Movies You've Seen Recently |OT| AUGUST 2014

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He actually didn't direct the second Die Hard, but he did direct the underrated Last Action Hero.


Yeah, Last Action Hero is fucking excellent. Especially because it plays so very well, on so many levels, on who Schwarzenegger actually is. I think it's a brilliant and fun film.
 
Can someone recommend me good non-english language movies from past three years? Preferably euro movies since I have seen a lot of asian movies from recent years already. I have seen Blue Is the Warmest Colour, Holy Motors, The Hunt and Amour. Genre doesn't really matter but I'm not looking for comedies either. I would also appriciate good sources for euro movies (blogs,review sites, etc.).
The Skin I Live In is great. One of my favorites from the past three years.
 
He actually didn't direct the second Die Hard, but he did direct the underrated Last Action Hero.

i know it was Renny Harlin...oh damn I literally meant 1-3, but it looks like I screwed up, heh


yeah LAH is so meta. Very misunderstood movie. Not my favourite of him, tho
 
recently:

her (2013): like ray kurzweil's singularity goes hilariously wrong...really liked this, but i could definitely see how i could hate it at the same time. i feel that a lot of films like this sort of tread a thin line between heartwarming and stupid, and for the most part i think it falls on the heartwarming side.

edge of tomorrow (2014): this movie was kinda awesome, but i can totally see how it lost so much money.

the grand budapest hotel (2014): wes anderson's most twee movie? i still liked it but my favorite wes anderson movie is still the royal tenenbaums.

leaving las vegas (1995): i was like 10 when this came out so i'm not sure how i would have reacted to it if i was an adult in 1995, but i thought a lot of this premise was sort of offensive and stupid, though nicolas cage was very good in it.

x-men: days of future past (2014): slightly enjoyed this but i don't think it lived up to all the hype i had been hearing about it.

godzilla (2014): ehhhhh, not that into it.

taken 2 (2012): so bad it was kinda awesome, the car chase w/ the daughter driving was probably the funniest thing i'd seen in an action movie in awhile.

the raid 2 (2014): fucking brutal, almost to a point where it made me uncomfortable. definitely as badass as the original.
 
Bonnie and Clyde almost makes me vomit from how terrifying it is existentially. I watched it for the first time all the way through recently, and can't remember if I posted about it here. The scene where Buck is on the ground and Blanche, I think it was, is screaming "He's dying! Can't you see he's dying! Leave him alone!" is absolutely harrowing to me. The men stand around watching him, and the camera zooms in on his twitching hand. God.

And the scene where Frank Hamer walks away from a blind Blanche as she tearfully relates the events that traumatized her to thin air.....just awful.

It lingers so uncomfortably on the deaths and trauma of them that it becomes unbearable for someone like me to watch.
 
i know it was Renny Harlin...oh damn I literally meant 1-3, but it looks like I screwed up, heh


yeah LAH is so meta. Very misunderstood movie. Not my favourite of him, tho

Is that film really all that misunderstood? It's upfront about being a self-aware Schwarzenegger film, but my biggest problem is after The Terminator, pretty much every Schwarzenegger film was pretty goddamned self-aware. With those films, though, they are a great deal more consistent in terms of maintaining tone, which is the biggest problem with The Last Action Hero: it wants to be a lot of different things, like a supercop send-up, a "magic of cinema" thing, the whole surrogate father analogy, a family-friendly comedy, as well as a Schwarzenegger action film, and it never does any of them well enough to have anything stick beyond some small elements, like Charles Dance's surprisingly committed performance and a couple of good lines here and there. It really does feel like the product of about 50 different rewrites from lots of different writers.
 
Is that film really all that misunderstood? It's upfront about being a self-aware Schwarzenegger film, but my biggest problem is after The Terminator, pretty much every Schwarzenegger film was pretty goddamned self-aware. With those films, though, they are a great deal more consistent in terms of maintaining tone, which is the biggest problem with The Last Action Hero: it wants to be a lot of different things, like a supercop send-up, a "magic of cinema" thing, the whole surrogate father analogy, a family-friendly comedy, as well as a Schwarzenegger action film, and it never does any of them well enough to have anything stick beyond some small elements, like Charles Dance's surprisingly committed performance and a couple of good lines here and there. It really does feel like the product of about 50 different rewrites from lots of different writers.

