Amph What was the last movie you saw?

birdman, by ingmar birdman. just kiddin', i saw that quite a while ago. i have the blue ray but i haven't cracked it open yet.

 

tell me about it. best movie, best director, but not best actor? whateva

 

Watched Boyhood and Blue is the Warmest Color over the weekend. Damn, did I just see two films that showed my childhood on film. Boyhood is mandatory viewing for anyone who is a child of divorced parents, and Blue is mandatory viewing for anyone who is LGBT. So, yeah, five stars for each.

 

I think we all have films like that. I similarly think that Cool as Ice is a brilliant piece of 90s pop art. Pretty sure I'm the only person on that particular train, but hey.

But I will say that the production values of KMTPOTP are fairly high for a made for TV film ($3 million dollar budget according to its Wiki. Pretty high for a made for TV movie in 1978 I'd suspect). In particular the lab set where the scientist builds his creations is really impressive. It's also directed with some cinematic flair, so I wasn't surprised to learn that it was helmed by a guy with extensive big screen experience in Gordon Hessler, who had directed three films with Vincent Price, a Sinbad movie (Sinbad the sailor, not Sinbad the painfully unfunny comedian) and he went on to do two Sho Kosugi Ninja flicks in the 80s; Pray for Death and Rage of Honor. By 1978 made for TV standards, Hessler was a pretty good get.

I think Peter's main power was remaining upright , but reading its Wiki confirmed what I suspected. Peter's powers were great agility and leaping ability. L-a-m-e. It would've been cool if his drumsticks had been mini-lightsabers or something.

 

I swear I have the pitch for 'Birdman Returns'. It's all about a rejuvenated Riggan Thompson getting nominated for an Oscar for the film adaptation of his play and all the phoniness behind lobbying for an Oscar.

 

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

Bogart plays an absolute a-hole but its Walter Huston who steals the show here. great dialogue, and a great ending.

 

St. Vincent. It was good... a pretty heartfelt comedy-drama with really good performances, especially by Bill Murray and the boy actor (Jaeden Lieberher).

 

"John Dies at the End"

I liked it.

 

What happens at the end?

 

James and The Giant Peach -- Wonderful, wonderful!

 

Exit Through the Gift Shop

Loved this movie.It seems to have been created as an act of petty jealousy or apology or self-appropriation of credit/blame for unleashing a fraud on the world of pop art, as if there has ever been pop art that wasn't at some level fraudulent. It plays as a self-promoting retrospective of Banksy, as something more shallow (a swipe at a competitor) and something deeper (a bemused and somewhat ironic look at the evolution of Warholian celebrity).

 

I just saw that actually. I loved it.

 

Penguins of Madagascar. Not nearly as good as DreamWorks's last film (HTTYD2), but enjoyable enough. Definitely superior to the last Madagascar and Shrek films anyway.

 

The Phantom Menace

 

Night at the Museum 2. A lot of the humor was meh, and some of the comedy skits dragged, but Amy Adams lit up the screen with her interpretation of Amelia Earhart, and Hank Azaria's lisping Boris Karloff was funny.

 

Tooth Fairy

 

Feast (2014) – Patrick Osborne



This cute little short film showed before Big Hero 6 and comes as an extra feature on the Blu-Ray. It’s a nice, clever little short in which we track a man’s relationship with a woman through his dog’s eyes. It’s a story told through the meals that the man gives the dog. It sounds more complicated than it is. It’s actually executed very smoothly and cleverly. Quite loved this one. More than I did Big Hero 6 actually. Great ending. Highly recommended. 4 stars.

tl;dr – romance is seen through the eyes of a hungry dog in this adorable short film. 4 stars.

More Movie Reviews!

 

Finally saw a documentary that's been on my Netflix list forever and a day...

Jiro-Dreams of Sushi

Tells the story of one of Japan's most famous sushi chefs, a man whose been doing the job for 75 years.

Certainly recommended but not as good as I was hoping for/led to believe.
Some of the 'essence of Japan' nuggets are just amazing.
Like serving as an apprentice for 10 years before they let you cook the eggs or the poor guy trying to make a certain dish 200 times before they deemed it acceptable.
When he passed that test he cried.

 

50 shades of grey

It was a date, ok? And I got a snog at the end, so... kinda made up for this rather craptacular flick.

I thought Dakota was fine in it, but Dornan just seemed way too... nice. Too many boring tied up scenes and too many boring 'what other flying machine can I take you on a date on? Even tho I don't do dates. Cuz I'm a dom, innit' scenes.

 

Hot Tub Time Machine 2 -

 

Raiders of the Seven Seas, 1953. With better dialog (and even a half-hearted attempt at a period accent) this could have been pretty good. Donna Reed looks gorgeous in an atypical role. Lon Chaney is wasted. Meh.

 

Citizenfour I was disappointed. Not only did this not tell me anything new, it barely told me anything at all. It was mostly about the experiences of Snowden and the people who met with him during his time in Hong Kong. That's fine, but it's definitely not for someone who wants to be informed. For example, they mention programs in the U.S. and UK without really explaining what they are.

It did humanize him a bit for me. He certainly didn't come across as the psychopath with a martyr complex that his detractors like to paint him as. There's some bits with a former NSA guy talking about the evolution and extent of the surveillance state and a good summation by Glenn Greenwald (in Portuguese) as to why it's a bad thing. For someone who actually wants to learn about the NSA from a documentary, I'd recommend Frontline's The United States of Secrets (also available on U.S. Netflix). It's twice as long and is much more focused on the NSA.

 

Watched a 70's sci fi 'classic' over the weekend, At the Earths Core, starring Peter Cushing and a staple of 70's dinosaur type sci fi films Doug McClure. Its your typcial Jules Verne story with Victorian explorers tunneling to the earth core to find dinosaurs (men in suits) and races being enslaved by other evil tribes. I hadn't seen this film for a long time and I still enjoyed it despite its campness and typical 70's style of shooting.

 

Ewoks Battle for Endor based on a recommendation here and I liked it.

 

Directed by cult movie master Don Coscarelli (Phantasm series, Beastmaster, Bubba Ho-Tep). It's one of those quirky movies like Buckaroo Banzai that doesn't quite work in a conventional sense, but gets a +1 roll for attempting to do something different and for its odd-ball charm.

All I remember from NATM:2 are Amy Adams and her amazingly tight pants. She flat-out steals the movie out from under Ben Stiller and Co.