Captain America was awesome definitely worth the hype.
Batroc vs Captain America
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Captain America was awesome definitely worth the hype.
Batroc vs Captain America
I was thinking of watching the Other Woman
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UntgUwEjAz8
Last night I watched Compliance. It's interesting. And disturbing.
"The Book Theif"
What is disturbing is that a real life event be filmed with such a lack of quality and care, it turned out to be as manipulative as the real event, a truly horrible film, I wouldn't even give it 1/10 for effort.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ben
Calvary, an Irish film made with a mix of Irish and UK funding, written and directed by John Michael McDonagh, who made the excellently dark and funny The Guard. Both films star Brendan Gleeson, and in Calvary, he plays a good priest - in every sense - in a rural parish in present day Ireland, with its ruined economy and broken lives, so don't go expecting some Quiet Man whimsy. This is raw, dark and occasionally violent. The set up is that a parishioner tells him in confession that within a week he is going to kill him (the priest). So yes, it's a thriller, but it is also so much more.
Gleeson is the centre of the film, and I don't think I've ever seen him give a better performance. It's a hard watch at times, but also both gripping and absorbing.
I can't recommend it too highly.
"The Edge" with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin. One of my favorite films.
Django Unchained
Hereafter (Clint Eastwood, 2010)
I don't recall any reviews of this terrible film when it was released, and I am not surprised. Eastwood has made some first class films, this is not one of them. The idea that there is something after death is hardly original, nor is it original to have three people from three different countries coming together in a unifying climax, but none of it rings true, not least because it takes more than a year to publish a book yet within what seems a few months the French woman has both written and published a book. Matt Damon as a forked-lift truck driver doesn't really work, he isn't that good as a psychic either. The English boy cannot act, looks at the camera at least twice, but the dialogue overall is weak. Not one of Eastwood's memorable films. Maybe he should retire.
The Raid: Redemption (Gareth Evans, 2011)
This is one of those martial arts films in which no matter how many people are coming at the hero, he commands the centre ground and inflicts the most terrible injuries on them which they cannot inflict on him. It is well choreographed, but the 'story' of corruption in the police is by now exhausted whether it is New York, London, Manila or Jakarta. It is vaguely interesting to have the entire film set within four walls, but other than that this is strictly for the teenage martial arts nuts.
Oh, that one. Haven't seen it. Not even sure I heard of it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Stavros
Noah (Darren Aronofsky, 2014)
This is a confused, and confusing film. God makes no appearance in it, although 'the creator' does. Unfortunately before the film started we had to sit through those ridiculous trailers full of bangs and whooshes, and a trailer for Transformers: Age of Extinction, so it was quite unsettling to see these Transformers, now, as it were, transformed into the English-speaking good guys, building the Ark. Anyone who thinks this is a faithful account of the Genesis story will be disappointed -the 'serpent' crawls along the ground in the Garden of Eden to tempt Eve even though according to Genesis it was only after the discovery of original sin that the serpent was punished by being made to crawl on the ground.
You may be interested to know, if you are a student of ancient history, that Cain and his descendants founded an -and I quote- 'an industrial civilisation'...or does this suggest we are not in biblical times at all, but some dystopian future in which snakeskin has magic properties, and nuggets of something called Zahar which, when tapped, explodes into light and fire (I prefer Zatar), but an age in which when necessary -as when the Ark is besieged by thousands of nasty people -an unseen hand wipes away all one's troubles?
Noah, excellently mumbled and grunted by Russell Crowe (if you want mumbles and grunts), claims he has been instructed by the Creator to marshal the natural world into the Ark to cleanse the world of its wickedness and corruption in preparation for a new start, which will not include humans. For reasons which are, shall we say, flexible, Noah changes his mind after the flood, although of course his inability to slay his new grandchildren and thus terminate human life from earth, is a 'sign from above' that he made the right decision. Exhausted and confused he crawls away to a cave to get pissed on the wine he has made from the grapes of the new world...he also strips butt naked on the beach, as an Aussie would, even in this film, and in any age.
According to the credits, Nick Nolte is in this farago of rubbish somewhere, it doesn't matter if you don't see him. Also, be warned: at over two hours this film for the most part is soaked in so-called 'music' which consists of three notes played over and over and over again, with the only variation two-notes, or maybe five, whatever it is, it is all but guaranteed to drive one to insanity. You would have to be part-insane to watch this film.
I like Jennifer Connolly, so I think she needs to change her agent. A deliciously attractive English girl, Emma Watson, screams a lot, because she cannot act, as if that mattered. I am not sure who Darren Aronofsky is, and to be frank, I don't want to know.