I think McTiernan as a whole is a very meta, post modern director, expecially in his later films. Even Die Hard 3 has glimpses of that. It feels like he was thinking " I can do action better than most, I'm bored, let's throw in some postmodern elements". McClane almost becomes a cartoon, in a sense. LAH is him going all out about playing with the audience, satirizing almost all the typical action movie cliches. Like I said, movie is not my favourite by a long shot, but it's very interesting from a post modern cinema pow
 
The Return (2003) - I was disappointed, no really about the movie, but about me not feeling anything for it. Like I didn't care about anyone or anything that happened in this. Though I just saw that one of the kid drowned shortly after it's release, fucking terrible, only 15 too :(
 
Cidade dos Homens

It was just for a conclusion after having watched the series. There wasn't enough juice for a full movie. An episode would suffice for the relevant parts of the story. Acting is great.

Indiana Jones Quadrilogy

After all these years, it is full of sillyness and predictable scenes. The first one was good, the second one wasn't that bad and The Last Crusade is the best. Crystal Skull was the worst, even though it has some decent setpieces, that fridge scene and the sillyness overall went too far. Shia as Tarzan. It was entertaining to watch them all. I had only watched Temple of Doom on TV before.
 
aw man I forgot to rank the Die Hard series with Colis!

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Die Hard

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Live Free or Die Hard
Die Hard 3 (cept for that last 20 minutes were straight
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Die Hard 2

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A Good Day to fuck this movie
 
Chef Charming little movie. Makes you feel good without being sappy or overly sentimental.

Kick Ass 2 is the epitome of trying too hard. It's watchable, but often embarrassing.

Draft Day was a little more interesting than it looked from the trailers. Passable but too predictable to really recommend.
 
Thanks to the melbourne international film festival I managed to catch a screening of THE MOTHER AND THE WHORE my impressions quoted below.

For a film that's is basically about three people participating in banal and pseudo-philosophical conversations, sipping coffee at cafe, drinking alcohol at bars, and of course some fucking in-between while having very long conversations about their sexual activity for three hours and 40-minutes, it sure went by fast.

Definitely one of the best french new wave films I ever seen. The dialogue is constantly engaging, how the alienation and lifestyle of the protagonists is examined in the context of post 1968 france and the sexual revolution gives the film some interesting thematic content to chew on, and it has some seriously funny scenes like that scene where the protagonist makes fun of jean-paul satre while he's having coffee in the same cafe as him, and the completely random mundane moments and conversations that occur throughout the film. The final "I am not a whore" monologue is also one of the most powerful ones I have ever seen in film.

Overall the film itself kind of reminds me of the Before trilogy but more self-indulgent with a lot more pseudo-intellectual wankery in the conversations, but manages to avoid pretentiousness by how it specifically portrays the protagonist is kind of a sexist and chauvinistic dick. I still couldn't help but relate to him and his rather amusing pseudo-intellectual way of viewing life and extrapolating the small moments he has experienced to other characters in the film.

Happy to have experienced this.. one the big screen nonetheless.

But yeah I really liked it, I was expecting suffering for 3-hour and 40-minutes but I was shocked how fast it went by, and the audience was constantly laughing and it even got a round of applause at the end.

Noticed a few walkouts when the reel was getting changed though..
 
I really need to watch that movie, I was always intimidated by the length but I'm glad to hear that it goes by fast. For some reason I have a mental block when I see a movie that is more than 160min and always put them on the bottom of my backlog. But recently I've been working on watching those long films once every couple of days.
 
Live Free over Vengeance?! Oh hell no.

The real Die Hard ranking system:

Masterpiece tier:
Die Hard

Pretty Darn Good, If Not a Patch on the Original tier:
Die Hard With a Vengeance

Has Franco Nero In It tier:
Die Hard 2: Die Harder

Youtube the Car Chase tier:
A Good Day to Die Hard

Seriously, Viewtiful, What the Hell is Wrong With You, It's a Goddamned Len Wiseman Film tier:
Live Free or Die Hard
 
A Good Day to Die Hard is way worse than Die Hard 4.

and that car crash in 5 is really bad; ridiculously ugly and cheap looking for a 100m film.
 
A Good Day to Die Hard is way worse than Die Hard 4.

and that car crash in 5 is really bad; ridiculously ugly and cheap looking for a 100m film.

I should point out that I feel the last three tiers there are pretty much the same.

