review capsules!

RISE OF THE GUARDIANS - A very good, but not exactly strong animated film in which childhood icons like Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, the Sandman, and Jack Frost are reborn as kind of a superhero team who protect the dreams of children.

This is an imaginative and brightly colored film with a lot of good ideas, that unfortunately aren't explored enough in the film's 100 minutes. I did like that the filmmakers try to treat this mainly as a fantasy adventure, and don't try to dumb down things too much, or throw in a lot of desperate comedy relief for the kids. Yeah, there's some physical humor with Santa's elves, but they don't really play a part in the film, other than to make the kid's laugh.

A very good film, but it's no Wreck-It Ralph or Paranorman.

LIFE OF PI - Easily the best looking film of the year. Much like Scorsese's Hugo from exactly one year ago, this is a perfect example of how to use 3D technology in an artful way that doesn't come across as gimmicky or unnecessary. The visuals in this film are something to behold.

If only I had gotten more involved with the plot. This is not a bad movie, but outside of the stunning visuals and great direction by Ang Lee, there wasn't a whole lot for me to get excited about here. There are also some curious moments, such as late in the film, when the main character sits in a bed, telling a story, and we're pretty much looking at him talking to the camera for five minutes or more. Some visualization of the story he's telling would have made things a lot more interesting. It's a scene that I'm sure works great in the original novel the film is based on, but on screen, comes across as an example of "show, don't tell".

I'm giving this a marginal recommendation on the strength of the visuals alone. it's quite the experience. I just was never involved like I felt I should be.

RED DAWN (2012) - Yeah, this one sucks, just like everyone knew it would. The characters are forgettable (most of the Wolverines are developed about as well as your average horny teenager in a slasher movie), and the movie doesn't even really bother to explain just what is the agenda of the invading Chin...oops, I mean North Korean army. There's a lot of shaky cam, and the whole movie has the feel of a live action video game. No wonder at one point one of the characters says, "We're living Call of Duty: Modern Warfare...and it sucks".

Full reviews for all 3 films up on Reel Opinions.

According to the director, Dig Dug was supposed to be in the movie as the "homeless" video game character that eventually became Q-Bert. But, when they pitched the idea to the original Japanese creator of the character, he did not find the joke funny, and would not allow the use of the character. Fortunately, the people who held the rights to Q-Bert had a better sense of humor.