Excuse me if I've reviewed this before, I can't remember if I did or not
2011's
The Thing 6.99/10 - when people heard that there was going to be a 'remake' of John Carpenter's 1982 movie
The Thing, the fans were up in arms. JC's movie is now considered a classic, nearly a perfect movie of its genre.
But the producers pulled a fast one. It's not a remake.
If you know the 1982 story, you know that the movie starts off with a helicopter chasing a dog into the US Antarctic science base. The helicopter pilot and his passenger are armed and acting irrationally. One of the Americans remembers the helicopter having the word "Norge" on the side of it and they realize the helicopter is from the Norwegian science base some miles away. They investigate the base and the story takes off from there.
2011's
The Thing is the story of what happened at that Norwegian base. It is not as scary as the first movie - I guess because the surprise factor is gone for those who know the 1982 movie. In a great treat, the actors are mostly all Norwegian. The producers got the OK to cast the
creme de la creme of Norwegian film stars and got them.
There are some liberties taken with some things. But for the most part, the extras on the movie talk about how they had to do a lot of 'reverse engineering' using the 1982 movie to show how things ended up as they did and they nail it.
Hint: Stick around for the first part of the credits.
And I've been on a Benedict Cumberbatch kick recently so I've watched the following. I've also recently bought a DVD/blu ray player that plays region 2 movies so be aware two of these are not available in the US:
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy 8.5/10 - I missed this in theaters when it first came out and finally rented it. Well worth it. I ended up buying the movie. I do like spy movies (they don't all have to be Bond or Bourne) and it got such excellent reviews and I like almost everyone in it. So I picked a cold, rainy night so I could concentrate on the plot because I heard it was tricky. But it turned out to be a fairly straightforward tale, the acting by EVERYone is FAR beyond reproach and it was a lot more emotional than it looks from the trailers. The sexuality of some of the characters, like the morals, is surprisingly fluid in this movie. But John le Carre gave that his blessing as he says that was quite common.
Third Star 7/10 - movie of a man with terminal cancer taking a trip with his close friends to his favorite wilderness beach in Wales. I like it because you rarely get to see a movie about friendships between (straight) men that gets so intimate. They rip each other to shreds emotionally in this movie, are rude, crude and cruel with one another, but also treat one another with great tenderness and love.
Stuart: A life backwards Based on a true story of an author (Benedict's character) who decides to write a biography of a homeless man (Tom Hardy's character) and the odd friendship they develop. I need to watch this again before I give it a rating because it wasn't what I was expecting.
First off - culture shock - what is 'homeless' in the UK is apparently not the same as someone considered homeless in the US. Stuart is considered 'homeless' but he actually does live in government housing and owns a car. In the US, when you're homeless you are truly homeless, you are living under bridges or in dumpsters or in a box in a back alley somewhere and have nothing.
Secondly, Stuart the character is really bad off - he's ill, a heroin addict and an alcoholic, so he mumbles. And it is very very difficult to understand what he is saying, so I was stuck concentrating on understanding his words instead of focusing on what he was actually saying and what it meant, so I played catch up the entire movie, lagging behind in meaning and being divorced from the emotions of the story because I wasn't getting most of Stuart's dialogue.
Tom Hardy is spectacular in this role. I think he either won a BAFTA or was nominated for one and deservedly so, but my goodness, the man can't put two words together in person.
The DVD has extras and interviews with each of the cast and in his interview, Hardy rambles on and on, unable to find the words for what he wants to say. But he does obviously admire Cumberbatch as a person and an actor, he smiles when he says the man's name and is quite prophetic when he says he knows when someone is an Olympic level actor and Benedict is that.
Hardy apparently really took Benedict to heart. They worked together again in
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and on the red carpet at that premiere, Hardy gave Cumberbatch a very intimate hug that apparently got awkwardly long:
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