Movies (discuss, list, etc.)

myanimelist profile · Posted: Tue Mar 13, 2007 4:34 pm

No movie, but I am watching The Wire season 1.
Truly a copshow like no other; since I wouldnt be seen ever watching one. But this is just a really intelligently written series, which focusses on one case per season, instead of a new one every (couple of) episode(s).
Probably as realistic as it can get; there's heaps of character development and nothing/nobody is ever entirely good or "evil".

Posted: Tue Mar 13, 2007 11:38 pm

Word. I need to get some time and watch 3rd and 4th seasons... 2nd took me 2 days to finish :]

big idjit Joined: 03 Jan 2003 Posts: 280

Wow, I totally missed this thread.

Pan's Labyrinth: I really enjoyed it. I saw this because I really thought the trailer looked interesting. I hadn't heard anything about it being really great except for seeing the Rotten Tomatoes score (which was really high). I can see it not living up to the hype though since the people that liked it would rave about it (I've raved about it). It's not good enough to live up to super high expectations though.

The Host: I haven't seen it, but to comment on the White Devil thing... there IS a historical bias. Apparently the reason they blamed the American on it in the movie is because something like this happened in S. Korea. Apparently the US military dumped crap into one of the rivers in S. Korea which outraged them but the US didn't apologize for it. At least that's what I've read.

300: I loved this movie. Is it a great film? No, not really. It's basically stylized violence, corny lines, and an overly macho swagger. But if that's what you're expecting, that's what you get. I think the best part of this movie though is going on to actually look up the details of the battle. I could argue that those fuckers were even more hardcore in real life than they were portrayed in the movie. (If you didn't know, the movie is based off of the graphic novel which is based off of the Battle of Thermopylae).

Posted: Wed Mar 14, 2007 8:33 pm

Quote:

The Host: I haven't seen it, but to comment on the White Devil thing... there IS a historical bias. Apparently the reason they blamed the American on it in the movie is because something like this happened in S. Korea. Apparently the US military dumped crap into one of the rivers in S. Korea which outraged them but the US didn't apologize for it. At least that's what I've read.

Yeah, that's true, but South Korean companies have dumped over ten times as much crap into the same river and it never blew up like the American incident did. The writer probobly just chose the American incident because of the publicity involved and to highlight the tensions that exist in the country. Plus, if you really want to analyze the movie it can (I didn't really pick up on this till I read an article) be seen as pretty much against South Korean corporations to begin with, so maybe Joon-ho thought making them the straight-forward "villians" would be overdoing it.

But The Wire is one of the sole saving-graces of American televison. It's ridiculous how obscure it is compared to other HBO shows (though I guess we should be thankful it hasn't been cancelled like Deadwood or Rome). Works amazingly as a cop show and a portrait of the modern American city (seen more in later seasons more than the first one). I especially like how they don't go with the cliches of the genre (that part in the first season where one of the gang members clocks the old cop then the other cops, both the "bad" ones and the "good" one, start kicking the shit out of him was a great example).

Posted: Tue Mar 27, 2007 4:12 pm

seen a lot of movies recently, the very best of which were the prestige, profound desire of the gods, and the proposition, in that order.

the prestige was particularly awesome and has renewed my faith in christopher nolan. nefarious showmen/magicians and a covert propaganda war between edison and tesla (portrayed as wizards, the latter by david bowie). it's a really strange movie and probably worth watching a few times.

glad i got to see profound desire of the gods on the big screen because it looked amazing.

wanted to see the proposition because it was written by nick cave, and it turned out to be pretty good.

Posted: Fri Mar 30, 2007 9:06 pm

I just saw the Prestige as well and can agree that it is awesome. I really can't understand why I didn't see this in theatres since I've really liked just about everything I've seen from Nolan (well, there was the Insomnia remake, but even that was decent by thriller standards). Fine, fine moviemaking. I'll have to check out the book. I thought The Proposition was also quite good; it was either Ebert or Roper who compared it to Blood Meridian, and while it really can't begin to touch that novel (it would kind of be impossible to make a movie that does), its a good way of looking at its desolate world.
I've been watching alot of old HK films again for some reason. I was really blown away by The Killer when I first saw it, but now not so much. The action is as dove-tastic as ever, but the melodrama and the ridiculous religious imagry takes things a bit to far. I'm probobly a minority but I think that Hard Boiled works much better in just about every way.
On the other hand Peking Opera Blues is just as ridiculously fun as it was the first time. That climax is just kooky.

Fan Boy Joined: 13 Jul 2006 Posts: 10

I watched 300 recently, and I didn't enjoy it much. The visuals were pretty amazing, but it was too Hollywood. After a while I just got tired of the supposedly pretty pictures. The battle of Thermopylae is one of the most famous battles in the history; and to be honest I was expecting something glorifying, with great characters. What I got instead was this movie with great sound and picture quality (saw it in IMAX) and no characters with any depth and sense acting either. I just couldn't sympathize with them. It was too cheesy. Maybe the director of Gladiator should have made it instead and instead of it being based on a comic book with the soldiers fighting monsters, they should have fought humans with real emotion.

