Welcome to Brian's Movie Reviews! I designed this page to give the uninformed public (you) my personal reactions to the various movies I've recently watched. These reviews will focus on only the parts of movies I wish to discuss, for the sole reason that I am the one talking about them.

List of Movies currently Reviewed:
12 Angry Men
Alien
Amelie
Batman Begins
Boondock Saints, The
City of God
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Donnie Darko (Director's Cut)
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Fight Club
Finding Neverland
Flight of the Phoenix, The
Forest Gump
Garden State
Godfather, The
Hero
Lost in Translation
Nightmare Before Christmas, The
Ray
Run Lola Run
Se7en
Silence of the Lambs, The
Sin City
Sixth Sense, The
Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith
Terminal, The
Transporter 2, The
Usual Suspects, The
War of the Worlds

12 Angry Men
12 Angry Men did a great job of keeping my attention through the film. It's a good movie if you're into older films, but it won't keep you entertained for more than one viewing. Acting and dialogue were strong throughout the film, but the story was predictable. Overall I give it 1 thumb up.
Rating: 2/5 stars for being pretty good, but nothing more.

Alien
I'm sure that in 1979, when Alien was made, it was a great movie. But for today's standards, it stinks. Far too much of nothing went on, and I actually was rooting for the Alien to win at a few points. Sound quality was poor, visuals were decent. Acting (if running around and screaming a lot qualifies for acting) was mediocre at best. No real reason to watch this movie unless you're a fan of 1970's sci-fi slasher movies. The best part of the movie had to be the weird android-type person that started spitting milk all over. For some reason that just amused me.
Rating: 2/5 Stars for not being anything unique.

Amelie
This movie was pretty great. The story was intriguing and enticing throughout, camera work was some of the best I've seen. I found myself laughing, and occasionally yelling at the screen a few times throughout the movie. Anything that can draw a positive reaction out of me to the point where I start yelling at the screen is good. I find myself yelling at the screen for negative reasons quite often (see Lost in Translation. If you don't mind reading subtitles (movie is in French), go watch Amelie.
Rating: 5/5 Stars for the strong story.

Boondock Saints, The
Plot synopsis: Two Irish brothers go on a killing rampage when they get ticked at the mob. End of movie. I really wasn't as impressed as I should have been by Boondock Saints. The logic and theology behind their killing spree was confusing to me... maybe it's just an Irish-catholic thing? Boondock Saints, while very much entertaining, lacked in the story / character development section. There really was only one good twist in the movie, when I found out the guy with the six guns was really {spoilers removed}. It was also slightly amusing to hear all the Irish people dropping F-bombs every other word. It sounded funny when they said it. Then again, it might have just been my severe lack of sleep. There isn't anything special that sets this movie apart from any other rampage-killing-mob with lots of guns movie.
Rating: 3/5 Stars for an entertaining two hours that left me no better, yet no worse, than when I started watching.

Batman Begins
This is by far the most excellent Batman movie ever made (that's not saying a whole lot though). Christopher Nolan (director of the masterpiece "Memento") did a stunning job directing. This was a dark, gritty Batman movie with tons of kickbutt action and one of the best bad guys I've seen in a while. It might actually be with another $8.00 to see at the theater again.
Rating: 4/5 Stars for strong story, acting and visuals.

City of God
This has it all. I was absolutely astonished by so many aspects of this film. The strongest aspect of this film is the story, which is emotionally charged and never has a dull moment. City of God follows a young boy "Rocket" as he grows up in the slums of Rio de Jenero. This movie shows the horribly dark side of the world without being horribly depressing. It masterfully weaves together characters and events into a tapestry of visual experience on the screen. The best part is it's based on a true story. This movie does contain some pretty harsh content, but the redeeming social value easily outweighs that. This movie is easily one of the top 5 movies I have seen in my life.
Rating: 6/5 Stars for being entirely a masterpiece.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Despite being rather old, Close Encounters is really pretty cool. Like most movies from 30+ years ago, the story moved pretty slowly, but I found that I was fascinated by the alien ships. Like moths attracted to a bright lantern light, so too are humans attracted to the bright lights of the unknown. The 5-note melody (do-do-do-do-do) was pure genius. Close Encounters felt like the weird love child of Star Wars and Space Oddessy: 2001. It had the slow-paced story and nothing-happening-ness of 2001 with the crazy special effects of the original Star Wars movies. As for recommending this movie - I wouldn't for the average movie-goer (they'd be disappointed), but anyone studying film should definatly see it.
Rating: 4/5 Stars for being uniquely cool in it's own special way.

