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Author Topic: Respond to the last movie you watched (Jan 2011 - Nov 2013)  (Read 2532686 times)

Junior

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #15800 on: October 28, 2012, 11:55:30 AM »
I don't know about Lobby, but for me a 5/5 (or the equivalent) isn't automatically perfect.
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verbALs

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #15801 on: October 28, 2012, 11:58:29 AM »
6/5 then (ratings are dumb).
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Lobby

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #15802 on: October 28, 2012, 12:04:56 PM »
I think the few remaining signs of his uncommented sex addiction to please the male audience alongside with an occasional silly remark that doesn't land all that well and the unbelievable lack of computer safety thinking that M displays is what keeps me from giving it a 5/5. But as everyone knows by now I'm fairly generous with my rating.

I know the debate about rating or not rating. I've chosen to do it for the time being because it helps me to make up my mind about a film and because I think it helps to communicate my overall impression of a film, where you sometimes can get misled when you bring up details that don't work for you rather than focusing on all that does.

As about the major changes taking place in CR I'm aware of that. But it takes time to work in this change into my mind. I'm afraid the oldschool Bond is still what first comes to mind when I think of Bond.
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jdc

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #15803 on: October 28, 2012, 12:52:06 PM »
Frankenweenie

I enjoyed the 3D of this, gave me a few good laughs and smiles and overall a pretty good afternoon.  Been a long time since I enjoyed a Tim Burton film, I would be happy if he just made these kind of films and maybe forget about Depp (who I like but not with he last few Burton films).

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MartinTeller

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #15804 on: October 28, 2012, 02:51:29 PM »

The Avengers - Pretty fun.  Rating: Very Good (82)

Lobby

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #15805 on: October 28, 2012, 03:49:40 PM »
So I rewatched The Road as a part of an upcoming blogging event among the Swedish film bloggers who are posting about "food". Since my post is almost entirely about The Road, I can as well publish it in this thread.

If you're in doubt after reading this, I'm a real fan of this film. I suppose it's a 4,5/5 for all of you who enjoy ratings. :)


The best movies about food are those where there is none

Let's talk about film food. And no, it's not another rant about how much we all hate popcorn. It's about what's on the screen. What's the first thing that comes to mind when you think about food in movies.

For me it's THAT scene at the restaurant in Monty Python's The Meaning of Life. I don't think you want me to talk about it, so we're stop there.

Number two to pop up in my mind is La Grande Bouffe, where Marcello Mastroianni and his friends purposely and as far as I recall successfully eat themselves to death.

And then my mind drifts off to the futuristic cannibalism of Delicatessen. And cannibalism in turn opens up to a field of choices, ranging from The Silence of the Lambs to Alive!

Yes, I'm a sick, sick person.

In an attempt to appear as a normal person, I should obviously speak about good, uncontroversial food related movies, such as Sideways, Dinner Rush or Babette's feast.

I'm not going to do that though. It doesn't raise my appetite to watch people helping themselves at lavish dinner tables such as the one in Marie Antoinette. If anything it makes me disgusted. But show me someone who is hungry for real, someone who is on the verge of starving to death - and I'll think about food in a new way. After watching such a movie, a meal that I'd normally consider trivial, like having an apple or a sandwich, turns into a luxury.

The Road
The best movies about food are those where you don't see much of it. It's present as a dream.  In this post I'm going to talk about one of them, The Road from 2009, which I recently paid a revisit. Do you remember it? If you've seen it, I bet you do. The image of the man-without-a-name and his son, walking through a world in ruins after an undefined disaster, with all their possessions in a shopping cart, doesn't go away anytime soon. They're sick, they're freezing, they fear for their lives every second, afraid to become victims to cannibals.

I didn't read movie blogs when it came out, so it was only later that I found out that it wasn't overly well received. The film is based on a praised novel, and those who have read it claim that the adaption is inferior. To me it's a non issue, since I've only seen the movie.

Some people accused it of being too much of a crowd pleaser, not dark enough, out of fear of scaring away the audience. Then there were others who claimed the opposite, thinking it was unbearably gloomy.

Unaware of the criticism, I loved it without any reservations when it came out and on my rewatch I found that it was just as good as I remembered it. It's the harshest - and at the same time most believable - picture of the final days of mankind I've seen. And it's so much more than just a survival story set in the future. It brings up all those questions - about ethics, about what it means to be human, about where our boundaries go and what makes life worth living at all. Would we or wouldn't we eat other people if our survival depended on it? Even if we consider ourselves "good" people, is there a point where the survival instinct will take the overhand and lead us in a different direction? Is suicide ever justifiable? Each one of us will have a different answer to those questions, but in the end it's all just speculation. We don't know where we really stand until we've been in those shoes ourselves.

The Coke can scene
Back to the food again. While we don't see much of it, it's right there in the middle of The Road. When you strip your life from everything non-essential, it's what it's all about. Bread and water. Or a can of Coke. One day the father finds it, stuck in a vending machine and he insists on his son to have it. Judging from his reaction it might be the first he's ever had, being born after the point when the world fell apart. The shared soda becomes a bubble of, if not happiness, at least temporary relief from everything that plagues them. Living in a world where people buy soft drinks in two liter bottles, I can't help wondering if this abundance has made our senses numb. We don't feel the taste from the drink anymore. We just drink it anyway, not enjoying it particularly much and aware of that it doesn't do us any good.