But a great advert for Iceland, where most of it was filmed (you surely don't think this would have been shot in the Middle East, now, do you?).
Silly Movie Here....The Naked Gun......Epic Movie!
Better than Noah!! Just think of the laughs!
Fuck Noah!!!
:)
Raid 2: Berandal
it doesn't come close to comparing to the 1st original Raid film (Redemption)
although the fights at the very end were very impressive but anyone that
recalls the first Raid knows how that entire film never let up and had such
great action sequences and pace throughout the entire film, whereas
Raid 2 has way too much dialogue that drags and slows down the film
much too often. And i was totally confused and disappointed that one introduced, highly skilled character
was killed off so very early after only a couple of very brief appearances.
Raid 2 Bernal does carry some of the heavy violence and blood-gore load
that we saw in the first one. the fantastic fight ending and the
early prison fights make it entertaining enough to call it an overall good film ... but it's not great.
Again it's nowhere on the level of the 1st Raid: Redemption film which
was just AWESOME and never slowed or let up throughout the entire film !!
"Twenty Feet From Stardom" documentary lite, but fabulously entertaining film about the great women singers working as back-up to many of the most famous rock stars. Fantastic voices and feisty girls. Loved it.
Twenty Feet From Stardom Official Trailer #1 (2013) - Music Documentary HD - YouTube
annie hall.
as woody allen movies go...it is standard fare and not my favorite one he has made.
as rom/com movies go...it is standard fare as well.
i really don't understand why this is in AFI's top 100 list. what am i missing???
Blue is the Warmest Colour (Abdellatif Kechiche, 2013)
I wasn't sure what to expect given the hype over the sex scenes in this film, which in French is called The Life of Adele, Chapters 1 and 2. What is remarkable about the film is not so much the sex, but the framing device which Kechiche uses which means almost all of the film is shot in close up, or when dealing with groups, close enough to blot out most of the background. This intensifies the focus on the characters but also intensifies the emotions which shape the relationship between Adele and Emma, but luckily without some ghastly hysterical ending. In fact, it is the immediacy of the majority of the shots that gives the concluding shot its shocking depth, making it so painful. Even with a few cliches, this is a bold and powerful film in which, ultimately, being a lesbian is not as important as the authenticity of the feelings expressed between two exceptional actors. Adele Exarchopoulos is mesmerising as Adele, a stunning performance.
"Fair Game" with Naomi Watts and Sean Penn. A drama based on the outrageous scapegoating by the White house of the former CIA operative Valerie Plame and her husband when he blew the whistle on the lies of the Bush administration over Yellow Cake uranium from Niger and Iraqi so-called WMD. Low key but sure footed piece of film making. Scooter Libby took the fall for this act but the true criminals from Bush downwards are still free and immune from justice for the illegal invasion of Iraq.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpMGQgXbOgA
Nymphomaniac Vol1
Interesting movie in storytelling format. Can't quite see the tenuous link between sex and fly fishing. Straight over my head!
Must say though, it has certainly pushed the boundaries in explicit sex for a mainstream movie. Thought I was watching porn again.
The Grandmaster:
Yi dai zong shi (2013) - IMDb
I saw this last night and was enthralled. What an intelligent perceptive and moving film. it avoids all cliches and penetrated, as Stavros says to the heart of relationships where issues are skirted and where the past clings tenaciously to the present. Splendid. I re-post S's review bevause i agree with it wholeheartedly.
Oh and that teardrop. Wow...
And this was a review from The Guardian.Quote:
Originally Posted by Stavros
The Past review – 'Its severity and cerebral force are beyond question'
A Separation director Asghar Farhadi confirms his place among cinema's true grown-ups with a pressure cooker of a relationship drama. Prepare yourself for post-film debate
Peter Bradshaw
The Guardian, Thursday 27 March 2014 14.59 GMT
Asghar Farhadi's complex, intricate drama is a tragedy of good intentions and bad beginnings and wrong decisions that seemed right at the time. Farhadi shows the desperation and anger involved in trying to annul incorrect life choices and defy the past. A brilliant opening vignette shows two people pranging their car while reversing. They are looking back, but failing to see the danger.
The Past is a film that announces this director's arrival in the rank of those film-makers like Kiarostami, Haneke and PT Anderson, directors who are intent on the unfashionable business of making morally serious films for adults. Very often, a certain type of movie is praised for being "immersive", for providing the longed-for sensual pleasure of pure cinema. Farhadi's kind of film is quite different, but just as valuable. You are not immersed; on the contrary, you are challenged, alienated, compelled to pay fierce attention to every line, every cutaway, every scene change, and then to question what you think you have learned. Having watched and rewatched The Past, I wonder if it is a little contrived, but its severity and cerebral force are beyond question, a pressure cooker of passion and anguish. Just as in his film A Separation, it is the agony of splitting that reveals the truth of a relationship most clearly; literally an analysis, a taking-apart.
