13 Assassins. That was too many assassins, but the interesting ones were pretty interesting, and the villain was hilariously great. Nice budget, too.

Kamen Rider W Forever: A to Z/Gaia Memories, finally being done with this entry in the franchise. Good but not great, it was basically the good parts of the series and with a few not as dull villains. Now that this is over I can finally continue with Black and Kuuga.

I'll just post my top five for 2012 for the time being:

1. Moonrise Kingdom
2. Jiro Dreams of Sushi
3. Attenberg
4. We Need to Talk About Kevin
5. Amour

Ultraseven: Lost Memory, the first of 1998's Ultraseven Memorial Trilogy. It was kind of like an alien edition of CSI and I have to admit it was done somewhat better than the two NTV specials. Viyella Seijin was not a bad monster, although disguising himself as a woman was rather odd, but oh well. Lets hope the other movies will be this good, Guts Seijin returns in the second!

The Martian Chronicles: I´m hooked. I need to find the book.

Ultraseven: From Earth Forever, the second of the Memorial Trilogy. Once again this movie acts too much like a crime movie and has even fewer sci-fi elements with Guts Seijin hardly doing much of anything although compared to later incarnations he is not bad. It probably would have been better if they did not have some weird subplot about how Dan (Seven's human form) was frame for murder and they never follow up on that. On the other hand the fight with Sulfuras was very well done. Not only was the monster awesome despite being a knockoff of Mururoa from Ultraman Taro, but the fight scene itself is one of the best I have seen in the franchise, it was just that good.

I just saw Cosmopolis. It was fantastic.

Watched Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. Very good. Add this to the list of movies I should have watched years ago but was too lazy to make the effort to track down.

The Informers.

In this anthology film about the malaise of life in 80's L.A. adapted from a short story collection by Bret Easton Ellis... Not much happens, really. A depressed woman is having an affair with her son's best friend, and the friend is also tapping the son's girlfriend on the side, and the son really loves this girl, truly, deeply, down in his heart, but she's dying of some unknown disease, while staying with the ex-wife of a drugged up rock star who can't seem to stay away from underaged girls and the occasional boy, who is in town to shoot a film where he rescues a princess from a planet ruled over by a giant tomato... Okay, deep breath. ... Meanwhile, a friend of the son's is vacationing in Hawaii with his dad and his dad tries to reach out to him to no avail, the depressed mom from before is trying to reconcile with her ex-husband, who doesn't love her and is still hitting on a pretty young TV news broadcaster and the doorman who works at the son's girlfriend's apartment has an uncle who kidnapped a boy and plans to sell him for meat to a group of pale-skinned, aggressive, creepy mobsters who should have been vampires, but that whole subplot was cut out, due to the film being painfully fun averse.

Yep, all that shit happens, and the film makes very little impact on the viewer. It's mostly clinical and deadpan, sterilizing material that should be funny and shocking, but the resulting film isn't bad, good, or anything; there no other words to describe it but 'meh'. It does manage to achieve a sort of understated sadness, and I was able to enjoy it somewhat on the level of it being a re-contextualized adaptation of a book I'd read, though I really have to wonder: would I have had any reaction to this were it not for the book? I don't know. The soap-opera style 50's things at once are going on angle might have been kind of interesting for awhile, but the only joy I really got to squeeze out of it pertained solely to observations on the nature of adaptation.

Ultraseven: Betrayal of The Sun, not as good monster, better fight. I didn't get the plot that much, Banderas was trying to either feed on human greed or hypnotize them when they found gold statues that were stargates and something about the sun or I don't know, it was one of those times I would only get it if it was in english subs.

Also yesterday I watched The Expendables 2 and to put it bluntly: BEST. MOVIE. EVER! 11/10! What the hell are you waiting for? See the best movie of all time RIGHT NOW!

Twin Drive Sigma Aquarion wrote:
See the best movie of all time RIGHT NOW!

All those old actors... How many years before their career ends? Also, why do portuguese movie theaters only broadcast these movies weeks after coming out? This is like that time I was waiting for Prometheus...

All those old actors... How many years before their career ends?

Better question: Who cares?

Twin Drive Sigma Aquarion wrote:Better question: Who cares?

Um... the actors capable of action roles that made the film likable to people like you, for one. I'm sure they'd hate it of their careers came crashing to an end. And I think it would effect the action movies you'd watch.

Um... the actors capable of action roles that made the film likable to people like you, for one.

Actors aren't everything.

I think it would effect the action movies you'd watch.

How? I've never seen other movies with half of the actors in this one and humans are the most replaceable thing in fiction. Well, so is dialogue, but that is debatable.

Twin Drive Sigma Aquarion wrote:.
humans are the most replaceable thing in fiction. Well, so is dialogue, but that is debatable.

You're wrong on both counts. The answer you're looking for is "plot"

Sure it is, ran1, sure it is.

Twin Drive Sigma Aquarion wrote:Sure it is, ran1, sure it is.

It really, truly is. Plot is a straitjacket: wearing one can be comfortable (and maybe even exciting if you're into that sort of thing) but if it's too tight you'll end up numb with blood-loss to significant parts of the body.

Total Recall(2012): It was crap. I´m not surprised.

That was a pretty bad analogy, Mugwump. A better example is bread and butter. Bread is actors, butter is the likeable parts, you can have butter on anything or simply nothing at all. The point is you do not need any specific bread slice to enjoy butter. Butter and bread also work greatly as a style and substance analogy.