Most of his later work seems to be underrated. With the exception being the most recent Indiana Jones his later films hold up really well for me.

Mike Mills' Beginners. it was beautiful. it was sad, but heartfelt. it didnt drown you in sadness as Mills placed comedic elements throughout the film.

it's finally coming out in my city this week, and i can't wait to see it. glad you enjoyed it, hope i do too...

Ebert's latest Great Movie is relevant.

What do you think of AI, Tony?

I respect it despite the problems. It's clearly the work of an artist.

Thanks for the recommendation (which, in the case of this movie, is sort of like giving thanks for a sucker punch to the gut). Really tragic story, but a great doc nonetheless.

Stuff I've watched recently.

Cyrus: Enjoyed this a lot. In some ways, it reminded me a lot of 'Lars and the Real Girl' where the premise sounds like it's going to be crass and silly (Guy dates woman only to find she has a questionable relationship with her son who doesn't want anyone to date his mom) but it's actually quite touching and enjoyable. Really, everyone did a good job.

Whip It: I actually quite enjoyed this which is an achievement in and of itself given that I really detest Drew Barrymore (who directed and co-starred in this). The biggest gripe I had with it is that the romance in the middle was really shoe-horned in and undermined the message of the whole film. If a girl is sacrificing everything to travel to another town to compete in something she loves that's a solid message. If a girl is sacrificing everything to travel to another town to compete in something she loves, but also mainly because her boyfriend is there, it sort of undermines that whole "Doing something you love" thing.

The Dirty Dozen: Maybe my favourite cast ever (Lee Marvin, Telly Savalas, George Kennedy, Donald Sutherland, Robert Ryan, Ernest Borgnine, John Cassavetes, Jim Brown and Charles Bronson!) in this sorta silly, completely macho, ultra-patriotic war movie with Marvin as a guy who has to lead a crew of twelve convicts in a suicide mission inside Germany.

Big Man Japan: Occasionally fascinating mockumentary about a guy who grows to giant size to battle giant monsters in modern Japan. There's some really interesting ideas and some really funny ones, than the ending is completely baffling and ultra-Japanese and it's not consistently funny enough to be something I'll really remember. Apparently it's been purchased for an American remake which will surely be terrible because what made this one especially funny was the restraint if often showed to stay away from sight gags and gross-out humour.

People Will Talk: A doctor falls for an unmarried woman who is pregnant and tries to kill herself and their subsequent relationship is used as fodder to try to discredit him with a McCarthy-esque witch-hunt. And it's a comedy...sort of... Cary Grant stars as the doctor and there is some really funny stuff and it's a pretty interesting story. I enjoyed it, even if Grant himself basically erased it from his own filmography.

Ip Man: Oh man, if I'd seen this in 2008 or 2009, I probably would have had it as high as #1 for that year's EOY poll. Tells a fictionalized version of the life of Ip Man, the mentor of Bruce Lee. The first part is all about him being this awesome martial artist in pre-war China. Then the second part is about him basically being homeless after the invasion of the Japanese and how he stands up to them to show his patriotism. There's a sequence where, upset by the death of a close friend, he agrees to fight some Japanese martial artists and he just stands there and says "I want to fight ten men" then proceeds to beat the shit out of them and it's just staggeringly awesome and somehow sort-of moving. It's completely Chinese and patriotic and anti-Japanese, but, whatever, can't win 'em all. If you dig martial arts films, you should probably give this a watch. Donnie Yen is awesome in the lead.

"America, America" by Elia Kazan. ** Like a lot of personal pictures, it goes too long, and could use some serious editing. But it's Kazan, so as he tells the story of young Greek boy's depserate attempt to emigrate to America pre-1900, there are some awesome shots from Hassell Wexler, and while there is a very interesting appearances here and there-- it's just super bloated. Our whole family watched it together, hoping for some great shots of Greek culture, etc., and unfortunately, the film is overflowing with fucking Turks! The movie won the oscar for art direction, and the lead actor, who had no previous acting experience, is actually quite good, but I doubt I will watch this one again.


And oh geez-- before I forget-- "The Kids are All Right" -- what an overhyped, boring, self-indulgent, didn't really have anything meaningful to say, piece of garbarge. I mean, with everything I'd heard, I expected something a lot deeper, or even a little shallow-- what crap! The movie goes in the obvious direction, displays white people who are probably more "waspy" then "Ordinary People", and they're in fucking California! While Bening had a pretty good speech at the end, and Julianne Moore was probably as good as she could be-- the rest of the movie is just wasted space, and it is a mortal sin that the new oscar "quota" got this forced into a nomination. There were a lot better films than this that were made. What shit. *

and it didn't seem evident that cholodenko was questioning/criticising the lives of these waspy californians? you didn't discern any social/sexual/racial commentary? this is seriously one of the most ideologically complex movies in recent memory, and i can't fathom how you just saw 'wasted space.'

just put this on at work, now reliving my childhood.




and by reliving my childhood i mean remembering watching this movie as a child, i never played baseball with a group of misfits.

