Film You Just Saw - And What You Thought About It.
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Thought it would be nice to list the films we watched last in one main topic NOT to replace individual Topics about a certain film, just as a general list to keep track of our viewing tastes, likes and maybe even warnings of truly awful viewing?
Thought I'd start this up with something special.
Antichrist... ... ...
Yes it was disturbing and very upsetting in places, yes it was very painful to watch, and no I didn't understand the ending at ALL.
But I did really enjoy it.
Anybody with the stomach to watch it should do so as it's an experience almost like nothing you would have seen before. -
OK, I'm in.
Daybreakers.
Solid low-budget dystopic vampire flick... think "what if the vampires from the first Blade flick were to take over society"?
Well-drawn characters, good production values (even with some glaring CG-FX), and some of the purest show-don't-tell filmmaking I've seen since film school in the first 8 minutes.
Nothing life changing, but worth a watch if you're looking for something. -
^ I still haven't seen it either. I heard good things about Tucci, not much else though.
I have 2 I just saw the other day on BluRay.
In Bruges - Been meaning to see this for quite a while. Decent dark comedy with a solid plot and some shockingly good parts for all the right/wrong reasons. Worth seeing if you haven't.
Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 - I still don't know why there is spaces in that title, the train in the movie isn't. Remake of the classic cult with Walter Matthau and Robert Shaw. Washington is in the Matthau role, but is given clunky and generally bad dialogue he can't save. Travolta is not Shaw, and he's not even sure what he wants the character to be like. Comes together alright in the end. James Gandolfini's New York Mayor is the best and smartest character of the whole film. Faily uneven but watchable. Original is far better, but the remake sits as not one of the worst remakes, but not one of the better ones either. -
Lovely Bones does some interesting things digitally, but the stilted action and suppressed storytelling tries feebly to get you choked up from frame one, when there's nothing to be upset about. The girl's narration throughout serves to pull you away from what you're watching, and you never get immersed in it. So by the end of the film when the girl learns not to hang on, you're just wishing she'd go into the light already and quit flagellating us with sappy, self-mourning dialog. It just doesn't work on any level. Probably read well as a novel, but just doesn't translate to film.
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Drag Me To Hell. UK uncut Blu-Ray version, (the BD has both the Uncut and theatrical versions, but the differences are so slight I'll not be watching the other).
Sam Raimi back close to his best horror roots. Some great gross out moments, great scares and a good (if heavely signposted) twist at the end.
He even managed to get a bit of old fashioned slapstick in there too!!! -
I thought the cat was dead when it gets... regurgitated, which made it even worse that she killed her little cat and it was all for nothing, another mark against her.
Anyway... My turn!
We watched The Seventh Seal last night. It was on my list of grown-up things to do, like getting a 401K and reading the New York Times, though I do the latter extremely infrequently.
Turns out that it truly deserves the hype. For a movie made in 1957, it is very modern in the issues addressed and the interactions of the characters. It also wasn't artsy in the negative way one thinks of lauded foreign films. It was full of metaphor, but didn't linger on them. I'm sure I didn't notice all of them, either, and it didn't detract from the impact of the story. At 96 minutes running time, it is a tightly woven story that doesn't waste time but managed to pack a whole lot of searing observations about the state of the world which are as applicable today as they were then.
I'm surprised at how much I liked it. -
"I thought the cat was dead when it gets… regurgitated, which made it
even worse that she killed her little cat and it was all for nothing,
another mark against her". Oh! my mistake.
Now then.
Old Boy - UK BD. And just where do I start with this one? I remember this being near the top of the list when I asked for an odd film recommendation on the old forums, and boy were you guys right, there is revenge, and then there is this!!!
I STILL can't think too much about the ending yet, too much to take in. But I loved it none the less. -
Plopper said:
Old Boy - UK BD. And just where do I start with this one? I remember this being near the top of the list when I asked for an odd film recommendation on the old forums, and boy were you guys right, there is revenge, and then there is this!!!
I STILL can't think too much about the ending yet, too much to take in. But I loved it none the less.
I think that's one film that I wouldn't watch in HD. Another would be Audition.
I remember thinking Old Boy was brilliant but I can't remember too much of it now. Probably because I got Ichi (film and anime on seperate buys) and Audition on DVD at roughly the same time so I watched all three fairly soon after each other.
I probably won't be adding to this thread much, after over a year (possibly 2 years) I'm still working my way through The X-Files. But I started Season 8 a few days ago so I should be finished when the real summer rolls along! -
vincent said:
I remember thinking Old Boy was brilliant but I can't remember too much of it now. Probably because I got Ichi (film and anime on seperate buys) and Audition on DVD at roughly the same time so I watched all three fairly soon after each other.
