It’s nearly two months since my last movie review — a review, I might add, where I was unreasonably hard on the reviewed movie, as the fact that I’m in a foul mood shouldn’t really count against it. Anyway, since then I’ve watched a lot of movies: excellent movies, great movies, good movies, mediocre movies, and possibly also a crappy one or two. And since I’m simply too lazy to give all sixteen movies the attention they probably deserve, I’m gonna limit myself to copying my comments about them from my physical movie log; comments which have declined in quality since I started blogging about movies. Sure, I might add a sentence here or there now, but still. It’ll be pretty low-level reviewing — but hey! How does that really differ from what I usually do, eh?

Here we go:

(Oh, and if my spelling seems to have degenerated dramatically over the summer, it’s probably true, but part of it is caused by me not quite having accustomed myself to my new laptop yet.)

(Ooh, did you see what I did right there? Carefully, and oh-so-subtly, I bragged about my new laptop. Man, I’m so good, sometimes I scare myself a little.)

Requiem for a Dream
Fucking awful perfection; I almost felt as if I travelled down the road to madness along with the characters. New respect for both Jared Leto (pretty-boy of my childhood) and Marlon Wayans. 10/10.

Lost in Translation
The second time I’ve watched it. I still think it’s hyped way more than it deserves, but it’s still a good movie. A sweet one, too. 8.0/10.

The Name of the Rose
The movie adaption of Umberto Eco’s classic novel is well-nigh perfect, and hadn’t the script-writers or whoever changed the ending, this’d been a clear 10′er. Unfortunatley, they were unable to restrict themselves. The rest of this Medieval detective story is awesome, though. It’s especially fun to notice how all the friars — except the proto-socialist Franciscans — are portrayed as freaks of one kind or another. 9.0/10.

X-Men 1.5
I’ve never really seen the original, so I have no idea how they’re different. What I have an idea about, though, is the quality of this comic book movie adaption. Sure, the plot got kinda irrelevant after the first time, but the characters are swell, they have some iconic moments, and the way they interact with each other is fun in many ways. 8.0/10.

Lady Vengeance
I picked up this Korean flick pretty much on a whim. I’d heard from some diffuse, unspecified source that it — and its relatives, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and Oldboy — was kinda neat, but that was about it. However, I’d just gotten the first paycheck of the summer, so what more of an incentive did I need? As for the movie itself, it turned out to be quite good. A bit weird, true, but I’m spspecting it merely seems that way because of some cultural differences. Because it really is an intriguing and intelligent look at the consequences of the miscarriage of justice. It’s also narrated in a rather interesting way. Some might call it untidy and/or confusing, but I just thought this helped create some suspence. It was somewhat slow in the middle, though. 7.5/10.

Mortal Kombat
I have about the same relationship to this movie as to “Wayne’s World”. They’re both mediocre at best, but because I come into contact with them during my formative years, I tend to overrate them, or at least watch them numerous times, mostly without being overly critical. Because you can’t be critically inclined towards this kind of movies. There’s no plot, the actors aren’t really actors — i.e. they’re chosen for some ability other than their acting skills — and most of them suck pretty hard. But what they do, is that they give you exactly what they promise: simple entertainment with no strings attached. So unless you expect or crave high drama, there’s few better ways to kill a couple of hours than with one of these movies. It’s even funnier if you have someone to watch them with, ‘cos you know, sarcasm is at least thrice as amusing if you share it. Oh, and MK has a lot of pretty cool martial arts; I just thought I’d mention it. And’s it’s a classic martial arts movie of kinds. And it’s based on a computer game. 3.5/10. (Utterly unfair to “Van Helsing”, I know, but as I’ve already said, I wasn’t in the mood for “Van Helsing” when I watched that one, whereas I was completely ready for MK. Makes quite the difference, that.)

12 Monkeys
“Donnie Darko” meets “The Terminator”, who brought “The Fisher King” along. In other words, some seriously weird shit, but good shit. Actually, it was so good, I think I might drop the feces metaphor altogether. 9.0/10.

