I have seen 4 Refn movies till now, Drive, Valhalla, Bronson and now God Forgives and i think the last was the worst out of the 4.
Latest Movie/Show You Watched?
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I watched Cloud Atlas a few days ago, and I really enjoyed it. It's a bit confusing at first (But I'm assuming this is because I never read the book), but once you get the hang of the format…it's a great film to get into!
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I saw The Untouchables for the first time today and….wow, really, that's it? I'm sorry, but I thought this movie was just okay.
Yes, Sean Connery gave a great performance (by far, the best thing about this movie), and the film had some cool action scenes, but everything else, I just don't know. The editing is weird, the music choice is weird, the sound-mixing is weird, the direction is weird, the writing is cliched as hell (I can't believe a Pulitzer-winner wrote this), some of the dialogue is downright cringe-worthy, and a lot of the characters and performances given to them (particularly Costner and Garcia) are just so bland and uninspired.
Sorry, but I think this film is really overrated.
[And if the band you're in starts playing different tunes
I'll see you on the dark side of the moon] -
I saw The Untouchables for the first time today and….wow, really, that's it? I'm sorry, but I thought this movie was just okay.
Yes, Sean Connery gave a great performance (by far, the best thing about this movie), and the film had some cool action scenes, but everything else, I just don't know. The editing is weird, the music choice is weird, the sound-mixing is weird, the direction is weird, the writing is cliched as hell (I can't believe a Pulitzer-winner wrote this), some of the dialogue is downright cringe-worthy, and a lot of the characters and performances given to them (particularly Costner and Garcia) are just so bland and uninspired.
Sorry, but I think this film is really overrated.
lol .
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I watched Cloud Atlas a few days ago, and I really enjoyed it. It's a bit confusing at first (But I'm assuming this is because I never read the book), but once you get the hang of the format…it's a great film to get into!
Just saw Cloud Atlas on the plane home the other day (along with Avengers and something so apparently forgettable that I can't remember it). I thought the screenwriter and editor did a remarkable job given the fractured narrative they had to work with (the book starts with the first story chronologically (Ewing in the Pacific) and works towards Zachary in the far future, at which point it reverses and tells the second halves of Sonmi, Cavendish, Luisa, Frobisher, and finally Ewing; doing it in this sandwich style in the movie would have been awkward, so I was actually pleased with all the jumping around from narrative to narrative).
And I definitely recommend the book. It obviously fills in tons of details and internal processes (given that each section is first person narrated by each protagonist) and fleshes out the stories quite a bit more (there's a ton more to the Sonmi and Frobisher stories, which are by far the most interesting). Having read the book first made me appreciate just how well done the movie was, that much more.
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Just watched Searching for Sugar Man. Man, the story really seems made up, haha.
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I heard The Conjuring is pretty good and scary. Is it?
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Since I don't know what other thread this could go in, permit me to squee here, but
.That probably doesn't mean much to anyone who grew up outside of the UK in the late 80s and early 90s, but it was this dungeon-adventuring game made using early CG with actors playing parts and a team of teenagers shouting instructions to another teen who had to navigate the dungeon and solve the quest. I guess it was a game show, but it always felt like more, and it was a key part of my Friday afternoons as a little Print Error.
What I love about this remake is that it's done with all the original crew (seeing Lord Fear again made me squee more than kittens) and played totally straight, like the original series, even though it's done with a bunch of British Youtube personalities. I've seen affectionate parodies, but this is like the real thing, back, for just this one week at least. Actually made me cry.
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I heard The Conjuring is pretty good and scary. Is it?
yes it is, but its depend on your scary level.
for me, the label "based on true story" are no longer scare me.
but they got well arranged plot and they make it simple. no overrated acting and bla bla bla. (like the hollywood used to make +___+)
make the movie seems so possible and "logical" on the new-un-blessed-houses in my town. (we believe ghosts here)btw, its the latest movie I watched anyway. :3
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I just saw 2 Guns yesterday.
! It was pretty badass and had some amusing one-liners. Washington and Wahlberg were a great team. But:
! The Navy was investigating a Mexican kingpin's money to what…...fund covert operations, or something? I think I missed the explaination, but I know the corrupt Quince made a deal with Papi.....
! And it was disappointing Debbie both double-crossed the group and was killed, but seeing as how Bobby and Mike walked away with a ton of money at the end, it's a bittersweet ending at best.
! Now what, though? Is Bobby gonna stay with the DEA even though his boss and lover have been killed? Is Mike still AWOL? Doubt there's gonna be a sequel, so these are just my ponderings.
! Still a fun, action-filled movie, though.I'm hoping to see The Wolverine next.
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Went and saw The Conjuring last night. It was actually pretty scary like everyone was saying. The first half was better, simply because of the suspense, it did get a little cheesy towards the end. Overall, I did enjoy it and it made me really want to look more into all the cases that the Warrens did.
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I heard The Conjuring is pretty good and scary. Is it?
It's well-executed. I don't look for originality in media, necessarily, and would rather a film use a simple plot than try to be out there by using a plot about an identity thief just to be unique. I'm more of a "Wow, this film is using birds as a form of an exploding terrifying weapon. That's original! +1 point. Does it do it well? If so, +100 points" guy.
Anyway, I just saw it a few hours ago. I'm quite frankly too steely and consciously prepared to let most movies scare me. I find terror outside of horror movies to be more terrifying, for example thinking of being in the situation many characters are in in Breaking Bad is a lot more terrifying and dark to me. So, it didn't really scare me, I just empathized with the characters a lot and hoped nothing happened to 'em. The scariest part to me were minor spoilers the hands and the extended thought that the kid just vanished into Narnialand /minor spoilers.