I will say the one thing I'll give Die Hard 2: Die Harder is it's the best looking one in the series. Renny Harlin always had a pretty solid eye for visuals, and even patently ridiculous stuff like that nude yoga stuff in the beginning had a nice color pallette. And Franco Nero, of course.
 
I can shuffle around the middle three entries, but Die Hard is untouchable and Die Hard 5 is SHIT, and I steadfastly refuse to budge on these!

Also on Die Hard 2, it has an insanely badass cameo/bit part by pre-T-1000 Robert Patrick. Like, its actually kinda distracting how much of a boss he is, and I'm always been impressed that he managed to not get typecast throughout his career still playing such an iconic stoic character.
 
300: Rise of an Empire - Eva Green/10

Between this and Penny Dreadful, what a year for her to return to our consciousness. A commanding and electric performance. I wish I could describe the way she carriers herself. It's a combination of her affect and demeanor that locks you in. She's very good.

As for the movie, I thought it was clear that Leonidas's army had a lot more personality than Themistocles's army in this one. Previously we had Fassbender along for the battle, this movie, nondescript actor who just happens to become a badass because the story requires it. I guess you can use a more lively set of supporting characters to position the first movie as being better than this sequel/prequel. As someone who wasnt enamored with the first movie* I don't think I would rate this one any worse. I enjoyed the way the story was told and prefer the naval encounters (plus the location) to the overly choreographed combat in the prior movie.

*7 years later I still maintain that the trailer for 300 is a better experience than the 2 hour movie we ended up with.
 
I can shuffle around the middle three entries, but Die Hard is untouchable and Die Hard 5 is SHIT, and I steadfastly refuse to budge on these!

Also on Die Hard 2, it has an insanely badass cameo/bit part by pre-T-1000 Robert Patrick. Like, its actually kinda distracting how much of a boss he is, and I'm always been impressed that he managed to not get typecast throughout his career still playing such an iconic stoic character.

Getting a little fat killed any chance of that typecasting. It's not like the dude is in Val Kilmer "What the fuck happened to you, man? Your ass used to be beautiful" territory, but it did a number on his look.
 
So far this month I haven't really sat down and watched a whole lot of movies from start to finish (there have been a dozen or so that were on TV that I did catch parts of) with the only exceptions (so far) being Hatchet 2, Hatchet 3, Grave Encounters, and PontyPool.

Hatchet 2 - Decided to revisit it and to be honest I still kinda hate this movie as I (still) found Danielle Harris's shaky southern accent overly annoying
Hatchet 3 - Much better imo than Hatchet 2 as Danielle Harris's southern accent isn't as annoying or shaky
Grave Encounters - Kinda of enjoyed it, especially the mind f*(( second half
PontyPool - This started off kinda interesting, but lost me a little bit past the halfway point when the main characters realized that
speaking English will apparently turn you into a murderous rage zombie who can't "see" their victims and instead hunt by sound
.

Update:
Ghoulies II - I recently watched this movie because I thought I had seen it as a kid and wanted to "refresh" my memories of it. Turns out I hadn't seen it at all and that some of the memories I had were actually from a different movie that (I still don't know what movie it was) had a few similar scenes
there are a couple of scenes set at a carnival and these little creatures are running a muck killing/eating people like a guy who falls into a dunk tank or a person who went into a port a potty,etc.
.

Clive Barker's Lords of Illusion - Saw this was on Netflix and couldn't resist watching it as it's a bit of a guilty pleasure (and imo very quotable) for me, now all I need is for Netflix to add Deep Rising

Hellraiser: Bloodlines - Been on a bit of a Clive Barker kick after watching Lords of Illusion and whaddya know pretty much every single Hellraiser movie is available on Netflix, decided to watch this one just for the heck of it.
 
The Hundred-Foot Journey. This exceeded my expectations (based on the fun trailer) and they succeeded admirably in conveying the wonder of Indian spices, in the hands of a gifted chef (it delivered far more on this front than Chef). The French locale was also wonderful and evoked memories of Jean de Florette (own combo-DVD (not available on Blu :( ), with Manon des Sources - recommended).

Apart from Helen Mirren, who was great as the owner of the competing high-end French restaurant, the cast was largely unknown to me (if you're from the UK, you might at least recognise Om Puri, who plays the Indian Papa), but excellent all the same, especially the main characters.

