The Movies Discussion Thread

[Meandthem]

Had a spin on a batch of Oscar-nominees/winners and found most of them quite good...
Hugo and Midnight in Paris both celebrated nostalgia and had a lot of meta hints for cinema-, literature- and art-freaks (like me) and both showed elaborate visual and musical craftsmanship - no surprise for neither Scorsese nor Allen!
I feel the love and passion for the media trough-out both movies.

Beginners shows the missing insight between generations and the stiffness of the rules of behaviour in our -the American - society.

The Help is in it's own way hilariously funny, but as a document in history shows the phoniness of the American Constitution in the -50s.
Great performances all over...

And last The Descendants where George Clooney shows more feelings than ever.

[justabagofatoms]

The Bed Sitting Room

If you have seen it, need I say more? If you haven't...FIND IT. Henceforth, one of the largest regrets of my life will be not discovering this movie until just the other night. And it came out in 1969. I'd like to slap the face off of everyone I know who should have told me about this. It is possibly the best film in the history of mankind. Or at least the last one.

[moom]

So, folks, - Avengers. Any good? Bad? Same for Dark Shadows.

[rememberaday]

Anyone watched Modern Times (The Charlie Chaplin movie)??

[justabagofatoms]

I was at the premier but I can't seem to recall a thing about it.
tsk.



Inglorious Bastards, a Quentin Tarantino fantasy. Brad Pitt thought he had signed on to a Coen brothers movie and was channeling a weird mix of John Wayne and random hillbilly that made me laugh every time he opened his mouth. I don't know if he was intentionally being comical. I hope so. This film had some very superb scenes with a palpable menace, but they inevitably (and predictably) led up to everyone in the cast getting the shit shot out of them. I don't imagine this was too popular in Germany. I know how they feel, I still have to deal with hundreds of years of inherited guilt every time I look at a black person, or a Native American person, or an Asian person...let's say everyone else I look at. My forefathers brutalized and bulldozed their way across the country in ways that I feel no understanding of, whatsoever. But, like the German people, someone has to feel the wrath. Sorry, didn't mean to get sidetracked. I guess if one watches a Tarantino film, one should be prepared to understand that he views savage, gory, sudden violence, as an artform, in and of itself. I'd love to jab a hatpin in him, and remind him of the reality underneath it all. And anyone else that has forgotten that murder and mayhem and brutality like that so entertainingly depicted in this movie, is something to avoid and eradicate, and not relish and smirk at.

. Brad called them "Nattsees". lol.

[danielcaux]

"Inglorious Basterds" was complete fun. Both the opening scene in the farm and the one in the tavern are among the most tense scenes I have seen in recent years. Shoshanna was mindblowingly beautiful as the vulnerable yet tough avenging heroine. Christoph Waltz created in Landa one of the most memorable movie villains of all time, no doubt the most charmingly evil MOFO in the whole Tarantino world, wouldn't you like to eat a nice strudel a la creme with him? And yes Pitt was hilarious as the hillbilly commander. The only thing that felt kinda out of place was Austin Powers playing that british general.

Talking about Melanie Laurent, I recently watched "Beginners", pretty nice movie, a little bit of a downer but nice and warm. I really liked the whole wacky mother/introvert child relationship, and you gotta love that dog too. Wish there were more romantic comedies like this one. It is a romcom, right? Well, at least it made me laugh more than any recent romcom I have seen.

[J Ed]

Anyone watched Modern Times (The Charlie Chaplin movie)??

I watched it a couple months ago, theres probably even a "review" from me a few pgs back
Chaplin could be a circus performer, his stunts are so elaborately choreographed and he seems able to do anything
in Modern Times theres the blindfolded rollerskating sequence at the edge of the balcony, that perticklerly amazed me ... he did stuff like that for real
oh yeh and we hear his voice for the first time in that one, theres this great will-he-or-wont-he build up to the moment he's meant to sing

a couple years back I saw The Gold Rush in the big screen, with a live wurlitzer accompanist ... the Paramount Theatre in Seattle is one of the great surviving movie theatres from the earliest era and they had regular Silent Movie Mondays when I was living there, 8 years ago now ... hopefully they still do because that was mighty civilized

City Lights is the other Chaplin film I really really like, if you like the sentimental aspect of Chaplins films (always helping the stray dogs orphans and blind girls) that ones the sentimentalestest

[henno]

.....
And last The Descendants where George Clooney shows more feelings than ever.

jesus, i though the decendents was one of the most over hyped pieces of non-ness ever!!!

[danielcaux]

Watched Antichrist last night - one of the most pretensious films i've seen in recent memory. Very nice gorey bits, sure, but with lifeless characters, a flimsy script and constant sex scenes the graphic nature of the film just felt utterly gratuatous - not something that rests nicely considering how seriously it takes itself and the imagery that just screams about a subtext that i felt not in the least bit inspired to figure out.

I just watched it. What can I say, another pedestrian script on Von Trier's list of pretentious films. What was the point of it? Scare us? Shock us? Teach us? Make us laugh of its own absurdity? I guess he intended as some sort of excercise on imagining how the world would be like if medieval conceptions of it (woman+nature = evil) were true. What a waste of time and money. Seriously Lars, is that all that was in your mind? If it was intended as a some sort of torture comedy then I gotta say it wasn't funny. If it was intended as high art drama, then it didn't move me at all either. Stupid and heavy handed and simple-minded and unambitious. Some nice atmospheric images though, too bad that he doesn't seem to know how to put them to good use. But I guess the credit should be given to Anthony Dod Mantle, the cinematographer.

[Creek]

We watched Disney's John Carter of Mars. It's a first class sci-fi, a movie literally 100 years in the making. Edgar Rice Burrows was a genius.

[danielcaux]

There should be a genre called "Sci-Fa" to differentiate all the very diverse stuff (in tone, style, theme, structure) that's usually just called Sci-Fi, 'cause most movies that are classified as that are more like pure fantasy with a tiny little bit of futuristic technology thrown in the mix. Star Wars for example, most people think of it as the quintessential Sci-Fi film, but what's actually the scientific concepts or especulations explored on it? The Force? The implications of the use of laser guns as weapons? Exobiology? None really, right? It's just The Lord Of The Rings on space, interstellar fantasy if you like. 2001 and Solaris, that's real Sci-Fi IMO; A Scanner Darkly, Minority Report, all that Phillip K. Dick stuff, even including the original Total Recall, which was a neat mix between the 80s "Super Macho" flick genre (Cobra, Commando, etc...) and an actual sci-fi plot (artificial memory implants and terraforming).

That said I do enjoy interstellar fantasy films a lot, and was looking for that John Carter film, too bad I missed it, because it's the kind of film that's meant to be seen in the big screen.

[rememberaday]

Well I watched a Hindi movie called Barfi. It's beautiful.

Wow, it's now India's entry for the Oscars! Hope it gets nominated!

[GilmourGirl]

There is a great movie in which Ralph Fiennes played a schizophrenic. Can't remember the name. Brilliant indie movie tho.

[rememberaday]

Spider, if I'm not wrong.

[GilmourGirl]

Yes that's it! Thank you so much! I love that movie and he is such a great actor. He played Goeth(?) brilliantly in Schindlers List and lucky J-Lo got to get with him in Maid in Manhattan lolol!