Certainly the B&W added to the film. It seemed there were a handful of big film released that year in B&W. Just off the top of my head, Raging Bull and Stardust Memories. The year before, Woody shot Manhattan in B&W. There might be a few more, I don't know. It'd be nice if more filmmakers shot in B&W as it's just gorgeous.

The elephant stomping bits were definitely pure Lynch, and couldn't been interesting, but they don't really go anywhere. He doesn't really explore what any of that might mean. They feel tacked-on to the beginning and the end (if memory serves). It's like he Lynchified the film in the opening and forgot about it for the rest of the picture.

But yes, the acting was great. My main problems are with the screenplay.

A Lynch-directed From Hell movie shot in black and white and more faithfully adapted would probably be amazing.

The ending of 'Melquiades' or 'No County'?

I loved them both.


Am I on my feet?

On the Waterfront: Pretty awesome. I'd never seen this, neither had my parents, which we thought was odd. Marlon Brando is really great in this. Also, I got a huge kick out of seeing Herman Munster as one of the mob underlings. My only gripe was the score was a little overdramatic, didn't always match the action, and sometimes was a bit overbearing.

Burials, to each their own, but I have no interest in No Country.

Marlon Brando is great in everything.

The Hole (dir. Tsai Ming-liang)

I liked the end.

How Melquiades had told stories about his great life back in Mexico, but that none of it was true, made a lot of sense as if it was so great, why would he have left in the first place? I also loved the way that Barry Pepper fought Tommy Lee Jones every step of the way, even refusing to ask Melquiades for forgiveness. But, when he finally breaks down and apologizes and purges himself, and Tommy Lee Jones leaves him there, we hear pretty much the first words out of Barry Pepper's characters mouth that aren't motivated by selfish reasons: "Are you gonna be okay?" So, it's a voyage as much about a friend's promise to another, as it is a voyage of penance and redemption.


Ah, heh heh heh. Ever hear of a ritual killing? Ah, heh heh heh heh heh

Uncle Buck: Man, this was way better than I remembered it being. I mean, I still had it in like Top 20 of the decade, but, for what I assumed, were mainly sentimental reasons. But, actually, it's still really funny. A lot of stuff that didn't make as much sense when I was little and watched this make a lot more sense (i.e. the neighbour thinking Buck is raping someone in the house) now. Also, cable showings cut out A LOT of this movie, like (I completely forgot that Buck actually kidnaps Bug, drives around with him in the trunk of his car, before hitting golf balls at him).

on a real Welles kick lately.

And yeah, Caley, I like the ending too. I haven't seen Uncle Buck, maybe I'll add to the queue.

Finally saw the movie Murderball about quad rugby players and liked it a lot. Despite the cheesy Polyphonic Spree song at the end of the trailer, it's really good movie.

Murderball trailer

Just finished Season 2 and you were spot on with your remarks. I was shocked that the murder was resolved so early on in the season, after that everything got splintered into a million directions, though there were some pretty cool spots here and there, it didn't get back to must see until the last couple episodes, the last of which indeed did blow my skull away. The special features are amazing, the Japanese Georgia Coffee commercials, the 1-900 voicemails, the Twin Peaks festival, the Saturday Night Live skits. I feel like I'm a Twin Peaks historian now.

All that's left for me now is FWWM.

First off the cinematography is absolutely beautiful in this film,But I couldn't get into this as much as I wanted to. It was interesting enough,However it felt like a movie that I could pretend to love based on it's public reputation. It was enjoyable,don't get me wrong, But, I'm not jumping at my DVD player to watch it again anytime soon. Aside from De Niro's performance and the unique,brutal way the fights were filmed, I really don't know what I'd watch it again for. I personally think that Taxi Driver is the superior De Niro/Scorcese film.

Really? Page Tony to dispute that somewhere...

Hehe, get into Glen Or Glenda sometime if you haven't...

Dan In Real Life

I found myself liking this one. Steve Carrel could become a fine dramatic actor, if he chooses. He doesn't have a great range of facial expressions, but he's very direct on screen and very hard not to like. Other casting choices could have been better-- Dane Cook, the other brother, the other sister in law, John Mahoney stick out in my mind. (Cook in particular.) But Juliette Binoche is amazing and beautiful and warm, and she and Carrel play well off of each other. The plot is totally predictable, along with a lot of the dialog... but I liked it anyway.


