Amph What was the last movie you saw?

I will admit that the sword fight is really awesome and pretty hilarious. Especially since, at that time, Bond & the villain are supposed to be pretending not to know about each other. So, these guys like hack up priceless paintings and destroy tables and go all over the damn building and then they're just like, "Yeah, good work-out."

 

Yeah, they should've used the invisibility gimmick on that ****ing Lotus from The Spy Who Loved Me. Ick.

 

I loved the Lotus as a kid in the seventies. It was a different time, we had different standards of beauty. Just look at the decor.

 

****, look at the pants.

 

Still Alice

One of those Lifetime TV movies, though better acted (maybe). Alzheimer's sets in too early in the film, thus the viewer is denied a better understanding of the deterioration of the main character. Kristen Stewart is good in it--I'm not sure why she gets so much flak, she's a good actress. I think she and Mila Kunis are two of the better young actresses around, though they never seem to be in good films.

 

Watched SW: RoTS on Sky Movies a little while ago.

 

The DAD swordfight is good... until the longswords come into it. In one fell swoop it crosses over into utter stupidity and lameness.

 

DAD is a romp. It's pure joy, the Moonraker of the early 2000s. Love it or hate it, it's not intended to be taken seriously, so in that sense it is an unqualified success.

 

Butt....butt... I like those pants.

 

Uggh... yeah, Die Another Day is terrible. And as I mentioned in my earlier posts about doing a pre-Spectre Bond marathon this summer, that's one of the Bond movies that has been shown multiple times on multiple channels this summer.

My wife and I saw Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation today. Finally found some time to watch it while it's still in theaters. We really liked it... it's a very fun movie to watch. I think it may be my favorite MI movie yet (prior to this, I liked #4 the best).

 

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince.

 

I thought she was definitely the best thing in the movie. She won a Cesar award for one of her recent movie, The Clouds of Sils Marie. She's the first American actress to ever win one. Clearly, she's a lot better than people think.

Lava (2014) – James Ford Murphy



This short played before Inside Out in theaters and it’s pretty weak, especially as Pixar shorts go. It’s the tale of a volcano in the ocean hoping to find a female volcano that he can “lava,” which is one of the worst puns on the word “love” I’ve ever heard and it also has some unfortunate bodily fluids connotations, if you know what I mean. The entire short is told in a Hawaiian style uke song, but it’s just not very good. The animation is beautiful, I give it that, and it’s nowhere near as awful as The Blue Umbrella, the Monsters University short, but it’s not really worth your time. 1 ½ stars. Strongly recommended against.

tl;dr – story of volcano longing for love is predicated on horrible and strangely sexual wordplay and about as stupid as it sounds; nice animation, however. 1 ½ stars.

Inside Out (2015) – Pete Docter, Ronnie del Carmen



You guys, Pixar is back. After several years of films that ranged from mediocre to pretty good, the studio has turned out another bonafide masterpiece. I would have to rewatch the classics to decide if this movie is actually better or not, but this film is at least as good as the Toy Story movies, Finding Nemo & The Incredibles. Pixar’s world-building is back on top. The movie creates this astounding and wondrous world inside the head of Riley, the main character, that just keeps unfolding. Every time you think you’ve seen every creative depiction of the mind and thought processes, the characters round a corner and there’s something else brilliant, witty and insightful about the way our brains work. The animation is likewise breathtaking. And the casting is, as is pretty well routine for Pixar, off the charts brilliant. Amy Poehler, Bill Hader & Lewis Black are all perfectly cast and delightful. Richard Kind’s performance is maybe his very best; no, not his best vocal performance . . . his best OF ANY KIND (lol Richard Kind/of any Kind lol). And not enough is being said about the central performance, Kaitlyn Dias as Riley; she’s really perfect. But the absolute topper is Phyllis Smith as Sadness; it’s one of the best vocal performances I’ve ever heard, no exaggeration. The writing is sharp, funny and genuinely insightful. I feel like this is one of the very best movie’s I’ve ever seen about depression and the film just gets everything right about the way emotions work. When it posits how growing up essentially means saying goodbye to pure emotions and coming to terms with more complex mixed emotions, it feels utterly real. And it’s defense of sadness as an emotion that ultimately brings healing . . . super, super powerful. Yeah, what a tear-jerker. Was I sobbing at the end? You know I was. Yes, I can’t stress enough how brilliant this movie is. Welcome back, brilliant Pixar. I’ve missed you. 4 stars.

tl;dr – insightful, heart-breaking, hilarious, incredibly imaginative film is a return to form for Pixar; a great cast, great characters and surprising insight into our inner lives make this one a must see. 4 stars.

More Movie Reviews!

 

As a car, agreed (though I do have nostalgic love for it thanks to ABC's Sunday Night Movie, where they often showed Bond films in the 80s; particularly The Spy Who Loved Me it seemed), but it makes for a nifty sub IMO.

Bond sub fun fact! (From Wikipedia): Upon completion of filming, the submarine went on a promotional tour. Afterwards, it was shipped to Long Island, New York, and placed in storage. The storage unit was prepaid for 10 years; at the end of the lease, no one claimed the contents, so the contents of the storage locker were placed on auction. The buyer paid less than $100 for the unit. The buyers did not know the contents when they bought it, and through the years from 1989 through 2013, occasionally exhibited the submarine. The then-owner, also owner of a tool rental shop, had the exterior restored. It was put up for auction as a Bond Car in 2013. In September 2013, the submarine sold at auction for £550,000, or about US$1,000,000, at RM Auctions in Battersea, South-West London, England, UK. Elon Musk bought the vehicle, and plans to convert it into the functional car-submarine from the film. Musk plans to use Tesla Motors electric drive train, in making his conversion a reality.

