What I'm watching

Hi all, this tumblr mainly exists as a way of tracking all the movies I've been watching and some of the initial thoughts, and general feelings, I've had about them.

5/5 - Fantastic movies; movies which need to be seen and enjoyed by everyone.

4/5 - Movies which are very good but don’t have that spark which compels you to make others watch them as well.

3/5 - Average movies; watchable and enjoyable, but nothing which elevates them higher. The baseline all movies are given before watching.

2/5 - Can be watched but really bland and forgettable.

1/5 - Minimal to no reason to watch these films. It may have some redeeming factors e.g. it’s so bad it’s good or there’s one character that’s awesome enough to make it not a total waste of time.

0/5- Total waste of time. Nothing redeemable about these films.

As with every review blog/site, this is all my own personal opinion so feel free to take everything with a grain of salt.

Also I'm Scottish so all reviews will be in UK English. Get used to theatre, colour and words ending in -ised.

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Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor

 

Top 10 Films from September, 2011 (Excluding re-watched films) Total watched this month: 16 (12 new) A Touch of Larceny 5/5 The Social Network 5/5 Superman 4/5 The Girl Who Played With Fire 3.5/5 The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo 3/5 Bridesmaids 3/5 Repo! The Genetic Opera 3/5 The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest 2.5/5 The Kids Are All Right 2.5/5 Gilda 2/5

Top 10 Films from September, 2011 (Excluding re-watched films)

Total watched this month: 16 (12 new)

A Touch of Larceny 5/5

The Social Network 5/5

Superman 4/5

The Girl Who Played With Fire 3.5/5

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo 3/5

Bridesmaids 3/5

Repo! The Genetic Opera 3/5

The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest 2.5/5

The Kids Are All Right 2.5/5

Gilda 2/5

#229 The Girl Who Played With Fire Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace) is accused of three murders and being hunted by the police. Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist), believing her innocent, sets out to find the real story while Lisbeth uses her own skills to track down the real culprit who seems to have links to her past. I think this is the best of the three movies in the trilogy despite TGWTDT being my favourite of the books. This films has all the same things going for it as the previous did (good actors, good cinematography, etc) but it also manages to tap into the emotional elements of the story and the excitement of the plot unfolding a lot better than its predecessor did. The villains, while not better, have more hype surrounding them and are more central to the story this time around. The one main problem I think this film, and the others in the series, suffer from is that a lot of how we find out about the information in the books is take from within Salander’s head. Now, while this is always an issue for a movie being made from source material dealing with a first person perspective, usually they just make a lot of what the character was thinking into dialogue between two people (i.e. main character vocalising things to a sounding board/secondary character) and that doesn’t/can’t work here. One of the biggest characteristics of Lisbeth Salander is that she internalises damn near everything and she doesn’t talk for the sake of talking. This makes it really hard to get everything from the books across in the films. I know what’s going on because I’ve read the books but I imagine for someone who hasn’t it would be very easy to get lost really quickly. I also think this only gets worse in the next film. Despite this though, TGWPWF is still a solid follow-up film, fleshing out Salander a bit better and adding a good helping of the emotional drama missing from the first film. 3.5/5

#229 The Girl Who Played With Fire

Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace) is accused of three murders and being hunted by the police. Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist), believing her innocent, sets out to find the real story while Lisbeth uses her own skills to track down the real culprit who seems to have links to her past.

I think this is the best of the three movies in the trilogy despite TGWTDT being my favourite of the books. This films has all the same things going for it as the previous did (good actors, good cinematography, etc) but it also manages to tap into the emotional elements of the story and the excitement of the plot unfolding a lot better than its predecessor did. The villains, while not better, have more hype surrounding them and are more central to the story this time around.

The one main problem I think this film, and the others in the series, suffer from is that a lot of how we find out about the information in the books is take from within Salander’s head. Now, while this is always an issue for a movie being made from source material dealing with a first person perspective, usually they just make a lot of what the character was thinking into dialogue between two people (i.e. main character vocalising things to a sounding board/secondary character) and that doesn’t/can’t work here. One of the biggest characteristics of Lisbeth Salander is that she internalises damn near everything and she doesn’t talk for the sake of talking. This makes it really hard to get everything from the books across in the films. I know what’s going on because I’ve read the books but I imagine for someone who hasn’t it would be very easy to get lost really quickly. I also think this only gets worse in the next film.

Despite this though, TGWPWF is still a solid follow-up film, fleshing out Salander a bit better and adding a good helping of the emotional drama missing from the first film. 3.5/5