Donnie Darko (Director's Cut)
Now I see why this film is a cult classic. Absolutely amazing. Fantasticly fabulous. Crazily creative. I love it. I won't even begin to try to explain the crazy, messed up world of Donnie Darko. I watched it 3 times in a row before finally returning the DVD. If I wasn't a poor, broke college student I would buy the dvd in a second. I got shivers when the song "Mad World" starting playing at the end of the movie. wow. Recommended for anyone who likes odd, dark films with a touch of science fiction and metaphysics.
Rating: 5/5 Stars for being the essence of mind-blowing put in film format.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Wow. Cool movie. I loved Eternal Sunshine for its creative plot, awesome acting, and overall excellent visual effects. This movie, unlike many others I've seen, didn't flaunt the fact that it had cool visual effects, instead it focused on the plot, and the visuals were just icing on the cake. The story drew me in from the beginning, and didn't let go until the credits. If I had some money, I might actually buy this movie - that's how good it is.
Rating: 4/5 Stars for creative visuals, enticing story and strong acting.

Fight Club
Fight Club is surprisingly good. From a 3d / Visual Effects standpoint, it was creative, but not horribly well executed. One example is the shot near the beginning when the camera zooms out of a digital trashcan - it's horribly obvious that it's fake. What it lacked from a technical standpoint was easily offset by the original story. There were even a few themes running through the movie that I agree with (ex. the anti-commercialism stance it takes). Another great plot twist at the end, with good (but not amazing) acting by Brad Pitt and Edward Norton.
Rating: 5/5 Stars for creative visuals, great plot twist and other stuff.

Finding Neverland
Finding Neverland follows the life of J.M. Barrie, the author of Peter Pan. Johnny Depp, who plays Barrie, acts like a Michael Jackson from early 1900's. It's kinda creepy. It's a pretty straight-forward movie - nothing special. Watch it if you're looking for a family-friendly movie or you're just a Peter Pan (or Johnny Depp) fan.
Rating: 3/5 Stars for not being as cool as it could have been.

Flight of the Phoenix, The
When I first heard of this movie, I thought it was going to be pretty cool. I thought wrong. There's plenty to complain about - take the opening sequence for example. The opening sequence for a movie sets up the whole mood and pacing for a movie. FOTP had some footage of a cargo plain flying with crappy country playing in the background for its opening sequence. Nothing even remotely interesting - which reflected the rest of the movie very accurately. The dialogue wasn't natural, the story was pretty weak, and character development beyond the cliche "jerk turns into nice guy" was non-existent. Some of the visual effects were cool - the sandstorm (although not accurate) looked very awesome.
Rating: 2/5 Stars decent visuals, but horrible everything else.

Forest Gump
Forest Gump was an OK movie. Made in 1994, I gotta give it props for it's unique visual effects. Random Trivia - They covered Lt. Dan's legs in green, then keyed them out to make him look legless. By the end of the movie, I really ended up hating Jenny. There's not much else to say, other than Tom Hanks did a good job playing a stupid guy.
Rating: 4/5 Stars for a great story.

Garden State
I found a movie that actually contends with City of God for my award of "Best Movie Ever". Zach Braff's debut film is astonishingly funny, emotional and real. I'll write more later... maybe once I find a new "best film ever".
Rating: 6/5 Stars for for its odd humor.

Godfather, The
I personally don't see how this movie holds the #1 spot on the IMDB. Yes, it is a classic, but it's not that great of a classic. The story revolves around the mob killing, maiming, and otherwise violently engaging in various illegal activities. And throughout it all, you get the sense that this is OK behavior - that "it's all business". The Godfather really disappointed, so if you're expecting a masterpiece, go watch something else, like The Usual Suspects.
Rating: 3/5 Stars for being mediocre.

Hero
Hero was a stunning movie that doesn't sacrifice story or acting for its amazing visuals. There are only a few gripes I have with the movie, mainly that a lot of the 3d compositing work looks fake. But the fact that it fails in technical execution does not detract from the ingenious design of many of the shots. The story had many twists and turns, but it stayed simple enough to follow if you paid attention at least a little bit. Hero ranks as one of the top 10 movies I've seen this year.
Rating: 5/5 Stars for an impressive job of combining action and story with awesome eye-candy.

Lost in Translation
Lost in Translation is the perfect example of a movie that is absolutely NOT worth seeing, and I'll give you three reasons why. 1) It has no plot. 2) Totally unnecessary nudity (which is a minus in my opinion) and 3) it's so boring I found that I was entertaining myself by looking at the hair on my toes rather than watching the movie in front of me.
Rating: 0/5 Stars for it being an indescribable pile of dog poo.

