Last Movie You Watched

[Justacrazyguy]

The Elephant Man: Here I was expecting something like Eraserhead and instead I got drama!

Nah, just kiding, I liked the drama and everything else. Great movie.

Un Chien Andalou: Wow, that really was... something!

[moonwolf2024]

Just finished watching the first Poltergeist. Don't care what anyone says....this movie is freakin awesome. I'm pretty sure people have seen this, but if not I'll give a little synopsis. Basically, a family of five move into a house which was built on an old graveyard. Unfortunately the family isn't aware of the graveyard. The spirits mostly communicate with Carol Anne who is the youngest daughter. Oddly enough they talk to her through the TV. After a few friendly encounters the spirits decide to take Carol Anne and her family. That's when all the scary stuff starts

It's pretty creepy, but I love it more and more each time I watch it. One of my favorite parts is at the end when the father jacks up the community developer. The look on that guys face is priceless

[tomrule123]

Just finished watching the first Poltergeist. Don't care what anyone says....this movie is freakin awesome.

How can anyone not like the first Poltergeist? (never saw the sequels, so can't say anything.) It's a classic to the PG-family horror films (before the whole PG-13 rating came around. And thus we thank Spielberg for stopping the MPAA from giving this film an R rating. ... no joke, it could have been given an R-rating. Same thing goes to Indiana Jones: Temple of Doom(note: from what I know, no edits was changed that decreased the rating.)

SPOILER: Show

I know that it's Tobe Hooper that directed Poltergeist (that's right: the same guy that directed The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. ... makes sense, doesn't it), but Speilberg did help out a lot with this film (co-producer, co-writer) during the time he was directing E.T.

And yes, Spielberg probably did end up suggest the MPAA to give later films a PG-13 rating. What's crazy about today's ratings and parent's concerns is that if they never knew anything about Poltergeist, and they show kids today this film... )

[moonwolf2024]

How can anyone not like the first Poltergeist? (never saw the sequels, so can't say anything.)

If you ever get a chance you should see the sequels. The second one is my favorite out of all three, but they're all good.

[Tribblepoo]

I saw 2 Guns this last weekend with a friend of mine. We were both pleasantly surprised by the movie.

This is a straight-up 1980s/1990s buddy action movie. In fact, I was actually reminded of the Lethal Weapon series throughout the movie. The story was decently good, plot flow was rather nice, the humor was well-timed and the acting was pretty good, a notch above what you'd expect from the kind of movie it is. In short, it doesn't really suck at anything and doesn't try to pretend something it's not. It's simply meant for a bit of fun entertainment and it does this well.

The issue I have with the movie is that at first it comes off as a sort of action/comedy (lighter on the comedy than action), but most of the comedy comes from Wahlberg's character, making it somewhat one-sided.

Something I particularly enjoyed was that it was clear that the director grew up watching movies in the 1990s. References to other movies were everywhere. A lot of it was somewhat subtle, but others (like Washington having to disguise himself in a US Navy Commander uniform, a direct reference to Crimson Tide) were somewhat heavy handed. Still, this aspect of the movie was rather enjoyable and managed to add to the viewing experience rather than take away from it.

In all, I really liked the movie. It did screw up at some points, but it was done well enough that I can see this either as a stand alone movie or getting a sequel or two.

[Mr. Tines]

I caught the afternoon showing of Kokuriko-zaka Kara at the local independent cinema, expecting to have the usual competent English dub that Ghibli movies get in cinema because it was a daytime showing, but actually got the subbed version.

I must say I'd never expected to get a "but it turns out they're not blood related after all" ending in a Ghibli movie; and the trailer seemed to imply it was going to be more about boats than it actually was (which was pretty much a co-educational Manabi Straight, give or take the period setting).

[Dr. Nick]

My Bond-a-thon continues, as I blaze through the remaining Roger Moore films. And Sean Connery is there as well!

