Person A Is Evil, But Actually Inconceivably Good Too

I'm in the middle of a company meeting and paying no attention. This entire thing is being written while I'm supposed to be discussing important company details. Right now it's expansion plans or something. I dunno. I just count and record the money that comes in.

Bram Stoker's Dracula
A mainly faithful but far too romanticised adaptation of the novel, Dracula is a beautiful movie with great imagery and cinematography and sets which is let down by an uneven tone. It starts off almost camp and certainly comical in parts with the way in which Keanu Reeves meets Oldman's ancient Dracula at his castle as the strangeness initially unfolds and, while entertaining, this makes the film more difficult to take seriously when it needs to be. It fails to be horrifying when it comes across simply as odd; it fails to be captivating as the epic tale of love and lust that Coppola tries to spin and which a film which begins so far off-course desperately needs to get back on track. Very, very uneven. Perhaps the very definition of uneven. I'll give this movie a C-.

And I must ask, what the hell happened to Mr. Coppola after the seventies? The competence in crafting near-perfect cinema which he exhibited in all four films between The Godfather and Apocalypse Now seems to have withered and left behind a director who certainly knows how to pull off the visual style but without the substance to back it up. Crushingly disappointing. But I loved the creepy detached shadows.

C- or 2 out of 5.

The Island

Second viewing of this movie. The premise is interesting. The first 20-30 minutes are intriguing and entertaining. But once the light-humour fades and the action kicks in, this is largely a flat, cold encounter with a moderately interesting conspiracy to keep things running. I will say this though; The Island, and not Narnia, should have grabbed the third visual effects spot in the Oscar nomination list. The action in this movie is at times quite stunning, pushing the limits of what is technologically possible, even if in the context of the narrative it becomes tiresome and repetitive after a while as the film drags on. And it does drag. The pacing and structure of the story is awful. And for all of that I liked it more than Dracula. Let's face it, everything I just said could be mentioned as flaws of any average action movie, and that's exactly what this is. So it gets a:

C or 2.5 out of 5. Being a little generous.

Mindhunters

Awful. Actually most of the movie is bearable. But where it leads is awful, making no sense as Person A is revealed to apparently be the killer, tries to kill person B while saying threatening "I'm a killer" type things and apparently revealing a motive for it too, only to then get knocked out by person C who is the real killer. And when Person B kills off Person C, Persona A wakes up and is all friendly and they walk off together as if all is well. Wtf???

It is left to the viewer to speculate from the murky revelations that Person A actually thought Person B was the killer and hence tried to kill Person B (ie. they thought each other was the killer) but this is not played out well on-screen at all; it is executed in a way which intends the viewer to think Person A is the killer like Person B suspects and simply takes it to an absurdly contrived extent that there is no way Person A would still suspect an obviously innocent and accusing Person B, nor would Person A say what they do say if they were in fact innocent as we are eventually expected to believe. Before this ending, it's okay. But so what if you end up with a bad taste in your mouth?

D+ or 1.5 out of 5. And I'm being verrrrry generous with this one.

I need to see a good movie. Now.