first movie review compilation 2009?

Léon The Professional – 8.8
If you haven’t watched this movie, you need to do it RIGHT NOW! I was blown away by the brilliance of Natalie Portman’s performance; at the age of 12, she managed to pull off something that a professional actor might take years to accomplish. I’ve seen many movies (one movie a day is probably too much though) and I can say that her performance in Leon was by far, the best child performance in the history of movies. Period. Jean Reno, by the way, is as awkwardly cool as ever, and Gary Oldman was just creepy. The story is quite bizarre and made you check your moral compasses on the boundaries of sexuality between a hired killer and a child. Close-to-being-a-pedophile main characters aside, you just have to see this movie. If you like action movies involving gun fights and sympathetic and weird characters, by all means, watch this. Highly recommended!

サイドカーに犬 (Dog In Sidecar) – 8.4
A pleasantly sweet story about the bonds between an innocent girl with her father’s new lover, a free spirited women full of mystery. Although this movie is set around a dysfunctional Japanese family, the director successfully fleshed out many details about the characters that made this film full with small moments that made you smile. The details in the acting, dialogue and scene progression is definitely distinctive of those few good Japanese movie directors, but even if you don’t like Japanese movies, you should really try this one out. The script and screenplay was brilliant, and the main character played by Takeuchi Yuko and the uniquely different child performance of Matsumoto Kana was just superb. I like this movie, and I would recommend it to those who like Japanese family-comedy-drama movies.

Happy Go Lucky – 8.2
The movie evolves around an always-happy, always-sarcastic elementary school teacher; her overly happy-go-lucky attitude might sometimes be questionable whether it’s pure or not, but it’s still fun to watch nonetheless. The movie does not have a story or plotlines that have to be wrapped up at the end; it’s just a simple charming movie, with an abundance of appropriately funny scenes. Recommended for sure!

Bangkok Dangerous – 5.5
Just another dumb Hollywood action movie, but this time the location is in Thailand. Bad acting, bad story line, bad movie. Don’t bother to watch this crap.

X-Files I Want To Believe – 7.0
The X Files series used to be the best TV programs during the 90’s, and I used to follow the series whenever I can. They used to make a movie before, and it was not so good; but I’m glad that this time around, it was definitely an improvement from their previous efforts. David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson fits each other like a glove, but still, the story was not so interesting enough but at least I paid attention to it to the last minute, which is probably good enough. If you didn’t like X-Files, I don’t think you would enjoy this movie though.


Milk – 7.5
Based on a true story of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay official who was assassinated during the American counterculture of the 60’s and 70’s. It told the story of how the charismatic butt-seks-lover decided to get out in the open and fight for gay rights in San Francisco. Because this IS a story that revolves gay people, there are going to be several disgusting gay intimacy scenes in the movie, but don’t get that normal human emotion from turning you down, because the story was pretty interesting and Sean Penn really did a great acting performance; you’d believe that he loves to suck cock even in real life!

Appaloosa – 7.0
Unlike the many western movies before it, the gun fights in this movie feels very real; and that adds so much tension to each fight scene. Two men were hired by a troubled town to protect them from the outlaws terrorizing the peace there. Then of course, there is going to be a woman to complicate things further. Great performance by Ed Harris and Viggo Mortensen, but I don’t think Renee Zellweger is fit enough to take the role of a women that alpha males would be chasing for. A pretty good Western, nonetheless.

Saw V – 4.0
I slept on the beginning of the movie out of boredom, and then I slept again during the end. They should really stop making Saw movies now. It is boring, unoriginal, overly recycled and definitely not scary anymore. Don’t bother seeing this.

Disaster Movie – 6.0
You already know what to expect from a parody movie like this. Some jokes might work, some might fail miserably but at least it was not so bad that it’s unwatchable. Silly jokes and hot chicks; that is all that these types of movies need, and that is what they offer.

Hard Candy – 7.0
The premise of the film was quite interesting: a smart 14 years old girl tricked and trapped a pedophile in his own home, then resort to torture to ‘teach’ the poor bastard a lesson. But unfortunately, the ‘interesting’ bits of the story feel like ‘draggish’ later on into the movie that you really felt like ‘o when will she finally kill the guy and get it over with? Enough talking already!’. Ellen Page did a decent job in this movie, but it was not that great compared to Juno.

Zack And Miri Make A Porno – 7.0
The title says it all. 2 high school friends (a guy and a girl) were so broke; they decided to shoot a porn movie. Put lots of porn jokes in the beginning, make it a little romantic in the middle and try to make it seem all right at the end by finishing it off like a clichéd love story made for teenagers. The jokes were still funny, but there is nothing interesting about this movie except the title. And dumb me got lead right into the trap.

Resident Evil Degeneration – 7.0
Previous Resident Evil movies were not bad, but it’s a shame that although Degeration is a full CGI movie, it is definitely better than their Hollywood-made live action versions. Staying true to its video game roots, the movie has lots of slow zombies, zombies suddenly jumping out of glass windows, big scary BOSS zombies, main characters constantly jumping away from huge explosions at the last minute, and of course, betrayal! If you love the game, you’ll enjoy this. They got Leon and Claire in this one! The story is pretty bad and doesn’t make any sense though.

Nereikalingi zmones (Loss) – 8.0
This is the first Lithuanian movie for me, and it’s such a different experience; I’ve never seen a movie as unique as this. The story unfolds like a mystery movie and creeps at you slowly. Yes, this movie IS very slow, but it leaves space for the viewer to process the connection between each character in the movie, which is quite bizarre in how they’re connected to one single accident. This is a movie about the tragedy of the human heart, and how we cope with it by trying to connect with others. Worth the look.

Perfect Hideout – 5.0
This movie is so bad, it’s actually funny by being too ridiculously serious and dumb. This movie is funny because it tries so hard to be cool. This movie is so bad, that somehow it felt good. Still a crap of a movie though.

Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom – 4.0
This movie is the sickest movie I’ve ever seen. It insults your brain with its sick imagery, it numbs the mind with its mindless and overtly crazy story, and you were left wondering: who the fuck enjoys watching this shit? Avoid this movie at all costs, but if you’re wondering, this movie is all about sexual torture, sadisticm, and eating shit. It tries to unnecessarily depict the evil and cruelness a human being could conflict on another human being, the reason by just being bored. You will feel like you’ve lost you humanity after watching this. Crazy stuff. *This is an Italian movie*

War Inc – 7.0
A fairly entertaining movie that mocks and parodies the American military industrial complex and its out right ridiculousness and inhumane nature. Although entertaining, it is quite useless and brings nothing to the table of serious discussion, but I hope this kind of film will make some of the stubborn people think ‘holy shit there is something wrong with the American government!’

Religulous – 8.0
Bill Maher is a known Atheist who is not afraid to voice his opinion about religion, and he made a documentary about it. Although the documentary is extremely biased and pretty offensive to the people of faith, he did a pretty decent job in making it easier for people to understand why he thinks that religion is a silly hoax. Pretty decent ‘documentary’ for people who is interested in all sorts of religions, but be aware that you might get offended; IF you believe in GOD that is.

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed – 6.0
A failed attempt at raising an irrelevant issue of whether creationism and Darwinism should co-exist in science classroom in the States. I watch this documentary because I was trying to find another documentary that could answer to Bill Maher’s Religulous, but this one doesn’t even hold a candle to that. Dissapointing.