Movies You've Seen Recently |OT| Nov 2013

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Just got back from Gravity (3D) and... well, I'm gonna take this chance and congratulate Emmanuel Lubezki and Steven Price for the Cinematography and Score Academy Awards respectively. God damn this was a beautiful film.

The story was a bit predictable, as was Clooneys character and to some extent Bullocks as well. It dragged in the drama apartment to and from.

All in all though, fantastic movie!
 
The Hit

I was surprised by how good this was, I loved it. I had no clue it was John Hurt and Tim Roth until I looked it up after, but damn what great performances from both.

The Limey

A great movie to watch along with The Hit, given the differences in Stamp's performance. Great direction from Soderbergh and I always love Luis Gusman in dramatic roles.
 
Spiffy_1st said:
I watched Lost highway last night and don't know what I thought of it. I obviously have no idea what was going on, but I didn't even enjoy the weird atmosphere. I'm a fan of lynch, so I feel bad about not liking it.

Was there something wrong with me, or the film?
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Recently saw Kiss Me Deadly and it reminded me of Lost Highway for some reason and it turns out I wasn't the only one when I googled it. Not exactly sure why though.
 
Saw Escape Plan last night. Absolutely enjoyed it. Schwarzenegger was great in it. A lot better than The Last Stand and Bullet to the Head.
 
Hick, the film turned out to a different direction from what I was expecting. But it led to some strange outcomes. 3/5

Rewatched Days of Heaven, what a wonderful movie. Just the first minutes alone sets up the atmosphere so well.. Some imagery is just extraordinary, things that now can't ever be done, in Hollywood at least. I can't say if it superior or or not to Badlands.. too good movies to classify just like that. 5/5

It was a chores but I finished the Transformers movies with the last one, Dark of the Moon. So many childish situations, as it has the entire trilogy. Seems to be a weat dream of some teenagers fantasies, salving the world and the girlfriend. 1.5/5

Next terrible/infamous saga to watch: Twilight
 
The Color of Money
Despite the thoroughly 80s soundtrack, I actually enjoyed this a lot more than I thought would. Newman's older, more cynical version of Fast Eddie was more interesting than his '61 performance and the dynamic between himself and Cruise was surprisingly fun to watch. The Hustler gets all of the acclaim but I liked this more.
 
12 Years a Slave is a great movie, I think.

But Brad Pitt was not very good in it, and the fact that he looked liked White Jesus was very distracting and detracted from that part of the film.

I don't really understand the complaints about the music, honestly. There's two scenes with that "Inception"-like music people have described, but its function is pretty effable, all things considered.
 
Snowman Prophet of Doom said:
12 Years a Slave is a great movie, I think.

But Brad Pitt was not very good in it, and the fact that he looked liked White Jesus was very distracting and detracted from that part of the film.

I don't really understand the complaints about the music, honestly. There's two scenes with that "Inception"-like music people have described, but its function is pretty effable, all things considered.
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What would you say is the reasoning behind the music? I agree that there must be one, its use was far too conspicuous in the way McQueen so blatantly set it against diegetic violin music for it to be an arbitrary choice. But I couldn't quite parse out an explanation on my own.
 
Watched True Romance for the first time. Really enjoyed it. The interrogation scene between Walken and Hopper was brilliant.
 
Speaking of romance: looks like dem Brooks' Modern Romance is gonna air on TCM. About damn time!

I want to watch some of those '80s Alan Alda films as well
.
 
Gravity - Alfonso Cuaron can make anything enjoyable. Hated the story, loved the visuals and the sound (my God the sound effects and music and atmosphere from this movie) but it's ultimately a story that can be told in less than a paragraph. Will probably win all the Oscars this year.

Cat People (1942) - Somewhat boring and pedantic movie but the
swimming pool scene
holds up well.

The Bride of Frankenstein - Hard to watch this movie after watching Young Frankenstein. Still, a decent movie and surprisingly holds up well today.

Star Trek: First Contact - Internet memes aside, one of the better Star Trek movies. Is somewhat like Alien/Aliens in a lot of ways.

Star Trek: Insurrection - Going through the Star Trek movie series and up to this one. Very underrated and might be one of the better Star Trek movies (not as good as The Undiscovered Country or the previous First Contact though). Donna Murphy is a total hottie and I'm surprised she didn't get bigger roles after this.
 