The Golden Compass


About what I expected. I didn't want anything taxing. It was a hard week last week.

Dan In Real Life

I found myself liking this one. Steve Carrel could become a fine dramatic actor, if he chooses. He doesn't have a great range of facial expressions, but he's very direct on screen and very hard not to like. Other casting choices could have been better-- Dane Cook, the other brother, the other sister in law, John Mahoney stick out in my mind. (Cook in particular.) But Juliette Binoche is amazing and beautiful and warm, and she and Carrel play well off of each other. The plot is totally predictable, along with a lot of the dialog... but I liked it anyway.


The Golden Compass


EDIT: Sorry about the double post

oh yes. terribly underrated among the Hughes flicks. great stuff all around.



sex in the city

the irony of the originally very low budget made for cable show making a metamorphosis into a two and a half hour near epic length pic is that there's not nearly enough bang for your buck. even as I admittedly saw every episode of the entire show (as well as the sopranos) the fashionistas and shoe mongers may be tickled pink but I was just wondering where the heat was? maybe this was supposed to be the uber fans love letter but I thought it was barely a hallmark moment.

the main fallout extends to a period of over six months and the desired results fall into place in too trivial a manner. it defeats the complexity that the shows character always set to expand on. even the moments of lamenting were weak if not lazy. it seems like the screenwriting team must have had conference calls in to nora ephron at some point.

meagerly amused overall.

edit-eh. just saw there was a SITC thread several weeks ago. ah well.

Hide a stone among stones and a man among men.

The Hidden Fortress: Pretty good. Not my favourite Kurosawa, but still lots of fun. And what's up with the happy ending? That is very unKurosawa like. Also, the woman who played the princess-in-hiding was lovely, but what was with her voice? When she said stuff like "You look very handsome!" she said it with such a snarl you'd swear she was constantly cursing everybody out. I don't get people who say that Star Wars is terrible because it rips this one off, there's a very small influence (The movie being seen through the eyes of its two lowest characters who bicker throughout the film).

Will do. I've heard some..interesting things about it, and still have yet to see it.

EDIT- Oh, and since it's a talked about thing lately, I watched Batman Begins again today to prepare for Dark Knight, and I didn't like it as much as I did previously. It's still a good film and all, but watching it out of the mindset of "ooh, this is Nolan directing Batman", I found a lot of the dialogue overly weighty. Like basically anything Liam Neeson said, from the moment Bale was introduced to him, it was these feeble attempts at deep dialogue. Or all the different comments on what it was Batman was doing, on the concept of justice and so on, it just seemed too heavy-handed, and worse, clumsy. I've heard that a large part of the second film focuses on the concept of Batman being a super-hero vs. vigilante, and the implications of that, but the set-up for that in this film feels awkward. And then some of the dialogue was plain groanworthy. Tom Wilkinson with the "your father begged" bit just had me wondering how many damn times I'd heard that one.

On a lighter note, I realized for the first time that I actually liked Katie Holmes in the role, and that's it probably going to annoy me to no end having Maggie Gly-whatever playing the same part. Just give him a new girlfriend, they left Holmes with a reasonable exit at the end of Begins.

What a great movie. Found myself yearning for someone today (lots of someones, including a network) to grow such balls...and be listened to. I wonder if it would be possible for such a thing to ever happen again.



Interesting to see Lauren Ambrose in this role, but I couldn't get into it.

I thought that was some of the most compelling stuff in the film.

No offense, but to me if felt like lowbrow versions of dialogue I'd heard in more complex films. The previous times I've watched it, I was right there with you, my favorite portion of the film was the bit with Neeson and the training in the mountains, but watching it again, I just couldn't figure out why I'd been so into it before.

I found it almost amusing, when Bale firsts meets Neeson in his cell, and Neeson is immediately talking about being a Legend and so on, I feel like realistically someone would be thinking/saying, 'Woah, why am I listening to you? I've know you for about 20 seconds.'

EDIT- Good Night, and Good Luck really is a great film. More interesting stuff than I ever would've expected from Clooney, with it and Syriana I had hope he'd become an intriguing actor, but he's gone back to just whatever, IMO.

The Good German?
Michael Clayton?

even Leatherheads was intriguing. Sure, he made Ocean's 13 in there, but what the hell.