I'm a wordy dude so let's continue. For the people who don't know, the films was slapped with an R rating supposedly just for being scary. This would be awesome (if precedented) if the MPAA was credible. If you happen to think they are, yay extra scary boost for you on the house. I've always wondered if there's a difference between "horror" and "terror" in film ratings. "Terror" sounds like the one you gotta buckle your seatbelt for.
It was well-done and I enjoyed the acting (I don't happen to pay much attention to acting, only if it's bad do I do that, or only if it's really good. Otherwise I'm just like yeah this is passable then get engrossed in the story), so the acting will not take you out of the story. A tip: don't go in with any hype. Luckily I forgot about all the hype so my expectations were not for this to reinvent the horror genre. I got to have my cake and eat it, too. I think that's what you're supposed to do with cake, anyway, isn't it? Isn't the likelihood that you will buy a cake and then not eat it far lower? Like say you were carrying the cake through a mountain trail and then a small boulder crushes it? Just the mere act of having a cake isn't all that special to me.
Scary, well-acted, satisfying. If a door creaks in my house I'm going to throw a cake at it thanks to this movie.
4/5
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I went and watched Elysium just the other day. Not quite as good as District 9 I didn't think but still very good. I love high tech and sci fi in seemingly non sci fi settings. Like you look at the Earth setting of Elysium and it looks like a really run down poor place but there are space ships and exoskeletons and robots and stuff there. Even Elysium, while being a space station, doesn't look all that sci fi but there's still high tech stuff everywhere. District 9 was similar.
I felt that Matt Damon's acting was kind of poor though, but it wasn't that big a deal. The guy the played the main character in D9 was someone in this movie too and I didn't even recognize him until I looked it up afterwards. He's a really good actor and it looks like he's going to be in Blomkamp's next movie too.
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@CatMonster:
Went and saw The Conjuring last night. It was actually pretty scary like everyone was saying. The first half was better, simply because of the suspense, it did get a little cheesy towards the end. Overall, I did enjoy it and it made me really want to look more into all the cases that the Warrens did.
Finally saw it so I can comment on it at last.
The set up was great and the visual presentation and musical score were highly effective for a horror movie. However, the film in whole is remarkably mediocre as with most "possession/exorcism" based films. Essentially if you have seen ONE exorcism movie, you have pretty much seen them all (unless you count a few random oddballs like The Last Exorcism or something which still follow a fairly predictable formula). It has a few decent good scares and some interesting imagery, but that's all the film had to offer. Also the resolution is remarkably lame and the most cliched/tired option they opted with.
To be fair though, it is remarkably difficult to actually pull off an original possession/exorcism formula so I wasn't really expecting anything new or generally interesting. Though I don't know why this film was rated R at all. There was very little profanity, the gore level was set to MINIMAL, and very little sexual content/themes. There was SOME blood, but not enough to slap a R rating I would think.
Overall, a lame movie with a handful of good visuals. Probably would recommend to watch something else for a decent "exorcism/possession" film.
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^ Well, to be fair about the R rating, if The Conjuring was PG-13, there would've been more screaming children.
Been getting back into Kamen Rider lately. Re-watched Kiva with my husband, hoping he might get into it with me. I think he prefers Kabuto and Agito so far. Kinda figured, but at least it's another series I can watch with him
Also, my inner fangirl is happy to see Kenji Matsuda again. 
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Watched The Great Gatsby yesterday.
I was aware of what could be expected seeing as it's a Baz Luhrmann movie, but eh… It really didn't sit well with me. The music was fun and upbeat, the costumes were beautiful and Leonardo DiCaprio is easily the best thing in the entire movie. But pretty much everything else I hated. Way too much use of green screen, which made the majority of the movie look fake and uninspired. Disjointed narrative spoken by Tobey Maguire(though, not having read the book, I don't know if they're being faithful to the way and order events are presented with). Silly visual tricks with fades and text that are irritating and distracting instead of quirky or enchanting. And while I enjoyed DiCaprio's performance, no-one else stood out. So yeah, it's a mess. A pretty one, yes, but so much of the scenery is green screened that even the eye candy tastes bad.
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Went to the cinema and seen The Heat with the lady last not. Its a funny leave your brain at home movie, good for a bit of escapism and it was kind of refreshing seeing a buddy cop movie were both cops were women, Melissa McCarthy is one funny lass. I'd give a 6/10.
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So I just saw True Romance. Overall, a pretty fantastic film. You could tell it was written by Tarantino. Great dialogue, memorable characters, a lot of incredible scenes where two characters confront each other and of course the typical mexican stand off, a great experience…overall. Well except the ending which kinda sucked and was a complete tonal shift from the rest of the movie. Seriously, they just ride off into the sunset, elope into Mexico and have a child called Elvis? All along a cheesy voice-over and bad music? What? I actually looked it up and surprise, surprise it was changed from Tarantino's original script. Of coruse it was. And Tarantino apparently liked the change. Well I definitely didn't. Didn't ruin the film for me by any stretch of the imagination. It's still a fantastic film. The scene with Walken and Hopper alone makes it more than worth it.
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Just recently went to the cinema to see Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa. Pure Alan greatness and was hilarious from start to finish. Its not normal that one takes a long running TV show to the big screen and manages to pull it off well.
Here's hoping that we'll see more Alan in the future in some form.
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I saw Hangover 3 which was so bad I had to write a huge rant over it.
! Hangover 3: It's something when a comedy can't even make me laugh once. Even bad comedies are able to get a snicker or two out of me. Which really goes to show how terrible Hangover 3 is.
