recent movies

There is not a single performance (and I mean that) in An Education that isn't top-class, but favourites are the girl's silent mom and the glamorous blonde (such beauty!). The director also excels, but all this hides the fact that the characters don't have real depth, especially the girl's mom (door mat!), while the dad is not much more than a caricature.

The fate of the man who got strapped with bombs got me bursting out in tears in the not-so-typical war movie, The Hurt Locker. We also get a whole lot of detail deliberately left out. I'm left without knowing whether to herald such soldiers as heroic or not.

There's a gem here and there in Clash of the Titans but the visual effects are of inconsistent quality (battle with scorpions really sucks; all attacks by Hades are done well) and so is the character design (Hades and the monster, Kraken, are magnificent; the scorpions and it's riders suck). Also, the movie really leaves a bad taste in one's mouth, such that one is compelled to proclaim it bad, and that's not helped by the script.

Nothing this year so far was as exciting as Iron Man 2, which was impressive not only due to great visual effects but also good directing, script, and acting, and there's a nice cameo by Samuel L. Jackson, a normally uninteresting guy whose only other work I appreciate is Pull Fiction. The villain is a pleasure to watch.