Amph What was the last movie you saw? (Ver. 2)

Closer

Romance/Drama about four intelligent, attractive, complex, and dishonest people whose lives intertwine as they cheat and then recheat on each other. Starring Jude Law, Julia Roberts, Clive Owen, and Natalie Portman.

First time I saw this; it had been recommended by a few friends and so I finally watched it. The actors all do excellent work in this. There are a lot of emotional moments and several uncomfortable scenes featuring graphic dialogue regarding infidelity and the explicit details.

Natalie is good at portraying what it looks like to see someone's heart breaking onscreen. And Clive Owen is very strong in all of his scenes, some of which are comical. Julia is quite good as well, playing a rather cold and clinical character. Jude does well as a rather slimy dude.

That's mainly what I got out of the film is an appreciation for the acting performances. The story and dialogue are ok; basically 4 dishonest people backstabbing each other because they love and lust too much. I dunno. It's not really a genre I watch very often and that "Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You" song or whatever it's called is sung in such a cringeworthy way that I almost wanted to shut the movie off just as it was starting lol.

 

I'm with @Rogue1-and-a-half on that short. I think I referred to it as "Eraserhead for kids" to somebody. The majority of the Pixar shorts in the last, oh maybe decade or so, have been mediocre to terrible. It's not anywhere near as awful as the Lava one played before Inside Out. That made me want to slit mine and everyone else's wrists in the theater.

 

Dawn of the Dead (1978) Consumerism, zombies and the ugliest side of humanity. For me, the S.W.A.T. team attack on the projects remains the most harrowing, awful and utterly gore soaked sequence in the entire movie. I am always so glad when Woolley gets his.

The principal quarter of actors are fantastic (I love how no bs Ken Foree’s Peter is), and it is rough seeing their ups and downs as they try to survive life in a shopping mall surrounded by zombies.

For me, beyond George’s commentary on failing humanity and consumerism, Goblin’s score is the most memorable aspect of this movie: as it was among the first soundtracks that I could instantly recall the particular scene in my mind. When the quartet of survivors land on the roof of the mall and see the zombies in the parking lot, the discordant, weird synth strains mixed with Flyboy’s exclaimation of “Holy $@*!” (in regard to the zombies), permanently rooted itself into my cinematic memory. It took me awhile to seek out more of Goblin’s soundtrack work, but that Dawn bit is my second favorite track by them.

I wince hard at Tom Savini’s gruesome displays of zombie and human carnage. Sure, his protege Greg Nicotero has gone far beyond this, but the visceral impact of the deaths in Dawn still make this hard to watch. Despite my seeing far more graphic and disturbing displays of on screen death and dismemberment (even in Day of the Dead), I think projects sequence felt so horribly real that is why I always have issues with squeamishness in this movie.

Dawn... is a another brilliant look at the breakdown of society by Mr. Romero and makes me content to be done with the worst of humanity in two hours rather than several seasons or years of comics.

 

me too, but i'm glad i kept going. good film. if you haven't seen it already, i would recommend sex, lies and videotape for something along the same lines.

 

Ballad of Buster Scruggs .

this was great , pure Coen bros.
the opening story with Buster himself is so well performed .
Various types of stories about the old west , and it looks so magnificent , the scenery etc. why didn't they put it in theatres ?

.

 

what's a theater?

 

Some mod favorite

 

it's a place where people go to check their twitter and eat nachos .

 

The Death of Superman (2018)
Animated feature released on home video that was adapted from the extremely popular comic series from the 90s. I thought it was all right. Up until the climax when Doomsday landed and eventually confronted Superman, the story spent quite a lot of time going over all of those people who've been personally affected by him. It plays into the poignancy when Superman dies and they show his funeral. One thing I thought was interesting was the Easter Egg where Luthor sneaks out with Mercy while wearing a full red wig and beard; which is what his character had in the comics courtesy of an alternate story.

 

Springsteen on Broadway I've read his autobiography, so I already know 95% of the stories; I've already heard most of the songs performed solo acoustic. I still loved it, of course. By now he knows well how to make his work sincere, honest-- or appear that way, as he self-deprecatingly points out that many of the things he wrote about he hadn't or never experienced firsthand. He's in his late 60s (mostly) alone on stage and he's just as captivating as he was in his late 20s with the whole E Street Band behind him. My only complaint is that it wasn't a true Springsteen show because it wasn't 4 hours long.

