Hell, yes. Threads kicks ass. Makes the Day After even more insipidly melodramatic than it already is.

Also check out When The Wind Blows.

Oh yeah, it was a big, big deal when FOX showed it unedited here in the US, with lots of 'parental disclaimers' inbetween commercials. Very heavy.

When The Wind Blows has a great Roger Waters soundtrack.

you know this is a remake right? see 'Mostly Martha' & tell me whether this statement still holds true for you.




the black book

paul verhoven can be many things and a feminist is not one of them. I've heard some remarks like he's back to his original form with this one but its still marked by his twisted hollywood years in some ways which is more disappointing than thrilling. terribly underwhelmed by the resolutions in this flick and I'd expected more vengeful violent sequences to match his usual sexual proclivities but then he's always been that whacky dutchman of a filmmaker so I guess we can't always get everything.

I always get the fuzzy end of the lollipop.

Some Like It Hot: Finally got around to seeing this and I think it was a tad oversold to me beforehand. I mean, it was funny and all, but all the "Greatest Comedy of All-Time", "Most Hilarious Movie Ever" stuff set me up with really high expectations. I mean, as far as Billy Wilder comedies go, I prefer both 'The Apartment' and 'Fortune Cookie' to this. Which isn't to say I didn't like it, it was funny and ended on the perfect note. Also, words cannot begin to describe just how disturbing Tony Curtis' female voice is. I'm going to have nightmares about it for a long time.

seriously.

Go Now.

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Don't miss this. It's like Pan's Labyrinth, only better.

^^The Fall does look good.

I'll second White Light Black Rain.



This wasn't bad:

thanks, i'm going to check it out soon

IMHO, Hero>Curse>Flying Daggers

One of the oddest movies I've ever seen:

Is it a critique of civil war in Burma (Myanmar)?

Is it simply a meditation on the perils of war?

Perhaps an exploration on the relationship of violence and God (or a lack therof)?

Or is it just a balls out 80's action film which averages 3.2 kills per minute, which total surpasses the previous three Rambos combined (according to wiki)?

I honestly never knew how to feel during this movie. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

Aw Gene Kelly!

Also the pianist's imagined jazz symphony! !!

That movie will either be A) The most ridiculously overwrought and pretentious thing I will see in some time, or The most amazing, magical thing I will see in some time. Either way, colour me interested.


Yup. I was watching it, trying to imbue it with meaning ("So, the Burmese goverment is evil because they kill people but Rambo isn't because he kills armed people? No, wait, war is in some people's blood? And it's pointless to try and deny it?") before I realized it was just extremely bloody entertainment.

Tony Takitani's real name was...Tony Takitani

Tony Takitani: An exquisitely filmed painful meditation on loneliness. Based off a short story from my favourite working author, Haruki Murakami, it's about a son of a jazz trumpeter who leads a lonely life before falling in love with a woman obsessed with clothes. Her obsessiveness begins to worry him, as he has to devote an entire room of their house to her wardrobe and he seeks to curb her bad habit. It's ponderously slow with a really weird structure, as the film is narrated by an unseen voice, but the character occasionally break in and finish his sentences. Great camerawork, though, and a gorgeois Ryuichi Sakamoto soundtrack. And Issey Ogata is becoming one of my favourite actors to see after Yi Yi, and now playing the dual rules of Takitani and his father (I didn't even realize he played the father until looking it up afterwards, that's how good he is).

I didn't enjoy this as much as others of its ilk, simply[spoiler] for repeating the major plot point twice, albeit once as 'real life' and once as 'fantasy'[/spoiler]. But the choreography is why you watch this, not the story.

lucky number slevin

ebert said it best.. I feel like they're yanking my chain. great cast for a lackluster plot.
it'd have been better if there was an actual 'reveal' of some kind instead of this deconstructed revenge played from the inside out which leaves you with nothing but wondering if slevin could even possibly grow up with such a grudge. I suppose the set designs alone make for cable viewing folly but don't spend any hard earned money on this lest you're prepared for some disappointment.

I really don't think it's overwrought and pretentious. I know that some things like this are, and I know that I like some of these things, but I think that this this isn't the case with the fall. Splitting time between two different narratives dilutes the fantastic and picturesque nature of the one. Also, none of the dialogue is in any way arty. It moves naturally and balances humor with the drama. I'm tempted to compare it to Wes Anderson in that regard, but I know that there's a backlash, and I've been told that's not necessarily an apt comparison.

None of the more arty/experimental sections last more than 30 seconds before it's back to reality or dialogue.

