Amph What was the last movie you saw?

Agreed. I'm still torn on how I feel about the ultimate direction of the character as it relates to the movie, but Kingsley knocks it out of the park in terms of his performance. He's one of those really good actors who has gotten to that point in his career where he has to/does his share of crap films in order to put caviar on the table, so it was nice to see him get a role in a big budget mainstream movie that he could sink his teeth into.

Stormare is a guy that flew under my radar in spite of having seen a number of the films he's been in, but within the last week I watched Constantine and Minority Report, both of which he's in and both of which he chews through scenery like Pac-Man through a maze of dots. I'm still not sure if he's the worst actor I've ever seen or our greatest living thespian.

 

Gyllenhaal in particular was incredible. I think it's maybe the best performance of his that I've seen. I wouldn't mind Melissa Leo getting a Best Supporting Actress nom either.

 

I could see that, but Melissa was barely in it.

 

As much as I hate to admit it given my feelings on this film, yeah, Ben Kingsley was a hoot. He was possibly the one good thing about IM3 and he was severely underused.

 

Like I said....Peter Stormare being Peter Stormare.

 

IM3- I loved the barrel of monkeys scene and I thought the movie was better than IM & IM2.

Last movie I watched: In A Lonely Place- It was good.

 

This is the End. Funny stuff

 

I would have been satisfied if SHIELD of the US military were actually a part of the story...since...you know....AIR FORCE ONE WAS DESTROYED IN MIDAIR OVER MIAMI AND THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES WAS KIDNAPPED.

I mean, really, nobody really gave a **** about that except for Stark and Rhodey.

 

The Quickie (2001)

Another really terrible bargain bin movie that I have no patience to review right now because I want to watch a good movie dammit and not this bargain bin crap that I keep getting sent to me.

 

The Incredible Hulk (2008), the only MCU film I hadn't yet seen. Good, not great. Mind you, that still makes it several orders of magnitude better than 2003's Hulk. Norton and Roth are the backbone of the film; the former does a really good job as Banner, while the latter squeezes more out of his role than he has any real right to. In terms of the MCU, I'd put it fifth behind The Avengers and the other three 'origin' movies, but miles ahead of IM2 and IM3.

 

Gravity. Wow. I don't think I blinked through the whole movie. Aside from a couple of scenes that ignored the laws of physics, it was amazingly real. As a retired flight engineer, it really hit home for me. When things were going wrong, I was ready to open my checklists, troubleshoot systems, and review emergency procedures. It was like a nightmare about a bad ride in a simulator. I was drained when it was over.

I liked the characters too. They seemed like people I could fly missions with; totally believable dialog and personality.

Glad I saw it in 3d IMAX and will probably see it again.

 

I could have seen Peter Stormare recently because he was filming a movie nearby, but I didn't bother to try to deal with getting near the filming location.
I thought I was overdoing it in this thread, but I saw After Earth yesterday because I like to see panned stuff to have my own opinion. It was basically a stretched out version of the trailer that felt like a waste of time. Will and Jaden Smith made the silliest faces in that movie; a movie is really a problem when the sights or sounds of characters are annoying. There was no tension when it was intended and the scope of the film exceeded its story.

 

That is such a good movie. It seems pretty underrated. You rarely hear anybody talk about it.

 

What happened to Legolas Skywalker and his reviews. I need some positivity in my life plz.

 

sorry. I rented "Argento's Dracula."



I've never seen anything that bad, not even on Syfy. Literally, the visual effects look like something I could have done after playing around with After Effects for a few weeks. And the acting. And poor Rutger Hauer. The man has done plenty of slumming in his career, but this was almost exactly on par with Bela Lugosi's appearance in Plan 9 from Outer Space.

Try to imagine the effort it takes to make the worst-ever adaptation of Dracula. It's actually quite an impressive achievement. It was like the porn parody of Dracula we've all been waiting for, only with less porn. "****ula."

 

The best adaptation of Dracula is still Francis Ford's 1992 film version. It's so bat**** insane.

 

In the Line of Fire
13 Assassins
LA Confidential
The Double Life of Veronique
Leon Morin, Priest
Charade

 

That's an amazing line-up.

