Author Topic: Respond to the last movie you watched (Jan 2011 - Nov 2013)  (Read 2531882 times)

1SO

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #10370 on: January 07, 2012, 10:18:31 AM »
Thanks, Lobby. It's driven by the group and my not wanting to hear back that someone doesn't understand the point I'm making. Especially since my opinions have become increasingly unpopular.

oldkid

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #10371 on: January 07, 2012, 11:21:33 AM »
Viva unpopular opinions!
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sdedalus

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #10372 on: January 07, 2012, 11:26:43 AM »
The supporting cast is quite fun, with special mention for Debbie Reynolds, who steals the show every second she's on screen with her ebullient energy and song and dance chops.  I really need to check out more of her work... while I'm guessing Singin' in the Rain is her finest hour, there's bound to be a couple of gems elsewhere in her filmography. 

Debbie Reynolds owns the early 50s:

I Love Melvin (53)
Give a Girl a Break (53)
The Affairs of Dobie Gillis (53)
Susan Slept Here (54)
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Bondo

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #10373 on: January 07, 2012, 12:58:07 PM »
The Four Times (2010)

I don't know the particular source for it, but I've heard some express that there is no such thing as a boring film, just a bored viewer. And I expect it is a fair point; different people are bored by different things. On the other hand, I think it takes a little too much responsibility off of the filmmaker. I mean, when you have a film that is virtually dialogue free and is composed of long takes with minimal action, I dare say it is going to bore most people.

Compounding this is thematic ambiguity. The Netflix description says, "This visual poem brings to life Pythagoras's theory that the soul moves from human to animal to vegetable to mineral in its evolutionary journey." This is all well and good, but I don't see much from the film to suggest this, because the film refuses to speak. I'm not big on the idea of having to read external information to "get" a film and without the film saying anything, I certainly wasn't going to be coming up with Pythagorean explanations that I had no knowledge of. Suffice it to say, Pythagorean philosophy should not be a prerequisite to the success of any film. However, having the Netflix description in mind going in, I could at least see that it was indeed doing this, though it wasn't particularly meaningful to me.

I will say one thing, I enjoyed the general look of the film. It evoked for me the many point-and-click adventure games of my youth with its static backdrops suggesting a select number of paths to the next screen. Those games however have plot and interactivity, this has goats. There are some amusing moments that need no context to work on a basic level but how everything adds up is kept at a distance. More power to those who go for this, including Mark Kermode, with whom I usually agree, who had it as his #2 of 2011, but this just is not my type of film or filmmaking. Or goats.

1/5

Antares

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #10374 on: January 07, 2012, 02:02:46 PM »
Watergate (1994) 4.5/5 - You have to hand it to the BBC. They really know how flesh out the details of a story in their documentaries. I stumbled upon this five part documentary on YouTube, and I must say that it is the best program I've ever watched concerning this egregious moment in American politics. While every other documentary focuses mainly on the events post arrest of the burglars, this sets the stage with interviews with the participants, detailing what was originally planned, and how screwed up it all became. My first observation is that the whole operation was doomed from the start because of the fact that G. Gordon Liddy was involved. Listening to not only him, but the others talk about some of the hair-brained schemes he wanted to implement, one feels a sense that if they made a modern day film about Watergate, then Jim Carrey should play Liddy, he's that crazy a character.

It's a shame that by the time this documentary was made, both John and Martha Mitchell were already deceased. It would have been interesting to hear the former Attorney General's take on the event and its aftermath, and it definitely would have been entertaining to listen to Martha run her mouth off again. If I can find one fault in this series, it would be that the BBC paid very little attention to the efforts of the many reporters who tore away at the layers of security involved in the cover up. Also, very little is mentioned in regards to Hugh Sloan, the man at the Committee for Re-Election of the President, who eventually was the whistle blower.

If you've ever wanted to really delve into this infamous event, then this would be the best place to start.
Masterpiece (100-91) | Classic (90-80) | Entertaining (79-69) | Mediocre (68-58) | Cinemuck (57-21) | Crap (20-0)

1SO

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Respond to the last movie you watched - 1SOs 2011 Hit List
« Reply #10375 on: January 07, 2012, 03:49:56 PM »
The Help
So close to living up to its success and acclaim, The Help is exceptionally well acted in places and good intentions can get you pretty far. There were enough really good scenes that I can recommend the film, but there were also a lot of scenes that were less than. For a movie that's nearly 2 1/2 hours, it seems that another run through the editing machine ought to do it. But I still think you would have some problems.

Bryce Dallas Howard is even more one-note here than in 50/50. Her climactic event with the pie... well I just don't believe it to the extreme that its presented. There's a similar dip into the revenge of bad taste in Fried Green Tomatoes, and that one I believed completely. Here I wish the book had just been the revenge without the silly pie. (A trick like that would've led to greater fear of reprisal that the story doesn't even suggest.)

