Amph What was the last movie you saw?

It's a really funny movie. I was in tears most of the time I was laughing so hard.

 

can i have some of your mental healthy sake? that stuff usually hits the spot, but i've never tried this kind!

 

Madagascar 3: It really wasn't that great. And having Katy Perry's "Firework" in it kind of ruined it. I like the song, but I like when kid's movies develop their own songs to.

 

the last movie i saw was the hobbit, over a week ago. at one point during the film, i was feeling especially bored and i looked over at the nerds in my row and they were all touching their private areas. i did a little burp-heave but managed to play it off as just a loud burp. it managed to stop the self-abuse, though. momentarily.

 

From Russia With Love. Great spy thriller.

I'm trying to play catch up for the Bond thread, but it will probably take me a bit.

 

The Hobbit. I am trying not to measure it up against LOTR since they are different styles of books, but it is kinda hard. It is really missing the heart LOTR had. And... I don't really like the hot dwarf. *runs and hides*

BUT still very good and looking forward to see it again. I just don't think it will become of my favoritest movies EVAR like LOTR did.

 

LOTR: The Two Towers. Target had it for $4 and I had lost my old copy. Still kick-ass as always.

 

Red Cliff - It was more or less exactly what I was expecting, in a good way. John Woo directs an adaptation of one of the cool parts of Romance of the Three Kingdoms. The version I saw was the 2.5 hour "condensed" version (As opposed to the approximately five hour original cut) and I think it was effective - it assumed a lot of prior knowledge of the source material but was otherwise easy enough to follow. It was sufficiently well-paced that I'm not sure I could tell you where the cuts were made... were it not for some obvious intersplicing montages that were pretty plainly not intersplicing montages in the original version. Quite down to earth by wuxia standards but still full of great action pieces.

Ashes of Time Redux - What was this I don't even... apparently the original was lost due to neglect (A real shame as it's less than 20 years old) and as a result the writer-director cobbled together this, which is best described as a wuxia art film. Seriously, it's an art film. Weird angles, unnatural coloring, highly stylized means of depicting action pieces, contemplative segments, interweaving symbolic point-of-view substitutions, nonlinear narrative, titled segments - all of the signs are there. Surprisingly, it works really well, and once you accept the film on its own weird terms I'd argue the rapid still photograph progression and close shots used in fights are probably more effective than most of the glitzy wirefu you see these days. Worth investigating; if nothing else, it's certainly unlike most films you'll see... ever.

 

It'll go on the list.

The Bourne Legacy. It continues the proud Bourne-sequel legacy of being sillier and less interesting than the last, making the Moby over the credits seem ever more out of place, and not quite mustering up any reason to exist other than the money it can make. The drug stuff is ludicrous -- stuff that might work in an original thriller, but seems out of place in the Bourne universe. The fetishistic insistence on filling the entire movie with constant nonsense techno-medicospeak to make it sound like all the doctors and the barking CIA-corporate sideshow know what they're doing doesn't help. It's good that they didn't try to stretch more out of Bourne, given that they couldn't figure out what to do with him even in the first sequel, let alone the second, but even here, with a new protagonist, our lead is curiously purposeless. He gets betrayed and he needs meds to not be stupid, so he goes to get his meds, and that's it. Yeah, he technically has something to do, but, it's just an excuse for action, not a real character drive. We don't even get a personal journey of disillusionment, given that he appears to be cynical of his masters from the beginning of the film onward. Renner puts a lot of magnetism into his role and there's certainly the germ of some potential there, but the script can't get at it and the character ends up being a nothing. The supporting characters are no better. And the plot can't quite decide what it is, taking a simplistic get-meds quest and overlaying it with a bunch of series-mythology garbage that fools around with Ultimatum's CIA intrigues but never really ties into Cross's plotline meaningfully aside from instigating his get-meds quest and is obviously a clumsy attempt at jump-starting a sequel. There are some quality action sequences, and Renner and Weisz both give good performances with the material they're given, but the script is a mess and the film ends up with the stink of a money-grab all over it. Disappointing.

 

I am watching it now and came to point out the idiocy of the film but Havac did it for me.

Bond > Bourne > Bauer.

 

so glad i didn't see that.

 

The Hours. A nice concept, and most of the lead actors are pleasant enough, but the story-within-a-story conceit is a bridge too far.

 

I agree. The action sequence when the people come to kill Weisz in her house was the only really good bit. That was kind of Bourne level; i liked the speed and efficiency of it.

As to The Hours, I think most of the rest of the movie is a waste, but I'm darned if I don't think that's Meryl Streep's best performance. She's totally luminous.

 

Legacy is one of a handful of movies that I regret seeing in theaters. Havac nailed it on the head...it was completely out of place with the other films, and tried to mess with Ultimatum, which wasn't cool.

 

Meryl Streep was in that movie? As whom?

 

You're joking! She was the main character in the modern day story, Clarissa or whatever.

 

meryl
streptococcal pharyngitis

 

just saw Cabin in the Woods. It was good. Not as great as everyone made it out to be. But I'm guessing not everyone has seen Cube. If they had, they prolly wouldn't have thought CITW was incredible.

 

What? She played the teenage grad student that wants to have an affair with the guy? Isn't she like 60 years old?

 

Life of Pi, it was quite enjoyable.

 

i thought so too, even though at the end i felt like something was missing. i couldn't put my finger on it.

 

Oh. Ye gods, I am an idiot. When I said "The Hours" I actually meant "The Words." Oops. I realized this after about a half hour of contemplating how I could have confused Meryl Streep for Zoe Saldana.

 

John Carter -- I actually really liked it and I hope Disney develops a sequel to it in addition to their Star Wars plans, although I somehow think my hopes will be disappointed.

21 Jump Street - I watched this movie just to turn my brain off and be mindlessly entertained, which I was. I actually ended up liking how it came off as an affection homage/parody so I found it more thoughtful than the usual action blockbuster.

 

Lincoln. A magnificent biopic. Lincoln is such a difficult figure to approach -- as a world-historical figure, he's something more than human, and it's hard to steer around hagiography without veering into "Lincoln was just a real guy too" deflation. Yet Kushner's script does so, getting at what made Lincoln great precisely by examining him not as a colossus or deity, but as a man and political animal, someone who had his personal struggles and doubts, who was less than perfect, but who deftly manipulated the political machinery and made the right calls to accomplish tremendous goals. The result is a film that's beautifully shot, witty, and profound, a serious political drama leavened with humor. The performances are great, especially Day-Lewis's, which anchors Lincoln in a weary, frustrated, human reality even in those moments of folksy wit and titanic maneuverings that gave us the legend. The only criticism I have is that the ending was less than effective; had it ended on that powerful shot of Lincoln walking out the door, it would have been perfect. It's a great image, and we all know where he's going -- it's incredibly evocative and hits exactly the right feeling. As it was, carrying it on through the assassination, even if it was offscreen (though I should point out that I enjoyed Spielberg cleverly playing with the play imagery twice, just to tweak audience expectations), and his death and closing with his inaugural, just felt perfunctory and hit too obvious a note. One flaw in an otherwise outstanding film.

 

In the theatre...The Hobbit. At home....The Two Towers, 'cuz I got the EE trilogy on Blu-Ray for Christmas. Now I'm going to enjoy a big glass of vodka and fall asleep during Return of the King.