! I liked the first Hangover, I thought it was pretty funny, had some fun, bizarre characters and a tightly written story. The second Hangover was the producers' attempt to recycle the exact same formula from the first film without trying anything really new, the jokes weren't nearly as funny and by the end of it, you're just left tired and disappointed. Now let me put things into perspective. If the purpose of Hangover 3 was to make Hangover 2 look good, they succeeded. Much like how Die Hard 5 was so bad, it made Die Hard 4 look like the first one, Hangover 3 was so bad it made Hangover 2 look like Hangover 1. That's honestly how bad it is.
! The main problem of the movie can be summed up two names, Zack Galifianakis and Dr. Ken Cheong who play the characters of Alan Garner (the fat guy) and Leslie Chow (the weird Asian guy). The producers of the film got it into their heads that these characters are somehow the true stars of the franchise, the characters that we all want to see so they basically focus the entire movie on the antics of these two whilst missing an important point; they're not funny. At all. Not to say they have never been funny, I liked both characters just fine in the first Hangover and even in the second Hangover, they were okay, no where NEAR as bad as in this film. This gives me an opportunity to introduce to you a trope that we in the movie culture like to use called "Flanderization".
! Flanderization is when you take minor traits of a character, funny quirks or actions for example, and exaggerate them so much to the point that they consume the entire character. I've seen this a lot in stories of franchises or long running series. A good example would be Captain Jack Sparrow who in the first Pirates film came off as a badass pirate with odd eccentricities yet after the first film, his character became more and more goofy and exaggerated to the point that he comes off as a total buffoon. What happens is that writers gauge what traits of a character most appeal to the audience so in a next installment, they write the character so that these traits are more and more pronounced to the point that they become the character's identity instead of just minor quirks to a fully fleshed out three dimensional character. Because hey, if the audience likes the character because of these traits, then naturally they should just cut out all the other stuff and put in as much of the wacky stuff that the audiences liked as possible. I personally like to describe these sort of writers as hacks but morons would do. What they fail to realize is good characters are like cakes. You need to perfectly balance all the components of the cake to give a sumptuous meal, you can't just put an excessive amount of sugar just because it's what everyone likes the most, then you'd ruin the cake. It's the same with characters, when characters are defined by nothing more than their most appealing traits, they stop being characters, they become caricatures. A good character is a fully fleshed out being you can relate to with different aspects to his character, those funny little traits that the audience love are funny because they come in small doses. When you blow those traits out of proportion to the point that they define the entire character, they stop being funny because you milked them out too much. It's like blowing your load early. They're funny because they're given in tiny bites throughout the film along with other different traits from the character. Amping up these traits to the maximum doesn't make the character more appealing, it just takes these fun characteristics and makes them obnoxious and boring, we get tired of them. Or worse, we start hating them because in the context of the story, they make the character come off like a giant douchebag. Which was certainly in the case in this film.
! I don't even know when this franchise became about Leslie Chow. He was just a bit character in the first movie, nobody special, just an odd, eccentric character in a movie full of odd, eccentric characters. Apparently he was the most appealing to the audiences of the first film so what do the film makers do? They take the character and shove him in our faces making this once likable, funny character into someone goddamn annoying. It's even worse with Alan's character whom I'm just going to describe as fatso for the rest of the review for the convenience of the readers. In the first movie, he was odd and eccentric, he came off as a socially awkward man who just needed friends and did make mistakes and do weird, sometimes creepy stuff but he meant well and deep down seemed like a nice guy. Even in the second film, I didn't really have a problem with him. Not so in this movie. In this movie, he comes off as an asshole who severely needs psychiatric help. The movie is mostly about the next stupid, weird and absolutely awful (I mean awful as in awful for a human being to do) thing to do that will make me detest the character even more. He listens to music while his dad dies of a heart attack in the background, he mentally traumatizes a four year old by telling him he's his father, he keeps making stupid, unfunny jokes and acting like an egostistical asshole while serious shit is going on, even how he cries is stupid. The only time I almost sorta laughed at his antics is in the beginning of the film where he decapitates a giraffe and trust me, that sounds way funnier on paper than it was in the actual film because apart from it happening being easy to predict, the way it was executed was so gorey and disturbing that you're kinda too weirded out to laugh. And that was the highlight of the movie.
! Now let me make this perfectly clear, I don't hate the character because he's an egotistical douchebag, morality has nothing to do with my hatred here, my problem is that the character isn't funny. Asshole characters can be very funny when done right. Sterling Archer, Rusty Venture, Daffy Duck, these are examples of absolutely selfish douchebags. The difference being is that these characters are actually funny. They work in the context of the story either because they suffer the consequences of their actions and the joke is how we laugh at their misery like in the case of Daffy Duck or, in the case of the other two characters, because of a sense of self-awareness on the characters that they know they're douchebags; these characters are witty, they crack funny jokes and the way they react to situations in the context of the story makes them come off as satirical. They're acting like douchebags while at the same time poking fun at themselves and anyone who would act like this. They're in on the joke which is what makes it funny. Not so in the case of fatso's character. Yes, the writers of the character clearly know he's acting like as asshole, we know he's acting like an asshole but the problem is that the character himself doesn't know. The joke of the character is simple "Haha, Alan is such an asshole, what douchey think is he going to do next!?!" and that's it. There's nothing more to it. It's just what awful, dickish, weird and uncomfortable thing is he going to do next? There's no satire, there's no mocking of any kind going on and he sure as hell isn't suffering any consequences. The joke is just him acting like a douche and nothing else. And it's not funny. There's no craft to the humour, there's no set up, there's no punchline. It's just mostly him (and sometimes Leslie) acting like huge cocks for two hours. That's just not funny. It's just annoying and weird and uncomfortable. Good comedy is more intelligent than that. Let me give you an example of good comedy from the first film. The scene when we're first introduced to Leslie Chow when he jumps out of the car trunk completely naked. You know why that's funny? Because prior to him jumping out, we had no idea what was in the trunk. The scene was playing with our expectations and then completely surprises us with something so weird and unexpected and surreal that we can't help but laugh. It even carries on when we meet him the second time and we find out he's actually somebody rich and important and you just wouldn't expect a funny, naked Asian man to turn out to be so important. And that makes it funny. That's the fundamental core of good comedy, subverting our expectations. We laugh because we are surprised. There is absolutely none of that here.