Hell, even Out Of Sight and...going out on a limb...From Dusk Til Dawn.

I was only pointing out the films he made AFTER Syriana/Good Night & Good Luck. If we're going backwards...O Brother, obv.

Boring, even by Godard standards.

I gave up 45 minutes in because I kept falling asleep...helpful review from someone who watched it so you don't have to...

http://www.popmatters.com/film/reviews/k/k...-right-up.shtml
Many of the films made by Jean-Luc Godard, in his 40-year career are idiosyncratically verbose, self-consciously probing, philosophical inquiries that deal with the dialectics and concepts of life, death, history, politics and film. What they often don't feel like is a regular movie with a bunch of characters and a plot. Such is the case with Keep Your Right Up! (whose French title, Soigne Ta Droite!, translates literally as "tend to your rights"), a muddled film with three plots; the main one about a filmmaker (played by Godard) trying to deliver a film to a producer in 24 hours.

Godard is notoriously difficult to pin down. His career, which encompasses some 50 films, falls into four general categories: the New Wave period, from 1959-1968 (Breathless through One Plus One); his Marxist politics and dialectics period, from 1969-1980 (Wind From the East through Comment Ca Va?); his re-emergence as commercial maverick, between 1981-1990 (Every Man for Himself through Nouve Vague); and his personal montage essay films, from 1992 to present (Germany Year 90 Nine-Zero through Histoire du Cinema).

The only consistency over all this time is that Godard has never become a commercial director, like his fellow New Wave compatriot Francois Truffaut. He makes personal films, with little or no consideration for the masses, which is one reason why he is so admired by elite film buffs. But sometimes, his films are so off the charts that they seem, at best, mere folly, and at worst, incomprehensible doodling. Keep Your Right Up!, new on DVD from Facets Video, is both.

The film breaks into three intersecting, vignette-like "stories" that appear to have nothing to do with each other. The main one concerns an airplane trip taken by Godard's character (named by fellow characters, alternately, "The Idiot" and "The Prince"), to deliver a film to producers, another involves a rehearsal session by a two person techno-pop band named Rita Mitsouko, and the other involves a series of annoyingly silly scenes with an overweight guy called only "the individual" (played by French Comedian Jacques Villeret). After a series of odd, sometimes perplexing, scenes, the Prince delivers his film, the band takes their act on the road, and the individual has been arrested for spying on a woman.

But the plot is hardly Godard's main focus. Instead, Keep Your Right Up! is more concerned with asserting the significance of art in a world that isn't interested in art. The title may be interpreted as the film's "message," as if Godard is saying that, despite setbacks or producers telling you what to do about your art, just ignore them and keep up your own right. Such broad pontification makes Godard's films at once appealing, difficult, and maddening: appealing because they leave so much open to interpretation, difficult because of their obscure, Brechtian dramatic structures, and maddening at times, because they can be so cloyingly enigmatic.

Still, this combination of effects makes Godard a unique artist, with a signature style. Watch any one scene from any one of his films in the past 15 years, and it cannot be mistaken for work by any other director. The way he frames scenes off center, his exceptional use of sound and shards of music (like he is a DJ remixing parts of techno-pop with Bach and Beethoven), the way the characters speak in intellectual riddles, and the way scenes are at once serious and deadpan funny -- all are distinctive markers.

Unfortunately, Keep Your Right Up!, which was made in 1987, is a little more difficult and maddening than usual. Often, Godard appears to be commenting on filmmaking, rather than actually making a film. In theory, this is fine, but, as too many scenes have no structure and just flutter off into incoherence, the whole appears to be in disarray. The film begins to feel as though Godard really did put it all together in 24 hours, as if he was short on funding and time, so just played around with ideas, hoping they would gel somehow in the editing room. Consider the moment, about halfway into the film, when he crosscuts among three scenes -- "the individual" dancing with a naked woman, the techno-pop music group practicing, and a group of odd passengers sitting on the Prince's airplane. Sequences like this seem composed of a cinematic language that only Godard can understand.

