Protecting The Private Life

Amazing movie. The surreal-ness was handled extremely well, and Jake Gyllenhaal gives an amazing performance. It had me intrigued from start to almost-finish. And that brings me to my problem with the ending: [SPOILERS BELOW] Suddenly the time travel is actually real? Up until the tornado crashing the plane, everything could be explained as paranoid schizophrenia. It would have been really easy to have an amazing ending while keeping with the idea that it's all in his head - why the need to suddenly make the pseudo-science real? What did the ending add to the story? Unless I'm missing something? Maybe the Director's Cut is much better? 8/10

Apart from a couple of times where it slipped across the line, it walked the tightrope between cheesy and charming/old-fashioned to perfection. Harnessing the theme of ageing as a way to honour the series' past. Translating the theme of "fighting in the shadows" to literal (incredible) silhouette fight scenes with amazing background colours. So good. If it wasn't for some inexplicable character decisions and laughable "hacking", a perfect score would have been given. 9/10

Walked out after 25 minutes. I could rant for several paragraphs, but it can be summed up by saying that absolutely no respect was given to the audience's intelligence. Also, "slow motion" is not synonymous with "arty", nor "weird lens flare sparkles" with "beautiful". 2/10 And "3D" in the title? Seriously?

What a great movie. Far, far better than all previous Spiderman movies. Only downside is that the plot is almost exactly the same for the first half of the movie, but it's okay because everything about it is better - the acting, the CGI, the script, the pacing, the music, everything. Also Emma Stone in thigh-high boots :D 9/10

10/10 cinematography 9/10 music 10/10 acting (Michael Fassbender and Charlize Theron were amazing) 9/10 script 10/10 intensity 9/10 pacing 10/10 mysteriousness (and not overdone) 3/10 characterisation. For "scientists", they make some pretty stupid decisions. Hell, even for human beings it was stupid. I can forgive some of it for pacing reasons, but the rest was unforgivable. Everything might be perfect, but a small amount of bad characterisation can ruin a movie by tearing down the wall of believability, and that's what happened here. 7/10

"Shame" is not only quite a surreal movie, but an oddly surreal movie. The main character shows such complex and conflicting emotions through very little dialogue, that it's actually quite hard to confidently know what's happening. Don't watch it if you expect fast-paced plot, or tonnes of awesome sex. While there's a huge amount of sex in it, it's almost entirely deliberately soulless. I'd compare Shame to hypnotically lethargic movies like Blue Valentine or Lost in Translation, but with a slightly more sinister tone. 8/10

1. Incredibly intense plane crash. Only matched by the Super 8 train crash. 2. Equal parts frenzied violence and methodically paced humanity. 3. The action scenes had the camera a bit more zoomed in than I'd like. Think the Bourne movies but more zoomed in. Don't expect any "Taken" shenanigans from Liam Neeson. 4. It's a profoundly human movie - the fear and death experienced in a desperate situation. 5. When faced with so much fear and death, what is your motivation to keep living? 8/10