8186 replies to this topic

[birdistheword]

Thought this was cool, but Schrader actually posts a 'review' on Amazon responding to questions regarding the narration track (and naturally gives his own picture 5 stars, which I personally can't argue against).

[Pavement Ist Rad]

Brilliant!

[Agrimorfee]

a.k.a. "Harry Potter Pops his Cherry". That's really all you need to know.

[Ѡ҈҉Ѡ҈҉Ѡ҈҉Ѡ҈҉Ѡ҈҉Ѡ҈҉Ѡ҈҉Ѡ҈҉Ѡ҈҉Ѡ]

is that your kind of thing agrim

[fffffffff]

tom waits. DROOL.

[held]

larry flynt: the right to be left alone

this premiered on ifc a week or two ago. I viewed this with some surprise in that I hadn't realized to the extent of what the guy went through. Even having seen PPL vs LF ('96) its a completely different take when you see the actual archive stuff.

there's something odd in his own take pornography in that Larry claims he was never in it or titilated by the material..this aspect to me seems suspect and there's kind of a one-two punch. Like anyone with the ACLU would defend his right to say what he wants but there's also that giantic pillar of salt that goes with the idea that you'd back him. I mean coming from a guy who regularly displays the worst possible side in taste or decency for whatever its worth does raise a few eyebrows.

[caley]

Guys like him don't tell where they live!

Act of Violence: Gorgeous cinematography. It's a noir one from the 40s with Van Heflin as a guy stocked by gimpy Robert Ryan because of a grudge dating back to the second World War. Janet Leigh is really good as Heflin's wife, and the conclusion was really exciting and fun, but I found it to be a little meandering and slow-paced, which is funny because it's not even an hour and a half long. Worth a watch, though.

[vamos]

Just saw Annie Hall for the first time. Really truly great.

[Montana]

Where's all the "Ruins" love? Best movie I've seen this year.

[Ogawa]

Just saw Annie Hall for the first time. Really truly great.

Definitely. If you haven't already, you should expand your Woody Allen viewing. Love and Death, Manhattan, Hannah and Her Sisters, Stardust Memories, and Crimes and Misdemeanors are all certifiable masterpieces. And he has tons of minor greats as well.

Where's all the "Ruins" love? Best movie I've seen this year.

Just added it to my Netflix queue on your recommendation.

[M_Rots]

Yes, there is much to disparage in this, but there is also much to mourn. I was a big fan of director Joe Carnahan's Narc, so I was drawn to see this and when I did last year, it made almost no impression, apart from being way too obsessed with both style and "quirky" characters. Watched it again this afternoon and could not get over how much squandered potential I saw.

A good cast and at least decent idea is undermined by slick, music-video style camera work and look - I am not a big fan of this super saturated color in movies. Ridley Scott seems to know how to use it, but most movies made with this kind of film stock end up looking cheap, like any/all of the Saw sequels.

I would love to have seen one of the earlier drafts of this movie, before the producers started subtracting "story layers" -during his commentary, Carnahan tells of a number of run-ins with the producers over "unnecessary" characterization. I guess the producers were looking for more along the lines of Pulp Fiction minus, well, most of what made that such a good film.

At a human level, a number of storylines and characters get cheated by the insistence on style over substance and Smokin' Aces suffers accordingly. Joe Carnahan has repeatedly displayed a willingness to accept the premise that bad people are capable of posessing good qualities, just as much as good people are driven to do bad things in the pursuit of what they believe to be right. Those sorts of dichotomies would lie at the heart of at least three different storylines if only the script didn't cheat them.

The relationship between partner cops is an old story in movies and TV, and maybe Carnahan just counted on the audience to employ a sort of emotional shorthand, filling in the gaps in onscreen character development to assume the two FBI agents, played by Ray Liotta and Ryan Reynolds, cared both for each other as men, and for the Law as their Mistress. Whether it was just that lazy, flawed assumption or a watering-down of the script, that same failure to flesh out relationships and their emotional core, to play the important characters' bonds as wacky comedic elements a la the speed freak Nazi assassin brothers or Jason Bateman's sexually perverse lawyer, undermines everything that might have made this a standout genre picture.

We should feel more when the closeted lesbian assassin in love with her partner (Alicia Keys) thinks her dead and goes crazy with her free rifle, blasting away at more-or-less innocent FBI and security men. We should feel more when Common, as bag man to Jeremy Piven's mob informant, sees his impending betrayal and goes off. And we should feel a hell of a lot more when Ryan Reynolds gets all the way to the bottom of the mess of a story at this movie's center and makes the morally ambiguous decisons he does.