Overall, although not perfect, the authenticity of the food and location elevated the movie for me and I'd give it 8/10.
 
The real Die Hard ranking system:

Masterpiece tier:
Die Hard

Pretty Darn Good, If Not a Patch on the Original tier:
Die Hard With a Vengeance

Has Franco Nero In It tier:
Die Hard 2: Die Harder

Youtube the Car Chase tier:
A Good Day to Die Hard

Seriously, Viewtiful, What the Hell is Wrong With You, It's a Goddamned Len Wiseman Film tier:
Live Free or Die Hard

this list I agree with. Never seen LFODH because I'd rather stick a starved hamster up my arse than watching that crap
 
Punch-Drunk Love felt like Paul Thomas Anderson on a playground. So many great, crafted shots. If it wasn't for TWBB, this would be my favorite movie from him. 10/10

Blue Valentine was pretty good. Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams both put on good performances that felt real enough. 7/10
 
I really need more Michelle Williams in my life, sadly she only did a handful of movies in the last couple of years. One of the great actresses of her generation.
 
Hard Boiled by John Woo
A 90's action flick done right! Many memorable characters. Chow Yen-fat makes for a great badass cop who listens to no one. Tony Leung was great as always. Action scenes were explosive, literally. So many explosions. So many jumps and dives. Not as brutal as films like the Raid, but much more enjoyable and better choreographed. The setting was great too. Gun fights at a hospital with babies and sick people! It intensified the gun fights to great levels. The film also does a great play on blurring the lines of identity.

I heard great things about it, but it surely surpassed my expectations.
 
Thanks to the melbourne international film festival I managed to catch a screening of THE MOTHER AND THE WHORE my impressions quoted below.



But yeah I really liked it, I was expecting suffering for 3-hour and 40-minutes but I was shocked how fast it went by, and the audience was constantly laughing and it even got a round of applause at the end.

Noticed a few walkouts when the reel was getting changed though..

Glad you liked it! Any screening of an Eustache movie is worth catching (he didn't make that many movies) because it's such a rare occasion, even in France (his son his basically blocking any home release).
 
Just caught a preview of Into the Storm. It's quite dumb and by the book, but it's also fun and the visual effects are pretty good. And let's be honest, isn't that what a movie like this is about? All the character stuff is pretty sappy, during all this tween loving, family bonding, self-discovery and Lori from The Walking Dead doing stuff and thangs you really just want to get back to the tornadoes and their mayhem.

DisneyNature documentary Bears was great. Some stunning footage, both up close to the animals as well as swooping nature shots that are jaw dropping. They really manage to capture the characters of these bears. The narration by John C Reilly is pretty awesome as well, playing on both the comedic and dramatic sides of the story. Another win for DisneyNature.
 
The Expendables 3 Yeah won't be watching this again. Where to start.. its just lame..

- Was nice seeing Gibson, Snipes and Banderas in this. Gibson was good, nice seeing him back on screen. However
final fight scene and death was lame.
Banderas was pretty weird and funny
- Harrison was ... Harrison. In the movie more than I expected though
- Jet Li ... pointless screentime
- Some SFX that could rival a syfy movie..

The whole young team is just so pointless to the plot, its just shoe-horned it to get the young audiences which is annoying. They might as well let the young guys run with the expendables and have the old school guys make a proper throw back movie.

Without the classic faces I wouldn't come anywhere near these movies. All three have not been good, and Sly just announced a fourth and fifth movie!

When I saw Jackie Chan speak last week he was asked about the Expendables and how Sly approached him for EX2, 3 and now 4. He returned them down because well he's against violence and the violence in these movies is just mindless but also he doesn't want to appear for five minutes fight then disappear which is the problem. Having such a big cast you don't get to see people for ages. Snipes is there then you don't see him for 20-30 minutes until he pops up again in the background of a shot.

I'll still watch each new one as they aren't bad to turn your mind off, and laugh at how stupid they are but they could be so epic!

Edit: I also watched Police Story 2 the other day which is pretty good
 
Hard Boiled by John Woo
A 90's action flick done right! Many memorable characters. Chow Yen-fat makes for a great badass cop who listens to no one. Tony Leung was great as always. Action scenes were explosive, literally. So many explosions. So many jumps and dives. Not as brutal as films like the Raid, but much more enjoyable and better choreographed. The setting was great too. Gun fights at a hospital with babies and sick people! It intensified the gun fights to great levels. The film also does a great play on blurring the lines of identity.

