Nicolas Cage doing what he does best

That being a very bad lieutenant indeed in The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans. Cage was in splendid psycho mode and was able to rein it in, too, when the role required it. The rest of the cast (including Eva Mendes, Brad Dourif and Xzibit) was fine, the music was cool, the ending a little unexpected... all in all, I enjoyed the film. Extra points for singing iguanas!

I haven't seen the original Bad Lieutenant, but I understand they have little in common besides the basic idea.

Hard to kill

The titular Malone of Give 'em Hell, Malone is kind of a low-level superhero: he himself comments early on that he's hard to kill. He doesn't lie: Malone is shot a few times, stabbed, and beat upon the head with a baseball bat. He bleeds but does not die, and goes to his mother's retirement home so that she can patch him up.

The film has plenty of casual cruelty and needless violence. But somehow I liked it better than, say, Sin City. The latter felt very pretentious and hollow. Malone felt like an honest B-movie with no delusions of grandeur. I'm not sure I liked it as such, but it was all right.

Rotoscope drugs

First iPad-written entry, let's see how it goes...

A couple of friends came over and we watched A Scanner Darkly. Interesting animation style and properly bizarre plot. Quite a cast, too: Robert Downey Jr, Keanu Reeves, Winona Ryder, Woody Harrelson... And a bunch of songs by Radiohead. I enjoyed it.

Apparently this iPad text entry thing doesn't play nicely with the blog formatting commands. Oh well.

Unlikely weekend combination

While visiting friends in the countryside we watched X-Men: The Last Stand for game background and Låt den rätte komma in because everyone wanted to see it.

X3 is pretty uneven, but stays just on this side of watchable. Still, it's hard not to wish that Bryan Singer had stayed on the project. Let the Right One In (its English title), on the other hand, was a real surprise and a real gem. A Swedish vampire movie about two 12-year-old kids sounds like it shouldn't work. Happily, I was proven wrong.

In my defense, I was recovering from fever

Nicolas Cage was reliably insane throughout and there were bees.

Yes, it was The Wicker Man and no, it wasn't much good.

But at least there was a tip of the hat to Edward Woodward.

North Face

Being the English title for Nordwand, a somewhat factual German film about the 1936 attempt to climb the north face of the Eiger, also known as Mordwand or Murder Wall because of the number of climbers who have died trying. This story does not have the mandatory happy ending either.

The movie takes a while to get going, and non-climbing scenes are of average quality, but when we get to the north face the filmmakers seem to switch gears and the results are gripping and look marvelous. I don't know how much was actual climbing and how much special effects, but the whole fit together so well I didn't really care.

A weepie for guys

You know, when Maximus triumphs but dies soon thereafter and walks into Elysium... I did find some extra moisture in the corner of my eye. This would be Gladiator, of course, this time the extended edition on Blu-ray. It's one of my favorite historical epics. The aforementioned moment feels so wrong and so right. I guess I have some sort of a built-in trigger for heroic death stories. The Alamo, King Leonidas with his Spartans (and assorted other Greeks who tend to be forgotten) at Thermopylae, The Wild Bunch, Maximus...

Note that I'm not saying only boys' weepies have this effect. I am a big old softie sometimes.

I miss the signal

Just watched Serenity, and I think I appreciated it even more the second time around. But it did make me miss Firefly something fierce.

"Look at what they make you give"

The Bourne Ultimatum wraps up the trilogy in grand fashion. Either I got used to the camerawork after watching Supremacy, or it is a little calmer now, but the frenetic style was fine. I liked the narrative trick of having part 3 happen both during and after part 2. The actors continue to shine. There are many standout moments, but Bourne's line to Paz (quoted in the title) was among the finest, neatly mirroring his encounter with The Professor in Identity.

For my money the Bourne trilogy is the most satisfying and smartest film series of recent times, and ranks pretty high on the all-time list as well. They could've stopped after the first movie and the story would've been complete, but the additional exploration of Bourne's character and history in the latter two works. All three are kickass action movies, too, which is equally important to the franchise. They mix American-style stories and indie/European-style filmmaking well.