The Raven (John Cusack) - Fun movie. Obviously inspired by The Third Man in one part, using similar camera, lighting, and shadows. The villain had a great face for the movie, and the lighting on his face at the end was gorgeous. The movie was appropriately dark and didn't pull any punches. Kind of felt like a Hammer horror flick with Vincent Price based on Poe, or something. Big fan of the Vincent Price original, although this has nothing in common with it.

Below - Fun, but really dumb ghost flick. Has some interesting moments, but it doesn't take advantage of its premise enough. The paranoia in the movie is well done, and it does look spooky and off, but it never really scares you. The happy ending felt kind of idiotic as well.

The Heat - It did have some funny moments, but overall I didn't enjoy it as a whole. The leads were great, but it was a pretty straightforward buddy cop flick. Bullock and McCarthy are perfect for this kind of movie, though.
 
Dragoon En Regalia said:
Kurosawa's Cure tonight—um, wow, whatatwist.png. It really starts to drag near the end, but I'm hooked on this style already.
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I really love how his horror films often feature this undefined evil force that gets propagated through human contact. A similar idea is at work in Pulse. As if a nation of socially-isolated people needed more reasons not to interact with others.
 
I'm back too... had a lot of fun watching some overdue horror movies, and discovering some new gems.

From the 31 movies I watched these stood out in a way for me:

L'anticristo (Alberto De Martino, 1974) because of the lush sets, great Morricone soundtrack, and Italian horror aesthetics.

Night of the Demon (Jacques Tourneur, 1957) for its Hitchcockian vibe and subtle horror.

Dream Home (Ho-Cheung Pang, 2010) because it's an absolute riot.

So back to regular programming, I've seen:

Monsters University (Dan Scanlon, 2013)
Found it hard to get into this, and it started to drag at the halfway mark. Felt like I had seen all of it before.

Breathe In (Drake Doremus, 2013)
Very similar to Doremus' previous movie Like Crazy both in theme and look, I found this pretty great but I'm a sucker for dysfunctionality and Felicity Jones.

aWXxcVz.jpg


The Lone Ranger (Gore Verbinski, 2013)
Not as bad as I was afraid it would be, very formulaic but nonetheless entertaining to a certain extent; even if a lot of it was derivative, not in the least the Once Upon a Time in the West like theme that kept popping up.

The Internship (Shawn Levy, 2013)
This was a weird one to watch... is there any other movie where an existing company is featured in such a prominent way? And no, The Coca Cola Kid doesn't count.

Dragoon En Regalia said:
Kurosawa's Cure tonight—um, wow, whatatwist.png. It really starts to drag near the end, but I'm hooked on this style already.
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I loved Cure, that lead guy and the overall atmosphere were amazing. Only other Kurosawa movies I've seen are Retribution (not as good) and Pulse (a bit confusing but interesting).
 
big ander said:
What would you say is the reasoning behind the music? I agree that there must be one, its use was far too conspicuous in the way McQueen so blatantly set it against diegetic violin music for it to be an arbitrary choice. But I couldn't quite parse out an explanation on my own.
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The music was largely used
to mirror the inner states of the characters. For example, when they are on the ship, the driving music captures well the fear in which they're living, the immediacy of their situation. It's music you might expect for a chase scene in a normal film, but the urgency is far greater and more tangible here. If you notice, its tempo actually matches the speed of the waterwheel as the ship propels them forward to their hell, and the vaguely mechanistic sound of it reinforces their growing realization of being caught in something far larger and more unrelenting than anything their free life could have prepared them for.

If you're asking about the general motif, though, it generally played at moments where Solomon was reflecting, where the events had illuminated something new about the world and circumstances in which he found himself. At the very least, the fact that it was string-driven definitely ties it very much to Solomon's inner state, given how much of himself is invested in his violin-playing, though of course one could maybe quibble about what might be churning inside him at any given moment.

Edit:
Apparently, the name of that theme is "Solomon". So... yeah, I'd say it definitely is meant to capture something of his own reaction to things, rather than underscore the drama, itself.

Double Edit: also, some guy behind us was being an asshole, saying things like "Yeah, beat his ass!" when
Solomon beats Tibeats
. A guy near me told him to shut up, and I almost thought a fight was going to break out. who the fuck heckles a movie like this?
 
Night on Earth
I liked the scenes in Rome and Paris. Benigni is pretty funny. The rest is pretty boring and the last part in Helsinki is atrocious.
3/5


The Social Network
Just boring all around. The only thing I somewhat liked is the smartypants way of talking of the protagonist.
2/5


Django
I enjoyed this one much more when I was younger. Still decent though.
3/5
 
Chronicle

All things considered, I enjoyed it. My biggest take away? Dane Dehaan has a bright future of playing assholes, villainous and psychopathic characters ahead of him. I mean, the guy just has the perfect face for a bad guy.