Ah, now that makes a big difference. Because the trailer makes it look 90% arty/experimental with short bursts of reality or dialogue and I could see where that formula would get tiresome.

And I'm not trying to be negative, if that's how I'm coming across, because your endorsement and the trailer have really intrigued me. I just have a feeling this is going to be very much a Hate-It-Or-Love-It kind of movie: the people who like it will just gush over it and defend it to death, while the people who don't will tear it to shreds needlessly.

300

whoah...spartans.....coollll. did miller proud I'd say...least with the blood splatter credits..nice touch


live flesh

twas one of the few almodovar's that I'd not caught up with. excellent.

targets

bogdanovich's first flick is really odd in a way where it's supposed to play off his own relationship with corman. However, unless you were already aware of it. It really ends up looking more like he'd owe him something for the amount of footage he borrows which takes up a great deal of screentime. not exactly a run out and see it kinda thing but perhaps for the completist in some of you (or perhaps per the later Karloff performance) might make it worthwhile. outside of that you can go on living without wasting your time here.


babel

'amores perros' was such a phenominal flick and while '21 grams' had its moments. babel didn't quite feel as connected (or at least powerful) and perhaps it was b/c of the bouncing between the continents. Then again, I was already suspect of a moroccan/terrortist shooting incident to make international news. despite it happening to an american. I just have incredible doubt in the 'reaction' that the film suggests would be had from this 'event'. the japanese deaf girl was by far the most engaging imo. It could've carried on to a whole other film. far more engaged in that plot alone.

This was actually pretty decent.

50s satire-lite, with zombies.

This was great, of course. I think I'll have to buy it and watch it a half dozen more times to really have any slight idea what was going on. The ending felt so cheap, but I suppose that was the whole point. It's the American way to go out.
This movie was so beautiful, every shot just amazing. Loved it.



Also great. I felt that he was trying to hard to be clever with everything he does, though.



I don't know, I wasn't crazy about this one. Maybe because I went in thinking that it was going to be great, and I felt like I missed something. I didn't really get caught up in it. Man do people take a long time to die in Godard movies.

Next up:

Cool beanz. A good one, but my favorite Godard has got to be

(wish my library had the movies you listed above)

On Netflix's "Watch it Now" which is excellent. Four funny people.

i'll keep that in mind and check that one out next.
Yeah, my public library doesn't have all these movies, but I'm getting them from my school library. Now that its summer, there's no chance a class would have the film on hold.

The Joe Strummer song at the end hit me incredibly hard.

Wonderful film.

Running With Scissors


terrible

On a second pass through Jet Li's The One, I discovered a Mark "American Movie" Borchardt cameo. His imdb page says he's got a role in the upcoming Cabin Fever 2 movie. That's pancakes-level good news.

Hey, watch your mouth you dumb friggin' Swede.

Grumpy Old Men: After all the Jack Lemmon movies I've seen for the first time this year (The Apartment, Some Like It Hot, The Fortune Cookie), I joked with my mother that "All I need to see now is Grumpy Old Men" and she was all excited to watch it with me. So, in adddition to giving me a good idea for her birthday present, I finally watched Grumpy Old Men after some 15 years of ignoring it. But, it's actually really good. I always assumed it was Lemmon & Matthau cashing a paycheque for some easy slapstick work, but it actually is a good enough movie that it could stand shoulder-to-shoulder with some of their older ones. Both are really good in this, though, they tend to get overshadowed every time Burgess Meredith is onscreen.

Grumpier is pretty good too, but Out to Sea and Odd Couple 2 are the ones where they were cashing in.

next up

Grumpier is on the docket this week, methinks (It was a double bill DVD).

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Pretty damn good low-budget film noir. Short and effective.

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Classic, simply superb Renoir. I never mind returning to this one. IMO, perhaps his best film.

watched the savages tonight. really excellent, not as unbearable as i thought it might be. don't know why this wasn't more warmly received. it was like the 'happiness' to 'little miss sunshine's 'american beauty'. or something. it just felt honest, and even if the characters were pretty miserable, i still felt for them. and it made me laugh a whole lot.

oh, and i remember preferring out to sea to the grumpy old men movies. but the best was the one with james garner about the ex-presidents. and by best, i mean most ridiculous. it was like the hudson hawk of old fart buddy movies.

what is with all of these comparisons tonight?

haven't seen this tony jaa kat before but i'm pretty sure i'll be picking up Ong-Bak after seeing this. i'm assuming with this genre that if you watched ong-bak first you wouldn't be as impressed (only saying this because it seems like alot of the moves get recycled) but damn this movie had some beautiful fight scenes. the scene with jaa and the guy who had pray carved into his chest was one of those. other times, like the scene towards the end where jaa faces the guys in black and proceeds to break at least one limb on each of them, are straight up video game fun. i might watch this again right now.