This is a loss-of-love triangle. Bérénice Bejo plays Marie, a woman who works in a Paris pharmacy; Tahar Rahim plays Samir, who owns the dry cleaner just a few doors away. They have fallen in love, and Samir is now moving in to Marie's place, but such is the difficulty and pain of their situation that these characters never so much as smile at each other throughout the film.
Both are encumbered. Marie has been married twice, with two daughters from her first marriage; her current husband is Ahmad (Ali Mosaffa) who deserted her and fled to his native Iran following a breakdown four years ago. Now he is returning to sign the divorce papers, to get closure, and simply to bid their shared past a civilised farewell.
Samir is married, too, with a little boy, but his situation is even more difficult: his wife is in hospital, in a coma. And Marie is saving up some news for Ahmad that he is not going to like.
Everywhere in this film there are crosscurrents of unspoken reproach, guilt and fear. From the very first, Ahmad resents the fact that Marie has not booked him a hotel, forcing him to stay at her messy and overcrowded place, and she has moreover chosen this moment to redecorate. (As in Farhadi's 2006 film Fireworks Wednesday, redecoration is a symptom of dysfunction.) Is it hate or love? Does she want him there to rub his nose in her new relationship and his desertion, or does she subconsciously wish to see him as the paterfamilias just once more, to measure Samir up against Ahmad? There is a brilliant moment when Ahmad is on the kitchen floor fixing a mucky, blocked sink just as Samir arrives to meet him. Excruciatingly, Ahmad smilingly declines to shake his hand, because his is too dirty – doing real man's work.
Marie gives Ahmad a more important job, a domestic task that instantly fills him with resentment and yet self-satisfaction that it is something important for which only he is competent. He must speak to Marie's elder daughter, Lucie (Pauline Burlet), and talk her out of her new, stroppy attitude and late nights. In discharging this new quasi-paternal responsibility, Ahmad stirs up even more of the destructive past and uncovers baffling layers of guilt and resentment.
Adroitly, incrementally, Farhadi's drama discloses the various solutions to the question of Samir's wife, and with each possibility, we bark our shins on the sheer frustration of not really knowing. Samir himself is worried by scratch-marks on his wife's stomach: could she have made them herself, and therefore be capable of entering into a semi-conscious state? The doctors are not sure, telling him only that new tests expose more "room for doubt". Farhadi's whole dramatic procedure is founded on exploring this room for doubt. The only alternative to doubt is to cut your losses and move on: a number of characters here advise each other to forget, to break the past's terrible grip. But it is not so easy. Forgetting the past means losing much of the present and much of oneself.
Sombre and difficult this movie may be, but it is exhilarating to watch something that makes you come out of the cinema not sated or torpid, but wanting to talk – to talk about what the film meant, and meant to you personally. It's a rare pleasure.
Thank you for the compliment Prospero, and an unusually perceptive review by Bradshaw.
I saw The Past last week and have nothing to add to what Prospero and Stavros have already said. If you want to see sensitive, intelligent and intensely moving cinema, you couldn't spend your money on anything better right now.
BRICK MANSIONS
paul walker's last completed film. There's an memorial Ob at the end of film
dedicated to Walker. the film itself is loaded with action that includes stunning acrobats and stunts hand-fights, car chases from begining to end, though
average in plot/characters.
Frankly it reminded me very much of District 12. i couldn't stand the
shaky-whirly camera work. Rza continues to prove he can't act to save his life.
Brick Mansions is above average- but not memorable. Nothing special
it's a popcorn flick film i can enjoy the day i see it but forgot about the
next day.
i just saw the mighty ducks for the first time in years. don't ask my why i stopped on it but for a campy kids sports movie, it is remarkably still entertaining.
Enders Game , was pretty mehhh, dull and predictable .. cool effects though
Now a great old film i watched recently was Trading Places :)
Last night. A documentary...
The Counsellor (Ridley Scott, 2013)
Ridley Scott makes some interesting films, and some terrible films. I was intrigued by The Counsellor because it had such terrible reviews. They were right. The script by Cormac McCarthy is bloated, obscure pretentious crap (or embarrassing, as in the first scene). I don't know how many more films can be made about a drug deal that goes wrong, they can't be much worse than this. But at least Natalie Dormer is in it, all to briefly, wearing one of those spray-on dresses that brings the best out of her derriere, inviting others to enter.