! This movie is just so tiring. Even the rest of the cast look tired. In the second film, the guys looked like they were having a good time, they were trying to make a good film. Here? They just look so much like that they don't want to be there, like the only reason they're in the movie at all is out of contractual obligation. The production of this movie was forced by a studio to milk money out of a franchise where none of the people actually in the movie wanted to be there. It was just loud, unpleasant, uncomfortable, predictable and so, so not funny. This honestly is one of the worst movies I've seen all year and with the shit that's come out this year, that is saying a hell of a lot.tl/:dr Awful, awful movie.
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I'm actually wanting to start and watch Perception just because of this:
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I've watched a fair few this week and loved them all, so I'm just going to name them instead of the last as I'm not sure which one it was XD
So yeah, good week for films.
The perks of being a wallflower
Oblivion
The cloud atlas
Olympus has fallen (pretty meh)
Now you see me, now you don't
Super8If you want enjoyable films then you should try at least five of the six I mentioned. I guess it's to each their own, but I'm sure all of you would find pleasure in a few of them. I think the cloud atlas definitely scored high points for me though. They are all very different and each have a flaw or two, but not to the degree that would make you feel like a few hours was wasted.
I'm pretty fond of super8 too, but I'm pretty much a Spielberg fanboy and grew up on his films, so the sense of familiarity definitely helped it with point scoring.
I've tried not to focus too much on the small stuff that niggles with with films released nowadays. Everything has a fault and I'm not really into the idea of focusing on that, than the list of good that came from it. Some admittedly are so bad it's not exactly easy to ignore, but everything else can be looked past.
The only downside is I haven't got anything else to watch
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Between Thursday and today, I saw two movies.
We're the Millers
[hide]What can I say, the trailers had me pumped. I think Sudeikis is funny, the scenes in the trailer looked amusing….why not?Overall, I think it just.....okay. Certainly not a bad one, I definitely laughed a lot, but.....some scenes just fell flat, like the dragged-out kissing scene. But I think my main problem was that the bad guy, or generic Hispanic druglord #2354, was....just there. Not really entertaining, just a way to provide conflict. Also didn't think the swinger couple would be more than one-note characters. Was I expecting more of a crazy road trip than anything else? Well yeah.
Buuut on the flip side, Emma Roberts had some great one-liners (as did Sudeikis), and Kenny singing/rapping Waterfalls was probably my favorite part of the whole movie. Ed Helms' character was pretty damn wacky.[/hide]
Identity Thief
[hide]When my sister rented this for me, I thought "wait…..isn't this a drama?"But then it clicked, this is the movie with Jason Bateman and Melissa McMarthy. I like the former due to his awesome deadpan in his movies, and the latter is....okay. I can definitely say I enjoyed her more in The Heat than in this movie.
It's not that I think identity theft is a horrible thing to do, but coupled with McMarthy's predominantly obnoxious character....I ended up getting myself annoyed. But Bateman catches her early in the movie and-
....yeah, I think this was the problem. Catching the thief in the first 20 minutes of the movie? The writers knew they had to write in something for the rest of the plot....so they add in two goons of a prison lord (random T.I role), and a bounty hunter. All three of which I barely found entertaining and just felt they were placeholders than anything else.
The movie goes as well as you'd expect. Bateman catches McCarthy, he has to put up with her obnoxiousness, they avoid the bad guys, they become friends....I'll admit I liked the scene where McCarthy's character explains her true past and having no name (and she even took the heat at the end!), but I was bored through most of the movie.
Also, that throat punch got more and more annoying every time it used.[/hide]
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Tree of Life: Well that was a waste of over two goddamn hours of my life. I've never seen a movie that thought it was saying so much but was in fact saying so little. Every artsy, snobbish, pretentious drama cliche in the book without an ounce of substance. Plus dinosaurs for some reason.
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The last movie I watched was The Princess Bride. It was good, but I think I would've liked it a lot more if I'd grown up with it, especially since I already knew about the more iconic moments like the whole "My name is Inigo Montoya." scene. It still had a lot of funny moments, especially how over-the-top a lot of the characters were.
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Ah princess bride. Originator of the R.O.U.S
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I watched the new Ghibili/Miyazaki movie, The Wind Rises (or whatever the English name ends up being) over the weekend. I'm not entirely sure how I felt about it. It's obviously a big departure from his more fantasy-based films (aside from the dream sequences), so if you were to watch it with expectations based on those you'd probably be pretty dissapointed. It definitely charmed me, and I thought the notion of using the war-time setting as a simple backdrop to play up the building of planes as simply following one's dream was really neat. I guess what led to me not liking it as much as I could have is that since the story is a little more grounded in reality, things like writing and structure seemed more important to me. I felt that it dropped the ball in both of those areas at times, stretching things out and not devoting enough time to making me care more about characters when adversity is finally encountered. I'd probably like it a little more on a second viewing. It's a pity Miyazaki is getting skewered by nationalists for this, though.
