Amph What was the last movie you saw?

*sigh* You're killin' me, Smalls.

 

Fast & Fur10us

 

yesterday i watched the first two movies i've seen in weeks. they were both documentaries and both related to 80's nerd culture. one was called "man vs. snake" and was about people trying to score 1 billion points on the classic but obscure arcade game "nibbler". the other was "raiders", it was about the kids who made a shot for shot remake of raiders of the lost ark over the course of seven summers in the 80's and their quest to finally complete the one scene that they didn't have the budget or means to shoot back then. both films were quite good and compelling in ways that you might not expect.

 

Doctor Strange (2007) The animated movie which I liked back then and I still enjoy now; especially in light of revisiting the Ultimate Spiderman Strange-centric episodes. (Granted, I like some of those but the constant roll call of Strange getting owned makes me nuts). Here he gets to do his thing in spite of making him a bit more kindly than he was in his actual origin. Voice cast is pretty good and I like that costume was a riff on the mid-aughts black costume too.

 

Rogue1-and-a-half

Have you seen The Way Of The Gun?

I feel compelled to re-watch it...

 

The Purple Rose of Cairo. It starts off a bit rough. Farrow's hapless, weak character mooning over a thirties movie that doesn't look or sound like an actual thirties movie just doesn't work that well. But once Jeff Daniels crosses the screen, things pick up, with Farrow caught in a love triangle with Daniels the character, a supremely naive sweetheart baffled by the real world, and Daniels the actor who plays the character, a puppyish mix of enthusiasm and conceit. There are some good real-world-meets-the-movies jokes, and the other exasperated characters stuck onscreen waiting for Daniels to come back are reliably funny. Allen was able to play around with some interesting ideas in that triangle -- the romantic ideal that isn't real versus the pretty good that is. But while it was amusing, and while Allen's obvious love of classic film and its power to transport struck a chord, I was never all the way into it.

 

Gettysburg: Director's Cut (1993).

There's a review of The Brothers Karamazov that I love, consisting of a single sentence: "My first impression is that the book is very long."

That's kind of my takeaway here. It's a solid enough movie (maybe a bit heavy on MUH SOUTH malarky, although given the context it kind of gives it all an ironic tinge), but it's exhaustingly long. Good editing and pacing can solve a lot of that problem, but this is merely serviceable and there are two things really dragging it into "feels longer than it is" territory - and that's saying something here.

1. Monologues. Every major character gets at least one. Many get two. Some just keep getting them. And they're such insistent monologues that you have a mental image of the words "MONOLOGUE IN PROGRESS" scrolling along the bottom of the screen.
2. The score. For the record I accuse Hans Zimmer of being maudlin, so you can take my complaints here with a grain of salt, but the soundtrack was maybe the most self-insistent thing I think I've ever heard. "FEEL THINGS!" the composer yells at us. Actually we're good, the movie already makes me feel the intended emo"NO YOU MUST FEEL THE THINGS!" I was dreading every crescendo, and not helping this it's always right smack dab at the top of the sound mix.

So, basically: would I watch it again? Sure. In the future, am I going to stop at the fade to black about 2.5 hours in before watching the rest the next day? Absolutely. Would I welcome a soundtrack-free cut? Yes.

Oh, and if you're thinking "Maybe don't watch the DC if it's too long"? It only adds 17 minutes.

 

Doctor Zhivago I enjoyed it when I was watching, but I think I was lulled by the scenery, the music, the at-times brilliant direction, and Omar Sharif's handsome visage. The movie is a ****ing mess. Characters are built up, disappear, reappear for a scene, and then fizzle into nothing. Despite all the grueling travel, the film treats Russia as though it's a small town where you just happen upon people you know all the time. Despite the long run time, it often seems rushed. For example, Zhivago spent YEARS with Red partisans and it amounts to a 10 or 15-minute sequence. I don't really understand the point of his half-brother (whose relationship is not particularly well-explained) or anything about the framing device. He has a daughter and her life is kind of ****. Hooray? And Zhivago just died for no reason. It's as though the writer realized that he had killed Zhivago in the prologue; his plot is over and SO HE MUST DIE. Of an ailment that was never hinted at or mentioned or built up at all. I have a lot of other criticisms that mostly have to do with dated sensibilities (wtf was the point of the rape?) but I'll stop now.

