8187 replies to this topic

[caley]

Got a chance to check out "Son of Rambow" tonight. I really liked it, sort of a "Be Kind Rewind" meets "Stand By Me". It felt a little rushed at times but on the whole it was very enjoyable.

I really enjoyed this. It's one of my three favourites from 08 thus far.

[Ogawa]

Just finished watching this. Headache. Won't. Go. Away.



Speed Racer. A candy-colored horror show more nightmarish than a million Inland Empires. A film so bad that it confuses otherwise sensible people into thinking there must be some method to its madness.

But the defenses of this as somehow being Avante-garde aren't supported by the actual film. The visuals are audacious, certainly. But so are the visuals in the average Skittles commercial. The real audacity is in the runtime. Whereas commercials are merciful in their brevity, this monstrosity was a tyrant at 2 hours and ten minutes.

The film overall looks like a mid-Nineties kids show on the Family Channel. One where they just discovered green screen and so they plopped their pre-teen hosts into all sorts of goofy locales (the beach, the moon, etc). This isn't a live-action cartoon. It's a cartoon with live actors floating over top of it. What's the appeal anyway? Why the need for the live actors? There's nothing particularly compelling about their performances that elevates them above their cartoon counterparts. The characters in Cars, actual cartoons, are more real than the non-cartoons in this film.

What happened to the men who showed such promise with Bound? Who displayed a modicum of invention with The Matrix? They went overboard, they are adrift in a sea of CG feces. Those wacky Wachowskis, those mad masters of cinema, finding new ways to slow down an image, breaking new ground in the field of zooming into a character's eyes from 100 feet away. It's a brand new age. With CG, anything and everything is possible. And it has produced filmmakers who are lazy, creatively inept, and absolutely unbearable.

Roger Allam was good, though.

[Hero]

Saw Choke (Chuck Palahniuk Novel) in theatres yesterday


skip it.... very unimpressed. One of my fav chuck novels, and this wasnt worth it

[Asher Ford]

Son of Rambow - Decent movie. Liked Be Kind, Rewind a little better, but they're very similar. Also watched The Fall again. Really good movie.

[Bob Loblaw]

I haven't heard anyone even mention this one, but I thought it was def worthwhile.

[caley]

I haven't heard anyone even mention this one, but I thought it was def worthwhile.

Saw a preview and thought it looked funny. I plan to rent it whenever the local stores have some kind of deal.


You, stop multiplying.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang: I love that this was written by the same guy who wrote The Monster Squad. Anyways, I had completely written this off as another lousy Hollywood whodunit, until I'd read the SOMB consensus on this one and, shockingly, it's really good! I mean, your mileage might vary depending on your tolerance for Robert Downey Jr., but I find him charming and funny, so this went a long way with me. Really funny modern take on a film noir-style of plot.


I walked by Union Square Bar. I was going to go in. Then I saw myself - my reflection in the window - and I thought, "I wonder who that bum is?" And then I saw it was me. Now look at me. I'm a bum.

Days of Wine and Roses: I'm a big Jack Lemmon fan, and I don't drink, so this, a fiercely anti-booze film should really have been up my alley, but it was just a tad too heavy-handed for my liking. Lemmon plays Joe, a social drinker, who falls in love with Lee Remick's Kirsten, and convinces her to start drinking with him. And they drink. And drink. And drink and everything falls apart, so they get sober together, then start drinking again. The third quarter practically plays like an advertisement for Alcoholics Anonymous. But, man, Lemmon and Remick are really good. The cinematography is pretty great, too, and the score is tremendous. But, it really has all the subtlety of a sledgehammer.

[brobee]

kkbb is a great film. first time i saw it, i was in a really bad place, and my sis dragged me to the theater and the movie totally cheered me up. made me forget about all the terrible shit around me. i will never forget that about the movie. seen it a few times since, and it holds up extremely well. tonight is in the bedroom, which, so far, is absolutely stunning. the editing/cinematography is exceptional, and the script is nice and indirect. got an hour left. good stuff. thanks to all those who rec'd it.

[hornpout]

The Man from Earth
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0756683/

"An impromptu goodbye party for Professor John Oldman becomes a mysterious interrogation after the retiring scholar reveals to his colleagues he is an immortal who has walked the earth for 14,000 years."

Really enjoyed this movie

[Kennan]

Days of Wine and Roses: I'm a big Jack Lemmon fan, and I don't drink, so this, a fiercely anti-booze film should really have been up my alley, but it was just a tad too heavy-handed for my liking. Lemmon plays Joe, a social drinker, who falls in love with Lee Remick's Kirsten, and convinces her to start drinking with him. And they drink. And drink. And drink and everything falls apart, so they get sober together, then start drinking again. The third quarter practically plays like an advertisement for Alcoholics Anonymous. But, man, Lemmon and Remick are really good. The cinematography is pretty great, too, and the score is tremendous. But, it really has all the subtlety of a sledgehammer.

funny you should mention drinking movies. i've been recently curious as to the conveyance of alcoholism in cinema so i just watched two flicks last week:



This was ridiculous, though entertaining. It paralleled a 90-minute AA meeting against Lewis' relapse. But the film didn't seem to have a stance (though the catchphrase on the poster sort of does).

