[QUOTE="streak000"]I adore OldBoy. That twist at the end is so damn great and genuinely surprising, yet completely plausible in the context of the film. It was one of my favourite films of the last decade. I also really liked Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance. Lady Vengeance, not so much.

Antichrist is by far my favourite Von Trier film. Sure it's pretentious, but it actually looks good and he doesn't shake the camera around too much for once. I also think it's one of the darkest and most despairing films I've seen. I usually don't like Von Trier, but I loved this one. It really struck a chord. Melancholia's good too, but the pacing is slightly uneven and the camera shakes all the time...

As for Eastwood, he can't really do wrong by me. He's probably my favourite living Hollywood star. Despite that, I thought Gran Torino was much too sentimental, sacharine, simplistic and just 'meh' all round. I'd give it 3/5 at most. For me, the only truly great Eastwood-directed movies are Unforgiven, Mystic River and Million Dollar Baby.

I haven't seen (or even really heard of) Ordinary People. The only Roeg films I've seen are Don't Look Now, Walkabout and Performance. I liked them all, with a particular preference for the first two. Performance impressed me in my 'trippy' phase, but I don't know how well it would stand up today.

Kiefer was also good in Fire Walk With Me, which I forgot about last night.

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Oldboy is good, and I still rewatch it, but it's like Audition, it's a good film, but not a great one. I'm excited to see what Spike Lee does with Oldboy. The Vengeance films were pretty average. Mr Vengeance was good, but Lady Vengeance was such a bore - yet people still went crazy over it.

Dancer in the Dark for me, alongside Melancholia. Antichrist is a beautiful looking film, I just found it really tedious and uninvolving. I'm still yet to watch Breaking the Waves and just got the Element of Crime the other week, so I'll have to watch that soon.

Eastwood is really a hit and miss director for me. He's just like Pedro Almodovar for me - I don't get why people love them both. Gran Torino's the best thing he's done in years. And the less said about the absolutely terrible Mystic River and the average pro-euthanasia advertisement Million Dollar Baby (I get it Clint, you just want someone to take you out the back and quietly put you to sleep). That said, A Perfect World is really good and Unforgiven is one of the best modern westerns around - if you can still call it a modern western. Hereafter was also pretty average, but I really enjoyed the beginning and Matt Damon's storyline.

You should definitely check out The Man Who Fell to Earth. Witches is pretty good as well. Performance still stands up greatly.

Ordinary People is worth a watch but unfortunately because it beat out Raging Bull for Best Picture people really dislike it. It's a bit stagey at times, but Timothy Hutton is fantastic, Donald Sutherland is great and Robert Redford shows that he's just as good a director as he is an actor.

I saw A Dangerous Method yesterday and enjoyed it. My wife absolutely hated it. It's very talky, but I found it interesting and Keira Knightley was better than expected. It's very minor Cronenberg - just bloody release Cosmopolis now! - but worthwhile viewing. Maybe a wait for DVD though. 3.5/5

Finally got around to seeing The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo US version. I didn't mind it, but seriously, what's the hype for? There's a lot to hate about the film - the opening credit sequence, Daniel Craig's lack of an accent, pointless plot points - but it was interesting enough. It's waaay too long and there were parts in it which just felt completely unnecessary (yes, I get that the rape was part of a character building thing, but did we seriously have to see it? I mean, the tracking back down the hall was enough to suggest what happened).

Also, I'm sure it feeds into the second and third books but the epilogue was just plain boring and unnecessary. I mean, we'd been following this semi-interesting story along for a while, it finishes in a completely obvious way (seriously casting directors, if you don't want the villain in your film to stick out like dogs bojanges, then cast more noticeable actors around the villain, y'know, throw in a few red herrings), then they have an extra half hour which I don't give two hoots about.

