Amph What was the last movie you saw?

YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO WATCH THE SHOW FIRST!

 

I knooowwww. Really, the only excuse I can make was that it was at the top of my Netflix que.

 

Well, as long as you understand what you did.

Anyway as regards the six hour cut, I'm not sure it actually exists, but there is a ton of supplemental deleted stuff on the Blu-ray which is probably where people get the figure from. I think it's anybody's guess as to how much of it counts until the Showtime run starts.

 

A Man for All Seasons (1966)
Dir. Fred Zinnemann

Perfection.

 

I watched Gone Girl with one of my friends in Dallas. She was blown away by it.

 

Man of Tai Chi
Pretty good martial arts film that gets a bit mystical at the end. Lot's of good fight choreography before then, though.

 

Five Shaolin Masters (1974) I am not big on the whole Shaolin monastery series of films etc. But as I liked a couple of the actors I caved for the cheap digital version (ditto for David Chiang's later film Shaolin Abbot.) The title quintet are the five survivors of the sacked monastery who do what they can stay alive and honor their fallen comrades. But I have to say for a Lar Kau Leung and Lau Kar Wing choreographed film, this was pretty bad/sloppy fighting-wise. People say David Chiang is not the best at making forms / shapes look good, but Ti Lung was much, much worse here. The biggest bummer: I just did not care about most of the characters. It was pretty much meh, which sums up me and the majority of Shaolin films. 3/10

 

American Ultra: A pretty good B movie. One that I think will become a cult classic quick and be a favorite for mid-night showings..

 

The Incredible Mr. Limpet

 

3 Idiots (2009)
Dir. Rajkumar Hirani

I was expecting this to be some form of hell like Like Stars on Earth but... I dunno, I kinda found this watchable and actually entertaining in parts. There's this comical swing of tone which is very hard to adjust to... a musical comedy film with, played straight, a suicide, an attempted suicide, and a still birth thrown in for good measure... but after a while when you accept that there's this endeavour for this film to be a one stop shop for everything an audience might want, it's not too bad. Or maybe it was just some kind of Stockholm Syndrome, who knows. 3 hours is a bit much.

 

i watched particle fever. it was fascinating, but a bit over my head in parts even though i could tell it was really trying not to be.

i recently watched this too and i guess i agree with your overall assessment but not some of the particulars. i actually thought both leads were fine and their chemistry believable enough. but yeah, it was really contrived, cliche, and tropey. it's like they thought the apocalyptic setting would somehow mask that, but it was all very transparent.

 

13 Assassins. I'm generally not a big Miike fan, but I this was a hell of a lot of fun. There's a 45 minute battle sequence at the end of the film that's about as viscerally satisfying a piece of cinema as I have watched in long time.

 

Bernie (2011) -- Black comedy directed by Richard Linklater and starring Jack Black in the title role. Based on the true story of a murder that occurred in East Texas in 1996, the film is presented in a fake-umentary style, featuring sit-down interviews with locals, some of whom are actual town residents who experienced the events, while others are actors portraying residents. It's all very amusing and light-hearted despite the homicide at the center of the tale. Black is excellent, delivering his quintessential mix of musicianship (via an impressive string of vocal performances), befuddled humor and hidden darkness of the soul. Everyone else, including Shirley MacLaine and Matthew McConaughey, is somewhat sidelined by his dominating presence, which I believe was intentional. The film has a 90% fresh RT rating. Ebert loved it and it has been called a "masterpiece", among other accolades. I give it 4 stars.

 

'Dracula: Dead and Loving It'. In all fairness it is probably Mel Brooks' weakest film but as a huge Dracula fan I kind of have to love it. It does rely perhaps a little too much on easy jokes like pratfalls and an occasional poop joke but as a spoof film I think it is strong in that Brooks respects what he is spoofing. . I don't think the film would work at all if it weren't for Brooks' intense eye in perfecting his recreation of the Dracula mythos. Leslie Nielson and Peter MacNicol clearly did their homework. MacNicol in particular channels Dwight Frye and gets some huge laughs.

 

I have to agree, as a fellow Dracula fan, that much-maligned Brooks film hits all the right notes. The staking scene with the fountains of blood is one of the funniest scenes in any movie, ever.

 

That's a very underrated Brooks film and not at all his worst. That staking scene is just a masterwork of comic timing.


Planes, Trains & Automobiles (1987) – John Hughes



Been years and years since I’d seen this one; caught up to it at a local theater doing a classics series. And, wow, does it ever hold up. This movie is just brilliantly directed by John Hughes. Hughes has a real flair for comic timing and a lot of the sequences work as well as they do because of the editing and such. The sequence where Candy is driving on the wrong side of the highway is a perfect example. Start to finish, it’s just a masterfully done sequence, all leading up that hilarious shot of the luggage shooting unbelievably high into the air in absolute silence. Brilliant. Steve Martin is really, really great here; he delivers the jokes to perfection and the way he slowly progresses over the film from a slightly annoyed businessman to an unhinged madman is wonderful. But this is Candy’s movie. I have no problem saying this is easily his best film and his best performance. He takes a ludicrous, silly character and absolutely makes him come to life. As silly and over-the-top as the character is, Candy imbues him with a genuine heart and soul. The scene in the hotel room where Martin rips Candy up one side and down the other is brilliant; any other comedian would play the reaction as anger, but Candy just gets sadder and sadder the longer the rant goes. You can often see the awkwardness and the pain behind the schtick Candy’s doing; or rather, and this is key, the schtick the CHARACTER is doing. Candy shows us the pain behind the character’s floundering efforts to be affable and upbeat. He’s working on multiple levels here and it’s just astounding to watch. Anyway, I remembered thinking this was a good movie. Well, I was wrong. It’s not good, it’s great. It’s a genuine comedy masterpiece with surprising depth to it. Highly recommended. 4 stars.

tl;dr – Martin & Candy have great chemistry and Candy is career best in this surprisingly character driven and emotional comedy masterpiece. 4 stars.

