As a fully paid-up comic-book geek with all 12 issues of Watchmen in mylar bags in the spare room, I felt I had to watch this though wasn't expecting great things from it. I was pleasantly surprised, it looked great and stuck to the storyline well, although a few things were overdone which were more subtle in the book. However IMO it fell over whenever any characters had to interact with each other, some of the acting was terrible and dialogue scenes incredibly clunky. I guess character interaction is not the director's forte...

Absolute Beginner?

There was a lot of love on this thread for 'Watchmen' when it came out at the cinemas earlier this year, guess this must be a movie that loses a lot of it's impact on the small screen ...

Here's the next batch of Moons, District 9s & Inglourious Basterds that have caught my attention in recent weeks ;

The Lovely Bones



Avatar



Legion



Jennifer's Body



Tron Legacy



The Book Of Eli

I haven't got time to look at these just now but...


TRON!!!!

Enjoyed The Damn United last night. Forgive me if I missed earlier comments. What did you lot think of it?

i'm in 2 minds over this. initially my heart sank when i heard they were making a sequel, but i'm still pretty excited by the idea.

who am I kidding? i'll be there on the front row on the opening night in my TRON outfit!

(apologies for the horrific camel toe!)

Wasn't overly excited about the 'Tron' sequel either but have to say that the trailer has more than surpassed my expectations.

Wish I could say the same about 'Avatar' but after all the hype I felt a little bit disappointed in the trailer, visually it just looks very similar to the 'Star Wars' prequels .

Based purely on the strength of the trailers that I posted yesterday, 'Legion' is the movie I'd most like to see at the moment ...

Ditto on Avatar, I had read quite a lot about it but the trailer looks too much like a PC game and the concept of blue aliens flying on dragons reads like a bad episode of ST:TOS!

In order of "want to see" it'd have to be:

Legion (looks a bit like Resident Evil and Paul Bettany doesn't get enough roles like this)
The Book of Eli (I just hope it's not to "religiousy")
Tron Legacy (I thought the trailer was lacking in any detail seeing as it showed just one scene but I remain faithful )
Avatar (must be worth a go to see how much of the hype it can live up to)
The Lovely Bones (interesting concept)
Jennifer's Body (there's one very obvious reason to watch this but other than that I'm not sure what the point is)

Note 1: How good are HD Youtube clips now!!

Note 2: One of things I'm looking forward to when my kids are older is the ability to just go to the cinema without having to plan it for weeks in advance. Currently I have to make sure the films I watch are the best of the best which takes some of the fun out of it.

Saw a terrific little film last night. A wonderful 2007 musical set on the streets of Dublin, called Once. It stars the guy who played guitar in The Commitments as a gifted street musician, plus a talented 17-year-old female Czech immigrant. The music scenes, especially one in a music store, are pure magic. It's a love story, but bittersweet. Highly recommended. Surely someone on here must have seen this.

Wow .

District 9 is quite simply one of the best movies I've seen in a very long time so I strongly recommend that you make the effort to catch this on the big screen ...

District 9 has gotten top reviews in N.A. and I look forward to seeing it.

"has gotten" cannot be proper English. Sorry to be a pedant, but using "received" would be easier wouldn't you think?

As an respected student of English, I'd expect you to be able to correct me if I have gotten it wrong.

saw district 9 yesterday. very enjoyable. it was nice to see subtitles for both the aliens and the south africans, a nice touch there i thought. the main guys accent certianly grated after a while though. as a merseysider, i found the "f*%K" to be a bit of a scouse "f*%k", but maybe thats just me...

Hmmm...this was the only downside to District 9, there's been a trend in television recently to show subtitles for people who are speaking english with a strong 'accent'. This (I think) was the first time I've seen this happen in a movie and I can't say that I approve (it's insulting to both the individual & the audience)...

there was a prison documentary on channel 5 a while back where these young lads (all with track records of being in trouble with the police) had to live in a prison, in cells with real criminals. these criminals and the show was doing its best to portray the harsh realities of being on the inside with the message "crime doesn't pay". the young lads where from all over the place, london, birmingham etc. but i couldn't quite believe it when the scouse lad had his own subtitles!

on a slight sidenote, it makes me think of the star wars movies, in which Greedo is in one scene and has subtitles before he gets shot by Han Solo, while chewbacca is in 3 movies, and not a sausage!

The Ken Loach movie Riff Raff was shown with subtitles. Well in NA anyway. Possibly not in the UK. I admit I needed them. Reminds me of the film Letter to Brezhnev. I could have used subtitles for that one as well.

has anyone seen 'The Signal'?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLnUcuy6078

"A horror film told in three parts, from three perspectives, in which a mysterious transmission that turns people into killers invades every cell phone, radio, and television."

this a pretty low budget 'horror' film that i only stumbled on quite by chance (hadn't really heard of it, but liked the sound of the storyline and it had mainly positive reviews). the interesting thing that i only found out after i'd watched it, is the 3 perspectives within the film are directed by 3 different people, and the film is split into 3 sections, or 'transmissions' as there called in the film. the 3 transmissions naturally have different feel to each other which can be a bit disconcerting at first, especially as the 1st part really had me hooked, before the film sort of changes direction. all in all though i'd recommend you give this film a watch if you get the chance.

people get angry via a signal and want to kill each other. what's not to like?