Street Musician Joined: 16 Feb 2003 Posts: 530

I just watched an illegally-procured copy of Paprika, and it was, to put it lightly, fucking mind-blowing. Although I enjoyed Paranoia Agent, I wasn't that big of a fan of Satoshi Kon's theatrical works (Pefect Blue was pretty good, Millenium Actress I avoided and Tokyo Godfathers I didn't have a chance to watch, and then by the time it came out on R1 I forgot about it). Suffice to say my opinion of the man has shot up quite considerably. I am buying the R1 for sure when it comes out this year, hell if I get impatient I may buy the exhorbiant retail price for the R2. In the meantime I'll have to go back and rent his previous works.

Fan Boy Joined: 13 Jul 2006 Posts: 10

Neuroretardant, are you serious? You've got to watch Millenium Actress, and Tokyo Godfather. They're different from Perfect Blue, but in my opinion, quite better than the former. Satoshi Kon is absolutely one of my favorite animators/directors.

Posted: Mon Apr 16, 2007 6:37 am

Here's what I saw recently, listed best to worst:

The French Lieutenant's Woman
The Duelists
The Pillow Book
Brick
The Draughtsman's Contract
Adaptation
The Hidden Fortress
The Mosquito Coast
Babel
Oscar and Lucinda
Once a Thief
Jacob's Ladder
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Love's Labour's Lost
Melvin Goes to Dinner
The Private Eyes

Also rewatched some old favorites:
Alien
A Taxing Woman (Marusa no Onna)
A Taxing Woman's Return (Marusa no Onna 2)
Minbo no Onna

some comments:
Oscar and Lucinda - bad acting isn't usually that big a deal but that movie spends way too much time showing Ralph Fiennes (sp?) making awkward faces. Other than that there are two really good images that make this worth watching: 1 is when they drag a church down a hill and the other is when the main character floats down a river inside a glass cathedral.

Mosquito Coast was a slightly better "doomed journey down a river" type movie.

big idjit Joined: 03 Jan 2003 Posts: 280

Jacob's Ladder that low? Blasphemy! Hidden Fortress that high? Definitely not one of my favorite Akira Kurosawa movies. Meh.

I just saw Grindhouse. It was fuckin' awesome. Unfortunately, it's not a movie I can recommend to everyone. In fact I think a lot of people should avoid it. It's the Rodruigez/Tarintino flick. If you're curious the movie is set up like this:

* Trailer for a movie called "Machete" a campy hitman movie. It cracked me up. So very very campy.
* Rodruigez' Planet Terror. If you liked Slither, you'll like this movie. It's got a lot in common with Slither, but it's even MORE disgusting than Slither IMO. It had a lot of action, A LOT of gore. It was campy and funny too. But yeah, pretty high on the nasty factor. (Again, Slither nasty, not this torture horror movie nasty craze that we're seemingly on now).
* Trailer for Werewolf Women of the SS. Pretty much what it sounds like. Relatively funny.
* Trailer for Don't, a haunted house movie. I liked this one too.
* Trailer for Thanksgiving. A Halloween clone. This one actually made me go "Aaaaahhhhhhh!" at one point.
* Tarintino's Death Proof. Honestly, this movie started out slow, especially after the adrenaline rush of Planet Terror. It picks up steam about a third of the way through. Honestly, I liked Planet Terror more, but Death Proof was MUCH more tame on the gore. Actually it wasn't really gory except for one quick brief scene. It was still pretty good once it picked up steam.

Posted: Mon Apr 16, 2007 9:16 am

I think near the bottom of a list of (mostly) good movies is pretty appropriate for Jacob's Ladder. Probably would have ranked it higher but the ending was a bit of a letdown. Too much was explained, too concretely, especially since both the drug hallucinations and purgatory were implicated pretty heavilly from the begining and throughout the movie. (maybe you could argue that the "explanation" was part of that hallucination, but it didn't seem that way to me).

Not so sure about The Hidden Fortress. It's good but I might reconsider on further viewings. It's been so long since I saw most Kurosawa stuff that I don't know where I'd place it, except that it's definitely below Ran.

The real winners were those first five movies. Draughtsman's Contract might be even better than the others but It's complex enough that I'll have to watch it more than once.

The Duelists is just super enjoyable, and has one of the most satisfying resolutions of anything.

Oh yeah, also forgot to mention that I saw Children of Men recently. Really surprised by how good it was.

myanimelist profile · Posted: Sat Apr 28, 2007 10:12 am

As a follow-up to a previous post; finished The Wire season 2. I didn't find it as compelling as the first season. But it being what it is, a great show, I can't complain and look forward to getting my grubby hands on part 3.

Amateur Musician Joined: 08 Feb 2004 Posts: 197

The Wire season 2 is quite different in tone to the first, but it really sets up quite a lot of stuff for the third and fourth series.
The Wire is composed of pure win.

myanimelist profile · Posted: Sat Apr 28, 2007 10:39 am

RexMundi wrote:

The Wire season 2 is quite different in tone to the first, but it really sets up quite a lot of stuff for the third and fourth series.
The Wire is composed of pure win.

That's reassuring to hear, though I had little doubt in the writers. The heart of the series is the entire Avon Barksdale case, from Stringer Bell to Prop Joe and Omar. The Sobotka thing was okay, but I was still glad when they kept going back to first season stuff.