Excellent work from Octavia Spencer, Jessica Chastain and Viola Davis. Pretty good work from the rest of the cast aside from Bryce Dallas Howard. Chastain was a particular revelation since her character is pitched very differently from Tree of Life. I look forward to seeing what else she can do.
RATING: * * *
« Last Edit: January 07, 2012, 11:23:32 PM by 1SO »

sdb_1970

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #10376 on: January 07, 2012, 04:03:56 PM »
Trust (2010) (dir. David Schwimmer)
I liked most of the performances, and I liked that the film went into a depth that most popular media will not when it comes to the nature and effects of statutory rape.  But the presentation (e.g., the text messages on the bottom, the cinematography) and the script (e.g., repeatedly telegraphing the next sequence) had the distinct feel of an after-school special that did a disservice to the film as a whole.
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Bondo

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #10377 on: January 07, 2012, 04:41:16 PM »
Spoilers for Trust

There was no statutory rape in Trust, there was rape in Trust. Her age was ultimately irrelevant to the act. This for me was a big let-down of the film because it removes any moral ambiguity. If it had actually been statutory rape, that would have made it play out more interestingly.

Bondo

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #10378 on: January 07, 2012, 05:33:58 PM »
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)

This was a film that had pretty tough expectations to match. With the first Alfredsson film I saw, Let The Right One In, sitting in my top-10, I put him into my top-20 directors lacking any other evidence. I had a sense about him as a director. It would have been rather embarrassing if this faltered in any major way. Thankfully, Alfredsson is up to the task here, with a cast of some of the very best actors from the British Isles along for the ride.

The main premise of the film, there's a mole in the intelligence service and it needs rooting out, is pretty rote. If it put its main focus on plot, it could easily become an uninspired mess of intrigue. While things remain a bit unclear, as one would expect, for the majority of the film, this isn't really a twisty thriller. The time is instead spent on building up all the characters involved. It is a film that is more about the relationships between men than about spying.

On one side of the ledger you've got Control (John Hurt) who has received information of a mole. He sends Jim (Mark Strong) to Hungary in an effort to sort this out, but things go very wrong, leading to the ouster of Control and George (Gary Oldman). George is pulled out of retirement to pursue the mole when additional information is revealed. He brings Peter (Benedict Cumberbatch, sadly without his Cumberstache) along with him for the task. On the other hand, you have the four men who now run the shop and are the four suspects, Percy (Toby Jones), Toby (David Dencik), Roy (Ciaran Hinds) and Bill (Colin Firth).

There are a few different interesting dynamics between characters, told through a set of flashbacks, craftily tied into the present either through interview or reminiscence. By keeping the story in the present at all times in this manner, it avoids becoming a mess of timelines to keep straight. The way these developments come together in the end is a real great bit of emotion in an otherwise fairly icy tale. If I have one complaint, it is that one of the four suspects seems notably overlooked compared to the others.

As much as I do like the character-based drama, the film could use a few more moments of higher tension. There is one primary spying set-piece where Peter has to go into the office to recover a crucial document that could help determine who to believe, it is one of the highlights of the film. The film does overdo it with its focus on mood; how many times do I really need to see George swim. That makes the pacing a bit slack at times and had one person in my theatre snoring loudly for at least half the film, annoying the rest of us. So while this lacks just a little to make it a truly great bit of entertainment, it is a supremely crafted film.

4/5

THATguy

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #10379 on: January 07, 2012, 09:26:12 PM »
A few quickies.

Super 8
I really liked the first half more than the second, where a crappy villain and a really forced Romeo and Juliet riff end up taking up way too much screen time. Overall, I liked it, although it's not something I'm chomping at the bit to ever see again.

Memphis Heat: The True Story of Memphis Wrasslin'
Way too short. This could have been a truly transcendent documentary on pro wres that could have been something you showed to non-wrestling fans, much like Hitman Hart: Wrestling With Shadows or Beyond the Mat. Instead, it feels insular, just covering the events that it has people to interview, and glossing over major moments in the territory's history. It also ends very abruptly and randomly, with Jimmy Hart's defection to the WWF, when Jerry Lawler's a few years later would not only make a lot more sense, but also end the film on a different note.

Fast Five
This movie was just... silly. Not as outright bad as I feared, but still, the hackiness of the script and characters feels genuine and unironic, and really wears after 2 goddamn hours.

Hanna
Save Cate Blanchett's absolutely terrible Southern accent, this was well directed, well acted, great score, etc... but it just left me completely cold. I didn't care at all about the family introduced in the second act, and it just all seemed to fall flat.

The Skin I Live In
I haven't seen an Almodovar film so far that I haven't at least liked, and this one I really liked. It's, as almost all Almodovar, filled with color and context and things that demand your eye as a viewer, but I also really liked the theme about gender identity.
« Last Edit: January 07, 2012, 09:27:54 PM by THATguy »