Maybe it was like 3-D chess, and it was sooo deep that it went over my head, but all I got out of it, was what should have been a great idea, ended up looking like something that could have been on CBS.

The Trip. Sad, funny film. Me and 2 other people in the audience were laughing when Coogan and Brydon weren't doing dueling Michael Caines.

consider the range of cultural intersections in the film:

julianne moore and her immigrant worker. mark ruffalo and the young african-american woman. the son and his disaffected young man friend.

these aren't relationships which end comfortably. there's something to say for a movie which presents a decent-sized cast of predominantly likable characters, and then forces us to watch them act poorly, tests the limits of our affection for them. i can't defend its cinematic quality. i think it's far more artfully shot than a tv movie, but it isn't a particularly visual film. that's not really what cholodenko is good at, anyhow. but it's not ugly, just plain. but the script is great, and the acting is uniformly excellent.

Thanks for continuing the discussion, because I always want to hear an opposing opinion. Here's a rotten tomato review that sums up my feelings better:

http://www.nickschager.com/nsfp/2010/11/th...ht-2010-c-.html

that's certainly a valid interpretation, but i just read the film another way. i don't see it as being pleased with its own progressiveness, as much as it actively deflating that kind of smugness. none of the characters are progressive; they're rich, and spoiled. for all of benning's profane language, she and moore are conservative figures, never mind that they're lesbians. and mark ruffalo isn't playing a free spirit, his character is. if we were meant to admire or identify with these characters, then i might agree with schager, but we don't, at least not by the end of the film. the children are the only clearly sympathetic characters in the film, and that's despite having been raised by smug, hypocritical parents. and as a result of questioning the actions of self-identifying progressives, it questions the audience, in a quietly confrontational way. it's almost like the movie is telling its audience 'don't be too quick to pat yourselves on the back. you're just as bad as everyone else.'

just finished this and yea, this was a good doc. it's really a great treatment of love from the unconditional to the twisted.

At times laughed so hard I had to pause the film - if you've ever wanted to suffer simultaneous Michael Caine impersonations this is for you. Totally fucking hysterically funny.

Well again, I appreciate your suggestion to look beneath the surface of something. I know sometimes I miss that. like when I followed that "The Hulk film critic blog" that someone linked the other day-- I read a review of his for "Happy-go-lucky" that really did get me to think of the film in a whole different way, that I hadn't imagined. I read his blog for a while. Hulk can really write. Either he's a retired college professor, or he just knows how to write like one. I'll relink it, since I made him a fave:

http://filmcrithulk.wordpress.com/

Winnie the Pooh, easily one of the best things disney has done in the last 20 years (that wasn't pixar related). Seriously great movie.

That's good to know. I kind of assumed it was bad because the run time is only around an hour, and I didn't see any reviews. Unfortunately I don't think it will have a lot of staying power because it's gross was so low, so I should probably try and see it soon.

I took the boy to see Cars 2. I liked it more than the first Cars, but I also have to remember that seeing movies with my 3 year old is still a novel experience for me (and him)...so more accurately I should say I saw my son watching Cars 2 and I enjoyed it (and from that perspective, I also gave Gnomeo and Juliet a thumbs up, if that tells you anything).

I will say that the parental perspective does give you a different look at these films. I guess I'm pretty jaded to violent movies, and don't have too much of a problem if my kids see them (within reason). However, my son was legitimately getting freaked out by some of the action sequences in Cars 2, and then I started to realize: "hey, they're shooting machine guns, missiles, and grenades...and talking about killing and torturing other cars. That's kind of fucked up for a kids movie."

So the side effects of making "kids" movies that are also for adults is that, inevitably, some of the scenes in these movies are sort of inappropriate for kids. Again, I feel like a bit of a pussy for saying that, but shit changes when you actually see your son curling up in fear. And I'm not saying that all "dark" scenes from pixar flicks should be removed (Nemo's mother dying, for example, absolutely necessary).

Anyway, I guess I wish Pixar would take its collective talents and put out a true kids movies (no more fucking winking references to pop culture)... and maybe also put out a PG-13/R flick for the adults.

Anyway, maybe Winnie the Pooh is the simple answer to all of this.

Hey all, long time no see...

Finally saw Le Doulos last night, but made the mistake of watching it without sobriety on my side. Help me out here, I'm hoping I just missed something:

(SPOILERS!!)