I heard great things about it, but it surely surpassed my expectations.

Great movie. It is like The Raid 1/2 but made with weapons in mind instead of fists.

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Day of Anger
Kind of an anti-Death Rides a Horse. Pretty bad dubbing, even by spaghetti western standards, but a surprisingly interesting and well-drawn script. Van Cleef is as good as ever, while Giliuano Gemma is a total simp that's hard to root for. I think this was Tonino Valerri's debut film, which makes sense given the handful of awkward camera/editing choices. Technical hiccups and Gemma's lame ass aside, though, I think this is one of the more thoughtful and better constructed stories I've seen in a spaghetti western, which is always a nice surprise to find in this genre.
 
Rolling Thunder - A Vietnam vet has trouble adjusting to the "real world"(a Paul Schrader trademark), and to make matters worse his damn family gets murdered by thugs! Why, it makes one want to get on a revenge spree! Oh, did I mention he has a hook for a hand most of that movie? Cuz that's kinda important. Pretty pulpy stuff, but its a lot less Roger Corman then you think. In fact, its actually quite sophisticated, relatively speaking! Jordan Cronenweth, of Blade Runner fame, brings that same wonderful combination of deep black shadows and Spielbergian beams of light that really helps create this world filled with tension and menace. Furthermore, the script is full of these great, terse dialog exchanges that say a lot with a little about the characters' motivations and mindsets. Its got a really great cast, too. Will Devane, the protagonist, just has this big brow and downtrodden mouth like he's always sad even when he's smiling, a perfect choice for the character. Fuckin' Tommy Lee Jones steals every scene he's in.
 
Rolling Thunder - A Vietnam vet has trouble adjusting to the "real world"(a Paul Schrader trademark), and to make matters worse his damn family gets murdered by thugs! Why, it makes one want to get on a revenge spree! Oh, did I mention he has a hook for a hand most of that movie? Cuz that's kinda important. Pretty pulpy stuff, but its a lot less Roger Corman then you think. In fact, its actually quite sophisticated, relatively speaking! Jordan Cronenweth, of Blade Runner fame, brings that same wonderful combination of deep black shadows and Spielbergian beams of light that really helps create this world filled with tension and menace. Furthermore, the script is full of these great, terse dialog exchanges that say a lot with a little about the characters' motivations and mindsets. Its got a really great cast, too. Will Devane, the protagonist, just has this big brow and downtrodden mouth like he's always sad even when he's smiling, a perfect choice for the character. Fuckin' Tommy Lee Jones steals every scene he's in.

I thought you were referring to Tropic Thunder at first and was gonna ask where the hell was TLJ in that movie

sounds damn interesting. I love William Devane!
 
Watched Amazing Spider-Man 2 yesterday. I am not at all surprised that the film took a dive at the domestic Box Office. I thought the first film was alright (even if the Lizard was goofy), but this was worse than Spider-Man 3. At least that was entertaining in a campy sort of way.

Now that I have seen all 4, I would probably rate this year's comic films as follows (out of 5 stars)

Captain America: The Winter Soldier ★★★½
X-Men: Days of Future Past ★★★½
Guardians of the Galaxy ★★★½

All three of these were solid films. They didn't blow my mind, and none of them are likely to make my top 10 list for the year, but I had fun watching all three. Guardians would have probably been one of those rare 4+ star comic films if they dropped the lame final act or had a less generic villain (I like Ronan in the comics, but his film version was the definition of bland 1-dimensional bad guy). Days of Future Past had the best set pieces, but I had some issues with the overall plot. Cap 2 was better than the first, but again, Marvel struggles with those final acts.


Amazing Spider-Man 2 ★★

Some of the special effects were cool (though the CGI was really uneven in quality I thought). Some of the jokes were sort of funny, and Andrew Garfield + Emma Stone have decent chemistry. However, the villains were Saturday morning cartoon bad, the film was easily a half hour too long, the characters act irrational for the sake of melodrama, and the plot was full of holes. At least Peter Parker used Google this time.
 
The Fisher King is definitely a bit too manic and showy at times, but it's definitely got its heart in the right place, and it helps there's not a bum note amongst the cast members, and Gilliam's brilliant staging pays off in some truly unforgettable scenes.
 
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