3ozl.jpg


Now I'm actually kind of looking forward to The Amazing Spider-man 2 since he's playing Harry Osborn.
 
To hell with all y'all getting to watch the slave movie. Not playing near me because of racism probably.
 
Kill List: Loved it. The reviews were pretty mixed, so I was pretty wary going in, but man was I blown away. Fucking claustrophobic and the intensity just builds and builds throughout.

A Field in England: Well that certainly was something. The tripping visuals were well done and actually tripped out my brain a bit. Gotta look up some different theories online.

Definitely have to check out the rest of Ben Wheatley's stuff in the upcoming future, just eating up these British movies.
 
Some stuff i saw recently.

Gamer = Crap. You can tell this was written by someone without a once of IT Networking knowledge (and story telling knowledge).

Elektra = Mediocre. Just struck me as a high budget telemovie.

Alice in Wonderland (2010) = Fantastic. Loved it, was really engaged throughout the whole movie.

Tekken Blood Vengence = Boring. I was almost falling asleep, i literally had one eye open. The last 20 minutes where OK.

BASEketball (rewatch after 10+ years) = Fantastic. It was like a fresh experiance because i forgotten what happened. Can't believe i forgot all the Sqweek Bitch jokes.

Anna Katerina = Surprisingly good. I thought it was going to be shit but it was actually pretty good, not sure why they had to set it in Russia though based on the book when there was barely any reference to Russia outside names and all the actors where poms/american anyway.
 
Gez said:
Anna Katerina = Surprisingly good. I thought it was going to be shit but it was actually pretty good, not sure why they had to set it in Russia though based on the book when there was barely any reference to Russia outside names and all the actors where poms/american anyway.
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Taking Anna Karenina out of Russia would be strange to say the least. It's THE classic Russian novel. However, I agree that there was very little Russian flavor to the movie.
 
The Internship - Terrible in every way. Were they trying to recapture Wedding Crashers? What a complete failure.

Gentlemen Broncos - The opening credits were great, as was the soundtrack and in-novel sequences, but everything else was just uninteresting.

I need to start watching good movies again.
 
BaronLundi said:
wtf is happening in this thread

*shakes fist*
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I was fighting off a cold when I saw the movie, so that may have explained why I thought it was 'boring.'

Still, it's portrayal of the main woman character was/is ahead of its time. I didn't like the ending that much though.
 
Loxley said:
Chronicle

All things considered, I enjoyed it. My biggest take away? Dane Dehaan has a bright future of playing assholes, villainous and psychopathic characters ahead of him. I mean, the guy just has the perfect face for a bad guy.

http://img833.imageshack.us/img833/8645/3ozl.jpg

Now I'm actually kind of looking forward to The Amazing Spider-man 2 since he's playing Harry Osborn.
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That sounds like pretty great casting. I liked him in The Place Beyond the Pines.

By the way, if anyone wants to grab a free Redbox movie or 5 for a night, there's a promo code that expires at midnight: http://slickdeals.net/f/6385190-redbox-free-1-day-dvd-rental-or-1-20-off-game-bluray-rental?
 
Charles Foster Kane said:
I wonder how Count feels about new Carrie.
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Haven't seen it because it looks like another slick mediocre reboot and I'm not even that big of a fan of the original, but man is there a more miscast lead actress this year? You got the original with Sissy Spacek, with one of the strangest damn faces in cinema, who can so easily portray the kind of awkward/dysfunctional teenager the role calls for. Then you got Chloe Mortez here, mothafuckin' HIT-GIRL, supposed to play this uncertain, scared, socially misjudged girl? Yeah aight son
 
ViewtifulJC said:
Haven't seen it because it looks like another slick mediocre reboot and I'm not even that big of a fan of the original, but man is there a more miscast lead actress this year? You got the original with Sissy Spacek, with one of the strangest damn faces in cinema, who can so easily portray the kind of awkward/dysfunctional teenager the role calls for. Then you got Chloe Mortez here, mothafuckin' HIT-GIRL, supposed to play this uncertain, scared, socially misjudged girl? Yeah aight son
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Truly a wtf casting moment.

Regardless how someone might feel about the original, both Spacek and Piper Laurie were perfect for their roles.
 
Snowman Prophet of Doom said:
12 Years a Slave is a great movie, I think.