Maurice didn't trust Silien, so asks Kern to kill him once he's out of prison. Then he discovers it was Silien who'd helped him all along, and they have a good ol' laugh - and he lets Silien leave the bar before worrying about the price *he* put on his head? A good ol "hey man, ya know...I hired some to kill you," at least? No? Ruined what had up to that point been a really engrossing, if at the time extremely confusing, film. I hope I'm wrong and that Melville didn't completely sacrifice a plausible conclusion for a stylish one.

On a less griping note, I always forget how damn merciless Melville is, each and every time. Ya think I'd learn.

Winnie the Pooh had some genuinely funny sequences that even the adults in the audience loved, and they didn't have to resort to pop culture references or other gimmicks aimed at adults. Just genuine clever writing. It was a little short, but that's actually a good thing for me and my can't sit still that long 3 year old. IMO disney blew pixar out of the water this year, this film is wonderful.

Not a concert film but a documentary about how the history of Shea Stadium, the NY Mets, the relationship of Manhattan to Long Island and the career of Billy Joel intertwine, the focal point being his 2008 concerts there. Awesome Beatles footage I hadn't seen before, interviews with McCartney and Sting about playing there and a cool bonus feature of Chuck Klosterman expanding on what he said in his essay on Joel. Well worth watching even if you aren't a Billy Joel fan.

guess when it was about a song i like (dirty water...the book), i thought it wasn't such a bad idea. now...eh, litter with as many visual historical footnotes as you like this just doesn't appeal to me at all.

Well, this sucked. Pretentious, Jewish, humorless 'comedy' that fails to hit any marks except 'quirkiness'. Worst film I've seen in quite some time.



This, on the other hand, is beautiful. Beautifully shot, beautifully acted, great plot and dialogue, fucking fantastic, worth every millions of pennies they lost on it. The French language is my favourite to hear films in as well.

You didn't like the dalmation mice? The friendly-fire bb still stuck in a son's hand? The Stones tune in the pup tent soundtracking incestuous love? Danny Glover, as he straightens his tie, consoling a dejected Stiller with the heartbreaking, "I know, son"? That didn't get you?

That movie is fantastic.

Jewish!

No, I didn't laugh once. For a start, none of the characters were remotely believable and thus completely non-relatable. The humour wasn't good enough to make up for this. The whole thing was pretty bizarre, which was clearly the aim, but it didn't work at all for me. I didn't care for a single character, so none of the quasi-emotional moments had any sort of resonance.



I know all of Hollywood is Jewish territory, but this movie was just so fucking Jewish, to the point where I felt I had to be Jewish to get any humour/enjoyment out of it.

God Forbid!!!

don't worry, Waves Within, I know exactly what you're saying.

I've got nothing against those people, I just don't like the way they act, right buddy?

On the contrary, it's merely their sense of humour that leaves me baffled (no surprise, since most Jewish people I know have no discernable sense of humour - top quality dudes though some of them). This film though...you can enjoy mafia shit without being Italian...you can enjoy This Is England without being a white British nationalist...you can enjoy Queer As Folk without being gay...but you can't enjoy the Royal Tennebaums without being Jewish. I was recommended it by a Jewish dude I work with, so perhaps that has eschewed my thinking. Hey, just my opinion.

wow

anyway, Royal was only "half Hebrew" iirc

That's putting it lightly

make sure you don't want A Serious Man

Woody Allen? Mel Brooks? Jerry Lewis?

And their big stupid noses, amirite?

Drag, isn't it.

did I ever tell you guys how I feel about bankers?

I like bankers, they take my money and make it so I have more. They deserve their bonuses.

who runs these said banks?

I have nothing against Jewish people, their religion, their character, their good name, their aversion to pork, their banking monopoly, their media monopoly, their desire for land in the Middle East, their appearance etc etc etc. I simply find them humourless subjects for a film when they envelop it so. They should stick to emotional dramas about the Holocaust. That's just like, you know, my opinion, man.

Waves, I think you should've quit when you were behind. Honestly. mmmm bacon.

Wonderful quote from my favorite jews.

fiddler on the roof is a great musical

as someone who is, you know, jewish, i just want to thank waves within for providing lolz for years to come. i didn't realize that there were any actual anti-semites left, but just when i thought we had become hopelessly stat quo, here you come to make me feel like a minority again.

thanks so much. it's been years since i felt this comfortable in my own skin.

It's OK, I'm not judging you.

And if you seriously thought there were no anti-semitics left, you obviously don't hang around in the Asian community too much. Quite what I've said that's so offensive to Jewish people is beyond me though, I hate Christian rock music but it doesn't mean I hate Christians for fucks sake. You dudes need to chill.

you're right. it's not you that's crazy, it's everyone else.

waves within: the last sane man on the planet.