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@Thousand:
Tree of Life: Well that was a waste of over two goddamn hours of my life. I've never seen a movie that thought it was saying so much but was in fact saying so little. Every artsy, snobbish, pretentious drama cliche in the book without an ounce of substance. Plus dinosaurs for some reason.
oh god no
Tree of Life is so truly complex and beautiful it's ridiculous
I can understand not enjoying it, which is fine (although hard for me to grasp), but it is definitely not snobbish or pretentious.
Read into Malick's influence from thinkers like Deleuze, Wittgenstein (seriously the universe scene is like the most awesome and heart-wrenching representation of the last section of the Tracactus; even the scenes prior emulate the way the text exits language and enters silence: like emerging from a teeming crowd into a great, brooding cathedral) and Nietzsche to really start seeing the sheer affirmation that the film is. Its usage of permutations and silence is beyond masterful. This is not say that every viewer should understand Malick's philosophical background pre-viewing, but it should at least release one from the mindset that its an aimless or banal work of art: it is most definitely not. perhaps understand it as something a bit too exclusive and jeering; I don't mean this in a condescending sense at all, just that a more healthy and appropriate criticism is to investigate its technique in relation to the viewer: that its deep sense of language ultimately renders it mute (though its worth mentioning this is sort of what Malick is going for).basically Malick rules dude and I really don't want you to write him off so easy. I hope you're only discarding this film, because stuff like Thin Red Line and Days of Heaven is a lot more accessible but similarly moving
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Tree of Life is Terrence Malick pointing his camera in pretty ways, throwing in the most generic, pretentious, pseudophilosophical dialogue that is just so goddamn easy to write ("Father, Mother, Brother, where art thou, I come for you! I shall find you!" It's so easy, I could do it) ALMOST ALL WHISPERED (yeah, this movie isn't snobby at all) and then him laughing his ass off at the people who try make sense in the film where there's no sense at all. I mean really dude? Bringing up all these philosophers up like Nietzche? Like this movie actually has some thought behind it other than just looking really pretty?
If you got some sort of interpretation from the pretty pictures that appealed to your personal interests or something, power to you, I'm not taking it away from you. But I saw a far better movie about the permutations of life with actual characters, a narrative, good story structure and all the little things that make a movie a movie (because let's face it, no matter how much you like Tree of Life, you can't call it a movie, I don't mean that as disrespect, it's just not a movie), it was called Magnolia.
As far as I'm, concerned, shooting a lot of pretty sequences and editing the film in an extremely out of order, jarred fashion, does not a deep film make. I mean Dinosaurs? What's your philosophical interpretation of that?
But that's my humble opinion.
And for reference, the only other movie of his I saw was Thin Red Line which also pretty bad for the same reasons as this film but not as bad because at least in that movie's case, there was some sort of plot going on behind all the self indulgent shots of pretty trees and whatnot.
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Tree of Life was an incredibly divisive movie. It had beautiful cinematography and an excellent selection of music, but it did reek of art house pretentiousness. Those whispered voiceovers man…
I guess I am not "well-read" enough to appreciate it.
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@Thousand:
Tree of Life is Terrence Malick pointing his camera in pretty ways, throwing in the most generic, pretentious, pseudophilosophical dialogue that is just so goddamn easy to write ("Father, Mother, Brother, where art thou, I come for you! I shall find you!" It's so easy, I could do it) ALMOST ALL WHISPERED (yeah, this movie isn't snobby at all)
Yes, but a central theme in the film and in Wittgenstein's writing is the necessary question: what can we talk about? Wittgenstein delineates precisely what can be spoken about, and the rest he says "we must pass over in silence." There's this beautiful dichotomy between mother and father: grace and nature. The mother who can see "silence" and the father who attempts to subject existence and the world to crude authority. It's not just so much about what is spoken, but what is not spoken and what is not supposed to be spoken. Anyway, I don't want to pursue every philosophical aspect of the film; my intent was just to clarify that the film is not pseudo-philosophical or aimless, which I don't think I've even lain solid reason to yet.
The point is that Malick really just isn't the type of person I believe you think he is. The dude graduated cumma sum laude from Harvard before pursuing a PhD in philosophy. Granted this doesn't necessarily mean the film isn't meaningless and overblown, but if you then pursue his precise influences from thinkers, it really becomes difficult to maintain that standpoint. The use of nature, time and the universe is totally drawing from Deleuze's idea of passive synthesis, the soundtrack even bears a really strong resemblance to Nietzsche's understanding of music, etc.
Once again I'd like to stress that this doesn't mean you must enjoy the film; it still can be and certainly is flawed. Regardless, I feel the widespread criticism that the film is hollow and pretentious is ill-founded. Terrence Malick is a total recluse and I highly doubt he'd spend decades working on each of his films just for them to be ostentatious balls of fluff. -
We'll have to agree to disagree on this (funnily, I'm sure this is the sort of argument people had when the film first came out). Visually the movie is fantastic and there were some scenes here and there which I thought maybe this movie has got some sort of point to it, maybe he has some sort of ideas he wants to present on screen but by and large, I just think it's a bunch of pretentious fluff. An artsy director shot a bunch of pretty pictures, strung it together in a non-linear (and pretty incoherent way), dubbed in a lot of laughably pretentious dialogue and just put it out there for people to read way more into it than I honestly think it deserves.
But hey, if you got something out of it, more power to you. I don't want to take it away from you. I just personally think it's vacuous but that's just my interpretation
I plan to see one more Terrence Malik film and post my thoughts on it later this week, we'll see how that one treats me.