Personally I put Oldboy way out in front, with Ichi and Audition a toss-up. Audition bothered me, but I didn't love it, and Ichi, though I respected - see the old Dark Knight comments, just didn't really get inside my head. Oldboy HAUNTED me.
In other news, PANDORUM gets a thumbs-up from me. Having once been tasked to write a script that was "Alien Resurrection meets Event Horizon," I feel doubly jealous that I didn't think of that. Thought it took a tried and true formula and added some new spices to it. -
Maybe I'm more deranged than I realize, but Audition didn't really get under my skin at all. The part that bugged me the most was the horrors bag-guy was subjected to. That was just plain gross, but I can't watch the sequence from Arrested Development when Gob Bluth attempts to swallow the prison key without wanting to wretch, and that's a TV comedy, so I think puke is just something of a sensitivity of mine. All the other stuff was rather ho-hum to me.
Edit: Jim beat me to it! Curses! Anyway...
With one week to go before the summer season shows premiere, we're charging through the NetFlix queue…
Tonight's viewing: Pandorum
I was expecting "meh" at best, but I liked this one, too. It was a little derivative in that I felt that I was watching Dead Space: The Motion Picture and some of the concepts seemed cribbed directly from Firefly/Serenity, but in all, it was a fun adventure. I remember people griping about the ending (I think), but I thought it was a nice way to decompress from all the gory suffering that preceded it. Too many sci-fi movies and horror movies end with real downer endings where the bad guys win, as if that's somehow being edgy. Maybe 15 years ago, it was edgy, but today, we've come to expect it. A happy ending is now something of a bold move. -
Jayne said:
Maybe I'm more deranged than I realize, but Audition didn't really get under my skin at all. The part that bugged me the most was the horrors bag-guy was subjected to. That was just plain gross, but I can't watch the sequence from Arrested Development when Gob Bluth attempts to swallow the prison key without wanting to wretch, and that's a TV comedy, so I think puke is just something of a sensitivity of mine. All the other stuff was rather ho-hum to me.
I'm the same with vomit and wretching. I'm a sympathetic vomiter. Whenever I see someone throw up it feels like I'm gonna do it aswell.
The other stuff wasn't the worst I've seen, but the needles in the belly really made me cringe. One scene in The Cell had me feeling the same way. -
Day Of The Dead - UK BD, and I must say I really enjoyed the transfer. Oh! And I watched it with the director's commentary on, not Uncle George this time, but three of the Special Effects guys, Greg Nicotero, Howard Burger, Everett Burrell and Mike Deak, OH! four guys! No Tom Savini on the commentary this time, but I do have two other DVDs of the film with him on his own on one and him with Uncle George on the other.
A great package all round with 4 separate covers, double sided poster extensive notes and a whole comic book on the origins of Bub. And I haven't even started on the second disc of DVD extras yet. -
Old Boy: By the end, we were laughing uncontrollably. Silly, silly movie.
Pandorum: Was a decent film, but I felt it was pre-trumped by Event Horizon. See that one if you liked Pandorum.
Audition: We liked this film enough. Not that we would watch it twice, but it's easy to see where the Hostel films came from.
My turn, just watched The Quiet on Universal HD channel. Great premise and great acting with a terrible ending, meaning terrible in that you feel a bit cheated. Could've ended better. And after murdering someone, your next stop is the high school dance? Blah. -
Not really a film, BUT, all but!
Series 1 Episode 2 of the Masters Of Horror - Dreams In The Witch House by Stuart Gordon. Gordon doing yet another H.P. Lovecraft story, but this time on a much smaller scale than even From Beyond or Re-Animator. Very good little tale of madness witches and physics!
Also one night last week I watched the first episode, John Carpenter's offering Cigarette Burns, very interesting and very well done, basic premise is a lost film, kinda like 8mm, but this film was so evil it makes people go mad and kill each other.
Only two episodes in but I can already more than recommend this series. -
GYMKATA. I cannot comment on the experience of watching this movie itself, but when you add this:
http://gymkommentary.blogspot......mkata.html
it's something wonderful. -
We found that series to be wildly uneven, even for an anthology. That ep was good, and the best, IMO, was the one called "Cigarette Burns" about Il Film de Fin du Monde or something like that. It was really odd. "Jennifer" was pretty good-- can't remember if that was S1 or S2, though, and we never saw the one by Miike because it wasn't aired and we weren't interested enough to rent it. Aparently the stuff that got it censored out of broadcasting had to do with graphic sexual violence or somesuch-- nothing that I'd consider essential to a good horror story.
