Oh yeah, I guess I should be posting more often. Enough of this constant lurkerness.
Non-Stop. Actually a lot of fun. Liam Neeson puts in one of his better gruff-action-type roles, and he's surrounded by an equally-capable cast. The story gets somewhat ludicrous as it goes along, mostly with regards to the crazy amount of coincidences (and impossible forethought on the villain's part) that are necessary for things to work as they do, but the movie makes it work. It keeps things at just the right level of deadpan serious that you go along with it. It's funny when it needs to be, and remarkably tense as well. It's even got a bit of a political agenda, but it doesn't get preachy about it. This is what a good action b-movie should be like, and it's a shame there's not more of them these days (unlike the painfully forgettable 3 Days to Kill, for instance).
RoboCop (remake). Watched this one back on opening day, but didn't get around to saying anything until now. Not that there's much to say, though. I give the movie credit for making an earnest attempt to actually be its own thing, and to try and say a few things about drone warfare/corporate-police relations in the process. But it never really goes anywhere with those ideas, just presents snippets of food for thought and then ducks back to the remarkably bland story of Murphy becoming a robot and his family trying to deal with it. The action sequences are generally uninspired, the bad guys forgettable (and, in the third act, get really stupid all of a sudden for no good reason), and the movie as a whole lacks any real punch. It's not bad, it's not great, it's just alright. Inoffensively watchable, good for a conversation or two, and then shelved forever. Which seems to be about the best most modern remakes can hope for.
Running Scared. I really liked this one. It's got a crazed, almost demented shooting style about it, one that's hyper-stylized to the point of near irritation (see: the blacklight-bathed finale), but considering how gonzo the rest of the movie is, I think that's appropriate. Paul Walker gives a genuinely fantastic performance, one that's just the right balance between determined and dangerously unhinged. It's somewhat depressing that it can now officially be called the performance of his career, but there's no shame there. The plot progresses to some strange places, to the point where it seems like every cartoonishly evil person in NYC is out and about one night, and it's almost too much. Again, though, the movie makes it work, thanks largely to the whole thing essentially being a fairy tale of sorts. Just one that's about as hard-R as you can get. It also features a sequence that's among the most tense I've seen in quite some time, and was so over-the-top about it that it actually looped back around to being simply raw. A solid little actioner that keeps a great pace throughout, save for a few stumbles at the very end. Definitely one folks should check out.
Okay, back to lurking now.
Topic: What was the last movie you watched? (Read 1760338 times)
