allidan , dead poets society, and FIsher King
Printable View
allidan , dead poets society, and FIsher King
Pokemon: The First Movie
Guardians of the Galaxy
great fun
good music
I am Groot
I watch the the MST3K version of Gamera vs. Gyaos (1967)...
There is nothing better than kaiju and robots...
Well...may-be robots riffing on kaiju...
http://i.imgur.com/MypHfAz.jpg
good movie but not as good as the first one- which was kinda boring at times for me. this only had a few small stories that had some plodding and unnecessary parts and one particular story which was extremely predicable (hint: eva green)-
other than that? the same film noir comic book orgyfest
Nymphomainac vols 1 & 2 - Lars Von Trier (via Netflix) earlier review by Cerberus
I went back and looked at LVT's filmography and really couldn't recognize any of the film titles that I might have seen since Breaking the Waves. I guess through the years I always assumed I was seeing Lars' films when I really hadn't been. Part of this faulty memory might be due to his push to have movies filmed in the Dogme format, i.e. shaky handheld video cams. I never saw many of the Dogme films but I did see The Celebration, which I believe is a brilliant movie. Since it was a movie with a very grim storyline like BtW, I just assumed, without checking, that it was a Lars Von Trier movie, but of course, it wasn't.
My memory isn't good enough to be 100% sure but I believe Nymphomaniac is the first film by LVT that I've seen since Breaking the Waves. It was about 10-20 years ago that filmmakers were stating that on screen real sexual intercourse, with penetration, would be coming to theatres soon. Well, this movie surely broke through that barrier, although several others have too in recent years. I'm gathering Nympho was not widely distributed across worldwide theatre screens. Nevertheless, it's probably doing well in Netflix.
The movie is in 2 parts (about 4 hrs total) which tells the titular character's story through her own voice to a guy who saves her from a beating, played by Stellan Skarsgård. There's quite a few famous American actors who have guest roles in this flick, including Christian Slater, Uma Thurman, Shia LaBeouf and Willem Dafoe. If I had to characterize some sub-genre that this movie belongs to it would have to be movies about addiction, or maybe even more specifically, movies about women with addiction. The various stories the main character tells are interesting to varying degrees. The problem for me with addiction stories is that they generally don't build to any interesting climax (excuse the pun-like phrasing), barring the recovery storyline, which this movie doesn't have. That's why despite the decent acting, somewhat erotic scenes, and somewhat interesting stories, I can't really rate this much more than 3 stars. 4 hours is a pretty big investment for a movie. Truthfully, watching the first part and getting the gist of it and not bothering with the 2nd part wouldn't really be a bad approach to the movie.
Lone Survivor.....
Saw " November Man ". I saw preview a couple of weeks ago and it looked good. Movie was somewhat of a letdown though. Okay action movie, but could have been better. Pierce Brosnan did a pretty good job, but something was off. Direction, pacing; I can't put my finger on it.
Captain America: The Winter Soldier...(on Amazon )
I liked it...but I kinda liked the first one better.
Of course this is just a build up (as is the SHIELD television show) to the next Avengers film. Makes you think at some point, instead of making them movies, they may have to break them up into cable show series.
Also...I was never a big Scarlett Johansson fan and I probably would have cast someone else to play Black Widow...but she's grown on me.
The Giver, I can't imagine a worse scenario than an emotionless utopia.
Tightrope.... It's quite good.
China Strike Force
http://www.cnn.com/2014/09/16/world/...ones-injuries/
I saw in the news that King Richard III's bones had been analyzed and it was confirmed that he was brutally hacked to death on the battlefield. He even suffered some post-mortem wounds. In light of that graphic visual, I thought it was time I either read Richard III or watch the Laurence Olivier version. Feeling a little lazy, I opted for the second option. Olivier was great as the twisted (not referring to his spine) King Richard.
I had seen Olivier's version of Henry V and didn't like it as much as Branagh's version so I didn't know what to expect. However Olivier did a great job and it's worth watching even if you haven't read the play.
I also recently saw the Henry V The Hollow Crown by Sam Mendes and think it was very well done. It omits what I think is an important scene or one I'm kind of partial to anyway (the treason scene Act 2 Scene 2) but is otherwise a good production.