Another memorable scene is when they find a shelter full of canned food. For the first time in the movie they have a real meal. It's food that we normally would sneer at, but in this context it becomes an extraordinary dinner.

Put in that light, today's dinner of macaroni and some fried sausages doesn't appear all that bad.

And that's why I watch movies in the first place: to challenge my perspective on life. It's like with a snow globe. It needs a little shake-up once in a while to remain beautiful.
« Last Edit: October 28, 2012, 04:12:42 PM by Lobby »
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With fronds like these...

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #15806 on: October 28, 2012, 05:16:18 PM »
Red State
I watched this knowing very little about it, and having seen only DOGMA of Kevin Smith's films before (which I liked). This is an entertaining romp through a lot of well-worn characters and plots that have been done before: teenage boys on the lookout for sex get into something way over their heads, weird religious cults with dangerously charismatic leaders, lots of guns.

Red State is better than that sort of simple summary. Michael Parks is truly fantastic as the cult leader, a terrifying character who will stop at nothing, whose beliefs genuinely seem to drive every terrible decision he makes. John Goodman does well as the policeman put in an impossible position by his bosses, and the film is brutally unsentimental about killing off people you might have been rooting for 5 minutes earlier.

While it's true the film kind of bottles its conclusion, having been so brutal before, what really bothered me about this was watching a couple of the DVD extras. Christ, but Kevin Smith is boring. He seems to think he's Orson Welles or something. It all felt cynical, quite the opposite of the honesty he was blathering on about. The cover of the DVD features the lithe young woman from the cult family holiding a Very Big Gun in profile, a shot which does not exist in the film. So why is it there?

Do watch this film, but enjoy it for what it is; a breakneck 88 minutes of action, suspense and no little terror. But when it's gone, it's gone.

Devil

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #15807 on: October 28, 2012, 07:08:52 PM »
Red State


I could have watched another twenty minutes of that sermon in the middle, Parks was electric in that scene. The rest of the movie didn't really hold up for me as well. The chase scene was incredibly tense and frantic but then after that the action started to undo the film for me. I do agree though that it is worth a watch though.
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george96

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #15808 on: October 28, 2012, 08:59:13 PM »
Red State


I could have watched another twenty minutes of that sermon in the middle, Parks was electric in that scene. The rest of the movie didn't really hold up for me as well. The chase scene was incredibly tense and frantic but then after that the action started to undo the film for me. I do agree though that it is worth a watch though.

That was my favorite part, for sure, but I thought it was a strong film overall, as well. I thought the shifts in character focus were smart and engaging. Unfortunately, the film's ending is very large and very abrupt.

(By the way, and because I keep these sort of things organized in a spreadsheet, Red State was my 31st favorite film from 2011, and Michael Parks gave my 2nd favorite male lead performance.)

MartinTeller

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #15809 on: October 28, 2012, 10:42:27 PM »

A Simple Life - Roger (Andy Lau) is a movie producer.  Ah Tao (Deannie Yip) has been a servant for his family for 60 years, now working solely for Roger in Hong Kong after the rest of his family has moved to America.  When Ah Tao suffers a stroke, she decides to retire and move into an old folks’ home.

That is the simple plot of this simple movie about a “simple life” but it is rich in its simplicities.  Ann Hui is a director I’ve been meaning to check out for a long time, I’m glad I finally got around to it.  The movie speaks in very small moments as Roger visits and cares for his former servant.  He’s clearly closer to her than to his own family… to spare everyone long and potentially uncomfortable explanations, he refers to himself as her godson in the presence of others.  The two have a wonderfully warm relationship that doesn’t beat you over the head with touching scenes.  For the most part, Hui avoids tugging on the heartstrings, instead defining their bond with small gestures, like Ah Tao inquiring about the cat (an adorable Scottish fold named KaKa) or the two discussing food (food is a recurring theme, emphasizing how it’s used to express love and caring) or taking a stroll together.

Nor does the film attempt to be a scathing condemnation of the nursing home system.  There are obvious criticisms — the impersonal, menu-like breakdown of costs, the impersonal, cold atmosphere — but Hui does not paint it as a hellish environment, she shows that there some sense of community there.  Like all things in the movie, there is nuance and ambiguity to the depiction of the home, you are left to draw your own conclusions.

The film has some parallels to reality.  Yip is Lau’s real-life godmother, and the two worked in a string of movies together in the late 80′s and 90′s.  The story is based on true events from writer/producer Yan-lam Lee’s life.  The cast is peppered with small roles and cameos by giants of the Hong Kong film industry, including (but not limited to) Sammo Hung, Gordan Lam, Raymond Chow and Tsui Hark.

The cinematography is thoughtful but unobtrusive, often framing characters in isolation.  The music is a bit overdone with the tinkly-ness but it’s quite nice.  Lau is excellent, but it’s really Yip’s show.  She gives an incredible performance, very subtle and warm and dignified.  Her character isn’t drawn in broad strokes… she’s not an irasicble old crank, or a lovable granny figure, or the spunky dame who’s going to liven up the nursing home.  She’s just a simple person, but a lovable one, because we see her love and be loved.  A very tender and endearing work.  Rating: Very Good (83)

 

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