What films have you been watching recently?

Wow, it's like every single town centre Waites on a friday and saturday night!

Watched Pan's Labyrinth last after having bought it out of boredom at the airport last weekend. Very nice, definitely can see me watching it again and again.

Haha, very pleased that you finally got to see it, it is a superb film.

My film viewing tonight shall be Evangelion 2.22 on Blu-ray. I can't actually think of anyone else on here who watches anime, but I'm excited.

Not a huge anime fan per se (although I adore most Studio Ghibli films) but Evangelion 1.11: You Are (Not) Alone turned up over the weekend; looking forward to revisiting the world of Nerv and EVAs.

Clash Of The Titans. Possibly one of the worst remakes I've ever seen. It took all the good bits from the original version, like the banishment of Calibos, the Princess's riddle, Perseus taming Pegasus, and Poseidon unleashing the Kraken at the beginning of the film, so basically the first 50 minutes, and DIDN'T PUT THEM IN. An unmitigated pile of shit.

Yeah, but at least it had the owl in, right? :D

For about 20 seconds !

The only thing about the film that was any amusement was that instead of calling the city Argo they called it Argos, so every time there was a reference to the Kraken destroying Argos, or Argos being ruined, I thought of the shop.

Oh yeah, and was the reason they made Pegasus a black horse because they didn't have any other black characters in it ?

Watched the new Sherlock Holmes with Robert Downey Jr last night and tbh i thought it was really good which was a big surprise as the director cant normally direct traffic.

Looking forward to more!

Nice one! Rebuild is absolutely superb so far imo.

I still hope there's a proper directors cut of this one day, it's really obvious that it has been recut really badly at some point with massive chunks of the film missing.

I dunno mate, they changed some fundamental bits of the story too, like all this guff about overthrowing Zeus by not praying to him. Originally it was all about insulting Hera after Perseus had solved the riddle and won the right to marry Andromeda. And the scorpions coming out of Calibos' hand ? Loads of it had been reordered and altered. If there was ever a perfect example of 'if it ain't broke'....

Watched Dirty Harry for the first time over the weekend. Guns, violence, boobs and tank tops, it has literally everything.

I did indeed watch evangelion: 2.22. It is still as amazing as it was last year.

Labyrinth - not seen it for a while but introduced Rheya to it. She loved it :-)

Rendition - credited on Ch4 as a thriller involving a wife looking for her missing husband, it ended up being a "war on terror" thing. Reasonable watch though

Ponyo - typical Ghibli, utterly beautiful, but otherwise what the freakin' fuck was that about!?!?

I loved Ponyo! Magical stuff.

I watched Solomon Kane a few days ago, really enjoyed it in an 80's Sword and Sorcery way.

Recommended for an evenings brain-off entertainment.

Did watch Evangelion 1.11 last night and thoroughly enjoyed it. They've done a great job of condensing what, the first six episodes or so, into a ninety minute movie. I'd have ditched the awful 'party' at Katsuragi's apartment though; makes me cringe every time.

Interesting, Whingy^H^H^H^H^H^H Shinji is even more pathetic in this rebuild than in the original series. In the first two Angel attacks he doesn't really even do anything; the EVA goes berserk (earlier than in the series) and then he gets fried.

Still, this is still very much classic NGE with scene of extraordinary action colliding with quiet pathos. And giant robots*, of course. Any idea when 2.22 will be getting a European release?

(* Yes, I know they're not really robots...)

The Prestige. Extremely well-paced but the ending was garbage. 6/10

Well, it only just came out in Japan three weeks ago, so I would say anything from six to twelve months from now.

Robin Hood. (The new one.)

Bit dull, but my date ran her fingernails up and down my arm for the duration... Fuck it, best film ever. :)

An Education
Not really the sort of thing I would normally watch (films set in grimy 1960s Britain) but it was surprisingly enjoyable. It's about a young girl who falls for an older man. Her parents want her to go to Oxford but she wants to have fun (in that repressed British way of not really doing anything to make it happen until someone else does it for them).

Good performances all around, good story and doesn't overstays it's welcome.

GI Joe.
Also not really my thing but despite it obviously being rubbish it was reasonably fun. It should have been half an hour shorter, they should have got a decent director rather than Sommers and they should have had more of Sienna Miller in her ridiculous outfit and more of Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

Story is rubbish, action scenes are average, acting is terrible in most instances (JGL is the only exception) but the pointlessness of it was a nice change of pace for me.

I watched Gandhi for the first time in 10 years. Still one of my favourite films ever. Everyone should watch it.

Yeah, but he never followed it up with anything afterwards, did he.

I'd forgotten I'd put 2012 on my LoveFilm list until it popped through the door. I always thought it was going to be shit, Emmerich hasn't directed anything even half decent this millenium. I didn't realise it would be as shit as it was though.

If you cast your mind back to "The Day After Tomorrow" there's a scene where the cast are chased down the corridors of a NY museum by frost. It's completely moronic and probably the dumbest thing I've seen in film.

Except now it isn't, 2012 is one "chased by frost" scene or in this case "chased by the destruction of the Earth caused by complete garbage science" after the other. You've got chased while in car, chased while in plane (several times), chased while in RV, chased while on foot.

Good points: the effects are very nice and a bunch of British actors I quite like got some work.

Bad points: everything else and if you watch the alternate ending it's even more fucking stupid than the original, which I didn't think possible.

If you think that's bad, you should see The Day The Earth Stood Still.

Even Keanu actually finding a use for his wooden acting couldn't save it from being shite.

The remake of TDTESS is Oscar quality in comparison to 2012.

The Wolfman - was going quite well in the first 20 minutes as pretty much a straight remake of the Lon Chaney Junior one. Then they fucked it up by trying to be clever by amalgamating the Jack The Ripper case into the story - Inspector Abeline (the genuine head of the Ripper case) turned up - one of the real life Ripper suspects was a US actor who did a very convincing Mr Hyde - and accused Benicio Del Torro, an actor in this story. Then there was the whole 'dad is a wolfman too' bit so they could show off the special effects in a fight at the end. A shame- sometimes additions work in remakes (Rob Zombie's first Halloween) and sometimes they detract from the story. In this case they should have made a straight remake.

Not Marky Mark running away from the wind then?

Ponyo
It seemed slightly less imaginative than Miyazaki's normal work but it was very enjoyable and a fun 2 hours.

Liam Neeson's voice acting isn't anywhere near as good as the rest of the cast and yes I did watch the dubbed version cos I couldn't be arsed to read.

Ha! Was also flicking around and found it just as the opening credits started rolling. Thought 'Haven't seen this in ages - I'll just watch the first few minutes...'

Two hours later...!

Excellent film. Andy Robinson made an excellent nutter. Wonder if he ever did anything else?