I really wanted to like this. I really wanted to like it to the point where I was almost forcing myself to enjoy it, but damn it, I just didn’t enjoy it as much as I could have or should have. Comedy is a tough thing to create and surely enough “The Ninja Always Rings Once” proves that rule with a short story that not only really made no sense, but never sparked a laugh from yours truly.
Tag Archives: Thriller
Open Water 2: Adrift (2006)
I don’t know what I thought of “Open Water 2” in the end. I mean everyone knows by now that it’s not technically a sequel, just another movie that was branded “Open Water 2” but it makes its connection to the first film pretty much incidentally. As “Adrift” this is a hellish and grueling thriller that’s reliant of course on paranoia, elemental danger, and being marooned in an area with no hope of rescue or miracles. I’m a huge fan of the original movie “Open Water,” which is one of the most underrated and excruciating experiences ripped from the headlines that translated well. “Adrift” is along the same themes involving a group of friends who go yachting and find themselves in the middle of the ocean stuck in the water after forgetting to pull down the ladder on the boat. As the hours wage on, character Amy’s newborn daughter is still aboard starving and suffering from the heat, and now the folks have to find a way to get on the boat before she dies.
Live Free or Die Hard: Unrated Version (2007)
So, I opted on the DVD to watch the Unrated version, which sported a few F bombs and a little more edge. I’m sure the Rated and Unrated version probably didn’t sport many differences, but I owed it to myself to give the Unrated version the top priority. I won’t babble about Die Hard, or why the PG-13 rating is stupid, instead I’ll talk about Mary Elizabeth Winstead. This girl is absolutely gorgeous and sure, she may not be Meryl Streep, but she’s definitely one of the finer girls in film today and I dig her role her as John McClane’s daughter Lucy who is, like her dad, rebellious, smart mouthed, and always seems to stare evil down the throat with a smirk.
Cloverfield (2008)
We live in an age where we’re always watching someone. Cameras watch us, guards watch the cameras, surveillance videos keep an eye on potential criminals, we watch people on web cams, we pay to watch women undress for us, we peer into celebrities’ lives through tabloids and candid cameras, we watch reality shows built around surveillance cameras and hidden video, and we’re constantly being watched by our government who keep us monitored and at close range, so it was only natural that horror movies would grow to reflect that. “Cloverfield” is one in the “Blair Witch” formula that doesn’t try to give us a film, but more purports to give us actual home videos through the eyes of average upper class New Yorkers and keep us watching through a camera lens. Through this camera, we are the voyeurs.
White Noise 2: The Light (2007) (DVD)
I always say that if you’re going to derive from another better and well established concept, you’d better sure as hell do it well. Or do it to the point well it feels unique. The sequel to “White Noise” is a bonafide take on my favorite “Twilight Zone” episode of all time, “The Purple Testament.” Except this time it’s updated to a man who has a Near Death Experience after attempting suicide. When he returns from the dead, he can see white auras around people who are about to die. As well he can also hear EVP’s, and see transmissions of the dead on televisions, and he’s really about to experience something he never thought was possible. “White Noise 2” is by all accounts a superior film to the original, and that’s odd considering the original had so much potential, while this sequel had the odds stacked against it.
Cinema Crazed's Top 10 of 2007…
10. 3:10 to Yuma
I wasn’t completely sure that this remake would even manage to end up remotely watchable, at first. Even with people like Christian Bale and Russell Crowe, I couldn’t muster up enough enthusiasm to be optimistic, and yet, watching it left me utterly stunned. I’m a huge fan of the original film, so it took a great deal of raw acting talent and keen storytelling to stand apart from the original and somehow emphasize the struggle of morals and greed and add a sense of complex morality provocations for the audience and force our imperfect characters into a situation that required a great deal of courage and some stupidity.
Mangold doesn’t give us too many polished heroes and villains even if he edges slightly toward grind house atmosphere and gives our hero a perfectly flawed personality paired with a beaten down and pathetic personality, as well as our antagonist who is a charming, likable and incredibly evil sheep in wolf’s clothing. He’s the incarnation of the devil, a dapper and tempting individual who provides all the sins to everyone he comes across such as greed, lust, envy, and murder, and takes great pride in doing so. Paired with the rousing performances, and incredible action scenes, this is one of the best remakes of all time.
There Will Be Blood (2007)
My expectations were too high. My anticipation worked against me. It was too exclusive. Whatever the excuse or reason, “There Will Be Blood” is not the best movie of 2007 as I’d hoped, but hell, it sure is a damn good piece of dramatic filmmaking that flexes every single muscle of raw acting talent from each of its cast members involved. “There Will Be Blood” is likened to masterpieces such as “Citizen Kane” and “Giant,” and in many ways Paul Thomas Anderson aims his film down those roads but ends up with his own masterpiece of a man’s rise to power, and fall into his own lust for greed, oil, and his amoral misdeeds in the process.