As if in an effort to draw connections, the film includes omniscient voice-overs that allude to literature and philosophy, for instance, Goethe's pronouncement of the death of God, Doestoevski's ideas about torture, the protests of May 1968 in Paris, as well as André Malraux's musings on fate and the wacky comedy of Jerry Lewis. Compounding such enigmas, Keep Your Right Up! is also full of cryptic dialogue, as when one character says, "I'll admit that people can communicate and trade things, as a husband or a wife trade caresses or a train ticket. But to me, that kind of communication is useless play-acting. The curtain never gets raised. And first time meetings are worse!" Or again, "We alone exist outside the soul. Yet we're also always inside the soul. So sometimes one of us becomes an angel."

What do these lines mean? Are they just bad poetry or is the director making some pronouncement? It's hard to say. Ultimately, they sound like clichés. This is just one of the reasons Godard's films are not "entertaining" in the traditional sense of the word. He has always had a Marxist's contempt for the banality of bourgeois entertainment but, at times, he leaves the audience behind completely. You might wonder then, what to take away from the film.

Godard's admirers (and I am one) understand that film need not be entertaining. And it's easy to defend a non-entertaining film the defense is premised on a significant political or aesthetic position. This is the case for many of Godard's best films -- such as Breathless, Weekend, Two or Three Thing I Know About Her, and JLG/JLG -- but Keep Your Right Up! doesn't seem to offer a solid idea. Its only strength lies in some of the cinematography by Caroline Champetier de Ribes, including recurring images of the sky and a glass door, looking out on a beach. Sometimes, a little girl stands in the doorway and the door is slammed shut by the wind. Perhaps there is a metaphor here, about doors closing on youth, but I'm not sure.

At one point toward the middle of this film, the voice-over says, "An Argentine writer said it was madness to write books, better to pretend these books exist. One only needs a synopsis, a commentary." Perhaps this is Godard's commentary on his own film.

Life is a horrible little giggle in the midst of a forced death march towards hell.

Dedication: This was a charming little romantic comedy. Billy Crudup plays a misanthropic OCD-sufferer who is paired up with a woman to finish the children's book series he had previously worked on with his only friend the deceased Rudy (Tom Wilkinson). The humor slowed down a bit in the last stretch, but it was pretty funny before that watching Crudup's character try to bring down everyone around him, yet you gradually grow to appreciate him. This should do well on my list for the 2007 Re-Correction. When does that start anyways? Elemeno PT? Slackmo?

I was told by many that Good German tried too hard to be exactly like the films it was inspired by to be interesting. I thought this point of view was commonly held..I didn't even watch, I heard this so resoundingly. So, of course, I have no right to criticize it.

Michael Clayton, you have me there, it was acclaimed. I, however, thought it was a basic thriller at best. It took far too long to find its focus, and even when it did, I was just bored. I also thought it abandoned everything it had that was potentially interesting (hardly using Pollack, etc), in favor of an extremely generic conclusion. He didn't die from the explosion because he wanted to pet the horsies? Please. Not to mention that he caught the 'bad guy' in the end with a "others are listening" trick, that got painfully old after The Firm. To each their own, but to me, it was a generic thriller that found way too much aclaim.

I won't even go into Leatherheads, I guess that's one that people find interesting due to whatever, but I certainly didn't. And yeah, Ocean's 13.

Spoiler Tags would have been nice...

On a less confrontational note, saw Dark Knight today. Liked it, definitely a step over the former film. Ledger was absolutely fantastic, he stole the show, to be sure. Eckhart held his own as well though. It did, as I\'ve heard mentioned on these boards, feel a bit rushed at the end, but all in all, a damn good summer film. I despised the Maggie girl, everything cute and likeable about the character Holmes played, I personally thought she stripped away in favor of a smarmy bitch. And to be shallow, she isn\'t nearly as a attractive as the former actress. I was basically glad that she died, I really couldn\'t have taken another film of her as Rachel. I was also frustrated/saddened that The Joker didn\'t have a great death scene, as obviously, we won\'t get to see him again, as Nolan presumably intended. If they try to have another actor play the part, I imagine disaster.

Oh, and did anybody find the transfer from Dent being a noble man to one who would kill a child unbelievable/set up poorly? I know he was hurt and in rage, but it seems to me a man such as him wouldn\'t so quickly and readily be prepared to kill a child. I at least would\'ve expected more lead up to this. And is he really dead? That wasn\'t much for such a famous villain.

Ah, changed it. Apologies. I assumed you'd seen it since you'd posted in defense of the films as well, nonetheless, it still would've ruined it for whomever else, my mistake. I think I was already thinking over where I'd put spoiler tags for my Dark Knight thoughts.