Much Ado about Nothing (2012) – Joss Whedon



I went into this movie hoping very much to like it, but, I’ll be honest, I didn’t expect it to be anywhere near as good as the 1993 Branagh version, which is one of my favorite Shakespearean films of all time. Well, the joke’s on me; this elegant little flick is at least as good as Branagh’s and I actually think it’s probably a bit better. Color me surprised. In elegant, classy black and white, Shakespeare’s timeless story unfolds; the ensemble is more than up to the task of capturing the snap and sparkle of Shakespeare’s dialogues. It’s one of the best ensembles I’ve seen in a very long time. Amy Acker and Alexis Denisoff kill as Beatrice and Benedick; Clark Gregg and Reed Diamond are wonderful paternal figures; Fran Kranz, so brilliant as the Fool in The Cabin in the Woods, is given the play’s toughest role, Claudio, and excels. In small parts, Ricki Lindhome is wonderfully petulant as a gender-flipped Conrade and Nathan Fillion captures Dogberry’s pompous foolishness to perfection. It’s certainly the best Shakespearean film in a very, very long time, probably since 1998’s Hamlet, unless something is slipping my mind. This is a treat for lovers of the bard and a perfect gateway drug for those who either don’t know him or think they dislike him. This is a movie for all those who have hated Shakespeare since high school English ruined him. Prepare to be converted.

Hannah Arendt (2012) – Margarethe von Trotta



Hannah Arendt isn’t a typical biopic; it captures a frenetic, high stress period in the life of the German-Jewish writer-philosopher. It picks up as she prepares to leave her home in New York in order to cover the Adolf Eichmann trial in Israel; her articles, published in the New Yorker are scandalous, particularly once they’re published in book form, under the title The Banality of Evil. Arendt must then defend both her ideas and her life as the negative press threatens to twist the one and overwhelm the other. This isn’t a particularly easy movie to watch; dramatically, it’s frankly pretty inert. About half an hour in, I wasn’t thinking about walking out, but the only reason I wasn’t is because I never walk out, if you catch my drift. Some of the performances are not so hot; even Barbara Sukowa in the title role can’t nail some of the more emotional moments. But this isn’t really a film about overt emotionalism or about dramatic flourishes; it’s a film about pure ideas and it really explores Arendt’s ideas about the nature of evil with great impact. The ideas are still troubling and compelling and when Arendt goes into a lengthy speech about her ideas at the climax of the film, I couldn’t help but feel that somehow what Arendt said in the sixties was incredibly prescient. In today’s world of religious zealots and international terrorist organizations, it feels like what she has to say about the link between evil and the everyday, between evil and the simplicity of the routine, has never been more important. At the end of the day, the film was a compelling experience and I was genuinely moved emotionally by the import and power of the ideas, even if the personal drama wasn’t ever really compelling at all. I left the film deeply troubled, wrestling again with the nature of evil in this world. Ultimately, I think that’s what the filmmakers wanted. Arendt herself probably wouldn’t have cared about the personal stuff either; but the film brings her ideas to a level where they’re accessible to a mass audience and reiterates that the ideas are important, not to say critical. Arendt would probably be agreeable to that, at least, and so am I.

More Movie Reviews!

 

On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969) - (re-watch, part of a mini Bond retrospective) Going in I had this ranked as my #3 Bond film of all-time. I'm happy to report nothing about this viewing changed that. I know Lazenby is supposedly the weak link of the film, but I disagree. I find him equal parts charming and utterly believable with the fisticuffs (save for his exaggerated hay makers). I really wish this is the direction the series had gone in the decade to follow, and I would love to have seen Lazenby have a chance to grow into the role. And what an ending! That took guts. Bravo. - 8/10

Debriefing

- John Barry's Moog driven theme is my favorite from any Bond film.

- Diana Rigg is also officially now my favorite "Bond Girl". It really makes a difference when you get an actual actress for the role and not just a pretty face (not that she doesn't have that as well).

- Telly Savalas. Who loves ya, baby? I do.

 

I thought Lazenby did a fantastic job as well conveying a more sensitive side to Bond that we wouldn't see again for almost 40 years.