SPOILER: Show

For Your Eyes Only

- I wish they could have given Blofeld a better send-off, but with all of the Harmony Gold style legal bullshit surrounding the character, I guess we have to be happy that we got anything at all.
- Bond and Moneypenny have a particularly sweet office banter scene in this one.
- The film has a whole lot of little continuity-building things: Bond visits Theresa's grave; Blofeld; Russian M's office from The Spy Who Loved Me; The white Lotus; Bond's hat-throwing callback in his scene with Moneypenny.
- Melina is probably one of the most competent Bond girls so far. She manages to dispatch the assassin who murdered her parents all by herself, saving Bond in the process. Usually these good-girl revenge plots never work out; see Tilly Masterson in Goldfinger.
- The exploding Lotus is an awesome gadget-related twist, considering the way a nearly similar car was utilized in TSWLM.
- The soundtrack is funky as all hell.
- The Euro-boozer strikes again! It blows my mind that he appears in three Bond films whereas Jaws and sheriff Pepper only appear in two, respectively.
- The film makes it look like Bond's cryptonite is jailbait, which is fairly hilarious considering Connery's Bond had no qualms about plowing Kissy, the barely legal Japanese agent in YOLT. Roger Moore's facial expressions in this scene are pure gold, as this is one of the exceedingly rare scenes where we get to see Bond completely flummoxed.
- Since this is a more realistic film, the villain doesn't have a shark tank, but he does try to feed Bond and Melina to sharks. If there's one thing this film series is obsessed with, it's freaking sharks.
- The mountain climbing scene is something we haven't seen before in the series, and although it is exciting, I can't help but to notice that Bond only survives because of the absolutely dumbfuckery of the enemy goon. After spotting Bond and kicking him down a notch he doesn't immediately go and alert his companions. Instead, he grabs a rope and starts rappelling towards Bond, with predictable results.
- Great moments in Bond history: Bond trolls Margaret Thatcher.
- Oh god my sides: Russian Moneypenny's name is Rublevitch.

- In my opinion, FYEO is a small miracle in the Bond canon, seeing how it is sandwiched between Moonraker and Octopussy, the two most cartoonish films of the Moore era. While I greatly enjoyed its slightly grittier tone (which isn't that gritty, to be honest; it would be more correct to say the film is adventurous and funny without being clownish and stupid), I do think the very ending could have benefited from grander, more Bond-esque action. It almost feels too subdued, which according to Wikipedia might have been partly due to local monks sabotaging the filming at Meteora, forcing the filmmakers to rely on bland studio sets instead. But still, I have to put this as my number one Moore film.


Octopussy

- The opening scene with the mini-jet is for me one of the most memorable Bond scenes and the best type of Roger Moore goofiness.
- Unfortunately, this film also embodies the worst parts of Moore era goofiness. There's stupid shit like Bond pretending to be Tarzan and wearing a gorilla suit and a clown outfit, and it's far more frustrating here than it was in Moonraker because the film has a comparatively serious underlying plotline. From FYEO onwards, Moore's films started having significantly more Cold War themes, and here one of the two main villains, general Orlov, is basically an anti-Gorbachev who wants to slap the West around with military force. Too bad that all of his scenes feel like they're spliced in from an entirely different movie, creating jarring tonal shifts.
- 009 is a terrible agent for not getting instantly rid of the location-revealing balloons attached to his clown outfit.
- Here's something new: Q doing field work, and he pretty nearly gets offed by an assassin.
- The scene at the end where Octopussy's female cultists invade the Monsoon castle might be the lowest point of the whole Bond canon, or at least it might have been that until Die Another Day came along.
- Go home, Ridley Scott, you're drunk.


Never Say Never Again


- Hot damn, Sean Connery clearly doesn't age like normal people. By this point, fucking Moore looks older than him.
- In retrospect, it's fairly amusing how much like Skyfall this film is. The 00-section has been mothballed as an outdated relic (which seems spectacularly stupid considering that in this continuity SPECTRE is going strong and Blofeld is alive and well and more handsome than ever), and Bond is out of shape and keeps failing his field competency tests. In fact, here the situation is even worse since the new M seemingly has nothing but disdain for the red meat eating, Martini-sipping Bond.
- Oh god, I love this knock-off Q. Just see the image above.
- While the other pieces might be in place for a good Bond adventure, why did they choose to remake Thunderball of all things instead of opting for a new, possibly original story? Was Thunderball really that good? What's the point of remaking such a big-scale film when the smaller budget doesn't allow for the original whoa-moments like the transforming ship?
- Bond just flat-out molests Domino by pretending to be her masseur.
- That being said, I did like the film's vaguely Julian Assange looking villain, and his ship is crazy fabulous, even if it doesn't transform. However, he does one of the dumbest villain screw-ups ever by letting Bond roam freely on board the ship. "Please, feel free to walk around, seduce my woman, sabotage my equipment and undermine my genius plan. Mwahahaha!"
- The final duel between the hero and the villain is a boring underwater tussle. While the film is otherwise leaner than the bloated original Thunderball, this is one thing that was done significantly worse in the remake.


