First Impressions: "30 Days of Night" (2007), "City of God" (2002) + "Predators" (2010)

   John and I also watched a couple of DVDs I'd brought with me.

   The first was 30 Days of Night. One word: sucked! I haven't read the comic it's based on, but it can't be any worse than this! After all, this is an awesome premise. But man is it executed poorly in this movie!
   All the performances are dull as dishwater, which makes the sombre tone seem downright boring rather than desperate. (So you can see why they chose David Slade to direct a Twilight movie!)
   We get no sense whatsoever of the passing of time. Instead of just jumping ahead a few days every once in a while, how about if the vampires had massacred the town gradually, building up to a climax?
   And the vampires themselves just look… well… silly.
   So yeah, I don't like this one. A great premise and cinematography can't make up for an insufferably boring tone.
   My rating: 35%.

   And the second was City of God. Now, that's more like it!
   A caption on the box calls it the Brazilian Goodfellas, and coincidentally that's exactly what I was thinking while watching it! It reminds me very much of Goodfellas with its narration and its premise of the everymen working their way up the mob hierarchy.
   This is a gang war story in which both sides are as rotten as each other, so who you root for depends on whose ideals you agree with most. Rocket is the only one who stays honest throughout, but all the characters are easy to latch onto because of how human they seem (except for Li'l Zé, whose thirst for violence seems to come completely out of nowhere).
   At times it gets pretty unpleasant, but it never stops being an entertaining and captivating story. Terrific movie.
   My rating: 90%.

   And finally, we watched one of John's DVDs: Predators. This is another one that I really enjoyed. Everyone says it's a long-awaited worthy sequel to the franchise, and they're not kidding. It captures everything that was good about the original Predator, but still updates it appropriately.
   My favourite scene is actually the opening. It's a fantastic excuse to have the characters fight right off the bat!
   I actually think it's much more consistently strong than the original, where the first half wasn't that interesting, but it accelerated to one of the best climaxes I've ever seen. Though, on that note, I wish this movie could have had a better climax. The ending does lead to a really weak twist.
   Still, all the performances are solid (especially Adrien Brody), and the movie never stops being entertaining and awesome.
   My rating: 75%.