Last Movie Watched

[adgy-san]

If you are enjoying the renaissance of Matthew McConaughey on True Detective...this is where it really started. This is just sooooo ****ed up. William Friedkin is a seriously twisted man.

It's a great, ****ed up little movie.

 

[jerseydevil]

Ok, so I quit this 2 vignettes and some change in. But Lagwagon shamed me in to going back and completing what I started. All this movie did was enrage me. Yes...the Indonesian(?) cult 'story' had some damned fine imagery...some terrific ideas...but instead of developing them this LAZY and ponderous waste of time just jerked off all over itself, literally. Seriously, the ****ty unexplained EARTHQUAKY camera p.o.v was akin to whacking it with you left hand, after it has fallen asleep, and you went all EVIL DEAD 2 and shot it after it crawled in the wall. LAZY LAZY LAZY, this movie and the previous one aren't interested in telling stories, only in presenting images...disjointed, shaky images, that frustrate even more simply because there is SO much more hinted at. It's like a bunch of 8 year olds doing creative writing/Mad Libs...and the last 'story' with an alien invasion, while(and you should see a pattern here) having some striking images/ideas, ends with a truly masturbatory and simply cruel animal death that just leaves you with the feeling that you are less of a person for having watched it.
**** this movie. Seriously.



Heard this compared to Martyrs...and at times, it earned it...but it pulls back and just doesn't hit the mark. Not really horror as much as an 'evil that men do' type of movie...the wafer thin story line, despite some truly misery inspiring moments, just kinda goes on too long to sustain that sense of 'ick' that a movie like this needs. Some odd choices towards the end don't help. The very end itself, almost brings it back around...but the movie loses that nasty for too long before trying to call it back. Sean Pertwee maintains his streak of dying horribly in movies...but this flick just meanders too much to leave a soul crushing bruise. (Available on Netflix streaming...so is that p.o.s. V/H/S2)

 

[lagwagon0]

JD has lost his mind, my work here is done. :biggrin:

I guess I could have mentioned that the final scene is freaking terrible.

 

[jerseydevil]

JD has lost his mind, my work here is done. :biggrin:

I guess I could have mentioned that the final scene is freaking terrible.

 

[orpheus]

Prometheus

I thought what a lot of people thought about this, and that is, that's the visuals are great, but the story is not as good as it could've been. *shrugs*

Wings

Silent film that's the first film to ever win an Oscar. I thought it was pretty good and the flying sequences were great. They actually had cameras attached to actual planes being flown by stunt men. Take that CGI!

There Will Be Blood

I liked Daniel Day-Lewis's performance and loved the soundtrack, but dunno, the movie didn't quite win me over completely. :/

J. Edgar

I thought this was okay, but sorta all over the place.

The Phantom Carriage

Spooky Silent Swedish film. I could see how this was a huge influence on Bergman since it deals with death and existentialism. I really liked this one.

The Last Temptation of Christ

I've never seen this film from beginning to end despite having listened to the Peter Gabriel soundtrack a lot. It's a pretty interesting take on the Christ story.

The Boys in the Band

Early William Friedkin film based on a play about a group of gay men. It's pretty well acted and staged.

 

[jerseydevil]

Wow. So not sure if this is meant to be an allegory about sexually transmitted diseases, or a condemnation of lesbianism, or just a complete mind**** of a movie about how love in general...and especially physical, is death...all I know is this is ****ed up body horror akin to Cronenbergs best. Streaming on Netflix.

 

[jerseydevil]

Wow. So magically all over the place. I like Renner, but because he got cast and has NO ability to do anything but an American accent, Gemma Atherton is forced to dumb down her british accent , while Famke Jannsen has some weird 'meet you in the middle' accent. This movie is great looking...and fun at times(thanks to Peter Stormare), but too much steampunk-y and completely unsatisfying physical fx/wire work with the witches...like I said, all over the place. Clever...Hansel has type 2 diabetes, from eating too much candy, but for every smart turn like that...they just pull the rug out. Not Unwatchable, and certainly better than Singer's GIANT movie, but just a big mess.

 

[aaron]

Nymphomaniac 1 and 2
Definitely wait until you have a chance to watch both at the same time.

explicit yes, but very little eroticism. titillation at most. occasionally painful to watch. the first hour could have been trimmed and the later part extended.
absolutely recommend.
Not a date movie.

 

[roenick]

We saw this Saturday night and very much enjoyed it. Very quirky and similar to Moonrise Kingdom, which we also loved, in strange story and great cameo's, and of course being made by Anderson.

 

[jerseydevil]

I don't normally 'get' his movies, but that one looks like something I wanna take a shot at. Not condemning his work per se, It just gets by me.

 

[roenick]

It is in the vein of something like The Fisher King, which is one of the wife's and my favorite movies. I just enjoy offbeat stuff I guess. We loved Moonrise Kingdom. But it is truly a taste that needs to be acquired ...

 

[chaingunsofdoom]

Loved GBH! Great movie.

 

[fivehole32]

I will be seeing GBH this weekend. I absolutely love Wes Anderson movies. Moonrise Kingdom is very special to me, but I think The Royal Tenenbaums has to be my favorite.