The Counsellor | Official Trailer #1 HD | 2013 - YouTube
"The Village At The End of The World' a cinema released documentary about the Inuit community of Niaqomat in Greenland. The title refers not only to its location where it can be reached only by ship or heiicopter, but also to the fact that, with the closure of a fish processing plant, the community faces total collapse. It's a revelatory look at a community thatit is almost impossible to imagine being part off - wth one small shop, no teenage girls (so the teenage boy featured has no chance of dating) and where everyone seems to be related. They only got electricity in 1998. The happiest man in the film seems to be a guy whose job is collecting and disposing of barrels of shit everyday from the village houses.
Village at the End of the World Trailer - now on DVD & VOD - YouTube
Damn, this movie was bad. The two reasons I made it through it were: 1) I have a much lower standard for movies viewed while on an airplane; and 2) Stavros' point about seeing just how bad the movie could get.Quote:
Originally Posted by Stavros
Here's how bad... at the beginning of the movie they describe a device used by drug lords to decapitate their enemies, and also an in depth conversation about snuff films. By the end of the movie I'm rooting for several of the supposedly sympathetic characters die by decapitation and snuff film. Ridley did not disappoint me.
My last two Ridley Scott films were this one and the almost as horrible, Oblivion. Just retire already, old man!
I have to agree with you; I am not a fan of Cormac McCarthy on any level, and if Scott can't do better than this, yes, maybe its time to give up.
Thinking I might go to see Blue Ruin when it opens in the UK later this week. Anybody seen it in the US?
I saw this last night. It is bleak and uncompromising and very powerful indeed. I think RL hits the nail on the head with his brief review. Anyone with Catholicism in their past - or present- is likely to find this film even more affecting.Quote:
Originally Posted by robertlouis
Calvary Official Trailer #1 (2014) - Chris O'Dowd, Kelly Reilly Movie HD - YouTube
Sorry to hear that.Quote:
Originally Posted by Odelay
I have to say I enjoyed The Counselor. I don’t think there are any main characters that are supposed to be sympathetic, perhaps the Counselor himself (played by Fassbender), but only because he the least crooked of bunch (in it for some quick money to presumably pay for an exorbitant ring). What I loved about the movie were the exchanges and the soliloquies. A lot of people panned the dialog for being unrealistic, and that’s very true. The screenplay (which I read before seeing the movie...”cause as you know...I’m a McCarthy fan) reads like a play, rather than a film.
Listen carefully in the beginning to the dialog between the jewler and the Counselor. The jeweler explains that because of its eternal nature, a diamond is a cautionary stone. “At our noblest we announce to the darkness that we will not be diminished by the brevity of our lives.”
Later in the movie, seeks the influence of Jefe, a very wealthy and powerful Latin American businessman. The character Jefe at this point is given a rather long soliloquy on the metaphysics of choice and consequence in which he advises the Counselor, “...the world in which you seek to undo your mistakes is not the world in which they were made.”
Still later in the film, the Counselor has a brief interchange with the tender of a seedy bar who explains that here people are killed on a daily basis,
“To make a joke. To show that death does not care. That death has no meaning.”
The Counselor asks, “Do you believe that?”
And the bartender says, “No. Of course not. All my family is dead. I am the one who has no meaning.”
The film is full of gems. Watching cramped in an agonizing airline seat probably wasn’t conducive to your viewing experience.
I enjoyed The Counselor as well. The plot wasn't anything special but films like that can be carried by good dialogue and solid performances by an ensemble cast. Splash in a few scenes that are novel or 'edgy' along with some decent foreshadowing and I'll be entertained for the entire movie.
I wouldn't watch the movie again though. The plot is wayy too thin. Guy gets into the drug dealing business and it goes badly for him. THE END
Trish, it is a film -cinema exists to say things with something you can see, and your quotes, I have to say, merely underline what pretentious garbage Mac writes. The characters have no depth and no meaning in a film whose basic premise, a drug deal gone wrong, attempts and fails to say something 'profound' about 'the human condition'. There are other ways of doing it, this wasn't one of them.Quote:
Originally Posted by trish
Goes to show, to each his own. I won't argue for the value of the movie in any absolute terms. I just happen to like Cormac's stark, metaphysical dialogues and existential characters. But I understand (I think) how some would be repelled by sketchiness of the characters in The Counselor and the violence of the piece, which is as predictable as a Greek tragedy.
Mac's brittle style in his books seems to me to have the texture of a biscuit in a desert -some things don't translate well to the screen which is why it is often a short story or under-stated piece of writing that makes for the best adapted films. Things you would accept in prose can often sound overblown and ridiculous in a film.