by Felipe Rosa
X-Men: First Class: a decent entry to the series, better than it deserved after the last two, in fact. It’s good to see that they kept some thematic unity with the first two movies. The cast choice was inspired; so was the use of less known characters, making the reboot less tired than it could be.
Categories: Film reviews • Tags: action, super hero
by Felipe Rosa
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides: a sad addition to the series. Dark and murky, uninspired actions sequences, bad use of the characters. It’s a waste of such a nice cast. In fact, the only thing that is somewhat inspired is the Duck Soup reference (but, that’s mostly because of the source).
Categories: Film reviews • Tags: action
by Felipe Rosa
Hanna: the previous discomfort with the story continues. However, watch again the lovely camera work was a great pleasure, and I noticed some more shots that I enjoyed. (Granted, I’m a sucker for long takes with moving camera, particularly when done with good reason and elegance, like here.) See what I wrote previously: Hanna
Categories: Film reviews, Revisit • Tags: action
by Felipe Rosa
RoboCop: with very dated ultra-violence and special effects (it doesn’t look at all different from what Harryhausen did 40 years before), the saving grace would be at least a well-told or interesting story. Alas, we get neither; nor characters.
Categories: Film reviews • Tags: action
by Felipe Rosa
Seven Samurai: as perfect a film as one can be. There’s not one scene of this movie feels out of place; they are there either to advance the (deceptively simple, yet quite powerful) story or flesh out the characters. Each new view allow for new discoveries, new understandings. This is magnificent filmmaking in all levels.
Categories: Film reviews • Tags: action, drama, top
by Felipe Rosa
Thor: neither bad not good, just plain. This is riskless cinema. We know there can be character in super-hero movies, but someone forgot to tell the writers for this one. Warm beggining to the super-hero summer. Also, I need to remember myself to ignore the 3D showing as much as I can. It’s usually there for gimmicks only, and the film loses its visual edges due to the darker feeling.
Categories: Film reviews • Tags: action, super hero
by Felipe Rosa
Fast Five: dumb fun, and it would be dumber to expect more. It’s a guilty pleasure for sure, especially for stating that you either have to be a criminal (or a parrot) to want to go to Rio de Janeiro. It still bugs me that they have to use Spanish speaking actors, however. At least the radio chatter and street-speaking was in proper Portuguese.
Categories: Film reviews • Tags: action
by Felipe Rosa
13 Assassins: as far as action movies go, this is top-notch; nevermind that the action is appropriately old-fashioned, since this is a quite traditional samurai film. It also has a bit more to say than the usual action fare; it deals quite beautifully with the “two sides of the same coin”. But, with so many characters and so little time, a lot of them feel too generic.
Categories: Film reviews • Tags: action
by Felipe Rosa
Hanna: a little bit of discomfort with such a violent (if not that graphical) film featuring such a young main character. However, the strong cast (top to bottom) and the very fluid camera work (in particular the lovely tracking shot -or two, but well masked- that goes from the bus station to the subway station) makes this more interesting than the regular actioner.
Categories: Film reviews • Tags: action
Fifth about The Seventh