 

Mortal Engines

I loved the books and apart from the fate of one of the characters being changed this was exactly how I imagined it as when I read the book. Hope they adapt the other 3 books too.

Aquaman
This was a fun film. I didn't know what to expect from this one after Justice League but this was really good like Wonder Woman.

Spoiler

Something me and my friend both found funny though is the explosions that kept coming out of nowhere time to interrupt intimate or important scenes. If you've seen it you'll hopefully get what I mean. Neither of us were sure if they were actually meant to be intentionally funny or not but it made me think of this. Ironic with Willem Dafoe having a big part in the film.

 

yeah i just read that it bombed so hard

 

The Big Sleep. Remaking one of the ultimate Humphrey Bogart hardboed classics is a big undertaking, unlikely to pay off, but this seventies attempt had one big thing going for it: it could re-adapt the book much more faithfully with the Code out of the way, the plot having been completely mangled in the Bogart/Bacall film to hide all the pornography and sexuality.

Unfortunately, it squandered its potential to faithfully put the Chandler book on the screen with the inexplicable decision to move it to then-modern-day England. Robert Mitchum, though then old, is a great choice to bring a world-weary Marlowe to the screen. It worked out great in Farewell, My Lovely. But what’s the point here if he’s going to be completely out of his element, his hardboiled patter radically out of place in the movie’s impossibly sedate world? The atmosphere, the plot, the characters, none of it makes any sense at all in this context. The whole movie is fundamentally incoherent. Mitchum does what he can, and it’s nice to have Ollie Reed as Eddie Mars and a Jimmy Stewart cameo as General Sternwood, but both of the Sternwood girls here are massive, colossal steps down. The one has zero chemistry with Mitchum and just a generally oddball affect, while the other is one of the worst actresses I’ve ever seen. And it’s all in service of a film that’s just fundamentally misconceived. If they’d stuck with the proper setting and gotten a better director, this could have totally worked. As is, it’s a well-intentioned dud.

 

Bumblebee (2018)

I didn’t go in with very high expectations, considering how much of a mess the last Transformers film was. But it was a different director and they seemed to be going for a different approach, so I thought it could end up being decent. And... it was great! A change of director is exactly what this franchise needed. I’ll admit that I really enjoy the first three Transformers films, because they’re so fun to watch, but Bumblebee was quite a bit different. Everything was tonned down, so the film was a lot less full on than all of the others, but that was a good thing. There was less action than usual, but it was really well done. Bumblebee as a character really got a chance to shine. Hailee Steinfeld and John Cena’s characters were both enjoyable. The villains were probably the weakest part. They should’ve kept Starscream as the main villain. The film was also really funny at times. So overall it was great, but a bit too simple to be anything more than that. 8/10.

 

This was just the first book. Though some dialogue I could see was obvious setup for the next 3. Notably

Spoiler

Anna is turned into a Stalker in the second book and becomes the big bad of the series. In the film she says if she dies she wants her ashes to be scattered to the wind and die free. A bit of foreshadowing only book readers would get.

 

A new director is likely what it needed, and if they do any more new instalments hopefully they either use this guy or someone like him. I'm hoping this movie is different enough (since I haven't seen it yet) to be considered an 'alternate universe' from Bay's. I'd love to have a new take on the universe and characters that isn't filled with cringy sex jokes or mediocre attempts to be 'hardcore.'
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My latest movie was Jurassic World: The Fallen Kingdom.

It was good in some places, and so so in others. I liked the Indominus Raptor and many of the new characters, though there is a point of some parts being a bit too much. I could understand keeping them contained and greedy people using them for military weapons, but them all getting loose once again? That is getting old, with the only difference is how much to the degree the escaping just keeps 'escalating.' Once you go past a certain point, then it just becomes a ever expanding contest of out-doing the last movie of 'Oh dear, the dinosaurs escaped again.'