No offence to Pollack, who was good and all, but the movie was much more about Wilkinson, and to a lesser extent, Clooney's performances which were among the best of the year. Javier Bardem and Daniel Day Lewis were really good and all, but the best performance of the year 2007 was Tom Wilkinson.


No, no, no. He doesn't die because he spots the horses on the hillside which is almost the exact picture he saw in the book that Wilkinson's character had highlighted in his apartment. It's not a random thing that he stops and pets the horses. He stops because it's exactly what was in the book.


I want to go back and watch each of my Top 5 from last year again (Gone Baby Gone, King of Kong, No Country For Old Men, Lars and the Real Girl) before settling on anything. But, at this point Michael Clayton is a lock for spots #1, 2 or 3.

I think I might agree with you there. Wilkinson was fantastic. He wasn't in the film long enough to leave the impression I know he would've with more screen time. I know his murder set things in motion, but I felt he went out too soon. I thought Clooney was playing typical Clooney, blah. He was great in Syriana, but not here.




Hmm, guess I wasn't interested enough to pay close enough attention. Nonetheless, that makes it feel all the more contrived to me. Damn convient that that's exactly what the book showed, and that he thought, 'I'm basically a heartless dirtbag, but I'm really inspired by seeing this, I'll stop, just in time to save my life.'




I'm glad you enjoyed it, it just didn't do anything for me, I just found it incredibly generic. I know most people agree with you, my film professor gave my heaps of crap for not liking it.

EDIT- I really need to go back and reconsider my top list from last year. As of now, it stands-
1. There Will Be Blood
2. Eastern Promises
3. The Darjeeling Limited
4. Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
5. Gone Baby Gone

I'm not saying I LOVED any of those films, I'm just saying, he continues to make INTERESTING choices.

I made Syriana/GN&GL tied for #10 that year. None of those other films have come close.

Leatherheads, probably my least favorite of the bunch, I felt was definitely the most interesting choice.

Also, any film shot in B&W in the 21st century starts from the point of interesting. Yes, it could have been a little less in love with casablanca, but who out there is consistently picking (what I would consider) interesting and different films like Clooney.

Disregarding the M:I films, I think this (for me) is the most interesting filmography of a major actor out there. I even like the M:I films, as far as action films go, they were just right. Compare his list of films to other major actors (Will Smith?) and he's taken many more risks and interesting roles. I only went so far back on the imdb lists, but from Risky Business on, I love this guy.

# Valkyrie (2009) (filming) .... Col. Claus von Stauffenberg
... aka Walküre (Germany)

# Tropic Thunder (2008)
# Lions for Lambs (2007) .... Senator Jasper Irving
# Mission: Impossible III (2006) .... Ethan Hunt
# War of the Worlds (2005) .... Ray Ferrier
# Collateral (2004) .... Vincent
# The Last Samurai (2003) .... Nathan Algren
... aka The Last Samurai: Bushidou (USA: poster title)
# Minority Report (2002) .... Chief John Anderton
# Vanilla Sky (2001) .... David Aames
# Mission: Impossible II (2000) .... Ethan Hunt
# Magnolia (1999) .... Frank T.J. Mackey
... aka mag-no'li-a (USA: promotional title)
# Eyes Wide Shut (1999) .... Dr. William 'Bill' Harford

I thought you were crazy before, but now I realize you're dangerous.


Tom Cruise? Honestly, I don't think this is worth commenting on.

I knew I'd get chastised for this by someone, I actually found support last time I brought him up. I could go on all day about how the media is bullshit, and that's it easy to paint a relatively normal, nice individual as a monster. In my opinion, all religions are equally illogical, so whatever, find faith in what you can.

Ignoring what you'd argue as to his sanity, the man is a fantastic actor. Magnolia, that's all I feel I need to say. It's ironic that I'd end up feeling so strongly about pretty much the most obvious actor out there, considering my favorite actors tend to be the more obscure/less known/don't get the attention they deserve. Of course, perhaps it's the same, Cruise, using your post as an example, doesn't get near the respect he deserves.

EDIT- Not fond of this avatar even in the least, but just for you.

I really don't give a crap about couch-jumping, I just don't think he's very good. And he never has been.

