If you watched it, it would annoy you more.

Much much more.

We watched "SAW IV" last night, and I tell ya, I think most of today's horror flicks are complete sheit, but once again, I was pretty impressed. I dunno how, but the guys who do these movies know how to tell a story. In even the fourth sequel! It was still preety good, even if it wasn't as good as the first couple.

And the other weekend we watch a very unknown miniseries called "The Company" It was on TNT, and starred Chiris O'Donnell, Alfred Molina, and michael Keaton, and I'd put it right up there with the quality of most HBO movies. It was pretty damn good. Felt like another one of those Carre novels. Somebody must've greenlighted this after the "Good Shepherd" came out. Very similar, but even more in depth and interesting. (And of course more fun to watch on DVD, than TV)

We also watched "The Assassaination of Jesse James" last night, with Brad Pitt and Casey fuckin Affleck, and, in a word-- boring.

I just finished Away from Her, and it was amazing. Depth, subtley, empathy, it was all there. It's also a love story about seniors and alzheimers. This is definitely in my top ten, maybe number one. Dammit, now I see it's 2006, but it's up for this year's Oscars.

Don't just look at the date in the title, look at the release dates page:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0491747/releaseinfo

It's great...and eligible.

what's the word LMNOPT? Can I still move some list around?

Sunshine

Rescue Dawn

Both are fantastic, absolute must-see's.

I didn't even know there was a revised top 100. If Sturges is finally get his due, it's long overdue. And very much thanks to the Coen bros.

Yeah...I won't be tallying until Thursday morning so change anything you want up until midnight Wednesday.

Saw Sunshine last night too. It was ok. The twist with ~25 minutes left was pretty good, but the rest was just stupid. Really, how many of these doomed spaceship movies have to end with the main character running around the ship in a spacesuit, racing against a fucking countdown no less? And what was the point of it all?

It was kind of pointless, I'll give you that. But I loved the way it launched full-throttle into the mission, without bothering to setup emotional connections the people were leaving behind etc. Also loved the pace, methodic, without ever feeling painfully slow. And come on, you have to give it some credit for original storyline. The sun is dying, we're gonna plant a bomb in it to reignite it?! Nice idea, great follow-through imo.

Well, except for the 3 minutes of the main character sending the cliche goodbye message to his folks.


Yeah, I liked the story, and the movie kept me entertained for 2 hours. Felt it could have been a lot more though. We need more intelligent sci-fi.

What's all this underrated talk? Preston Sturges has always been very highly esteemed.

Esteemed by people who dig film, yes. But I'd bet that you could find 100 people who could tell you who Frank Capra was before you could find 5 people who could tell you who Preston Sturges was.

Exactly. When it comes to film, Tony forgets there's a world outside of academia.

King of Kong-

Really good flick. I gave my wife the skinnny on the movie, before I popped it in, she just rolled her eyes and said, "why do you pick this crap?". Ten minutes later she was completely sucked in.

3:10 To Yuma-

Saw the ending coming very early on, but the perfromances were so good I really like the journey to get there. Now I'm curious to see the original.

So I watched this last night:



I forgot how great this movie is. I love that 80's paranoia, but it's also just a fun film. It's sort of inspired me to do my own mini B-Movie-attacks-on-consumer-culture filmfest, so I think I'm gonna follow it up with:





and of course



The great thing is that They Live, Robocop, and Repo Man are all on comcast ondemand right now.

You could kindasorta add Gremlins I & II to that fest, too.

This is one of my favorite films of all time. Roddy Piper is excellent.

ridiculously awesome.

I'm not in Academia. And as for the general public you would probably have a hard time these days finding someone who knows who Frank Capra is...or anyone else who doesn't have a myspace page.


How long before 'They Live' is remade? They are working their way through the John Carpenter ouvre what with Assault on Precint 13, Halloween and The Fog already done and Escape from NY in the works. I'm waiting for the 'Memoirs of an Invisble Man' remake.

There's no way anyone can improve on "Vampires"!

They sort of already did:

Re: They Live--I had a crush on Roddy Piper for awhile after that movie came out. Wished at the time they'd figuredhow to do a credible sequel to it.



This was really good. Bowie sounds just like Pierce Brosnan now.

Margot at the Wedding: Against most people's advisories, I went ahead and rented this today. For the first 20, maybe 30, minutes, I was pretty sure everyone was nuts and this was really good. Jack Black's character Malcolm alone was worth the price of the rental with the way he swings from depression to rage (In particular the scene where he laments getting older and how he forgets things, and Margot talks about how she's starting to forget simple words like "sediment" and he gets angry and says he's not talking about those kinds of things, but how he can't remember the name of the bass player for Motley Crue, then sighs as if he's been deeply wounded) and back again and Margot (Nicole Kidman) was kind of a bitch but with some depth and it was so obvious she was going to have this great moment where she realizes how awful she's been. Then she gets crueler. And crueler. And finally at the zenith of her cruelty, the movie has the audacity to side with her, and
[spoiler]show us that she was right about Malcolm all along[/spoiler]
then just kind of ends. Margot is one of the most odious characters of the year. I'd rather hang out with Billy Mitchell. I'd rather have Daniel Plainview look after my kids. Jack Black is still pretty good, actually, you end up liking him even when he does bad things. An entire movie about Malcolm with Margot on the periphery might have been better. Either way, not so hot.