Oh, and apparently contemporary critics whined that it was too sympathetic to the Bolsheviks. I think they must have skipped out during the intermission and didn't watch the second half. ****ing Cold War.

The Nice Guys Eh, it was a "fun," disposable action comedy romp. The plot didn't really make much sense, though I like that it was all for nothing and it's nice to watch Crowe and Baby Goose in something decent.

Eight Days A Week This got me listening to The Beatles yet again. Damn you, Ron Howard. It's a pretty good documentary, if a bit light-- for example, there are celebrities talking about going to Beatles concerts. If you've seen Anthology, there's almost nothing new about the band here. I think any authorized documentary is unnecessary after Anthology, really.

Hooligan Sparrow A documentary about a feminist and women's rights activist in China and the **** she has to endure from authorities. I admire that despite being beaten, detained over and over, and evicted, she still fights.

The Birth of Sake It didn't seem like I would be interested, but I tried it anyway. It's about one of a relative few remaining traditional sake breweries in Japan. I learned that these guys have to spend SIX MONTHS at the brewery basically 24/7 because the work is so intensive (hence most breweries being industrialized). I was also surprised to learn that sake is dying in Japan-- young people prefer other drinks-- and the industry is (barely) sustained by the foreign market. The direction and cinematography made it easy to watch.

Quiz Show This is so quaint. People were upset that a game show was rigged. Today every so-called reality show is scripted/rigged (either directly or by manipulating the audience) and not many people care. Honestly I don't particularly care either. The media lies all the time. Why should I worry about an inconsequential game show? I think the film was sort of trying to ask that question: should we care? My pretty firm "no" answer on that made me less compelled. Television execs and producers are often slime. Who would have thought?

 

Quiz Show irked me for raising some questions that were more interesting than the ones it was out to answer (e.g., paraphrasing: "Have you ever noticed how if a Jew and a Gentile are in competition on TV the Gentile always wins?") but I remember thinking it was fun enough.

 

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. Had to rewatch with regards to the new book.

 

Finally saw Suicide Squad.
Eh.
Better as a collection of Trailers, than 2 hour movie..

 

Return of the Living Dead (1985)

I always forget how great this movie is. Full of dark humor and an awesome soundtrack. The whole cast is great.

 

It's arguably the best meta Horror film

 

The Girl on the Train (2016)

They couldn't have messed this up more if they tried. As a semi-fan of the book, they completely butchered this

 

Really? I got to watch the greater part of this, and it felt like a really dark film to me. There was nothing good spirited about it and the whole thing seemed to come from a pretty deeply disturbed place. There was something of a shock jock thrust to the whole thing, but even excusing that there's nothing I particularly want to see about some little girl that's forced to compensate for her father or whatever. I was pretty thankful when I got called away to go do something else.

 

Two things I remember about Gettysburg, and they both used to crack my brother and I up to no end.

If you pay attention to the extras in the background during the battle scenes, you'll find:

1) A charge that results in one guy dying after taking a single step. CHARGE! *dies*
2) A dead guy slumped over, with his eye resting on his rifle, as if he shot himself while looking down the barrel.


Haven't seen the movie in about twenty years, and that's all I remember.

 

The Transporter Refuelled. Meh. The filmmakers obviously didn't have the budget for wrecking cars that the FF crew has, so there was less spectacular mayhem. They managed to throw in a couple of unbelievable stunts, and I'm not using "unbelievable" in a good way.

 

Isn't there a part where a truck drives by in the background, or am I thinking of the wrong movie?

 

THE CHEESIEST.

All the President's Men (1976).

As good as I remembered, but hey, my Blu-ray works. Also, real talk, until just now when I IMDB'd the release date it never occurred to me that this PG movie had multiple instances of the f-word. Mostly because I don't care about film ratings, but man, ratings have changed.

Grizzly Man (2005).