And also then they give Lizbeth a character move which goes completely against what sort of character she is. [spoiler] You're seriously telling me that she would get emotionally involved with someone like Mikael and get all upset when she sees he has a partner already? Puh-leese. After all she's been through she'd just shrug it off and go, oh well, he's a man, that's to be expected. [/spoiler] I do hope that Fincher moves on from this series because it's truly his worst film that he's done. It's still good, but man is it just like a walk in the park for him. There's nothing to it. None of the intrigue in Zodiac, the violence and social commentary in Fight Club, the beautiful visuals in Benjamin Button, the great dialogue in The Social Network. It's just a well shot overly sexually violent thriller which is very ho-hum. 3/5

[QUOTE="streak000"]

@chamboosy, you don't like Se7en? That's my favourite Fincher film by far (not having seen Zodiac or The Girl yet). Even though I haven't seen the film though, I disagree about the rape sequence. It's right there in the book (as well as in the Swedish film version) in explicit detail. You might even say it's the centrepiece of the whole thing. It's not the kind of material that requires subtlety. It is what it is. Fun and enjoyable, but ultimately quite trashy. I think it would have been a mistake to not show the rape and the subsequent revenge in their full glory. I also don't think it's such a huge stretch that Lisbeth would become infatuated with Mikael. He's one of the only men who ever treated her with respect. The book justified it pretty well, I thought.

Never seen any American Pie film.

Anyway, here's [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dL0lNGXoP8E&feature=player_embedded]the opening credits sequence for Gaspar Noe's Enter The Void[/url]. One of the coolest and trippiest I've ever seen.

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I like Se7en a lot, but it's not like Zodiac which I could rewatch endlessly. You really should watch Zodiac. It's one of the most underrated films of the past decade.

As for the rape. Yeah, I get it's in the book, and I get it's pretty explicit. Just like the film. But in the grand scheme of the whole film, it means jack sh*t. Like, absolutely nothing. Ok, so she gets revenge on the guy who did it, great, but that felt like it came from a different film compared to the serial killer part. Even the finale felt like it came from a different film. I don't know about it being fun though. I mean, it's such an average story I just really don't know why people love the series so much. I kept waiting to be completely amazed, but instead I was completely whelmed.

I guess for this version it felt really wrong for Lisbeth to become infatuated with Mikael. She's such a rogue character - and a great one at that. If anything, the guy who recommends that she be used by Mikael shows her respect as well. Maybe it's just the side of me that reacts against anything that is super popular and unjustifiably so. I'm glad I watched it, but it reaffirms that I'm also very glad I haven't wasted my time reading the (stupid) books.

Ahhh... Enter the Void. I've got to watch that!

@ Streak - dude, you need to watch Zodiac. Yeah, so the killer isn't caught, but it's pretty obvious who was the killer and it's less about who the killer is and more about the procedural (sp?) aspect of a police investigation. Besides Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, it's the last time that Robert Downey Jr. has been tolerable, Anthony Edwards and Mark Ruffalo are at the top of their game, and Jake Gyllenhaal is superb. It's such a visual treat of a film as well. I think part of the film being less succesful than it should have been plays into the fact that the killer wasn't caught. It's such a shame this film isn't a success.

@ Shadows - I'm sure that the US version is neater than the original version, but there were still a few things which irked me. If Fincher isn't directing the sequels then count me out. I'm not huge on crime novels and wasn't entirely taken by the film or at least intrigued enough to seek out the original sequels or the books.

As for the intro, as a music video it's absolutely perfect. As an intro to a film? Absolutely awful. It's three minutes of a cover version of a song that is mediocre and visuals that are cool, but exceptionally wanky. Fincher does great title sequences - Se7en, Panic Room and Fight Club being some of the best title sequences ever. But this is too much.

It's a very good music clip for Trent Reznor and Karen O's cover of a Led Zepplin song. That's about it.

At this point he's obligated to say that he's doing the sequels - they signed him on to do them. But the problem is is that MGM lost money on the first one (which they can't afford to lose) and intend to make the sequels for about a third of what the first one cost. Which given how much Fincher likes to spend money (need I mention the debacle that was the financing of Fight Club and the studio's anger about it? I suggest reading Mike Medavoy's biography for further insight into this) I doubt that they'd be able to hire him on and allow him to make the films he wants to make. It's not all tears for Fincher though since he has a pay or play contract - so they could easily just pay him the $10 mil that he was going to get for doing the sequels and get someone else in to helm them instead for a lower budget. I think that's exactly what will happen - especially since Fincher will be off to go do 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea where Disney will give him the keys to the bank vault and allow him to do a $300 mil sci-fi film.