And then:


I liked this better than I thought I would. Both Kingsley and Leoni put in decent performances. Lighthearted in its approach to alcohol abuse and AA with some somber undertones. Fun, deadpan stuff.

Haven't see "Days of Wine..." yet, though I'd like to. Avoid, though, at all costs: "28 Days" with Sandra Bullock.

[Hero]

You, stop multiplying.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang: I love that this was written by the same guy who wrote The Monster Squad. Anyways, I had completely written this off as another lousy Hollywood whodunit, until I'd read the SOMB consensus on this one and, shockingly, it's really good! I mean, your mileage might vary depending on your tolerance for Robert Downey Jr., but I find him charming and funny, so this went a long way with me. Really funny modern take on a film noir-style of plot.

Excellent film. Val Kilmer and RDJr have great chemistry. they must reunite

plus Michelle Monaghan naked... we've talked about this movie before.

[caley]

Haven't see "Days of Wine..." yet, though I'd like to. Avoid, though, at all costs: "28 Days" with Sandra Bullock.

28 Days always reminds me of that episode of The Office where Pam is talking about renting 28 Days Later and being all terrified waiting for Sandra Bullock to come on.

Excellent film. Val Kilmer and RDJr have great chemistry. they must reunite

plus Michelle Monaghan naked... we've talked about this movie before.

It was the SOMB consensus that made me interested but I couldn't find the thread on it. Is there a whole thread devoted to it? Or am I wrong?

[M_Rots]

Strangely, it's hard to find good movies about drinking - or at least about the depths of alcoholism and recovery. Drug movies are everywhere - especially if it's heroin. But even Clean&Sober is about coke addicts, not drunks.

I loved Ray Miland in The Lost Weekend. The bit where he starts to hallucinate during DT's is priceless.

My Name is Bill W. is Ok - they took some liberties with Bill's life, but I guess that's standard biopic fare. James Woods is better than James Garner, but then, they do a spectacular job of reducing his character's role until he hardly seems the cofounder of AA. Gary Sinise as Ebby, the guy who got Bill W to stop drinking the last time, is pretty good.

I guess When a Man Loves a Woman is Ok, if you don't mind schmaltz, overacting, a lousy script and Meg Ryan portraying the dumbest woman in history. ("My husband loves me to death and now that I'm sober, that means I have to be hateful and leave him for no reason!")

Favorite drug-related movies:
Requiem For a Dream
Jesus' Son
Drugstore Cowboy
Sid&Nancy
Panic in Needle Park
Blow

Candy - THIS is a great fuckin' movie. Heath Ledger and Geoffery Rush as heroin addicts. No falsely happy ending, no cheating. It's scary and ugly and terribly sad. Highly recommended.

[petras]

Just finished watching this. Headache. Won't. Go. Away.

Speed Racer. A candy-colored horror show more nightmarish than a million Inland Empires. A film so bad that it confuses otherwise sensible people into thinking there must be some method to its madness.

But the defenses of this as somehow being Avante-garde aren't supported by the actual film. The visuals are audacious, certainly. But so are the visuals in the average Skittles commercial. The real audacity is in the runtime. Whereas commercials are merciful in their brevity, this monstrosity was a tyrant at 2 hours and ten minutes.

The film overall looks like a mid-Nineties kids show on the Family Channel. One where they just discovered green screen and so they plopped their pre-teen hosts into all sorts of goofy locales (the beach, the moon, etc). This isn't a live-action cartoon. It's a cartoon with live actors floating over top of it. What's the appeal anyway? Why the need for the live actors? There's nothing particularly compelling about their performances that elevates them above their cartoon counterparts. The characters in Cars, actual cartoons, are more real than the non-cartoons in this film.

What happened to the men who showed such promise with Bound? Who displayed a modicum of invention with The Matrix? They went overboard, they are adrift in a sea of CG feces. Those wacky Wachowskis, those mad masters of cinema, finding new ways to slow down an image, breaking new ground in the field of zooming into a character's eyes from 100 feet away. It's a brand new age. With CG, anything and everything is possible. And it has produced filmmakers who are lazy, creatively inept, and absolutely unbearable.

Roger Allam was good, though.

Just recently saw this and while I agree with all your criticism, I found the movie to be above all else fun. I'm not really sure what exactly was expected of a movie adapted from a fairly shallow anime. Maybe I went into it with lower expectations then you did but the movie pretty much delivered what I expected, it was basically bmx bandits with kick ass special effects. And considering how much I loved bmx bandits when I was about 8 years old I can only imagine a lot of kids prolly loved this movie. I'm sure i'll be revisiting this one when my son gets old enough to enjoy it.