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I've been watching the tv show "suits" lately. I really like the snappy dialog and snarky humor. I also don't seem to get tired seeing geniuses struggle(one of the main characters has eidetic memory, he still fails constantly though).
That said it doesn't really feel that remarkable beyond that, there are generally very few shows during the summer that catch my interest but this one did.
Looking forward to the blacklist, the new korra season, castle and of course shield next month.
There's going to be a lot of fun binge watching days with friends. -
oh god no
Tree of Life is so truly complex and beautiful it's ridiculous
I can understand not enjoying it, which is fine (although hard for me to grasp), but it is definitely not snobbish or pretentious.
Read into Malick's influence from thinkers like Deleuze, Wittgenstein (seriously the universe scene is like the most awesome and heart-wrenching representation of the last section of the Tracactus; even the scenes prior emulate the way the text exits language and enters silence: like emerging from a teeming crowd into a great, brooding cathedral) and Nietzsche to really start seeing the sheer affirmation that the film is. Its usage of permutations and silence is beyond masterful. This is not say that every viewer should understand Malick's philosophical background pre-viewing, but it should at least release one from the mindset that its an aimless or banal work of art: it is most definitely not. perhaps understand it as something a bit too exclusive and jeering; I don't mean this in a condescending sense at all, just that a more healthy and appropriate criticism is to investigate its technique in relation to the viewer: that its deep sense of language ultimately renders it mute (though its worth mentioning this is sort of what Malick is going for).basically Malick rules dude and I really don't want you to write him off so easy. I hope you're only discarding this film, because stuff like Thin Red Line and Days of Heaven is a lot more accessible but similarly moving
I wanted to say thanks for this post because it got me interested in Malick. I read up a lot about him (not on wiki) and I like his loose ideas about how to direct. The people he worked with spoke highly of him even though I imagine he could be difficult. The philosophical underpinnings of all of his films certainly drew me in, but I'm interested in the cinematography also - lotsa people describe it as hypnotic. It's quite interesting to me how many people cite him as their favorite director, despite his sparse collection.
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Malick is more of an acquired taste, I feel. Though I outta reckon he's at least he knows how to do pretentious art-house shtick better then most especially Jean Luc Goddard. Film Socilaimse is one of the biggest piles of pretentious art house garbage I've seen. Malick's cinematography is absolutely jaw-dropping. And say whatever you like about him, the guy is quite ambitious in his filmmaking and has the ablity to communicate so much with just one shot of imagery alone.
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Well just saw Waking Life.
What a gigantic fucking turd lol.
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Waking Life had some memorable discussions throughout it, but they were sort of scattered and it was all pretty much level one so edgy college philosophy. To it's credit, though, it's all straight up discussions and not just some poorly-conceived metaphor like a lot of artsy philosophical movies can be. It's when you're watching shit like Tree of Life that you know you're scraping the bottom of the sceptic tank.
Just watched Found the other night (the Scott Schirmer flick). That's probably the first horror movie I've seen that lives up to the genre. The story focuses a lot on the drama of the situation which makes the moment where everything goes red hit all the harder. There is some question as too the necessity of the violence in it, but I think it fits the film well. A lot of the movie is spent putting the glorification of violence up against its reality, so without it it might feel a bit distant from its point. Either way, it was a cool and memorable movie that I would recommend to horror buffs.
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i like the art in waking life but it is like philosophy-lite or something
was also really bummed to hear that Kierkegaard's last words weren't actually "Sweep me up"
also for one last note on the subject, I'd like to hear what people are identifying as the the hokey cloying metaphor evident in the Tree of Life
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Just watched Found the other night (the Scott Schirmer flick). That's probably the first horror movie I've seen that lives up to the genre. The story focuses a lot on the drama of the situation which makes the moment where everything goes red hit all the harder. There is some question as too the necessity of the violence in it, but I think it fits the film well. A lot of the movie is spent putting the glorification of violence up against its reality, so without it it might feel a bit distant from its point. Either way, it was a cool and memorable movie that I would recommend to horror buffs.
I'm going to hold you to this….oooh I'm going to hold you to this indeed.
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Marathoning through the first two seasons of Walking Dead again, with a new perspective since I attended a WD panel at Dragon Con. Also I just read that season 3 will be on Netflix by September 29th, which would be 2 weeks before season 4 is out.
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Watched Forrest Gump for the first time a few days ago.
I'd been told that it was an insanely funny movie, and it certainly was. I wish I'd seen it sooner.[I like to draw things.
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One on Netflix, one in the theater.
The Dictator! Was a little hopeful for this one. After all, while I didn't see Bruno, I thought Borat was freaking hiliarous. So okay fine, another eccentric yet anti-Semitic character trying and failing miserably to fit in the United States, right?
! ….Let's just say the expression "third time's the charm" doesn't fly here.
! I mean there were plenty of scenes where I laughed, sure, but.....it didn't feel very funny overall. The problem, I think, is that while some jokes were killer, some....just dragged on and lost their amusement quick. Like the one where Aladeen lies about his name using signs THREE TIMES in the cafe, or when he and his science leader are trying to get him over the zipline.
! And yeah, it may be hard to like a brutal (albeit a satire of) dictator, so throw in a romantic subplot. With Anna Faris.....meh. Don't really like her as an actress and the romance just dragged the movie down, in my opinion.
! So I guess I'd give it....2 out of 5 stars?
The Butler! Aw come on, I had to see this one. I initially thought it would focus purely on the mechanics of being a butler in the White House, showcasing Cecil's growth, and in one administration.