X-Men 2
Pretty much the same as X1.5, just with a better plot, and more of everything I liked. And Magneto’s escape. They had enough a whole movie right there. I could have watched that scene forever. Also, “You’re a God among insects. Don’t ever let anyone tell you differently.” 9.0/10.

Buffalo Soldiers
I can’t help it, but there’s just something about this tale of a bunch of American soldiers being bored out of their minds in West Germany, that I love, utterly and completely. Cool characters, a fun plot, great dialogue, dark, morbid humour — seriously, what is there not to love? 8.5/10.

Hellboy
Second time around, and much better than I seemed to remember it to be. Sure, they spend an awfully large amount of time on Sammael, considering that he (or rather, “it” ) is nothing but a dumb, insensate animal, but not as much time as I thought they did. A huge plus for the Ctuhlu references, though. A fucking enormous one. 7.0/10.

Gosford Park
This classic British murder story is equally amazing every time I watch it. The first time, it’s really confusing, and it was all I could do to keep up with the main plotline. The second time around I started noticing the characters more clearly, and the thrid time I really began appreciating the subtle character interaction, the tiny hints at hidden affairs — glances, raised eyebrows, a random remark. Unquestionably one of my favourite movies. 10/10.

Get Ready To Be Boyzvoiced
A Norwegian take on the classic “This is Spinal Tap” — only ridiculing boybands instead of glamrockers. It’s funny enough, but it gets repetitive way too quickly, and I’ve never really been much of a fan of the Eckbo brand of comedy. Compared to the humour of “Spinal Tap”, “Boyzvoice”’s approach is much more abrupt, blunt and extravagant, which makes it more hysterical the first time around, but I doubt I’ll ever watch it again, while “Spinal Tap” can be watched again and again and again. But hey, a decent way to kill an hour or two. 4.0/10.

Amélie
Another of my definitive favourites. A top-notch feel-good movie, with more depth than this genre usually has to offer. 10/10.

Babel
This was a extremely amazing movie, with first-rate acting, an intricate (yet not always equally interesting) plot, a definitively political edge, and great shooting. However, it got too cruelly realistic, it was at times bordering the naturalistic, with its emphasis on the importance of coincidences as determining factors in people’s lives. I mean, I’m fond of chaos theory, too, Gods, this was too much. Again, a truly awesome movie, but some of my individual pecularities forces me to give it a mere 8.5/10.

Platoon
What to say? It’s pretty close to perfect. But the voice-overs just bug me. They don’t contribute anything; anyone with half a brain ought to be able to figure out the things Sheen’s character is telling them on their own. I’ve gotta rewatch “Full Metal Jacket” again, soon, to see if the voice-overs were as annoyingly redundant there as they were here. But, after all, there’s not too many of these. 9.0/10.

O Brother, Where Art Thou?
I still love it, and I get another Odyssey reference every time I watch it. Which is impressive, really, as I’ve never read the Odyssey, unless you count a Donald Duck adaption of it. 8.0/10.

Phew. Finally ajour again. I wonder how long that’s gonna last?

No matter how that’ll turn out, I like that I’ve finally been able to wrap my head around the concept of ratings this summer. And about time, too. Because I think one of the main reasons why my ratings have been so extremely weird and arbitrary — aside from my overly lenient method of watching movies — is that I’ve previously failed to fully appreciate that ratings of this kind is a very blunt instrument. A specific rating, for example an 8.0, has to cover a wide range of quality, and I’ve failed to accept this. Rather, I’ve tried to differentiate between each and every movie: A movie which should have been an 8.0 has been rated as a 7.5 because I thought it wasn’t as good as the original 8.0. Then this has spread through the rest of the system, and corrupted much of it.

To the extent, of course, that I even have a system. After all, I’m known (at least to myself) for my insane rationalisations and attempted explanations, especially when I might otherwise be seen as, well, dumb.

And no matter what else, I’m intellectually vain.

(On a concluding note: Oooh, look at all the shiny tags! :D )