 

Godzilla vs. Megaguirus

Loved this. Great prologue recapping events from 1954 and 1966 and the need to prevent G from harnessing nuclear energy. Leads to discussion about clean energy and a plasma powered energy system which leads to a plasma weapon that can create a tiny black hole to eradicate G! Meanwhile an insect is caught in the path of the weapon and mutates in the presence of a worm hole leaving a giant egg that is retrieved by a juvenile entomologist. Fantastic!

Misato Tanaka plays Kirko Tsujimori who is one of my favorite characters ever. She is so brave, kind, intelligent, and bad***. She is out for revenge against G who killed her commander as he sought to stop her from further attacking G in Osaka.

The larval Meganulon and the eggs they hatch from give off a distinctly Alien vibe, much to the demise of an innocent couple simply out for a beer. These ferocious dragonfly insects are called Meganula and I feel genuinely bad for G when they swarm him, stinging him to suck the energy out of him for their queen, Megaguirus.

This movie has great characters, space satellites, black holes, alien horror, kaiju battles, and awesome cinematography. It kriffin' rocks and there is even a post credits scene foreshadowing a sequel. Eat your heart out MCU.

 

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

 

Just caught the last half of SW:TLJ on one of the movie channels. I'd have tuned in earlier if I'd known it was on.

 

i took my son to see into the spider-verse on saturday. we both really liked it, which is pretty rare for us.

 

Incredibles 2

Picked this up on DVD, I liked this movie, but prefer the first one.

Fantastic Beasts

This was a rewatch, very good film, but I prefer Crimes of Grindelwald

 

@I Are The Internets I kinda feel like animated shorts have just been disappointing across the board these last couple of years. Inner Workings was absolutely dreadful; I think it was before Moana maybe. Lava was awful, as you say. And I still don't even know what went crazy with that Olaf short that never got theater play.

Do you remember Get a Horse, that phenomenal retro-style/3D Mickey short from a few years back. Now that was great stuff.



Burlesque (2010) – Steve Antin

So, is Ali short for anything?

Yeah, it’s short for Alice.

Alice, huh? Well, welcome to Wonderland.

So, is this a bad movie? I mean, yeah, it’s a bad movie. Christina Aguilera plays a small-town girl who moves to L.A. to become a dancer/singer in a fancy nightclub and, you know, dreams and such. It’s about as bad as that summary would make you think. But there are a handful of decent things in it. Stanley Tucci, for instance, plays the assistant to Cher, who owns the club and if anyone can bring an underwritten character to life, it’s Stanley Tucci; he even gets a few chuckles out of the really tired jokes the script offers just because he delivers them like he means them. Likewise, Aguilera is a charismatic lead, likable even when she’s whiffing big dramatic moments. The musical sequences are sometimes fun, often because, well, look, I don’t want to be a perv or whatever, but this movie is filled with beautiful young women wearing very little in the way of clothing and often gyrating their mostly unclothed bodies around to music. Among those women are Christina Aguilera, Kristen Bell & Juliana Hough (looking smoking hot as a redhead, by the way). I mean, this movie is pleasant to watch. Kind of amazing this movie actually got made really; I don’t know how anything got done on the set. The musical sequences are often quite good, especially a surprisingly downbeat scene where Cher gives a really great beautiful reading to You Haven’t Seen the Last of Me & the high-energy closing number Show Me How You Burlesque (nonsensical title, but, hey). But if you think I’m giving this movie a positive review, I’m not. Basically, the script is awful. Aguilera’s Ali finds herself torn between Cam Gigandet’s eyeliner-wearing bartender & Eric Dane’s wealthy real-estate mogul. The dialogue is generally awful and, unfortunately, both Gigandet and Dane are really bad, so that whole story goes nowhere which is also about how far the plotline involving the club crew having to find the necessary money to keep the club from being demolished. Peter Gallagher & James Brolin are both wasted in this plotline, which has an incredibly stupid resolution. The scene of Gigandet trying to seduce Aguilera is one of the worst scenes I’ve seen all year. About the best you can say about this movie is that you’re never more than ten minutes from a musical performance and most of those are fun. 2 stars.

tl;dr – musical sequences occasionally enliven this misbegotten script; sexy but not tawdry, but also not smart. 2 stars.

 

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