Yes, I've seen Once, Pouzar - and posted about it! I basically said what you've just said. A delightful boy-meets-girl story, and the songs are good too. 8/10

Kieslowski's The Decalogue that you mentioned was originally screened as a series on TV, but two parts of it were released as feature films: A Short Film About Love and A Short Film About Killing. I haven't seen them but remember them coming out and getting good reviews, so I'll look out for them.

I saw The Dark Knight the other day, and didn't rate it at all. There wasn't enough action to make it a good action film, and not enough drama to make it a good drama. And is it just me or does Christian Bale have no screen charisma whatsoever? Even Maggie Gyllenhaal isn't as pretty as she used to be. The only thing that rescues it is Heath Ledger's amazing performance as The Joker. But the film as a whole rates 6/10 for me.

Billy, I believe if you rent the Decalogue it has the extended versions of Decalogue 5 and 6 you are referring to. I wouldn't even rate them the best of the 10. I simply can't recommend this highly enough. 10 haunting hours of thought provoking television that stands with the best feature films. I shelled out $60 to buy it and love showing segments to friends and rewatching them myself.

By the way, if you enjoyed Once you'd enjoy Before Sunrise (if you haven't already seen it). They're very similar: Once is boy meets girl and they hang out in Dublin; Before Sunrise is boy meets girl and they hang out in Vienna. If anything, Before Sunrise is even better. There was a sequel made with the same actors (Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy) called Before Sunset, which is also supposed to be good, but I haven't seen it yet ...

I've seen Before Sunrise twice (and Before Sunset is really good too), so I will try Once as well (even though I am not a big fan of musicals).

I saw a pretty good new English film called An Education, Sunday, at the Edmonton International Film Festival. It`s a story about a brilliant, Oxford-bound 16-year-old girl who falls for a smooth-talking 30-year-old con man and almost throws her life away. The actor who plays the girl turns in a stunning performance. The script is by Nick Hornsby and Emma Thompson pops up as the school`s headmistress. Well worth seeing, but I don`t know if it is in wide release yet in the UK.

You mean the English writer Nick Hornby, who first rose to fame with his autobiographical book Fever Pitch, which was about his obsession with Arsenal, and which anyone who's interested in football should read! It was turned into a decent film starring Colin Firth (not to be confused with an American remake substituting Arsenal with the Boston Red Sox ) His other books High Fidelity and About a Boy have also been filmed.

I haven't seen An Education - not released here yet - but it's based on another autobiography, that of the famously ascerbic English journalist Lynn Barber. I look forward to seeing it.

Just in case you are wondering Billy I have my own copy of Fever Pitch which I have read repeatedly and love. There simply is no other book that explains what it means (in hilarious terms) to be a supporter of a club. Great. Didn't realize I'd given Nick an extra letter. Tonight at the film fest it's two highly touted Frnch films, The Grocer's Son and A Prophet.

Saw a brilliant film at the conclusion of the Edmonton film festival, Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon, winner of the top prize at Cannes this year. Warning. This is not a date movie. It comes from the very very dark vision of Haneke, the esteemed Austrian director. It is set in a small northern German village in in 1913, just prior to the outbreak of WW1. Strange things start happening. The doctor is badly injured by unknown pranksters, a couple of children are mysteriously tortured, etc. The incidents just keep coming and nobody is sure who or whom is causing them. All this is presented in Gothic black and white images. Along the way we are introduced to the incredibly repressive atmosphere in the village and eventually it becomes clear that all the preconditions for the development of fascism are present. Remarkable authoritarianism, widespread cruelty, near total patriarchal domination, grotesque treatment of children by their parents and a terrifying lack of humanity. It is not hard to imagine what the next generation, the post-war Nazi generation, will be like. A great film but I found myself unable to sleep. I couldn't shut out those powerful images and the devastatingly negative vision of humanity they presented. A four star feel bad film if ever there was one.

With Halloween just over three weeks away, here's a couple of horror flicks that could be worth your time;

The House Of The Devil



The Crazies

Trick R' Treat has gone straight to DVD in the UK & is due to be released at the end of this month, it scores 7.8 on IMDB & can be picked up pretty so if anyone is interested in making a purchase remember to use the appropriate FISO link ...

I never saw the film 'Outlaw', but it seems it got some bad reviews and creators Nick Love and Danny Dyer are a bit cheesed off about it...