I haven't seen the US version of the Protector. The original Thai version was way too long and featured some HORRIBLE English dialogue and plot. I think that version might have it edited, which would make it damn great.

I feel like there's some scenes in it that trump some scenes in Ong-Bak, but everything else in Ong-Bak is also damn perfect.

Nowhere near as maudlin as the trailers made it out to be. Smith was as good as advertised, but the hamfisted cutesy narration really hurt the movie. Not quite recommended.

i didn't feel it was too long but agree with this in passing fashion. regarding plot...for me plot is secondary in movies like this so plot weakness didn't bother me at all.

Too many go-nowhere subplots and some suspect basketball scenes hurt this. Folks, it's always easier to get a performance out of an athlete than to get athleticism out of an actor. Still, fairly harmless genre piece.

in the last several days:

parts of 300 -- such a letdown on the small screen after seeing it on IMAX. i figured this would be one of those flicks you can watch frivolously whenever it's on, but it just seemed so boring the second time.

Hot Fuzz -- also doesn't lead to repeated viewings, especially when you compare it to Shawn of the Dead. it's like Neon Bible. i did catch a couple of lines that were missed the first time around (like the Aaron A. Aaronson gag)

Spiderman 3 -- just laughable. and great. and ridiculous. so good

the last ~30 minutes of Breaking Away -- simply perfect.

It wasn't necessarily that it had a BAD plot, they both have very simple plots that are completely effective. It was just too much lame exposition, character development and bad acting (because they tried to have thai actors speak in english.)

Boy loves elephant. Boy loses elephant. Boy fights a million bad guys to get elephant back.

We really don't need half an hour to set that up

I liked The Savages quite a bit as well. I don't think I've ever seen a performance by Hoffman that didn't absorb me entirely. He had a great year with this, Charlie Wilson's, and Before the Devil.

What the fuck is wrong with everyone today?

District B-13: Action seemed even more breathtaking on a second go-through, while the plot leading to said actions scenes seemed more...awful...this time around, too. Still, it's a fun movie to show your friends who would have never seen it, otherwise, and watch their reactions to it. I also like that the bald guy was able to parlay this into a fight scene with Bruce Willis in the last Die Hard


It's Kikujiro, dammit.

Kikujiro: is one of my favourite movies ever. It's about a kid travelling to find his father along with a friend of his grandmother's. The friend is Takeshi Kitano, who plays a grumpy ex low-level yakuza and it's just a funny, wacky, surprisingly touching movie where very little happens. The last segment where everyone just hangs out, plays games, and amuses the kid is one of my favourite sequences in any movie ever.

Some people go to church... I found a more entertaining way to relax on a Sunday afternoon:



Dirty Harry - Ultimate Collector's Edition box set

Hell yeah.

man i haven't seen a dirty harry movie in years. i get the feeling i might be let down.

eh, disagree. i hate when movies rush the first 20-30 mintues. watched Clean a while ago and from the beginning up to his death seemed very rushed with forced performances by the actors. but you know, i understand when a movie is already going on 2 hours you are trying the patience of viewers.

Fuckin-A! Don Siegel made those bad ass movies deeper than all of the imitations that followed.

I remember that I saw DH as a kid, on ABC's late night movie,and the Scorpio character freaked the fuck out of me. Had no idea until much, much much later in life that the movie was directly inspired by the Zodiac. I can only imagine what impact that shit must have had on the box office. Especially since the fucker was never caught.

The movie of the SOMB.

Really, I don't necessarily mind taking some time to set up character and plot, but if it SUCKS, just cut that shit, which they did. Original Version: 108, US Version: 81. What's nice is that 2 disc set includes both. Haven't watched the US one yet.

Regrettably slight, though it had its moments. Finally learned there's no "r" in Jemaine, which had often confused me.

God was that thing a turd

I think I've watched this once a year since it came out. Still holds up.

Another gorgeous film by Wong Kar-Wai. As usual, everything about it is beautiful: the scenery, the music, the glamorous women. Even though it felt a little long towards the end I think this might be my favorite of his movies that I've seen.

I think I might have to post some pics of Faye Wong in the crushes thread now.