 

I fell asleep watching Apocalypse Now after the tiger scene and did all kinds of crazy dreaming while waking up and falling back to sleep a few times, hearing Marlon Brando while dreaming. It was like rewatching a movie and getting a different experience from it, which is kind of neat.

 

Watching SW: RoTJ on Sky Movies. Tomorrow is the last day of 'Star Wars Weekends' for now. (It's a holiday weekend here in the UK).

 

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014)

Really stupid and tiresome.

Hey look, another director that doesn't know how to use a camera during action scenes.
The VA is really bad for a movie that depends on it heavily. Tony Shalhoub as Splinter?
The soundtrack is like the worst I've ever heard.
I don't usually care too much about sfx, but Splinter is the worst CGI in a big budget picture I've seen in a long time.
The Turtles have little character depth, and what character depth is attempted is hollow and amateurish.
Will Arnett's character is just awful.
It's not funny, but it thinks it often is.
The plot is weak (the villain's plot is like the exact same as the Lizard's in ASM), and it just becomes one long, boring action scene about halfway through the movie. I have enjoyed many movies that are almost entirely action, but this isn't one of them.


You know it's a bad movie when Megan Fox's acting is the second best thing about it. The first thing being the turtles look kinda cool, I guess. Some of the action, like the use of shells, was kinda neat and clever, but I'm only guessing because of the terrible camera work.

 

It's been a long hard road for me to make peace with the fact that I think Megan Fox is hot. I'm the guy that's always like, "I'm not shallow. You know who I find sexy? Women who are talented and smart and funny!"

But who I find sexy is apparently women who are talented, smart and funny and also Megan Fox. I liked her yellow jacket in that. I find very few people can actually look good in mustard yellow, but she did.

 

lol

It's okay to find Megan Fox sexy because of her appearance. No real need to feel guilty or shallow about that.

But I thought she did the best acting job in the movie, FWIW.

 

Saw "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." again. Good movie.

Before it started, they showed a preview of "Maze Runner: Scorch Trials". Post-apocalypse, oppressive society with a dark secret, band of rebels. Not really interested.

The trailers were for "The Walk" (tightrope walker between the Twin Towers), "Everest" (mountain climbers in peril), and "Burnt" (aspiring chef). Three different movies, but the trailers looked exactly the same.

 

Recently watched "Yojimbo" again. I'm a little bit in love with Toshiro Mifune. I really wish I understood Japanese!

 

I don't get this at all. Man on Wire was a fabulous film. Even friends of mine who don't share my documentary addiction loved it. I can't imagine this adding anything to the drama of the real story.

And Joseph Gordon-Levitt is intolerable.

 

Through A Glass Darkly: Can't go wrong with Bergman.

He never loses my attention

 

Can't go wrong with Toshiro. The man was awesome.

So in between getting my internet connection fixed and rendering my iPhone 6 into a grossly overpriced iPod Touch, I watched The Deadly Breaking Sword again. I could clearly do without Fu Sheng's unlucky gambler character as he was really only in this to ultimately knock sense into Ti Lung's titular a-hole of a swordsman. Perhaps if Fu had the screen time that Chan Wai Man did, I'd love this movie a lot more because when Ti and Chan are on the screen this film is beyond awesome. Basically, Ti's title swordsman Tuan Changqing challenges other martial artists to death duels and he kills his opponents by stabbing them with his sword which then breaks off into their collar bone. Chan Wai Man's Lian San is the only opponent who has survived a battle against Tuan and won't let Tuan forget it.

I must have spaced the last time I watched but the most awesome Chan Wai Man's villanous Lian San had a lot more screen time than I remembered. I really appreciated this as I think the man was highly underused at Shaw Brothers. He always made Sun Chung's films just a bit more intense and he was a superb real life fighter too. Catching some of those moves during a confrontation left me breathless. Anyway, Lian San survives Tuan's impalement because he seeks out a specific Doctor (Gao) who can heal him. And boy does Doctor Gao heal Lian San. In return, Lian becomes a bodyguard of sorts for the Doctor who is not the meek gentleman he appears to be. Naturally, Tuan and Fu Sheng's character are drawn into the complicated web of lies the Doctor weaved over a past betrayal.

At any rate, great characterization abounds along with an intriguing story. As is always the case with Sun Chung's wuxias the fights enhance the story and the characters rather than simply being the reason d'etre.

I really like this movie. Think it's one of Ti Lung's best performances (and he was in a lot of wuxias), he was just such a great a-hole, smug man. He had to work to become the gallant he claimed he was early on. 7.5/10 (It would be higher if less attention was given to Fu Sheng.)

 

Finally managed to catch Antman. That was fun. To me, the funniest part was the climax to the epic crescendo building up to the train wreck.

I was disappointed with Falcon's scene; IMO Sam is better than that. But thanks to Ruiz, Stan Lee had his funniest cameo to date.

 

Martin Scorcese's Goodlfellas. Funny how? Funny how? Funny like a clown, I amuse you? Classic gangster movie.