A View to a Kill

- Roger Moore gets slightly less cartoonish in his final outing. There's only one enormously stupid moment, the short snowboarding bit during the opening chase, and that is entirely the soundtrack's fault. Other than that, the horseshit has been toned down.
- Unfortunately, this alone doesn't make the film a similarly lean spy thriller like FYEO; rather, it just feels like a toned-down standard Moore film. It doesn't help that the first act wastes way too much time on a horse-related mystery in France, effectively re-treading Moonraker's first act. The pace does pick up a bit in California, although I can't understand by Zorin isn't a wanted man by this point, considering he revealed his true villainous nature to Bond early on, after killing two of his assistants. Wouldn't that be enough grounds for issuing an arrest warrant on him and having his assets seized?
- But hye, Duran Duran's A View to a Kill is my all-time favorite Bond theme song, no contest.
- As for Zorin, I did rather enjoy his psycho-yuppie characterization, as it was a welcome change from all these aristocratic, snooty old men.
- I've also really grown to like general Gogol. He's patriotic but honorable, he's got a great sense of humor, and he gets to both troll Bond and be trolled by Bond. If there's ever been a Bond character who needed a short spin-off of his own, it's Gogol.
- Most of the action set-pieces involve climbing up things or dangling from things (Eiffel Tower, underwater tunnel, elevator shaft, mine shaft, Golde Gate bridge), which might explain why they feel somewhat repetative. The big stand-out stunts, like the fire truck jump and the bridge pylon battle, don't look that impressive either, considering what we've seen over the course of this series. Overall, the film is a little lacking send-off for Moore, but I guess we should be happy that he didn't end his stint with Octopussy.

[Azathoth]

Only God Forgives. This movie was the tits and I want to watch it again wearing headphones - even the background noise is fucking symphonic. Visually it's just one astounding tableau after another, plotwise it's a grotesque death spiral of incest and suicide. Gosling's protagonist is really difficult to break down beyond "hurr oedipus complex" and in general this movie is about as difficult as Valhalla Rising (OGF is a lot like Valhalla Rising actually, right down to the hero's

SPOILER: Show

psychedelic premonitions of his death/transcendence)

, so I can see why there's been backlash from those who picked up on Nicolas Winding Refn from Drive. The dedication to Jodorowsky is in some sense appropriate - just look at this fuckin' movie - but Jodorowsky was never this grim, either. And neither has Winding Refn been this grim, which is quite something given how grim he's been in pretty much every movie he's made. Real human beings and real heroes this movie does not possess. The "remember girls, keep your eyes closed" successfully builds up your expectations that they won't dare to show something as awful as the thing they're building towards three times in a row, and they show it every time.

Also I've seen quite a few people say already that Chang is supposed to be God, but I don't buy this at all since the only person who forgives anybody in this movie is...Julian, whose disturbing incest vibes with his mom give me the impression that Julian is a more in-depth take on the sort of Bizarro-Jesus archetype the General's Son represents in Valhalla Rising. Also, there was more karaoke in this film than I had been led to expect.

[Oz]

Guillermo Del Toro's Pacific Rim: Popping my 3D cherry with kaijus, giant robots and toy helicopters mixed in with speedy action cutting and rapidly changing focus wasn't a good idea. Other than that, the film was excellent. A rarely well written and executed Hollywood blockbuster. It may have been a tad overlong on the action side in the last half since I was beginning to be worn out during the climactic fight - especially since sometimes it was hard for me to keep up with what was going on because I was by no means used to 3D and my eyes hurt at that point.

I also find it disturbing that out of the three actors I could name from the cast, two were Japanese. Pretty much fell off my seat when Ron Perlman and Mana Ashida made their sudden appearances in the film.

[Catamari]

Elysium.
I was surprised. There was no phoned-in romantic bit, which was excellent. With sufficient suspension of disbelief, it was very entertaining.

[moonwolf2024]

Elysium.
I was surprised. There was no phoned-in romantic bit, which was excellent. With sufficient suspension of disbelief, it was very entertaining.

I'm actually really excited to see this. I love Matt Damon and I think this is as close to a love action Battle Angel as I'm gonna get.

