I watched Lost in Translation on June 27th last year:

"Then came home, watched Lost in Translation. Gets bonus points for being in Japan, but minus several million for good thinking, yeah? is really rather slow and boring. Middle-aged, depressed empty-feeling man goes to Japan. Young, depressed empty-feeling woman goes to Japan. Man wanders round a hotel looking lost and drinking whisky for half an hour, interspersed with shots of woman wandering round hotel looking lost and listening to self-help tapes. Man and woman meet. Man and woman spend half an hour wandering round Tokyo.

It got better at the end though."

Watched it again on FilmFour tonight (because, of course, FilmFour is now free, which ROCKS) and it's much better the second time round, because I know what it's about. My mistake was going in expecting a romance, when it's much more complicated and more interesting: you've got a middle-aged man who's got a dull marriage and a mid-life crisis, and a young woman who feels a little unloved by her husband and who's alone in Japan, and the two meet, and it's just this wonderful low-key friendship between people of two different ages with only a trace of sexual tension between the two, and... god, I sound like a film critic. But... eh, it's something I'd like to experience, to throw away all my moorings and go to Japan for a while and meet someone random and explore the place with them. I'd love to go to Japan. Maybe I ought to take a gap year. It would make stuff a lot more managable... or maybe not.

Likewise, F.E.A.R. is better the second time round. Now I know what the basic story is about, it makes more sense to play it through, and it's quite clever really, how they present the plot to you. And the invisible ninjas are some of the scariest/best enemies in a game ("Fuck! **blam blam blam blam** take this! **blam blam blam** oh fuck shit arrggh"). I still think they could have done the scary bits better. I find that the fear and shock of suddenly being attacked without warning (like the invisible ninjas, or the aliens in Aliens vs. Predator) is a lot scarier than a creepy little girl and flashing dead faces on the screen, because there's no fear of death, just the shock factor.

Also, some of the gunfights are just reeally cool (firing 10mm bolts in slow-motion into an enemy soldier, who goes flying backwards, spraying blood and bullets everywhere, setting off a explosive barrel, which naturally explodes, throwing bodies into the air, then you run up to the remainder of the soldiers, firing a shotgun, leaping up and kicking them in the face, for example).

F.E.A.R.'s pretty good really, but it's not quite a HL2 beater.