Mission Impossible movies are horrible. Lions For Lambs looks horrible. Vanilla Sky. pffff. LAst Samurai is BORING. I really liked Minority Report tho...Collateral was pretty good. It's really no contest.

I thought you had me on a bold proclamation when there's people like PS Hoffman and Benicio Del Toro out there, but you wasted your chance on Tom Fucking Cruise.

I did so knowingly. I like the guy, sure it'll lose whatever little respect I carry around here, but it's who came to mind. I'd take him at his worst over Clooney any day.

PS Hoffman is superb. So is Gary Oldman, etc, etc. Hoffman and Cruise are friends, by the by.

I can see the argument for Last Samurai, but I think its Zwick's best film. (haven't seen Blood Diamond) I could care less about Glory, for all its acclaim, there's another generic, clumsily filmed movie. It's not the story that attracts me, so much as the beauty. I love Japan, and I love history, and the sheer beauty in each shot, to me, is spectacular.

Minority Report is superb. Aside from its crap ending, so is War of the Worlds. And Tom tears it up in both of them. In the latter, he was just such a loser, I was surprised he was so vulnerable. Collateral is also great, again aside from the ending.

EDIT-
Oh, and Vanilla Sky. If you take the ending for what's on screen, it's lacking. If you view the film for not what it appears to be, it's extremely interesting. At least to me, I think it's an extremely underrated film. It represented love and living, if you'll allow me to be so obnoxious, very well. I think I'm losing my connection in a storm, if I miss the bashing, I'll witness my demise when I can get back on.

Ed Zwick is horrible, the less said about him the better.

His best work is the opening credits of his first movie (About Last Night). It was all downhill from there

Sorry, Malcolm. I think Tom Cruise is a decent actor, actually, and I'm quite fond of him, but Clooney's last ten years smokes Cruises.


Yes!


Fuck, yes!


Now, Brad Pitt, there's a big-name actor who makes some interesting choices. He does a blockbuster, and then a weird one, a blockbuster, then a weird one.

Twelve Monkeys, Seven Years in Tibet, Snatch, Fight Club, Full Frontal, Confessions of A Dangerous Mind, Babel, and The Assassisnation of Jesse James (Though of varying quality, admittedly) are a pretty odd assortment of movies for a guy who could basically play He-Man or Romantice Lead for his entire career and make a fair sum of money.

Well, interest in actors is a pretty subjective thing, so I'm glad you enjoy Clooney, but I disagree as to which has made better films these past years. As I said though, it's just going to depend on opinion, and I've gotten pretty exhausted of defending Cruise these past years.

Nonetheless, just my two cents-

I bolded films (up to 1999) that I thought were worth my while. I don't make this to try and prove Cruise superior to Clooney, only to try and show why I personally like Cruise. The following judgments are entirely off my own opinion, and right or (more likely) wrong, this is how I feel about Cruise's career. And when I call some of Clooney's films "crap", I may be being unfair, it's just me saving time from discussing films I don't think are worth discussing.

Clooney-

Leatherheads- Crap.
Michael Clayton- Meh.
Ocean's 13- Crap.
Good German- Haven't seen, but doesn't interest me.
Syriana- Pretty damn good.
Good Night, and Good Luck- Another good one.
Ocean's Twelve- One of the worst "big" films I've seen.
Intolerable Cruelty- Crap.
Spy Kids 3- Seriously? Horrible.
Confessions...- Haven't seen it.
Solaris- An insult to the Tarkovsky film.
Welcome...- Haven't seen, but have heard negative things. Didn't even know he was in this.
Ocean's 11- Somewhat entertaining crap.
Spy Kids- I remember liking it, but I bet it's crap.
The Perfect Storm- Meh.
O, Brother Where Art Thou?- This one did nothing for me. That said, I watched for a teacher I didn't like.
Three Kings- Crap.

