Have only watched a couple of movies so far this Christmas, Syriana and The Holiday.
I enjoyed Syriana a lot, but found it too hard to follow to say it was a great film. Well acted, good story from what I could understand but I struggle with the ‘deep meaningful’ plots. The Holiday was a good Christmas Day film and that is about all I can say about it – enjoyed it because of the time of year and state I was in but wouldn’t bother with it normally. Main reason? I really don’t like Jude Law at all!!!!
Totally agreed on Jude Law. There’s something about him I just don’t like.
Syriana is a film I’d like to see, but I know little about it. Apart from the “Oceans 11” sequels George Clooney is usually in good films.
Chris, I take it as a given that you don’t like the more cerebral films. I remember thinking that when I saw that list of DVDs you were selling 😀 . Mind you I find with some supposedly ‘deep meaningful’ films, they are just ‘up themselves’ and aren’t meaningful at all. Have you seen ‘the Butterfly Effect’ for example? How depressing is that!!
It isn’t that I don’t like them. In the past I have never been a big film fan and usually just watched films to ‘switch off’. I used to pick DVD’s up at airports all the time.
Syriana is good. Clooney doesn’t appear in it as much as you would imagine. What I don’t like in films is when you can’t hear or see what is going on clearly! There are about 4 story threads at one times and as it is a spy film they whisper and mutter a lot which makes it hard to follow.
Well worth watching though!
Haven’t seen or heard of that film. Will keep an eye out for it.
> they whisper and mutter a lot
I’m glad it’s not just me that has difficulty hearing the lines properly at times. I tend to turn on the subtitles more often than not, and I’ve been doing that for a couple of years now. I just got fed up regularly jumping back a few seconds to try to make out what was just said, so I could follow the plot.
Yeah!!! And then they insist on shooting so much in the dark as well so you can’t see it either ……
I can see me turning this blog into the site for Grumpy Middle Age Men in 2008!!! Hmm, now that actually might be a pretty good blog to do actually?
I think that’s a great idea Chris.
One thing which bugs the heck out of me is shoddy camerawork, or overdoing certain effects like moving the camera around constantly just for the sake of it. Music videos and live concert films are dreadful for changing the shot every second or less. Aaargh
I have to agree that spy films are often over-complicated and convoluted for little return. Spy Game was such a film.