Nightmare Before Christmas, The
Call me an uncultured movie critic, but I had never seen any of Tim Burton's work up until I saw Nightmare Before Christmas a few days ago. The man is creative, I'll give him that. The movie was weird. It had a very simple plot to follow, but the story was just weird. Like some first grader was told to sit down and write a story about his favorite holidays, and he couldn't go out for recess until he had something done. You gotta love weird stuff.
Rating: 4/5 Stars for appealing to my odd sense of movie tastes, and being weird.

Ray
Ray was an awesome movie. Jamie Foxx was excellent as Ray Charles. There's only one shot I didn't like in the movie, and that's when they tried to composite a shot of Ray's hands playing the keyboard onto his sunglasses. It was a cool idea, but it's already been done (spiderman, and a few other movies) and it really didn't look all that cool. The music was absolutely amazing. The pacing through the whole movie was strong, but I felt it was dragging on a bit towards the end.
Rating: 4/5 Stars for general goodness.

Run Lola Run
Run Lola Run was a pretty sweet movie. All those kids who watched it in German class and said it was trippy and confusing, well, they were right. But it's still sweet as ever. Run Lola Run combines amazing camera technique with traditional 2d animation to make a visually stimulating movie. The acting was good (although all the dialogue was in German, so I couldn't understand what they said without subtitles). It gets a bit boring at times as we watch Lola run (and run and run and run) for a period of a couple minutes straight.
Rating: 4/5 Stars for creativity, unique camera shots, and just being cool in general.

Se7en
Seven was a pretty crappy movie. The acting seemed unnatural, the characters shallow, the dialogue forced, and the story lacking. There was no redeeming value in this movie for me. The story follows a crazy (through he claims he's not) serial killer that tortures and kills his victims using the Seven Deadly Sins as a guide. The ending was totally unfulfilling, and this movie left me wanting 2 hours of my life back. I can't believe I'm spending so much time writing about how bad this was.
Rating: 1/5 Stars for horrible just about everything.

Silence of the Lambs, The
Decent movie for a suspense / thriller. Slightly disturbing at times. Nothing special though.
Rating: 3/5 Stars.

Sin City
Sin City was an AMAZING movie from a visual effects / creativity standpoint, but otherwise had absolutely no redeeming value. The stylization of Black & White mixed with color was awesome. The stylized car chases were awesome. Sin City just oozed with creativity on so many levels. But then factor in the extreme violence, sex, and somewhat confusing story, and it turns into a movie I wouldn't recommend to most people.
Rating: 4/5 Stars for amazing visuals, but horrible content.

Sixth Sense, The
This movie, along with Unbreakable and Signs, showcase the extremely creative mind of M Night Shyamalan. The sound editing on this movie was superb, strong visuals, great acting by Bruce Willis and the kid. It's a fun yet suspenseful movie with a surprising twist at the end.
Rating: 5/5 Stars for plot.

Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith
If you've looked around my website at all, you probably realize what kind of a star wars nerd I am. Well, from a nerds point of view, this was a great way to end the Star Wars Prequil trilogy. Go see it. I was blown away by the insanely sweet visual effects, and there were so many lightsabers :) It did a great job of tieing up all the loose ends of the first two movies and it had a great (if not a bit overdone) transition to Episode 4. However, there were a few bad points to the movie. Once again, the dialogue was terrible and the acting wasn't great. Still a great movie overall.
Rating: 4/5 Stars. It's star wars... 'nuff said.

Terminal, The
The Terminal is a great comedy starring Tom Hanks as a poor lost foreigner stuck in the JFK International Airport. There was some really cool camera work near the begining of the film and the story was great. I laughed, I cried (well, not really) and I enjoyed watching The Terminal from start to finish. I'd recommended it for anyone looking for a fun film to watch on a rainy day or really any other day too.
Rating: 4/5 Stars for story, acting, and humor.

Transporter 2, The
Well, I never saw the first, so I can't compare the two. But if the sequal was anything like the original, then I don't know why they ever made a sequel. The Transporter 2 was your stereotypical action film. Fast cars, hot women, plenty of violence and explosions. There wasn't really anything that set this movie apart from the hundreds of others just like it. I will admit there were a few cool action sequences (such as when Frank took out a mob of thugs with a firehose). Save your money at the theater and rent it if you really want to see it.
Rating: 2/5 for being the definition of a stereotypical hollywood action movie.

Usual Suspects, The
What can I possibly say about one of the best movies ever written! The plot twist at the end was so amazing I'm still in awe. Three words for you: Go Watch It.
Rating: 5/5 Stars for plot and acting.

War of the Worlds
War of the Worlds was a bit of a letdown as far as Speilberg films go. The movie was solid for the most part, but the ending was a disappointment. It's hard when making a movie out of such a well-known book / radio drama. You can't change the ending without offending people, and you can't well articulate the ending in movie format. For what it's worth, the visual effects were sweet.
Rating: 4/5 Stars for story, effects, but a poor ending.