Look again at Olivier in this film -the hair, the hose, the pose -and you may conclude it should be called Queen Richard the III. Like too many directors before and since Olivier cut Shakespeare's text and moved it around to do it better than Will or to fit it into the 90 minute timeframe for an average film. In The Hollow Crown they even transform Aumerle from a defender of Richard II into his executioner, surely a contradiction too far.Quote:
Originally Posted by broncofan
transformers extinction and it was rubbish
Con air... Again...and it was brilliant again-
Caught up with a well reviewed Swedish film from last year "We are the best' directed by Lukas Moodyson.
Rather uninspiring little tale abut two troubled 13-year-old girl who decide they are punks.
We Are The Best! International Trailer 1 (2014) - Swedish Drama Movie HD - YouTube
Walk Among The Tombstones
This was a big letdown. I got sucked in by the previews again !
I saw Tusk last weekend.
I realize there are tons of reviews of this movie online but please take it from me....stay away unless you are just a kevin smith fanboy.
tusk starts out like it will be awesome in the first act. then kevin smith just says fuck all and ruins the second half by destroying the pace. the big reveal happens way way to early. the love triangle is meaningless. johnny depp is only there for comic relief and even so kinda phones in his performance and finally, the end is terrible because it makes no fucking sense. actually...justin long's character arc is just retarded because the character traits that he starts the movie with do not lend themselves to the disposition he ends up in. it would be like making a movie where superman sucks a dick at the end and willingly takes a kryptonite enema!!!
in short...
from a horror perspective, it is only horrifying for the first half.
from a comedic perspective, it is only funny at moments until you realize that the humor is based in sheer ignorance.
from a shock value perspective, it lacks the punch of the human centipede
its not worth your $14
47 Ronin...much better than I thought it would be. Spider Man 2 the other day. The Spidey movies have too much going on though. He always has 2 villains & some life drama. Not sure why they do that in his movies because the comic books weren't always like that.
47 ronin is my 2nd favorite keanu reeves movie....behind everyone else.
A new French film "Bird People" - slow and dreamlike - about two people whose paths cross and who seek liberation. Rather magical
Cannes Film Festival (2014) - Bird People French Trailer - Josh Charles Fantasy HD - YouTube
Rage, not one of Nicholas Cage's better films.
"Ida" a Polish film directed by Paweł Pawlikowski and probably not the sort of fare most folk here might choose to watch. But it is a stunning and moving film - and very beautifully filmed in Black and White - about a young Catholic novitiate about to take her final vows and her journey of self discovery after she finds that she is Jewish. High recommended. And the closing music is divine - a Bach choral prelude.
IDA Movie Trailer (2014) - YouTube
The Master (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2012)
Can 'the Master', using his therapeutic techniques bring a rule-breaking, compulsive alcoholic with a broken family background to a new awareness of himself that will give him peace and enable him to live a better life? No. And after two hours and twenty three minutes of this pretentious garbage, one is not surprised. Anderson must have his admirers, or he would not get the funding to make the bloated, self-important and desperately awful films that litter his catalogue. For £5 I even got the 'two-disc' edition, but will not bother with the extras and give this to the charity shop.
exactly my feelings aobut that film Stavros.
Denzel Washington's THE EQUALIZER. i loved it.
i never saw the TV series and now
i wish i had, since the movie seems based off the TV series.
The film itself is very tactful and strategic. the villain started great but
finished flat but the movie itself was the kind of bravo macho and blood violence i like seeing it.
Akira
Gone Girl (David Fincher, 2014)
Fincher returns to the theme of games/pretending that he has tackled before in films like Seven, Fight Club, The Game, and you could argue The Curious Case of Benjamin Button where all is not what it seems. The film is about an under-achiever from Missouri who moves to New York to be a writer and falls in love with and marries a high-end successful New Yorker with equally-high end aspirations, but a tendency to enjoy controlling men. They experience a financial crisis, like everyone else in the last 5 years, and remove to Missouri where their marriage goes badly wrong. If there is an over-riding theme it might be: Women are smart, devious and dangerous; Men are dumb, honest and useless. Whether or not this is a piece of misogyny I can't tell for sure as it is based on a story written by a woman who also wrote the screenplay, but I found this aspect of the film weighed it down, as well as the poorly delineated male lead. There are several plot holes, and in one scene a woman covered in blood leaves a hospital without the staff cleaning it off, that would never happen in real life.