Cruise-

Lions for Lambs- If you're interested in politics, it's good. Cruise always said he didn't expect it to be a critical success, it did exactly what it set out to do, whether that interests you or not, depends on taste. I liked it, it didn't try to change the world, it just reflected on some things I found worth reflecting on.
M:I III- An extremely entertaining spy film. The tension between Hoffman and Cruise carry the film.
War of the Worlds- It perfectly grasps paranoia. Great scene after great scene- the tripods arising, Cruise with the "dust", the tension between the family, the car stuck amongst the people, the ferry sequence, Cruise and Robbins in the basement, etc. And Spielberg had to go and almost soil it with a terrible ending.
Collateral- Entertaining to no end. Keeps you guessing until the no-brainer ending. Cruise was superb, Foxx was overrated.
The Last Samurai- Repeating myself, to me, it was just a beautiful film. Sure, it gave into some things towards the end, but it never ceased to move me.
Minority Report- Amongst my favorite sci-fi, and potentially my favorite Spielberg film. Perfect sci-fi noir.
Vanilla Sky- Love it or hate it. It struck a deep cord with me.
M:I II- I didn't much like this 1st time through. I've come to enjoy it however, realizing that the only intent was for style, and as a stylistic film, it soars. Still, I won't "bold" it, as I'm sure few will agree with me.
Magnolia- 1999 is Cruise's finest hour. This is a superb film, and a superb peformance.
Eyes Wide Shut- Stanley fucking Kubrick. One of his best films, regardless of current consideration. Near all of Kubrick's films were underrated upon initial release/for a time after. If the film community at large has any sense, this will some day make the list of great films.

I understand someone who loves the original Tarkovsky not digging the Soderbergh Solaris, but I thought that film was really quite beautiful in a lot of ways. It's a lot more compact than the Tarkovsky one (not that length is a bad thing, just that it expresses its themes a lot more efficiently) and I think the emotional content is far more affecting.

As for Cruise versus Clooney, I think they've both had very interesting careers. Clooney probably wins the "last ten years" battle if only because Cruise hasn't really made a terribly interesting film since Collateral (even though I enjoyed the third Mission: Impossible and War of the Worlds). But when taking their careers as a whole, Cruise is easily the far more varied and impressive actor.

Hmm, I didn't really find the Soderbergh version very affecting, at least in comparison to the original. I found the sweeping story in the earlier film moving, and the length taken in exploring different elements worked for me. I just don't consider Soderbergh a good filmmaker.

And I suppose I'm beating a dead horse as no one seems to agree with me, but I take little interest in Clooney's last ten years, apart from Syriana and Good Night. Cruise is probably too concerned with getting his career back on track to do something lower key and risky. That said, I think Valkyrie, despise the mixed buzz, will deliver a worthy film. It sure was a damn risky project to choose when trying to reestablish one's self. Think about it, at a low point, he didn't go for something big and shiny, he played a senator in a small drama, and is following it up with playing a one-eyed, cripple of a Nazi that failed in his mission. That said, if he gets desperate, and goes for another Mission: Impossible or Top Gun, I'll become a bit concerned.

If I thought Bryan Singer was capable of delivering a half-way decent film, I might be optimistic about Valkyrie. He's a bit of a shit director, though.

Normally, I'd agree with you, but I must have faith because the script was just so damn good. IMO, he showed potential for directing a good thriller with Usual Suspects, the film itself just didn't play out to my satisfaction.

Magnus makes me miss Artem. I didn't think that could be possible.

If I knew who that was, I'd be more sure as to whether that was an insult or not..

Yeah, I didn't like Usual Suspects or any of his other films. Superman Returns was OK. The X-Men films were terrible. Apt Pupil wasted a really good McKellen performance and completely changed the ending from the book which would've added some resonance to the story. He's a nothing director.

Manda Bala (Send A Bullet)


Very interesting documentary about corruption and kidnapping in Brazil. Recommended.

I didn't see Apt Pupil. I didn't like any of his super hero films, but I remember liking the X-men pair better than the Superman film. That said, I only watched each once. As far as Valkyrie goes though, the entire cast seemed so legitimately excited for it. And it has quite the gang aside from Cruise. Wilkinson, Nighy, Stamp, Branagh, etc. I'm keeping my fingers crossed, we'll see.

the best parts of this movie is the giant brontosaurus pile-up (had me laughing) and after kong crushes the dino's skull/bites its tongue out/tears its jaws apart and then the monkey decides to play with the jaws by making them open and close a few times while kong has this funny expression on his face.

edit: i just went back and realized there's still another fucking HOUR to this movie. too much for one sitting, i'll come back tomorrow.

Not Cronenberg's best or anything (a bit mainstream for him as well), but this one was entertaining enough. I like Walken and Sheen, and it was a fun film all in all.