Touch 'em all, fella.

Shoot 'Em Up: Slackmo's right on saying this is basically a cartoon. Every time I thought it had topped itself in ridculousness, it went out and did it again.

[spoiler] carrot through the back of the head < sliding in oil to shoot people < diving through a moving car's windshield < skydiving gunfight < bullets in the fingers heated in the fire < shooting a guy in the side to move his arm, then the wrist to make him pull the trigger[/spoiler]

Oh, and that's not a bad thing, in case I'm making it look like it, it's actually quite great. This kind of managed to "out Die Hard" Live Free or Die Hard. I would totally watch James Bond movies if they were more like this.

Decent, but would've benefited from some editing. There was no reason this needed to run nearly 2.5 + hours.

it was on tv. nothing else was on

boy was this crap.
couldn't tell if it was a comedy or drama, it was paced poorly, directed poorly, written poorly, acting... eh.
but i will say that the fight scenes between braff and jacinda barrett (god i've loved her since real world) are great.
well really jacinda is great, she cand scream like no one else.

I hated this movie....and I love John Woo. It was way too cute and too self aware, like just about every other post Woo/Tarantino carbon copy flick out there (and no one will ever out-cool Chow Yun Fat in gunplay flicks).

Yes there was. And the Director's cut that's 10 minutes longer is even better. It may be the best crime film ever made. Certainly one of them.

little children

the failed attempt to supposedly make kate winslet look homely was probably the most confusing portion that makes the events in this one all the more odd. I found it visually appealing to watch and there was an interesting development but by the end it was all wrapped up far too easily for what would obviously be a much larger and nastier circumstance and I kind of wish some of the other characters were written better. its not bad filmmaking but the translation to film doesn't exactly reveal great storytelling either.

Michael Clayton: Not as visceral as the first time I saw it, though I still found myself breathless for the last stretch. Might be my #1...I'm weighing I type this.


Lust, Caution: This was decent enough, but not blow-me-away stuff. Everything looked terrific, and the costumes were really gorgeous. Tang Wei's nipples are truly a sight to behold, though. Seriously they were like antennaes.

I just finished ordering my list. Solidarity, brother.

Paris Je T'Aime




Interview

Finished just in time to include these in the '07 poll. Both very enjoyable.

I finally saw this. It's a great movie. I've always known what rosebud was, so the end really didn't affect me one way or the other, but that's beside the point.

You can definitely tell a young guy made it, though. Both for it's brashness and because there's something that's just a little off about how the older characters are depicted. It's hard to put my finger on it.

The worst acting was from Kane's second wife. But the character was supposed to be grating, so it works for the film.

Last night I saw Spirit of the Marathon. A film that was at times unbearably cheesy and at other times fascinating.

They should have focused less on the chubby mom types that are running w/ support groups to convince themselves completing the marathon at a snail's pace is somehow an accomplishment. And focused more on the history of the event, the Kenyan runners & the back stories of marathon champions that had interviews sprinkled throughout.

Badass.

i know of whom you speak.

Just ok. Stevie Wonder & Love were good in the closing credits.

Two pretty-much identical movies from 1978:

Confessions of a Superhero
An entertaining 90 minutes about some fairly sad people. Superman & Batman need professional help.
Wonder Woman reminds me of a zoftig version of Natalie Portman (not a bad thing).

Rent it!

watched No Cuntry for Old Men last night. Damn fine movie. I was surprised the bad guy didn't just kill the kid and take the shirt instead of paying him for it...

Oldboy: So, apparently shady Chinatown bootlegs can't be relied on as last night watching the actual Fox DVD of this, I was confronted by two surprises:
1) The scene of the lonely girl on the subway imagining the giant ant seated further down the car from her. That was not in the version I watched.
2) That the title is actually used in the movie, when Oh dae-su logs onto the alumnus website and it says "Evergreen Old Boys". That, also, was not in the shady bootleg and always left me wondering why it had such a lousy title.

Anyways, this is still such a great movie, it's great fun to watch with people who've never seen it and see what they react most to:
[spoiler]For one friend, it was the hammer-assisted dental scene, for the other, it was the cutting out of the tongue[/spoiler]

with time to kill this afternoon i went to the theater. based on a rec from a friend i chose this one:

not really having any idea what to expect. kinda fucking creepy. after babysitting a strange child when i was a teenager any thriller with creepy weird children who "know more than we do" resonates a little more. i still enjoyed it even though it's not really in my wheelhouse. contains several "holy fuck!" scenes.

which songs do they play?

HEY-O!

Sicko

Pretty good stuff. Almost enough to make me want to move to France. The stuff he said about keeping people afraid and dissillusioned to keep them from forcing change seemed pretty dead on.
The Gitmo part was a little too much.
Solid rental.

Just when I thought Takashi Miike was the sickest man in the planet, this movie comes out of nowhere. Pretty good, though.

here too.

but im definitely moving to france. DEFINITELY.

i saw crash last night. what a flaming piece of horseshit.