Rosamund Pike looks stunning in underwear, that is all that is worth seeing in this lame, tepid film.
I saw The Equalizer today. I always liked the T.V. series that the movie was based on, and I liked this movie through about the first three quarters of it. I especially liked the scene where Denzel shows up at the Russian mobsters office. This was a great action scene. The action/ fight choreography in this film was great, but I just think they over did it in the end. It turned into Rambo. Also, I don't know what I'll do if I see another action star walking in slow motion with an explosion in the background. This has been done to death. Lastly, I'd rather see Denzel Washington play this type of character than Liam Neeson. I think he does a much better job.
I read one of Gillian Flynn's books (the author who wrote Gone Girl) called Sharp Objects. This seems to be an overriding theme in her writing, since I started another one and didn't finish it and it also identified very strongly with the clever female protagonist. It's interesting because Patricia Highsmith, who was generally viewed as a misogynist, portrayed men as devious and smart and women as superficial.Quote:
Originally Posted by Stavros
It was clear to me in reading Deep Water that Highsmith viewed women as intellectually inferior. Flynn probably doesn't think she's misogynistic (no-one ever does) as it seemed to me she romanticized this complexity of character among women. But yes, her characters are very "gendered"....their traits seem to be a function of their gender.
Thanks for this, as I had never heard of Gillian Flynn before, having little interest in crime fiction although I did read The Talented Mr Ripley some years ago, and Sherlock Holmes when I was a teenager. Not sure if you are right about Ms Highsmith.Quote:
Originally Posted by broncofan
I won't derail the thread....but I noticed after I wrote this that the issue is more complicated that that...as I had only read a single book of Patricia Highsmith (the woman in Deep Water was especially vapid and one-dimensional) and assumed others followed in that vain.Quote:
Originally Posted by Stavros
I saw Gone Girl today. The biggest problem I had was with the ending. A big let down in my opinion. The woman leaving the hospital with blood all over her didn't make sense to me either. I haven't read the book, so I didn't know what to expect.
Boyhood (Linkater 2014)
In truth, the movie should probably be listed as 2002 to 2014. If you haven't heard about this movie, Linklater shot a few new scenes, each year during the 12 yr span as the main character grew from 6 to 18 years of age. The audience watches this actor/character and his sister grow up on screen over the course of 2.5 hrs.
It's a pretty clever production and Linklater's writing makes this a very good movie. His best movie, really. Movie reviewers have had a difficult time comparing it to any other movie, but in truth it does have some similarities to Michael Apted's 7up series. Linklater was a little disingenuous in an interview by stating his movie isn't like Apted's series. The key difference is Apted's series show the characters aging in huge 7 year chunks with each new movie release. In contrast, this movie shows one continuous narrative over 12 years.
I've liked many of Linklater's movies through the years, beginning with Slacker in 1992. My expectations were high going in, and I found that I liked it even more than I had expected. I'm guessing this movie will net Linklater his first best director/movie AA nomination.
"Gosford Park" - essentially an early take on the themes developed in the "Downton Abbey" TV series. Directed by Robert Altman (one of his few truly disappointing films) and written by Julian Fellowes. Tedious, overlong and full of cliches. It came out years ago but I fell asleep first time I watched it. Would have done well to repeat that escape this time around.
I just saw Inside Llewyn Davis. I did not like it very much. I know it has been reviewed positively, but I had a lot of trouble connecting to the subject matter or the characters. Even though I am not a big folk music person, I would have expected someone who sings folk music at a time when it was not lucrative to be very passionate about it. Yet the main character was a miser, all the way around. Didn't treat his friends well, wasn't passionate about his music. Maybe I missed something. I need some reason to like a movie...it does not have to be a feel good sort of movie but if not then it has to reflect some aspect of life or make me think.
X:Men 2014....i usually hate prequels, but then I take an exception here.
A very slow and gentle little film called "Still Life" directed by Uberton Pasolini
STILL LIFE - Official HD Trailer - YouTube
I also saw in the past 24 hours a film entiled "Finding Fela"
Finding Fela -- Official Trailer (Dir. Alex Gibney) - YouTube