 

Puss in Boots

It's a silly idea with potential, but the execution was awful, just horribly lazy dreck. The first fifteen minutes are just painful with terrible attempts at humor. It starts to pick up once Kitty Softpaws shows up, I really like her Gray Fox design and the dancing was sorta cute. Not really, but in comparison to the rest of the movie. Unfortunately it immediately nosedives into Puss' origin story, which was uninspiring. I was just as bored by it as Kitty was, and that was supposed to be a joke.

The VA in this movie is piss poor, which is kind of a big deal in an animated movie. Zach Galifianakis' performance was just sorry, as if he were reading the lines in his sleep. Salma and Antonio never had less chemistry, were never less charming, never more awkward, stilted and contrived. Salma didn't seem how to know to do the lines, so she's just all over the place, monotone boring at times and throwing her voice and emotions all over the place at others.

You ever see the Simpsons episode "Helter Shelter", when the Simpsons are on a reality television show that forces them to live circa 1895? When they get the offer, Marge goes "I'll do it!" Then she looks at the camera and asks to do it again and tries a dozen variations of "I'll do it!" I'll do it. I'll do it. I'll do it. I'll do it!

Yeah, that's Salma Hayek's performance in the whole movie.

Antonio seemed to have a lot of enthusiasm for the role, but the entire movie seemed to be based on "Ha, Antonio Banderas has a funny accent", without bothering with actual humor, a story or anything. I actually like Antonio and I think he was the only one who did the best he could, he just had crap to work with. It's a shockingly lazy attempt from a major animation studio like DreamWorks. It's like they had it all in the bag with the idea itself and didn't bother putting any effort into it.

I was ready to turn it off about halfway through, it was just getting embarrassing to watch. I only stuck it out because I almost always finish a movie once I get more than five minutes in. The movie just drags and drags, it seems like it should have been over after they get the golden goose, or maybe I just wanted it to be over.

Humpty's "I was always there" face heel turn was a new low. It was so terribly bad it was kinda funny, but not really, I wasn't able to laugh because it was just too awkward. Maybe it's funny to someone on the outside, like watching Michael from The Office. Watching Puss in Boots is like working with Michael from The Office, not so funny.

It's a tiresome movie that thinks it's funny but isn't. The voice acting is pathetic. The story is completely uninspiring, there are no feels, no charm, no laughs, nothing redeemable except maybe dancing cats.

I don't really follow these animated movies too closely, I watch them when I get around to it, but Puss in Boots is one of the worst. I didn't speak too highly of Wreck-It Ralph in this thread, I thought Wreck-It Ralph was kinda lazy, but Puss in Boots makes Wreck-It Ralph look like Herculean work in comparison.

 

Well it is 63 years old and Bogart has a few other movies that are quite famous. Also 1950 gave us Sunset Blvd. and Rashomon.

 

You must have seen a version where RDJ was completely edited out, then. Weird.

 

Agreed, and that's just what this story needed. I think that's where not being a trained actor actually worked to his advantage. There was a sincerity to his performance that I really found refreshing. Moore's Bond was a bit too glib. Dalton's too cold. Brosnan usually felt more like he was imitating Bond than playing him to me (I did like all three actors in the role in their own ways, and I think each managed at least one really good film in the series). I personally believe Craig is the best actor to play the role, and he's able to successfully marry all of the aspects of Bond's personality so that he's an actual character and not just a caricature.

I was really surprised by how much I liked Lazenby this time around. Moore is the Bond I grew up with, and I think he's an absolute class act, but I really found my self wishing that OHMSS had been more successful, that Lazenby had held the role for the next decade, and that the tone of the films hadn't gotten quite so camp.

 

Rollerball (1975)

I don't really know what to think about this one. James Caan does another good performance. The rollerball sequences are very well-shot, brutal, and intense, and they manage to still hold up in today's day and age. I could really care less about the overall storyline though with confusing corporate politics that go nowhere, a bunch of stuffy grumpy British dudes who don't want Caan in the game anymore for...some reason? The ending....ummmm.

Yeah, like I said, I really don't know how to review this film.