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"Jennifer" (directed by Argento BTW) was series one Jayne, but on the second boxed set that I haven't got yet, but have seen on the stand alone DVD. As far as the quick write up I read about the Mike Garris episode, it's the weakest of the first series so I don't think you missed much, it's actually the next disc in the set, so I'll let you know how it is first hand when I watch it.
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I meant Takashi Miike, not Mike Garris. It's the 13th ep of Season 1, "Imprint."
Here's the 4-1-1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I.....or_episode) (but it contains a plot summary, so you might not want to read it).
Basically, it's classic Miike, which was cool in concept because the Showtime series allegedly permitted quite a range of creative freedom on the part of the writers. Still, Showtimes' standards and practices required some cuts to "Jennifer" and after seeing "Imprint" said hell no. There was alot of back-n-forth for a while, negotiating what had to be done to air it, but in the end, Showtime refused, citing the graphic nature of the content, let alone the supremely messed up story.
It's available here in the box set and also as a stand-alone DVD. Given what I've learned of your BBFC, I wonder if you can even get it over there? -
Jayne said:It's available here in the box set and also as a stand-alone DVD. Given what I've learned of your BBFC, I wonder if you can even get it over there?
Apparently we can.
To totally change the genre...... Today I watched Transformers 2: Revenge of The Fallen. Had some good points in it, but too many bad points. It didn't improve upon second viewing, but I just had to get the Bumblebee Limited Edition pack
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Forgot to post the other night, but I watched the Mick Garris Episode - Chocolate which was a lot better than I was expecting after the review I read.
And tonight I watched the episode by Lucky McKee - Sick Girl which was very entertaining, gross, funny and well acted. And loads of BUGS. -
Watched THIRST today, from the director of OLDBOY. Kinda neat, offbeat Korean vampire flick... it's got its True Blood-ian elements (vampire romance and sex scenes), but add to that mental illness, the priesthood, and family dysfunction and abuse, and a hearty dose of self-awareness (which allows the flick to enter absurdity without alienating the audience). I wouldn't say it's for everyone, but it's worth a look.
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Forgot one from the other night! Netflix finally deemed us worth enough to watch Inglourious Basterds. For which I have come up with a new term:
"World War II Porn"
Seriously, this is a movie for history buffs with a perverse violent streak. I hate to type it for public reading, but just like The Man in the High Castle asks the theoretical question, "What if FDR had been assassinated before WWII?" I think that Basterds asks the question "What if Jewish soldiers were just as violent if not more violent than the Nazis?"
And yes, Christoph Waltz is absolutely worth every award he's getting. Best movie villain in years. Definitely the best villain in a WWII film, and that's saying a lot in comparison to Robert Shaw in Battle of the Bulge, Otto Preminger in Stalag 17, and Bruno Ganz as Hitler in Downfall.
...and yes, I fully expect Yost_Flix to insert another video sub of Hitler ranting about Inglorious Basterds in his next reply. -
I became a Tarantino hater after Pulp Fiction. I was constantly turned off by his work which seemed more like self-gratification than movie for other people's enjoyment.
Then, reluctantly, I watched Inglourious Basterds, and I decided that maybe Tarantino was just going through a phase. The opening sequence in the farmhouse was one of the most intense moments I've seen in movies in years. The rest of it was equally well done.
Maybe instead of "WWII Porn" we have a "What-If Porn" category. I can't think of another movie that considers WWII in the same way Basterds does. However, there are other movies that posit alternate histories and explore the impact of fictitious events on these "what if" scenarios. One that comes immediately to mind is District 9, which proposes that the landing of the alien spacecraft interrupted the anti-apartheid movement. As a result, blacks and whites were still segregated (see the sequence in the burger place), but they're more or less united against a more loathsome "other." The morale of the story is that "separate but equal" is a human tendency, as wrong as it may be, and big business can and will always exploit those who don't have the ability or the appearance of the ability to fight back. -
Yost_Flix said:
But I love the new genre you've proposed. What else would fit?
Well the only two I can think of without research are The Dirty Dozen and the original Italian Inglorious Bastards, but they hardly fit the term as exactly as Tarantino's pic does. There's something about the film that just goes so far over the line in terms of giving you what you've always wanted to see and then overdoing it like a complete sadist that no other film has tried. But I would certainly like to see someone else try, now.
I'd also like to go on record as describing The Wild Bunch as "Colt .44 Porn."
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A mate of mine which I went to see the new Inglorious lent me the DVD of the original version, and I loved it, he didn't, but your right Dan, it's just not int he same league, for me the only other film that I can think of in the same SORT of vain, the irreverent and greatly funny Kelly's Heroes, but does it count?