More Movie Reviews!

 

Well - Jurassic World and Godzilla 2014 ...

 

I'll take Brooks at his worst over the likes of Friedberg and Seltzer any day.

PT&A is the kind of movie I expected to see Hughes make in the 90s and beyond, and perhaps he would have had Candy not died. I recently revisited The Breakfast Club and doing some reading, Candy's death really hit Hughes hard.

As much as Hughes is credited as being the godfather of the teen movie, he also had just as keen an insight into the mind of the Midwestern everyman and middle America in general, because that's who he was in his core.

Continuing to chip my way through some Bond leading up to the release of Spectre. Began with Goldfinger, the movie largely credited with creating the mold for the Bond franchise, and thought it would be fitting to watch the film that effectively ended that era.

Die Another Day (2002) - Brosnan deserved a better swansong than this poorly made snoozer. Featuring atrocious special f/x and a lame story that would've seemed cheesy even in the Moore era, this film's only saving grace is that it likely paved the way for the franchise's reboot (It was a big hit, but I think the negative response helped to convince the powers that be it was time to change things up). Don't even get me started on the theme song.

But my biggest disappointment in this re-watch was Halle Berry. I remembered a stronger performance and a more memorable character from her here, but at times her performance seems unsure, and Jinx falls out of the movie for a long stretch, robbing her of a chance to form the requisite relationship with Bond and with us. But there is that bikini scene. Wow. - 5/10

 

I still think Berry holds her own in Die Another Day, I see those quibbles as her character being a bit more green than she claims to be. But yes Brosnan definitely deserved a better swan song and villain. It was pretty goofy. I still cannot buy that a North Korean would literally change face for vengeance.

The Proud Youth (1978) Not sure what was going on in this Sun Chung adaptation of a Louis Cha novel (The Smiling Proud Wanderer). There's apparently a song that brings death if you sing it, clan wars and Wang Yue being his usual unappealing / annoying self.

I do know Chan Wai Man was the only good element about this movie (his lecherous, vile swordsman was just all kinds of repulsive and yet I still watched. Felt a lot more real world than his villains in other Shaw period films.)

Chung tries to bring his nifty complexity to the clan war story but he did it so much better in the previous years' Judgement of an Assassin. I think this is one I'll watch for CWM and just leave the rest alone. 6 for his perf, 4/10 for the movie itself.

 

I just remembered her being a bit more dynamic than she was. There was all this talk at the time about Jinx getting her own spinoff, and I guess I was just expecting more... personality. Attitude. Berry almost seemed to be holding back to me. Granted, the script gives her nothing to work with. Also felt she lacked chemistry with Brosnan. Their flirty introduction and subsequent love scene were painful to watch.

Yeah, the whole thing felt like a parody of itself. It was a big hit, but thankfully the producers saw past the bottom line and realized this ship needed to be righted.

 

Berry in Die Another Day was embarrassing to watch. Like half her lines were double entrendres, terribly unimaginative ones. She sounds like a teenage boy, putting the emphasis on words like "thrust".

I have no idea what the hell people were thinking when rumors of her getting a spin off were going around.

Berry had won an Oscar for Best Actress like a year before. She was the first black woman to do so, and though I haven't kept up, I think she's still the only black woman to do so. What a terrible step down in roles, to be reduced to lame puns, even for a Bond movie, the Ursula Andress bikini scene, and a spy catsuit.

 

Also kind of a shame because I thought the set-up of Bond being captured and kept in captivity for a long period was solid. The idea that he would come out and be suspected of being compromised, well, they could have done a lot with that. Too bad.

 

I kind of love Die Another Day because of how relentlessly stupid a lot of it is. "Let's duel with swords for some reason! I'm a North Korean military member who got plastic surgery to look like the most generic white guy ever! I have diamonds and a death satellite but it's fine that we're recycling ideas because this is a franchise celebration. Ice hotel; **** it!" It's like they said no to precisely none of the suggestions made in the writers' room.

 

Yeah, I think the pre-credit scene, where it looks like the typical "Bond gets away" and then he gets captured, was a solid start. It promised a far richer story than the sci-fi nonsense we ultimately got.

I thought that was going to be my ticket to enjoying it. It was clear they were doubling down on stupid, and I was totally up for some cheesy fun. But for me they forgot the last part. It's not without it's moments though. Not a total loss, but not one I plan on ever revisiting again.

 

I watch DAD for the sword-fight, then switch-off. The car is pretty, though - which is just one of the reasons it was stupid to make it invisible.