FYI- these are based on watching screener copies so I have no idea what they show in the theatre
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FYI- these are based on watching screener copies so I have no idea what they show in the theatre
To Rome with Love directed by Woody Allen. A very typical Woody Allen movie winding four unique stories dealing with a variety of human frailties. Good cast, first movie Woody has personally acted in since he did since he did Scoop. His dead pan humor is still there as his raising questions about mortality, morality and meaning.
Lighter fare than many of the films mentioned here but it contains Woody's flair for making cities beautiful backdrops, his use of long single shot scenes.
Being a huge fan I enjoy all his movies but this one is probably somewhere between his best and the clunkers from early 2000's. It amazing to think that this man is screenwriter and director and puts out a movie every year. A prolific career indeed!
Available now streaming and DVD.
But the thread about the man who can only sing in the shower was stolen wholesale from an old Chinese film. I was shocked when i found that out.Quote:
Originally Posted by fivekatz
Zero Dark Thirty.... too long and predictable. Jessica Chastain is terrific. I agree with the director that portraying waterboarding, torture, special rendition, black sites etc and other dubious practices is NOT endorsing them. Rather more interesting question is did they really help in the pursuit of Osama bin Laden? Many argue that nothing gained by torture is reliable. Another interesting element is the assertion that the director and writer were given access to classified material not available yet to the media or general public.
Django Unchained
This is a very long and tedious film that fails to rescue Tarantino from the decline that set in after Pulp Fiction. We are asked to believe that the lead character, Dr Schulz, who has abandoned dentistry to kill people for money, acquires a conscience while working with a slave called Django. A plantation owner called Candie (Leonardo di Caprio) has set dogs on a slave who tear him to death, an incident which apparently turns Schulz against Candie and precipitates a bloodbath led by the 'slave'/freeman Django. But nothing substantial in the film up to this point justifies this moral change, throughout the film Schulz and Django are both killers, and the moral assumptions about the iniquity of slavery are pre-ordained precisely because nobody these days either believes in it or can justify it. As a result the film is basically the story of an attempt by a slave to rescue his wife from bondage, and that's about it. The script is dire, using a reportoire of words and phrases, mostly ending with the word 'boy' that are presumably derived from the way people spoke at the time, though I doubt it.
The initial conceit of a black man riding a horse generates an astonishing series of responses -yet surely slaves were used as cowboys to herd cattle across Texas and other states, so what is the problem? The nadir of this silly film arrives with Tarantino himself pretending to speak with a South African accent, and he can't even do that.
Tarantino has made a living making films which poach from other films, he is a film nut, fair enough. But this is not an homage to Corbucci's western, Django, but an insult. Corbucci's work is not an homage to the classic western but a severe critique, offering an alternative narrative which removes the morals so loaded in the typical John Wayne film -whereas the moral assumptions in Django Unchained choke it to death. Nor is the film rescued by any notable acting performances, while the mere idea of a German speaking slave called Broomhilde is just potty.
Perhaps an enthusiast can give this film a credit. I can't.
Dude, thank you so much for that. I've seen Sukiyaki Western Django even but Tarantino is still the assistant manager at Blockbuster Video to me.Quote:
Originally Posted by Stavros
judge dredd and it wasnt very good at all .. just average .. the older one in 90s with sly stallone was much more fun to watch ..
Just saw Looper. It felt like with a little more work it could have been a really good film. Something was missing for me. But I can watch Emily Blunt all day long.
Looper had an interesting premise, but wasted in what is essentially a standard shoot 'em up film....
Blockbuster in the UK went bust last week; they are finished. I sometimes wonder if Tarantino's isn't just a sump -he saw all those movies, and he can quote from them, but did he ever understand them?Quote:
Originally Posted by Dino Velvet