SIDE NOTE, until watching the extras for John Landis' section of The Masters Of Horror, I NEVER knew he worked on Kelly's Heroes!
Jayne, I'm the same as you, after Pulp Fiction and before Inglorious the only Tarantino I've liked is Kill Bill one, and I've never even seen Jackie Brown, must get around to that.
Tonight I watched the last installment on the MOH boxed set I have, Homecoming by Joe Dante, and I'm just dieing to know how that went down in the US after it first aired? I know there is a bit of a tradition for political themed zombie flicks (especially after Uncle George) but WOW! I enjoyed it, but it's like nothing I have ever watched before, I didn't know which way to turn, one minute it was a zombie flick, the next an episode of the West Wing, then it would spin into almost slapstick! -
Plopper said:
after Pulp Fiction and before Inglorious the only Tarantino I've liked is Kill Bill one, and I've never even seen Jackie Brown, must get around to that.
I haven't seen Jackie Brown either... nor have I seen Grindhouse or Kill Bill Two, since when Kill Bill One's credits started in the theater, I got to my feet and started cursing out the screen. That said, I really like Reservoir Dogs, and Pulp Fiction is one of my favorite movies. -
Don't go from Inglorious to Death Proof... you'll just be saddened. There are only 2 sequences in Death Proof worth seeing, but in order to see them you'll have to sit through about 40-50 minutes of very lengthy lengthy dialogue in single shots and deal with every other shot inbetween being a shot of feet (due to QT's foot fetish) each time. It's a shame because Kurt Russel is awesomely bad ass and even though he's the main point of the story, he's really the character you spend the least time with for obvious reasons. But do see the fake trailers and the RR/Planet Terror half of the Grindhouse experience, because thats a roller coaster ride.
I just watched RocknRolla... I don't understand the hype about it myself now. It was an okay film, but definently not Ritchie's best. Not even close. Maybe it was just because it was Ritchie's return at the time it was released, people were really happy but it wasn't as good as people kept saying. -
RocknRolla is not his greatest film, by any means. I'd still give that to Snatch. But it was certainly better than the 2-3 films he made between Snatch and RocknRolla, and I think that's why he started getting the kudos again. Sherlock Holmes was pretty good, btw. Not a "Guy Ritchie" film in the purest sense, but other than throwing in a completely irrelevant bare knuckle match he didn't bollocks it completely.
Just watched The Curious Case of Benjamin Buttons. Worst piece of soppy storytelling I've seen in years. No idea how Pitt talked David Fincher into directing this PoS. The CG effects are completely transparent and irritating for the first 45 minutes, and having Cate Blanchette loop over the voices of the 2 young girls playing her character is also very distracting. Then they take a great sci-fi concept and do absolutely nothing with it. The storytelling changes styles 2-3 times, and the story comes to a complete halt for no good reason another 2-3 times. I want my 2 hours back. -
Are you sure you are not thinking of Ritchie's production credits for films like Layer Cake and Mean Machine as he's only really done one full length "Ritchie" film since Snatch, and before RocknRoller, unless you count that Madonna film Washed Out of something? Sorry Swept Away.
The only other pucka! Ritchie film in the time between was Revolver!!! I've watched it maybe 4 times now and I still can't fathom it out? -
Love Snatch, really liked L4yer Cake. Lock, Stock... I thought was good, but not as good as Snatch (kind of like how I feel with Tarantino - the first movie shows the raw material, and the second makes good). Holmes, I thought was a neat diversion (but look out if Jayne registers her own feelings with that one), haven't seen Revolver or Rock n Rolla, and no interest in the Madonna flick.
As for us, we caught Get Him To The Greek today. Some laugh out loud stuff, but I wouldn't say consistently funny. Maybe it suffered from having watched Forgetting Sarah Marshall again before we went - which, IMO, is still terrific - good balance of funny and serious, that. Greek goes for the same thing and only partially achieves it, but hey. We didn't pay for it and I had a few laughs, which is what I was going for.
Tonight's edutainment for me will be Legend - Director's Cut. I've been wanting to check this out for a while, but only now did it finally catch up on my Netflix cue. At some point I'm going to have to check out Ridley Scott's commentary, too, since I hear it's pretty great. -
Dan - Yeah, Snatch is def my fav too with Lock, Stock just behind. I still haven't seen Holmes... it's been on my list for a while, but I just haven't gotten around to it. At this stage I can just wait another month or so until the BD costs like $1 to rent and I'll see it then.
