Profound, profane or pedestrian

This movie is such appropriate viewing on Xmas Eve - but don't do it. It is an utterly run-of-the-mill horror movie - a group of young people trapped in a inescapable location where the spirit of a deranged serial killer roams about doing ..... well ..... deranged serial killer type things.

*yawn*

I was really surprised by this movie - there was far less Cabin and far more of the "other stuff" than I expected. Still, funny, thrilling and Fran Kranz went up yet another notch in my estimation.

Just been to see this movie and I can't say that I enjoyed it much. A number of times, I found myself thinking "Everybody stop talking and just DO something - anything!"

Even though the opening was stunning (but what was the point of the blood transfusion thing - false DNA evidence for the crash investigators, perhaps?), far too much of the film was spent with various characters telling us either why they did what they just did or explaining what they were about to do. Just get on with it  and then we'll draw our own conclusions -and if you can't do that from what is on the screen, you haven't made a very good movie. In addition, get an editor - this movie could have lost half an hour at least with no loss of story line.

Closing scenes were nice - got to love the ambiguity there.

In short, too much talk, not enough crash!

It was strange experience, watching this movie. This will probably be the big one for Joss - good box office movie numbers, lots of money for the studio and get him offers to make lots of other movies. The movie was big, dramatic, enormous in scope, wonderful SFX, good acting - and I could care less. There wasn't any moment where I cared about any character, the outcome any battle or, after a while, whether any character even lived or died. In short this wasn't a Joss movie for me.

I left feeling like I had watched a good superhero movie - that just about anyone could have written and directed. It will be sad if this the movie that gets Joss into the Hollywood A-league because he did it by not being Joss. Congratulations to Joss for a big movie - but it just wasn't my kind of movie.

Sometimes I watch a movie and wonder "What is this movie about?", other times I wonder "Why did the characters do that?" and yet other times I wonder "What the hell am I doing watching this movie?"

This movie is the third kind. Let me put it another way - when the portal misfires and takes them back to an apparently prehistoric dimension, I cheered because I would never have to meet these characters ever again!

I felt highly distracted during this movie - as soon as I saw that it was Bruce Willis and M. Night Shyamalan, all I could think was "If they find that he really did die in the accident and this is all some kid's strange perception of dead people, I am going to be so very pissed."

Ignoring that side of things, the movie really was quite good with Willis doing some of his best acting (that I've seen) and Jackson being suitably enigmatic right to the final brilliant moments. Overall, a thrilling movie with at least two outstanding scenes - the kitchen gun scene (I really wasn't sure where that one was going to go, right to the last second) and the pool cover scene (the sense of terror and helplessness was spot on the mark).

In the end, a damned good movie, probably the best of Shyamalan's movies that I've seen.

I haven't really seen very much of Russell Brand but, as this movie shows, he can certainly carry a movie well. Brand is so close to the rock start persona anyway that the step-up for him is pretty easy, I think. He is entrancing as Aldous Snow, alternately grandiose and self-doubting, which is just as well because, aside from a wonderful cameo by Sean Combs as Sergio, there's not too much to remember this film for. It is reasonably funny ("When the world slips you a Jeffrey, stroke the furry wall" is a wonderful quote and a great motif for the whole movie) but just not very memorable.

This may sound strange to say, because I loved this movie, but I don't know why it was made. I mean that it is a hilarious, spot-on continuation of the series - Will is his usual pedantic awkward self, Simon is still mooning over Carli, Jay is still full of the weirdest and most obvious lies and Neil is ..... well, just Neil, with all that that entails!

However, there's no real reason to make this a movie - it could have just been a double (triple?)-length finale for the series. As I said, I did love it though with Neil's dance across the club being an absolute highlight - mind you the other three's contributions were equally hilarious!

I watched this movie today and was somewhat conflicted during the experience.

( *SPOILERS follow. )

I liked this movie - faithful to the "original' (the sequel to this one) but with it's own touches.

( More after the cut. )