! I was pleasantly surprised to see a whole backdrop of the civil rights movement, and Cecil's life through 8 presidents….and 6 were on screen!
! Overall, it was a dramatic and heartwrenching yet amazing movie. Seeing his son get arrested multiple times, his other son dies in Vietnam.....but he finally gets equal pay and lives to see Barack Obama be a candidate....only to have his wife die......speaking of, I liked Oprah's character.
! Although I thought Robin Williams was seriously miscast as Eisenhower (not that he was bad, but) and Mariah Carey......felt they used such a big star on such a small role.
! My favorite scene was the one where Louis and his class sit at the white section at that diner. While we see a flashback of their teacher preparing them for the worst, and god, do we see it. Then again, the scene where Alabama protesters set fire to the bus was even more powerful.
! the relationship between Cecil and Louis…...it really drew you into the film, into their whole lives.
! What a masterpiece.
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Just watched Elysium. From the mixed reviews, I expected an overambitious project with a lot of exploring of interesting themes that may or may not have come together along with a formulaic story that albeit simple at least served to explore those themes. One of those what the fuck did I watch movies. Nope. Just got a cookie cutter "The Chosen One" story with absolutely nothing interesting or new about it. A lot of terribly written sci-fi, the exploration of the horrors of social disparity almost non-existent and what little we got was laughably one dimensional and cartoonish. I know exactly what I got from that movie. A whole lot of nothing. That and some fun overacting from hilariously over the top villains.
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Finally got my hands on one piece movie 12.
I was not disappointed. A handful of small things that bugged me, but overall worth the wait.
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Watched Forrest Gump for the first time a few days ago.
I'd been told that it was an insanely funny movie, and it certainly was. I wish I'd seen it sooner.one of if not the best Tom hanks performance ever. Maybe on par with the cloud atlas to some degree.
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So, I just watched a very weird movie called Employee of the Month, starring Matt Dillon and Christina Applegate. It
s about some looser type schmuck who loses both his job and his fiancée in a single day, which puts him over the edge and makes him want to go rob the bank he worked at. On the DVD, its described as a black comedy and compared to the Coen Bros. style. Now, movies like that are right up my alley. I love black comedies. I love movies like The Big Lebowski or Burn after reading, that take a bunch of eccentric, maybe even vile, but funny, characters and puts them in dangerous and nerve-wrecking situations. And I do really like both Math Dillon and especially Christina Applegate, so I expected a fun little movie, not a masterpiece, but atleast a movie that delivers on its promise.I sure as hell didn
t get that. Now, first of, the whole "loses everything and turns crazy or whatever" part is supposed to be the setup that leads into the main story part, the heist or the revenge on those who wronged him, right? But at 90 minutes runtime, the movie spends the first 60 minutes showing how the life of the main character falls apart. Ok, fine, if that would be done well, it could serve as some nice character building. The problem is, its neither entertaining nor very funny. In fact, the whole movie just isnt really funny at all. It has some small moments that are mildly amusing, but thats it. The main characters best friend, played by Steve Zahn, for example, is supposed to be the funny sidekick who just say whats on his mind and does whatever he wants. Oh! Hes pissing into the little fountain in the main characters garden! How droll! Now hes stealing the jewelery off of dead bodies, insulting the gay character and acting like a complete loon in general! Thats so provocative, it must be funny! Right? Right? No, sorry, the problem is, the writers seemed to think that political incorrectness automatically equals complete hilarity, except that would require the lines to be actually funny and not just weird and dickish. Its just makes the character seem like an unlikable asshole, and an annoying one at that. And aside from that, the movie just turns into drama soap opera in the middle, when the main character (who i wish I could remember his damn name) is lamenting that he screwed it up with his would-be wife and that he actually loves her so much and calls her and apologizes and whatever. Thats all nice and dandy, but wasnt this supposed to be some crazy, black comedy in the style of the Coen Brothers?? Well, and then comes the third act, and I guess I should spoiler this part, as I really have to describe it in detail:! So, Matt Dillons character goes back to the bank, hacks into the banks computer, makes a huge bank transfer to some poor customer he promised to help the day before and then gets into a scuffle with his asshole boss, threatens him with a gun, but does not kill him. So far, so good. But then he walks out offhis bosses office and there is a huge bankrobbery and a couple of heavily-armed masked guys are holding everyone at the bank hostage! Huh…kinda random, but ok. Matt Dillon (I
ll just call him that now) imagines playing the hero and shooting all the bankrobbers (Ill come back to this later on), but in reality, he just follows the bankrobbers orders and kneels down. The bank gets robbed, but Matt Dillonsmistress at the bank (shes the reason his fiancée left him) is almost kidnapped! He heroically starts shooting at the bankrobbers, saves his girlfriend but then.....gets gunned down by the robbers and gets thrown into their van! Oh no! We see his ex-fiancée desperately crying as the police tells her they found his dead body in the burning wreckage of the van! What a weird , dramatic ending for a supposed comedy that wasnt really funny at all! But then.....twist reveal! Hes not really dead. He, his best friend, his mistress and their gay dentist friend planned the whole thing, faked his death and now have all the money. Well, cool, thats a nice little ending, I guess at some point they got together offscreen and decided to do this, right? Wrong! It is then revealed that they actually were planning this from the second Matt Dillon took the job at the bank and that they in the meantime coldheartedly disposed of the other members of their little bankrobber gang. So....basically they were all cruel, evil killers all this time and the main character actually isnt some nice loser guy? Uhhh.....but wait there is more! The gay dentist leaves, as does the mistress. Matt Dillon tells his best friend that the whole loving his fiancée thing was just a phase, so its nice that we spent so much time of the movie on it! They talk about grabbing his mistressshare of the money, but then.....he suddenly shoots Steve Zahn in the face! His mistress enters again and it is revealed that they were actually planning on taking Steve Zahns share of the money!nother twist! But then.....she shoots Matt Dillon in the head, and takes his share of the money, too! She drives to the dentists clinic and someone jumps into her car.....its Christina Applegate, Matt Dillons fiancèe! She just killed the gay dentist and it is revealed that they were actually lesbian lovers this whole time!!! Uhm....this is getting weirder and weirder. Over the credits we then get some "Wild Things" type of scenes that are supposed to fill up some holes in the story. Oh, and then the two lesbians get hit by a bus or something and die.
