Dial M For Murder

I guess It takes a real crazy sick kind of individual to possess the capabilities to commit a murder, to actually take the life of another person, to be able to walk up to somebody or in this case behind somebody and kill them, you have to be either a cold blooded evil mother fucker or just plain crazy. The first thing that slightly detracted me from this awesome story is the lack of emphasis towards human emotion when faced with the prospect of having to commit a murder.  Tony Wendice (Ray Milland), jealous of his wife’s brief love affair with Robert Cummings, and rightly so, blackmails his old college buddy Alexander Swan (Anthony Dawson) into murdering his unfaithful wife (Grace Kelly) whilst her ex love interest is in town. This is the only difficulty I had with this movie, the guy he’s blackmailing seems like a smart and educated guy, not psychopathic or even in the right mind and out and out evil, he was just a guy trying to keep himself out of Jail as Ray Millands character had him pinned with details of his slightly dishonest, but not necessarily murderous or violent past.

The Astronaut Farmer

The premise of this movie is complete and utter bullshit. But it works in a strange kind of way. The dramatic elements are generally pretty good and I did kind of get into it, but the shortcomings were just a big huge black mark over the screen for the duration of the movie. Who the fuck, regardless of how super clever and rich you are, can build a full scale fully functioning space rocket in their back yard and launch it into space? In this flick, Billy Bob Thornton does just that.

I think this is one of those movies that get’s a decent budget, a star player, and a full commercial release, but nobody really gives a shit about it. I just have a hard time imagining 2 months prior to release a group of movie fans going “yeah Astronaut Farmer’s out soon, I really want to check that shit out”. This was probably enjoyed in theatres by majority whim ticket purchasers, people who turn up at the cinema to watch a movie, or see what’s showing online after they have decided that’s what they’re doing. AF totally passed me by in 2006, I actually came across it in an Amazon sale and read a synopsis, I just thought “wtf”, so i watched it and yes, as far as films go it was ok, it wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t that good either.

Spartan

This kind of caught me off-guard last night. I bought this on DVD about 4 years ago and I only just got around to watching it, some movies do that too me, when deciding what to watch I think about them too much and try figure out what I’m in the mood for. In the past with Spartan the blurb on the back of the case always seemed to push me back a notch in my contemplation for whatever reason. I think the fact it was written and directed by David Mamet sold it to me in the shop as opposed to an explosive description of what will probably turn out to be a mediocre execution of said description. So, as for being caught off-guard, Spartan is slightly more than a straight ahead thriller, with enough shifts in the story and new developments/goings on adding to a pretty dense plot throughout the whole movie. This is a slick as hell, fast paced and punchy film.

Dragon Tiger Gate

Dragon Tiger Gate was a pretty cool movie that I didn’t enjoy as much as I really wanted to. It had one of those stories that I don’t like, it’s straight forward but pointless. This is a Kung Fu movie starring Donnie Yen so why does it need a good story? It’s the action that speaks here. Well maybe if the movie was actually full of action with a throw away storyline then that would be ok, but that isn’t the case. It’s fantasy, a superhero movie. Everybody has powers and super crazy Kung Fu moves, but I just found it quite boring.
DTG is a school for orphans where they are trained from a young age to do kung fu to protect themselves from criminal gangs and the like. Dragon Wong (Yen) and Tiger Wong (Nicholas Tse, New Police Story) are step brothers who knew each other as young kids. Dragon Wong was adopted by a Triad boss (Ma Qwun) after his mother was killed in a fire; he grew up to become his body guard, now a kick ass kung fu master and gangster. So the whole thing revolves around a plaque called the Luocha Plaque, which is a symbol of authority within the Luocha gate (A criminal gang), and its holder is considered second most powerful to the Luocha Gate leader Shibumi (he’s a crazy masked demonic type evil fucker with superpowers and kung fu skills). So this plaque goes missing and Yen is sent out to retrieve it, this reunites him with his step brother Tiger, and another dude called Turbo they meet after a huge showdown in a Japanese restaurant (who’s wicked with Nunchaku, but according to the master at DTG he needs practice).