Bourne again

Tonight's movie was The Bourne Supremacy. Paul Greengrass takes over from Doug Liman, and while I am not bothered by the camerawork like many people seem to be, I think I prefer the photography of the first film. Both returning and new cast members are excellent and it's a worthy sequel, all things considered.

Where the modern Bond learned his tricks

The complete Bourne trilogy on BD arrived in the mail today. I started watching it right away with the first movie, The Bourne Identity. It was the third or fourth time I saw it, and it still works damn well. Acting, photography, direction... it's all there. I remember being very pleasantly surprised when I rented the film for the first time, having read the book once.

I think the creators of Casino Royale took a long hard look at the Bourne franchise when rebooting Bond with Daniel Craig.

Yes, he is Iron Man

I cannot imagine anyone better for the part of Tony Stark - Robert Downey Jr. simply nails it. Iron Man was a brilliant start for a franchise, and even though it's RDJ's show, the others are solid too. If a superhero movie can make a man who can fly thrilling again, it must be on the right track.

Going country

I went to the local indie movie theater (should do that more often, as it's just around the corner) to watch Crazy Heart, and I'm very happy I did. Jeff Bridges was great, Maggie Gyllenhaal was good, and so was the music by Stephen Bruton and T-Bone Burnett. I don't listen to country much, but this was good stuff.

You can have any brew you want

Ah, The Fast and the Furious. The BD release features the loudest engine noises I've heard at home. It's the best thing Rob Cohen has directed and by far the best entry in the series. Sure, a guilty pleasure, but it feels like an actual movie nevertheless.

HD is a drug

So, The Hurt Locker, first film directed by a woman to win the Oscar for Best Director and Best Picture. I don't know if it was the best movie last year, or Kathryn Bigelow's best, but it's certainly damn good and worth some accolades. The Blu-ray release looks and sounds wonderful.

Word is Bond

I think I need a new label to show when I watch BD movies instead of DVDs. Luckily they are cheap!

Tonight's programming was two versions of James Bond: Dr. No and Casino Royale, the first cinema screen 007 and the first with the current actor. Dr. No is the first actual Blu-ray disc I've watched, and it immediately convinced me that this technology was money well spent. The restoration work was done from the original camera negatives, scanned at 4K resolution, and the film now looks astoundingly vibrant. I find the film one of the better Bonds, as it's not overladen with gadgets and corny jokes and Sean Connery is in fine form from the get-go.

Casino Royale was a very promising start for the latest incarnation. Daniel Craig is a proper blunt instrument, Eva Green is stunning and actually has a character to play, and the supporting cast is fine. Implausible gadgets and jokes are in mercifully short supply. My only major complaint is the end of the film: I found the last big fight scene entirely unnecessary. Without it, the film could've been shorter and they could've used something more akin to the novel's ending. My copy is "just" a DVD, but it looked fine, if not mind-blowing like its predecessor.

Mind: off

I went to see The Expendables with some friends. It was what I was looking for: brainless old school action with entertaining stars, although some of the action was cut too fast and close - the bane of many a modern film - and the script was uneven, certainly not on par with the best 80s action movies. Also the loudest film I've seen in a long time.

Back home I felt like some brain cells were still stirring, so I searched my TV recordings for a cure. I found Stealth, which was as dumb as they come. It had lots of CGI dogfights, lots of things blowing up, and Jessica Biel. Director Cohen is the auteur behind The Fast and the Furious, which I love dearly and which is a deep character study compared to Stealth.

All in all, a highly successful mind-numbing exercise on both counts.

Exhausting

No theme day now, just Crank: High Voltage. Jason Statham gives his all again as Chev Chelios, who has survived the fall at the end of the first movie and gets in trouble immediately: Chinese gangsters steal his heart. Cue delirious action with hardly a pause until the credits. Also appearing are Amy Smart, Dwight Yoakam, David Carradine, Corey Haim(!), Geri Halliwell(!!), and a bunch of real-life pornstars who are on strike ("No pay, no lay"). Every ethnicity is mocked mercilessly and nasty stereotypes abound.

It's like Grand Theft Auto on, uh, crank.

This is not a bad thing at all.