 

[roenick]

We got free passes to see this last night

While probably not overly realistic we enjoyed it especially since it was free. Leary hasn't been this good since The Ref. Costner was good and not over the top.

 

[jerseydevil]

Nice to see Costner getting a second chance and using it well. Dude was a good actor, who got way too full of himself.

 

[jerseydevil]

Just watched TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE:THE MOVIE...for the first time in a long time, and as cool as it was to see David Johanssen/William Hickey get outsmarted by a cat, this...



Has haunted me since I saw it the very first time. It's a little rushed, but like most good anthology/short stories it makes it's mark and STAYS with you!

 

[nocturn]

Nice to see Costner getting a second chance and using it well. Dude was a good actor, who got way too full of himself.

No way dude, he's awful.


IMHO, he's the anti-character actor. His movies are Kevin Costner doing an impression of Kevin Costner...boring and predictable. Although, he'd make a fantastic Kevin Costner in a Kevin Costner Auto-Documentary.

Hey Kevin Costner's ego just called with a script! Its called "I SUCK!"

 

[orpheus]

Prince of Bagdad

This was a pretty fun adventure movie that was an obvious influence on Disney's Aladdin. And the special effects are impressive considering that it was made in the 1940's.

True Grit

I've seen the remake, but I've never seen the original one before. Storywise, both versions are very similar, and like the remake, the girl who plays the character who hires Rooster does a a really good job. The original probably has more humor too. I enjoyed it.

The High and the Mighty

And yes, haha, I am on a John Wayne kick. Anyways, this movie is an ensemble cast film about a group of people stuck in a plane that might not be able to land properly. A good example of the character driven films they made in this era.

Lincoln

I didn't like this as much as I thought I would. I mean it's well done and acted, but I think the problem was that it didn't cover enough of Lincoln's life, but rather focused on the 13th Amendment. I suppose one can only cover so much in one movie and the passage of that amendment was intense and an important part of Lincoln's presidency so there's that. Maybe, we'll get a prequel.

Donovan's Reef

Fun enough movie set in the Pacific Islands, but far from being a major John Ford/John Wayne movie. And Lee Marvin plays a drunken weirdo, haha, which is like him just being himself.

The Call

I realized that aside from Session 9 and The Machinist, I haven't watched any of Brad Anderson's recent films so I decided to start with this one. A suspenseful little film about Halle Belly playing a 911 operator who's trying to save a young girl after she's being abducted by a creepy serial killer.

The Lords of Salem

I thought I was going to loathe this movie, but I didn't. It's far from perfect and won't win any screen writing awards, but I did enjoy it enough. Self indulgent or not, I thought it had a lot of visually impressive scenes.

 

[jerseydevil]

nice pull Orph.



Saw this a few weeks back. Odd bird. Visually...nice. Not AS good as the original(and thus a theme develops). VERY strange. Happens concurrent with the events of the original. So you get a lot of folded in highlights, and all that does is point out that a)that the original, for all your complaints about Snyder, was made by a better artist/craftsman. At times this feels very 'direct-to-dvd' sequel in a lesser-than kinda quality and b)Sullivan Stapleton, while fun, is no Gerard Butler. And oooooh those teeth. Matter of fact, at least this had realistic horrible teeth on people who probably did not have great oral hygiene. Anyway...Eva Green tries SOOOOOOO hard to make this better than it is. But too many repetetive story beats(including the father trying to protect his son...and one of em dies...cue 'i'm so proud of you' music and dramatic pause, like I said, just lesser than.

Overall...not terrible, just not as good.

 

[LetTigerIn]

It was a Scarlett Johansson double-feature Saturday for me.

I liked Under the Skin, actually, but I would not recommend it to everyone. It is deliberately obtuse, and the pacing is extremely slow by today's standards, perhaps by any standards. It looks good, though, and it has a real throwback feel to it, like maybe '70s European type in terms of storytelling. I happen to like that. It is not subtle. People may describe it as such, because it is primarily visual, but the visuals are somewhat spoon-fed. This visual storytelling is the primary interest and strength of the movie. There is little depth here, but the deliberate looseness of thematic exploration and slow pace allow the viewer to explore some interesting possibilities, if they are so inclined. A few films I've seen within the past few years that I might compare to this one would be The American, Amer, and, not surprisingly then, The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears. I'd put Under the Skin well below The American, which was my favorite film of 2010, but maybe only slightly below the other two. I enjoyed them all.

A couple of non-movie notes from my viewing of Under the Skin:
- I was surprised how many people were in the theatre. Some did walk out.
- The people next to me considered walking out. I wish they either would have either done it or stopped talking about it. Shhhhhh.
- Did I say it was slow? My Bodymedia registered that I slept through the movie. I did not.
- Turns out there were some people who showed up just because the New York Times said it was great. They were disgusted. I think that's a terrible reason to go see a movie blindly, and, now, maybe so do they.
- While I did not recognize any of the buildings, I gleaned the location of the movie early on from the soccer/football kits worn by fans. That kind of made me happy.
- Heck, maybe I did sleep through it, in which case, I enjoyed the strange movie I dreamed.


Then, I walked across the hall and watched Cap. Extremely well done. Definitely one of the best Marvel movies. 'Nuff said.