... Watching this before bed was a mistake. Oh, I slept fine, but when some noise or other woke me up at about 6 AM all I could think about were shots of severed animal limbs and Herzog visibly shaking as he listened to the final audio tape. Large swaths of the documentary were utterly haunting.

I guess from looking around a lot of the conversation is about how Treadwell was actually a hypocritical jerk or just hopelessly naïve, but I found myself sympathetic to Herzog's argument that disillusionment with modern society led him to seek out some intangible alternative in a wilderness he overly idealized. Perhaps it spoke to me as a warning against conflating the natural with the authentic. Perhaps I secretly long for the kind of self-assured confidence - paranoid, delusional confidence, but confidence - that we see on display. Perhaps I just really like the sublime, terrible, uncaring beauty of nature-ass nature. Perhaps I'm just really into Don Edwards. Regardless, it moved me.

 

When Herzog is on, he's on, and he's so on in Grizzly Man. Cave of Forgotten Dreams is beautiful but not as mesmerizing, even though it's one of the best 3D movies ever made in my opinion. I'm looking forward to Into the Inferno, out today on Netflix!!!! My project for tonight.

What I liked most about Grizzly Man was Herzog's comment that the violence of nature is irrepressible and can't be anthropomorphized. If it's true of grizzly bears, must be even more true of volcanoes.

 

The Shallows


In a word, entertaining.

The Shallows, is just that shallow in terms of plot and character development. But that's not a bad thing in this film, as simple fits the story well. It actually kind of annoyed me when they tried to develop Blake Lively's character with a "facetime" chat with her sister.

There are no real surprises or twists in the film and is pretty predictable, but Lively does a wonderful job in conveying the trials of her character and capturing her dire situation. Parts of the cinematography in the film were amazing.

I think this movie was definitely worth watching at home on a rainy day.

 

The Accountant. Think Jason Bourne with autism.

 

Deadpool. That was funnier than I expected.

 

Fuqua is one of those directors that I wish was just better. I think Training Day is his one masterpiece. I haven't caught Magnificent Seven (and I might). But his last two, Equalizer and Southpaw were both movies that had some incredibly great stuff in them, buried under an avalanche of bull****. They both had really great performances (Czokas is career best in The Equalizer and Gyllenhaal was fantastic in Southpaw) and some great sequences, but the level of cheese is just disconcerting. I just wish he would stop making movies that are okay and become better. Not even a lot. Just a little.

That's quite interesting that you say you don't care for paranormal horror as much as, I'm guessing, darker serial killer horror and such like that. Because I look at my list and they are all paranormal and now that I think about it . . . I cannot think of a great non-paranormal horror movie of the past few years. For some reason I'm going all the way back to the first Saw. That can't really be the last great serial killer movie. Would you classify The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo as horror? I mean, it's got elements, but it's not even all that great. Anyway, yeah, that's interesting. I guess the non-paranormal stuff has been weak in recent years.

You've really got to see seven now so you can go see eight in IMAX. I saw 7 in IMAX and it was just so amazing. I get that they are completely ridiculous, but they've reached the level of basically being superhero movies now. Maybe if you view them that way, you'll enjoy them more. I mean, great drama they're not, but they've reached a level of being genuinely great action movies, I'd say.

Oh, thanks for the reminder. I had that on my list to see back when it was in our local arthouse theater, but I missed it. I've really got to prioritize that soon.

Zhivago is super-overrated in my opinion. I didn't even enjoy it while I was watching it. I mean, there were stretches that were good, but it's just interminable. The best things are the supporting performances: Steiger & Courtenay are both quite good, I think. Sharif is . . . really not. Christie is okay.

As for Quiz Show, I think it's dated as a moral outrage tale, but I think it holds up to a degree as a character study of the Fiennes character. His performance is really good, I think, and I still remember that one scene of him and his father in the kitchen. It's a nice metaphor for the dumbing down of American intellectualism and the compromises made in that pursuit. Read that way, it's ahead of its time.

I have not. I'm a fan of Del Toro pretty well across the board (The Pledge is not even in the same neighborhood as the board, however).

My mother did NOT appreciate that when she rented this movie. She was utterly baffled by that "rat-*******" scene, let me tell you.