[Nuclear Lunchbox]

I'm glad to hear that Elysium sounds good, since I'm seeing it next week.

[Catamari]

I'm actually really excited to see this. I love Matt Damon and I think this is as close to a love action Battle Angel as I'm gonna get.

Any movie involving computers (or electrical systems) in some sort of capacity outside of "just there" makes me cringe. If they have to "hack" anything or the suchlike, I sit there and twitch. It's painful. That said, Elysium was alright in this sense, there were a few scenes that made me want to throw something at the screen, but it wasn't as bad as it could have been.

Although, I find it a little strange that, in 2154, Elysium runs on an x86 processor, and they still use Intel syntax. I didn't get a good glimpse of the assembly long enough for me to figure out what it really did, but I thought that was actually quite funny.

[Trajan]

I've seen a bunch of Ozu films this summer as part of my long past due exploration of his work. In descending order of quality:

1) An Autumn Afternoon
2) Late Spring
3) Tokyo Twilight
4) Equinox Flower
5) The End of Summer
6) Early Spring

The only one I didn't really like was Early Spring; overall, I'm pleasantly surprised that Ozu has lived up to my expectations so far. OF course, I'm focusing primarily on his later work so I haven't explored his resume fully yet.

Before anyone gets all riled up over the fact that I haven't seen Tokyo Story yet, note that I'm waiting for a criterion re-release in the hopefully near future.

[Madonna]

Suspiria

Creepy, with a terrifying ending. Loved the way it was directed, the use of bright and beautiful colours in a horror film was very innovative. It's held up very well as a great film.

[Oz]

@Trajan: It's not a good idea to watch so much Ozu in such a short period of time. The more you watch Ozu, the more exhausted you become.

[soul.assassin]

The Complex.

Rating: 3/5. Yet there are some uppity types who think she's still not up to their standards of, um, acting quality just because she's a product of Yasusu's system. The real letdown is the material itself -- the flick doesn't bring something new on the table, as it's following the typical formula for Japanese horror.

[Gendo'sPapa]

Saw David Gordon Green's Prince Avalanche . What a relief! It's no classic but it's a charming, funny & lyrical mini-budgeted feature that gets by on the great performances of Paul Rudd & Emile Hirsch & solid emotive directing from Green. I really was afraid he was lost after the one-two-punch-travesty of "Your Highness" & "The Sitter".

[Tribblepoo]

I put away Iron Man 3 and Man of Steel this past weekend (second-run theaters ftw). I can't say I was overly impressed with either of them. I will start with the bad first.

All said, Man of Steel is about what I expected it to be; a retelling of the Superman story with the focus on him deciding whether or not to become the savior of Earth, with the predictable result (yes he does). The movie was decent, but failed on a couple of levels. Primarily, the writing sucked balls. While some aspects of it were good (the opening sequence, the sensory overload scene and the homages to the original), plot and character development were horrible. A particular offender was the tornado scene. Apparently the writers want us to believe that Pa Kent was a Gendo-level emotionally scarring prick.

The other area of failure was the flow of the movie. I can handle slow movies (even the fights felt slow), when the plot calls for it, but when it is broken up into near incomprehensibility by poorly transitioned flashbacks, it just becomes irritating. The stunning visuals helped make up for this and the acting, surprisingly, didn't suck. Overall, this was really a meh movie and as far as reboots go, I think Superman Returns did it better.

Iron Man 3 was better, but still had its flaws. I do like that it remained a stand-alone movie as far as the Iron Man franchise goes, but an important sub-plot relied heavily on knowledge of the Avengers. Not a major flaw, but it helps to have context. The plot was nice and well-written with no real flaws. I liked the visuals, very good as is to be expected for the franchise. I was particularly surprised to see Guy Pierce and Ben Kingsley in the movie though. Both performed well and it was obvious that Kingsley was having fun with his part. In all, the movie didn't suck at all, but nor was it particularly good or noteworthy.

But I may have been distracted. I kept expecting Pierce to pull out an Abba turd in every scene he was in.

[Nuclear Lunchbox]

Catch me if you can

Personally, I think the book was better, but this was a damn fine movie. Young DiCaprio did a near-perfect job of Frank Abagnale, and the rest of the cast was pretty superb. I don't think it matters whether one reads the book or watches the movie first, but I'd definitely recommend taking the time to watch this one.