I liked this better than I thought I would. Both Kingsley and Leoni put in decent performances. Lighthearted in its approach to alcohol abuse and AA with some somber undertones. Fun, deadpan stuff.

It wasn't very memorable as in I totally forgot about it until I read your post, but I enjoyed this one a great deal when I saw it. Ben was great at making me laugh and then immediately feel guilty for doing so throughout. Everyone should give this one a rental it's definitly worth it.

[vamos]

Ogawa I completely disagree with you about Speed Racer. Best thing that's come out this year. Completely revolutionary and at the same time wonderfully uplifting and emotional.

[Ogawa]

Rewatched 24 Hour Party People for the first time since 2003.



I'll just say 'Icarus.' Ok? If you know what I mean, great. If you don't, it doesn't matter. But you should probably read more.

I'd forgotten how much I love this film. I now believe it to be one of the best films of the decade. It's energetic, exciting, funny, original. The cast is incredible. Steve Coogan and Andy Serkis are particularly hilarious. The atmosphere, the tone, the music. I can't think of another film that feels like this. Unfortunately, Michael Winterbottom has not made another film since that even approaches it in quality.

Also watched Control, which was interesting to see next to 24 Hour, how they deal with the same scene and musicians in completely different ways. The two central performances (Sam Riley and Samantha Morton) were fantastic and it's astounding, though not surprising, that they were ignored by the Academy last year. Really good film.

Also watched Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, for Paul Newman. ::honorblade::

Ogawa I completely disagree with you about Speed Racer. Best thing that's come out this year. Completely revolutionary and at the same time wonderfully uplifting and emotional.

In what way is it revolutionary?

[M_Rots]

I may need to revisit 24 Hour Party People. I keep reading good stuff about it. I used to own it and found it rather tedious, which surprised me, as the era is of such interest to me that I thought I would have enjoyed it no matter what.

I've ony seen a couple of Winterbottom's movies since then. I fell asleep watching Tristram Shandy and liked Code 46 quite a bit. A Mighty Heart, I couldn't figure out why people were so impressed with any part of it, but especially not Jolie's performance, which was where much of the praise centered.

That was a terribly written sentence. You should only respond if you wish to enable my destruction of English grammar. Or its destruction of me.

[Ogawa]

I may need to revisit 24 Hour Party People. I keep reading good stuff about it. I used to own it and found it rather tedious, which surprised me, as the era is of such interest to me that I thought I would have enjoyed it no matter what.

I saw it in theaters in 2002 and didn't think much of it. Probably even fell asleep, if I remember correctly. But then I bought the DVD on a whim one day, sensing it deserved a second chance, and I loved it. So, perhaps a revisit would do the film some good. The film has a sort of insane energy and thick atmosphere that's lacking in his other films. There are things I like in all of them but none really hold up for me as great works.

The sex scenes in 9 Songs were nice and would've been even better in a film with a more developed central relationship and minus the concert footage/Antarctica nonsense. In This World was rather dull. I dug his representation of the future in Code 46, though the script didn't do much for me, and I liked the investigation material in A Mighty Heart, but I agree that Angelina Jolie's performance was unimpressive. Haven't watched Tristam Shandy or Road to Guantanamo, yet.

[velocity]

You Kill Me has been on HBO or Encore lately and it was indeed a pleasant surprise.

[Bleep Blop]

Ran--- Movie looks amazing. Very cool story, very well executed. I don't know, not really much to say that hasn't been said about Kurosawa. The man is a legend. Kinda cool when you can tell how much hard work went into something by watching it. Time to visit/revisit more of his movies.

[brobee]

I may need to revisit 24 Hour Party People. I keep reading good stuff about it. I used to own it and found it rather tedious, which surprised me, as the era is of such interest to me that I thought I would have enjoyed it no matter what.

I saw it in theaters in 2002 and didn't think much of it. Probably even fell asleep, if I remember correctly. But then I bought the DVD on a whim one day, sensing it deserved a second chance, and I loved it. So, perhaps a revisit would do the film some good. The film has a sort of insane energy and thick atmosphere that's lacking in his other films. There are things I like in all of them but none really hold up for me as great works.

The sex scenes in 9 Songs were nice and would've been even better in a film with a more developed central relationship and minus the concert footage/Antarctica nonsense. In This World was rather dull. I dug his representation of the future in Code 46, though the script didn't do much for me, and I liked the investigation material in A Mighty Heart, but I agree that Angelina Jolie's performance was unimpressive. Haven't watched Tristam Shandy or Road to Guantanamo, yet.

tristram shandy is a good time, with lots of meta-party people coogan-ness. it also helps if you're familiar with alan partridge, and probably the book (though i've never read it). i've seen few odder films, but it's breezy. not a chore to sit through in the least.