Yep. Massively overrated.

Enjoyed Valhalla Rising.

K

I really wanted to like it. Missed it at the local theater and was excited when I saw it was on netflix. But I found much of the direction late in the film, really amateurish, very film school, especially the gimmicky stuff, and completely without any purpose in telling the story, what little there ended up being, the slow pacing I found really , really annoying and the end seemed completely unsatisfying. The first hour or so was much better than the last and almost seemed like a different director.

I liked "Iron Clad" and "Black Death" both much better.

If I had to pick a worst film, "Season of the Witch" comes to mind.

I like that kind of ponderous, atmospheric stuff, and found myself engaged beginning to end. I'm not sure why Refn continues on with the sort of loose handheld directorial style for a movie like this one, though. I found it distracting in the early scenes, it compromises your ability to put yourself in that other place the film wants to take you to, when you so clearly sense/see the director running around with a camera bobbing on his shoulder like a documentarian. I also found the digital editing techniques a little hit and miss. Like Pusher, you could sense it was a low budget film. This is the second or third Refn film I've seen and I always seem to walk away thinking he's pretty good, but not quite as great as he wants to be. VR reminded me a little of Von Trier's Antichrist, despite the wildly different plots, but Antichrist struck me as more accomplished. Still, there was nothing about VR I didn't enjoy. 82 minutes of unadulterated art-house bad-assery. This is the kind of shit that's just inherently up my alley. I actually found the twist at the end pretty interesting. Never heard of those other two.

K

I caught Black Death on Redbox last year, it wasn't terrible. The blurbs would lead you to believe it dips into the supernatural, but it's actually played pretty close to historically feasible.

Had completely forgotten about VR.

I think if they would have not bothered with the weird film school edits and stuff late in the film, and played the end more like the beginning I may have enjoyed VR more.

Iron Clad was a fictional account of the battle of Rochester Castle, a sort of Knights Templar's Seven Samurai with a bit of 300, set just after King John signed the Magna Carta. Paul Giamatti plays John.

Black Death starred Sean Bean, it's about a small group investigating small outlying villages not effected by the plague and it was a little average film that surprised me with one particular thing which I won't say, as it would be a huge spoiler. And there is a bit at the very end that they took just way too over the top.

I think I remember seeing "Centurion" that same weekend, and that was pretty good too if I recall.

But like I mentioned above I saw them both after having seen Season of the Witch, which I suppose wasn't Nicolas Cage's worst film.

Centurion. Gah.

Don't get me wrong, Centurion was a very flawed film, a lot of historical issues and technical ones, even the poison used by one character works differently from what I've read and there are more than it's share of hollywood clichés. But its engaging and fun, much better or at least no worse than that awful King Arthur movie they did a few years back.

A much better film was "Beowulf & Grendel" with Gerard Butler (2005). So much better than the big hollywood CGI/animated one written by Neil Gaiman a few years later(2007). Talk about "gah."

Just watched Lucky McKee's 2011 movie, The Woman. The soundtrack sucks massive balls and the third act goes a bit Brian Yuzna (if you know what I mean), but story up to that point... HO-LEE SHEEP-DIP. One second I'm laughing uncontrollably, the next I'm screaming. Yeah, I know big money totally fucked up Peter Jackson and Sam Raimi, but McKee is definitely an A-list director waiting to happen.

Enjoyed Drive.

Refn has won himself over a new fan at this point. Drive was about as good as Valhalla Rising. That is to say, not necessarily perfect, but still indicative of an exciting talent with high quality influences. I'm not sure I've properly wrapped my head around the whole 80s kickback vibe, though. Not that it bothered me, it was interesting -- but I couldn't really intuit a reason for it, it seemed like such an arbitrary aesthetic decision. I guess if you ponder Drive w/o that aesthetic, and just as a straight-up heist-gone-wrong movie, it becomes a different, lesser animal, but still. Anyway, thumbs up. It's fun watching Albert Brooks kill people. I wonder what causes QT to relegate Drive to a mere "Nice Try" category. All in all it's pretty great. Refn's getting very good at using just the barest strokes to propel his storytelling, relying on the audience's fundamental intelligence and familiarity with movie conventions to fill in the gaps. It's very classic feeling, very tense, but stripped down, and trying some new things within its own framework; a little like what the Coens did with No Country For Old Men.

Drive was also the first movie I watched on blu ray. Big, 1080p tv in a small room. I was impressed. Watching a true blu ray disc on a high quality display really puts into perspective how shitty Netflix Streaming HD, or even most digital HD rips, are by comparison. I look forward to watching more movies this way. The clear motion technology on the tv almost makes things look vaguely 3D. It's weird.

I'll see Melancholia this weekend.

K