But we don't feel much of anything - or at least I didn't, and this is a worse movie for it. If the producers had been more willing to trust in Joe Carnahan's script and direction and less interested in the big surprise ending which an even half-bright viewer sees coming in the first ten minutes, there might have been so much more to this. As it is, a good-to-great cast (Liotta, Reynolds, Andy Garcia, Peter Berg, Ben Affleck, Bateman, Keys, Curtis Armstrong and many more) and a not-bad setup get tossed overboard and a promising genre outing becomes a watchable, if hardy memorable, failure.

[velocity]

I've probably seen Annie Hall a dozen times and it gets better with each viewing.

[Montana]

Yes, there is much to disparage in this, but there is also much to mourn. I was a big fan of director Joe Carnahan's Narc, so I was drawn to see this and when I did last year, it made almost no impression, apart from being way too obsessed with both style and "quirky" characters. Watched it again this afternoon and could not get over how much squandered potential I saw.

That is one of the worst movies I've ever seen.

[M_Rots]

Wow - that's real insightful. Thanks so much for sharing that thorougly useless, I'm-up-late-and-bored-so-I'll-spread-the-joy opinion.

[theremin]

Where's all the "Ruins" love? Best movie I've seen this year.

I read the book, but I can't bring myself to watch the movie.

[Montana]

Wow - that's real insightful. Thanks so much for sharing that thorougly useless, I'm-up-late-and-bored-so-I'll-spread-the-joy opinion.

Yeah I'm not into wasting time talking about horrible movies that I should have turned off halfway through.

[Ogawa]

Coming from Carnahan, this film should've been so much better. Like you said, there's only a skeleton of a film here with all the points of interest and character seemingly stripped away for whatever foolish reason. As a result, the film ends up feeling, unfortunately (and perhaps strangely and maybe a bit confoundingly), like Guy Ritchie-lite. Only it's not nearly funny enough, not nearly fast enough, not nearly enjoyable enough to succeed on that level.

I had a similar, though more extreme, reaction to Wayne Kramer's terrible Running Scared. That film tried really hard to be fun, but just ended up being unpleasant. It's like these directors looked at Guy Ritchie's first two films and thought, "Gee, I can do that," and then proceeded to fail miserably as they misunderstood what made those films work.

[M_Rots]

Coming from Carnahan, this film should've been so much better. Like you said, there's only a skeleton of a film here with all the points of interest and character seemingly stripped away for whatever foolish reason. As a result, the film ends up feeling, unfortunately (and perhaps strangely and maybe a bit confoundingly), like Guy Ritchie-lite. Only it's not nearly funny enough, not nearly fast enough, not nearly enjoyable enough to succeed on that level.

I had a similar, though more extreme, reaction to Wayne Kramer's terrible Running Scared. That film tried really hard to be fun, but just ended up being unpleasant. It's like these directors looked at Guy Ritchie's first two films and thought, "Gee, I can do that," and then proceeded to fail miserably as they misunderstood what made those films work.

Ritchie! God, that's exactly the comparison point I was after!

[Campaigner]

Coming from Carnahan, this film should've been so much better. Like you said, there's only a skeleton of a film here with all the points of interest and character seemingly stripped away for whatever foolish reason. As a result, the film ends up feeling, unfortunately (and perhaps strangely and maybe a bit confoundingly), like Guy Ritchie-lite. Only it's not nearly funny enough, not nearly fast enough, not nearly enjoyable enough to succeed on that level.

I had a similar, though more extreme, reaction to Wayne Kramer's terrible Running Scared. That film tried really hard to be fun, but just ended up being unpleasant. It's like these directors looked at Guy Ritchie's first two films and thought, "Gee, I can do that," and then proceeded to fail miserably as they misunderstood what made those films work.

I think the problem with Smokin' Aces was that it tried to set itself as a comedy in its trailer, yet wasn't very funny at all. Having said that, there were some characters that had real potential - such as those psycho brothers. Oh well - at least Alicia Keys was hell hot.

As for Running Scared - I actually didn't mind it at all. Paul Walker didn't do his normal impersonation of a plank of wood, and although the whole premise was far-fetched, I thought it was well-made (yet disturbing in times - such as the side plot with

Spoiler

Oleg getting trapped by the evil fiddling, murdering couple

). Again, the trailer made it out to be more of a 'fun' movie than it actually was.

Of the two, Smokin' Aces would get a 4/10 from me, while I'd give Running Scared a 7/10.

[Pavement Ist Rad]

Crazy fucking bitch, right here.