! Ok. Im terribly sorry for the length of this, but I just had to get across the insanity of the last ten minutes of this film, as twist after twist gets piled upon eachother. Just to sum it up: Matt Dillon is not a nice normal guy as he claimed in the freaking beginning of the movie, but actually a coldhearted, evil dude, which begs the question why he randomly transferred a huge amount of money to that poor customer earlier. The whole time, most of the characters were planning a heist at the bank, they just never bothered to talk about it onscreen (And why did Matt Dillon imagine playing hero and shooting the bankrobbers when they were working together??) And the whole plot with the fiancée leaving him because she found out he had an affair with his coworker? Was completely fake because the two gals were actually working together the whole time, too, so why did they even bother to invent such a huge drama at all? In short, the first 80 minutes of the movie.....are a complete and utter lie! I admit, I was definitely surprised by the twist ending(s), but not because it was clever or anything, it was just completely random. A smart movie may have inserted small hints here and there, so if you go back and watch it again, you can see how it all fits together. But nothing here fits together, there were no hints, it all came out of nowhere and doesnt connect at all to the rest of the movie. Really, it seemed like I was suddenly watching a completely different movie with completely different characters. The first 80 minutes: kinda boring, a little love drama, sympathetic loser main character. The last ten minutes: crazy heist movie, with tons of backstabbing, dead bodies and twists galore, and everybody is fake and evil!!So, really weird movie. Really bad movie, too. And I wrote waaaaaay more then I meant to:ninja:Sorry about that.
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Just watched "Rush" about the Formula 1 championship 1976. I'm not a too big racing fan, but as an Austrian it's pretty inevitable to know of Niki Lauda.
And it was a great movie indeed. With great OST by Hans Zimmer it showed really well the relationship between Lauda and Hunt. Maybe sometimes the dialogue felt too "movie-like" for a movie based on true events, but that didn't stop it from being very enjoyable indeed. It especially picked up after Lauda's accident. It showed two ambitious people, which are both not flawless, and how their rivalry pushed them forward.
Especially noteworthy is Daniel Brühl's portrayal of Lauda, he plays the man perfectly imho. Maybe something about that gets lost in the English dub though, seeing his amazing imitation of his dialect.
All in all a great picture that isn't only for racing fans.
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One on Netflix, one in the theater.
The Dictator! Was a little hopeful for this one. After all, while I didn't see Bruno, I thought Borat was freaking hiliarous. So okay fine, another eccentric yet anti-Semitic character trying and failing miserably to fit in the United States, right?
! ….Let's just say the expression "third time's the charm" doesn't fly here.
! I mean there were plenty of scenes where I laughed, sure, but.....it didn't feel very funny overall. The problem, I think, is that while some jokes were killer, some....just dragged on and lost their amusement quick. Like the one where Aladeen lies about his name using signs THREE TIMES in the cafe, or when he and his science leader are trying to get him over the zipline.
! And yeah, it may be hard to like a brutal (albeit a satire of) dictator, so throw in a romantic subplot. With Anna Faris.....meh. Don't really like her as an actress and the romance just dragged the movie down, in my opinion.
! So I guess I'd give it....2 out of 5 stars?
The Butler! Aw come on, I had to see this one. I initially thought it would focus purely on the mechanics of being a butler in the White House, showcasing Cecil's growth, and in one administration.
! I was pleasantly surprised to see a whole backdrop of the civil rights movement, and Cecil's life through 8 presidents….and 6 were on screen!
! Overall, it was a dramatic and heartwrenching yet amazing movie. Seeing his son get arrested multiple times, his other son dies in Vietnam.....but he finally gets equal pay and lives to see Barack Obama be a candidate....only to have his wife die......speaking of, I liked Oprah's character.
! Although I thought Robin Williams was seriously miscast as Eisenhower (not that he was bad, but) and Mariah Carey......felt they used such a big star on such a small role.
! My favorite scene was the one where Louis and his class sit at the white section at that diner. While we see a flashback of their teacher preparing them for the worst, and god, do we see it. Then again, the scene where Alabama protesters set fire to the bus was even more powerful.
! the relationship between Cecil and Louis…...it really drew you into the film, into their whole lives.
! What a masterpiece.Glad to hear it was a good movie, I have been thinking about going to see that one. I watched a similar one that went into the civil rights movement, but was more about slavery, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. Great movie, it was based on a fictional character, but in the story she lived during the end of the Civil War and through the 1960's. Might check out the book someday too.
Aside from my random horror movies, recent ones being Return of the Living Dead and Rosemary's Baby, I've been watching Comic Book Men with my husband. Pretty interesting show, they show some pretty cool stuff that people offer to sell. I always liked Kevin Smith more than Jason Mewes anyway.
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Olympus has Fallen - incredibly stupid movie
Spring Breakers - Unbelivable s.hit–- Update From New Post Merge ---
The last great movie that i saw and that i would recommend is The Painted Veil.
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