But Brad Pitt was not very good in it, and the fact that he looked liked White Jesus was very distracting and detracted from that part of the film.

I don't really understand the complaints about the music, honestly. There's two scenes with that "Inception"-like music people have described, but its function is pretty effable, all things considered.
Click to expand...

What is going on with the Hans Zimmer tributes? Captain Phillips had one near the end where I could swear it was a remix of Time from Inception. He's even credited.
 
Wrote a small review for Inside Llewyn Davis. Leiden, by the way, is the Dutch city where I live:

ild-02813-ct0ed2c.jpg


It’s November, which means Leiden gets to play host to its very own ‘International’ Film Festival (LIFF). The festival is relatively small, but they usually have a pretty cool selection, most likely a direct result of their professed interest in ‘the border between art-house and mainstream cinema’. Which is nice, since that particular ‘area’ offers a degree of focus and production value that’s rare for the cheap stuff, while retaining some of the depth that is often lost in bigger pictures. The Coen Brothers’ latest film Inside Llewyn Davis fits that description neatly and it’s also one of the headliners for this year’s event. It was my first pick for the week (I’m also seeing Blood Ties and Captain Philips tonight and tomorrow evening) and despite my ‘take it or leave it’ attitude towards (most) folk music, I had a great time with it. - See more at (don't worry, no ads or anything): http://timetowaste.net/#sthash.flJzXaIF.dpuf
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As part of that festival I also saw Blood Ties last night. Directed by the guy who did Tell No One (French film that was pretty awesome), starring Clive Owen and Billy Crudup. I'm not sure how I feel about this one. I thought it was fucking terrible for almost the entire duration of the film (bog standard 70's crime drama done in 2013, they even have the typical criminal backyard bbq thing at one point, I mean shit), yet somehow they managed to redeem it with the ending, to a degree anyway. Couple of great shots though, most notably one with Owen leaning against a cool 70's muscle car and one moment where the camera takes its sweet time to frame Owen's lusting gaze on Cotillard. The look on his face is fantastic there.
 
World War Z: Enjoyable film. I'm a big fan of efficient storytelling, and this wastes no time in getting going. Just don't try to question the motives of characters too much and it's a good way to spend a couple of hours. Starts off better than it ends though.

Spring Breakers: Dirty, hot, sleazy, dreamy, Hotline Miami-esque. Franco is incredible. The director is clearly a pervert, but in the best possible way. I enjoyed the film more than my wife did.
 
Messofanego said:
What is going on with the Hans Zimmer tributes? Captain Phillips had one near the end where I could swear it was a remix of Time from Inception. He's even credited.
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Zimmer actually did the score for 12 Years a Slave, but there's one piece that's played pretty often and very nearly sounds like Time too.
 
I'm tired of Zimmer scores at this point: they feel like they'd lose all effect were it not for properly-calibrated theater speakers. Besides, Giacchino has some concept of melody.
 
Dragoon En Regalia said:
Frak, this guy and Almereyda are two directors I haven't experienced yet.
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Hal Hartley started my love for independent American cinema. The new wave vibe, stilted dialogues, musical intermezzo's, Martin Donovan and Hartley's muse Adrienne Shelley, it's the whole package. His movies until 1997 are really a must watch, especially the first three (The Unbelievable Truth, Trust and Simple Men). After that, not so much. It actually went from classy and amazing, to unbelievably cheap and bad... Fay Grim and The Girl from Monday are almost unwatcheable.

iR1pn8d.jpg


Some weird and sad background info:

http://gothamist.com/2006/11/07/shellys_murder.php
 
I have two questions about the OG version of Psycho.

What is Hitchcock saying by
showing the fly at the end of the movie
and with all of the
references to the birds
throughout the movie?

Ty in advance for the help. ^_^
 
Saw The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Black Orpheus, L'argent, The Ox-Bow Incident and To Be or Not To Be and they were all fantastic, especially the latter-most.

Hoping to catch The Wind Rises, Thor 2 and maybe Ender's Game in the next week.

omgkitty said:
Has anyone here seen Oktober November? It's the new film from Götze Spielmann that played at TIFF this year.
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We liked it at TIFF.
 
Nebraska
It didn't hit me like The Descendants did, but I thought it was overall just a very sweet story. Will Forte did a Q&A afterward and he seemed like an extremely nice, generous guy, not too dissimilar from his character (by his own admission).
 
Just finished watching Short Term 12, and I thought it was pretty much psych-sploitation(is this a thing yet?) apart from a few good bits.
 
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