Snatch

Guy Ritchie might be my favorite director. I love his style, and it really shines here, more than in any other movie of his that I've seen. Snatch has a ton of good actors, all playing great characters. Each one contributes something, even if they’re only in a few scenes. It's consistently funny throughout, there's always something new and unexpected happening, and the way it all comes together is great.

I'm pretty sure I must have seen Snatch at some point. But I was only 14 when it came out, and I didn't remember it at all. I knew where the diamond ended up because I read a reference to it somewhere, but other than that and the fact that Brad Pitt played a gypsy, I didn't know anything about it.

I like Guy Ritchie's movies a lot, with the exception of Lock, Stock. Maybe I should watch it again. Or maybe not. Snatch seemed a lot like Rocknrolla and Layer Cake (not a Guy Ritchie movie), only a million times better. I don't know what the point of making Rocknrolla even was since he had already done Snatch. Lock, Stock would probably be similar enough that I wouldn't get anything out of it.
 
Snatch had me hooked right from the beginning. I love Jason Statham, although by the time I watched the second movie that I saw him in (The Bank Job, which incidentally, I didn't like him in), I had completely forgotten that he was in Snatch. To be fair, that was eight years later, which is a long time to remember an actor you've never seen in anything else.
 
But his character was great in Snatch. Although I didn't get why he needed to reference "zee Germans" three times. I loved his sidekick, too. I felt like I knew him from somewhere, but I don't think I really did, even though I've seen a few things that he's been in. I also felt like I had just seen the diamond guy and Brick Top as bad guys in similar movies, but apparently I hadn't.

The Departed

The Departed is a bit dated, but the acting is good, and I guess it’s interesting enough, if you like that kind of thing.

I had always heard that The Departed was good, but I wasn’t interested in it. Now that I finally got around to seeing it, it seems kind of dated, but I guess that’s what happens when you watch something that’s a decade old.

The Magnificent Seven

The Magnificent Seven has a lot of flaws, and the acting isn't good enough to carry the lack of plot and character development. Some of the action is cool, but it's not really enough to make it worth watching.

The Magnificent Seven got mixed reviews, but I was hoping it could be carried on the virtue of the actors. Turns out it couldn't. The plot is ridiculously simple, but you know that going in, so they really need to do some character development or have some cool tricks or something, but they don't. It felt really tired and unispired. The whole "defending a small town with tricks" thing has been done to death. You've got to have some spectacularly impressive tricks if you're going to make it entertaining, and they didn't.

Hail, Caesar!

I'm not the biggest Coen brothers fan, but I liked "Hail, Caesar!" All the actors are good, it's fun to see how they used to make movies, and there are a lot of funny scenes.

I'm not a huge Coen brothers fan. I either haven't seen or haven't been that into most of their movies, although I did like The Ladykillers (what) and True Grit. But Hail, Caesar! just looked interesting on its own merit. Roeper liked it; the friend I watched it with had seen it already and didn't like it because it seemed too "disconnected." Maybe I was inclined to like it just to be contrary. I didn't really find it to be disconnected. Everything seemed to go together pretty well. And overall it's exactly what you're promised – a funny look at how they used to make movies back in the '50s.

The Expendables

If you can work hard enough to get past all of the things that are wrong with Stallone, it's got some entertainment value. The scene with the guy and his machine gun in the hallway was particularly memorable, and I liked Rourke's performance, and of course Statham.

Valentine's Day

Love Actually