Plopper - I think you're mixing up Ritchie with Matthew Vaughn who was a producer on Lock, Stock and Snatch as well as those movies you mentioned. Ritchie had nothing to do with them. L4yer Cake was awesome, Mean Machine not so much. Vaughn also wrote the screenplay for as well as produced and directed Kick Ass. Which I really enjoyed as I totally didn't have any idea what to expect.
I watched The Final Destination last night. The film on the BD came in standard and "cheesy 3-D" formats (complete with 2 pairs of red/blue lense anaglyph glasses). I tried watching it in 3-D at first but the color and the quality made my head hurt, so I watched in as normal. The shot for 3D effects were obvious even in 2D, and the extras show you that the film was changed to a 3D release after the filming was complete which included reshoots. I don't know why I watched it, I knew exactly what I was going to see... but still, I wouldn't bother. -
Today we watched Twilight: New Moon. What the point of commenting? Won't matter what I say anyhow.
We also watched The Box. Decent sophomore effort from the guy who did Donnie Darko, but more complex and more unanswered questions. Kinda like watching Lost if it were directed by David Lynch, except in just under 2 hours. If you liked Donnie Darko, you might like it more or less. I was comparing the two the entire time.
@Yost_Flix: Legend Director's Cut is quite good with the original soundtrack restored. Still the same film, but you can take it a little more seriously. I think the ending was a little longer too? Which was nice, since the theatrical cut was more about the darkness than the light. -
@Rombie, actually Ritchie was the exec producer of Mean Machines, but that was the point I was trying to get across, the fact that Ritchie had nothing to do with the films, but often gets mistakenly credited for them.
I've often read or heard people say that both Layer Cake and Mean Machine were Ritchie films. -
Dan Birlew said:
@Yost_Flix: Legend Director's Cut is quite good with the original soundtrack restored. Still the same film, but you can take it a little more seriously. I think the ending was a little longer too? Which was nice, since the theatrical cut was more about the darkness than the light.
Sadly, I made it through a half hour, then decided life was too short to watch this on a day off. Maybe I'll watch it at work or something.
Also, The Box was the director (Richard Kelly, I think?)'s 2nd movie after Darko. The pretty universally panned Southland Tales was in between the 2. -
I deliberately took a nap during Sherlock Holmes, and I didn't regret it one bit. The whole point of Watson's wife was to distract from any sort of Batman/Robin subliminal homoeroticism. Annoying and unnecessary. The opening sequence was brilliant and I thought I had settled into something really sharp-- I loved the voiceover analysis of Holmes' to-be attacker. I was wrong and thus I napped.
Get Him to the Greek was consistently funny, but it was lacking a real story. I'm used to movies with three acts, you know, where there's a conflict that gets resolved and stuff. GHTTG would have made an excellent 2nd act or 3rd act of a bigger movie. It wasn't bad for what it was, but it didn't feel complete.
I wanted to like Legend. Really, I did. I wanted to enjoy Tom Cruise before he became a couch-jumping madman. As a fan of Red Sonja, I was certain I could not be disappointed. I was wrong, but I did not nap.
@Dan: I just admitted to being a fan of Red Sonja. You can offer your take on New Moon. Really. It's a supportive place, and what we say here stays here. Let me help you start:
"Hi, I'm Dan. I like sparkly vampires and.... [take it from there]"
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Haha! Frankly my opinion is probably too poisonous to publish, and the only result of releasing it into the Universe will be the bad Karma that circles around and shoots a proverbial hole in my ass. I did utter one complaint during the movie to Laura, and that was during a scene in Bella's bedroom between her and Edward. I basically looked over at Laura and said, "Neither one of these kids can fucking ACT. Why would they cast these two in a series?" To which she rationally replied that they were cast because they didn't have to act, they are both so much like the characters that it doesn't matter.
I've also been poisoned by the speculation that Twilight is a complete rip-off of the The Southern Vampire Mysteries currently being adapted (with quite a few improvements, apparently) into HBO's fabulous True Blood, repackaged for a 'teen' audience. But then it seems that Twilight's popularity is influencing what HBO is doing with True Blood, such as:
Spoiler:Bill asks Sookie to marry him. This did not occur in the novels.
And at the end of the second Twilight movie:
Spoiler:Edward asks Bella to marry him.
Then there's the whole inclusion of werewolves as enemies and other similarities that were stolen from the Harris books and given a romantic spin, and this is being taken back and reincorporated with a similar spin in True Blood. And this is starting to make me a little angry.
These are the things I've previously stated about Twilight, so I don't mind stating them again. -
Not too much (if anything) to add about Twilight, but it's the first time I've seen the new improved spoiler code at work, LOVE it.
Twilight now, beautiful people acting badly for other beautiful people to watch, so that leaves me WELL out of the loop, so I never intend watching any of the series.
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