list/discuss/rate - your recently watched movies

what in the f**k is wrong with this forum?  half the time I type stuff and than when I go to post it, there is an error or my stuff is lost!!!!



anyway,

Slipstream- a film written and directed by Anthony Hopkins (yes the actor who usually plays nice and creepy characters)  perhaps all of his years of playing psychopaths has gone to his head, as this film is a schizophrenic's David Lynch-wannabe nightmare.  It is fairly incomprehensible plot-wise, and falls into the easy trap of being more about art for the sake of art.  Do not get me wrong, I love many offbeat and bizarre films, yet I feel that folks like Cronenberg and Lynch do a great job of making you squirm with the surreal in the seeming mundane or the organic and un-natural.  The devices that made this movie tiresome were the constant, milisecond flashes of randomness, cuts to black and white that seemed totally random, time jumps from past to present and alternate reality likeness of scenes with little details changed.  Also the editing was very much like what you might get if you put a turntable-ist audiophile onto the film editing machinery and let him mistake the equipment for some vinyl to scratch......it is very jumpy, repeats numerous times what would otherwise seem to be useless minutia and randomness repeated for no reason.  Art film students may no doubt eat this up.  I can appreciate the artistic element, but even Lynch usually knows when to pull together a plot or some direction, no matter how many distractions.....meh.  I am at a loss.  This film will never be the masterpiece that Memento (for instance) is.  it gets bonus points for a great score and some truly disturbing material and shots included in all of the random milisecond flashes of randomness.....

I am not even sure how to rate this.....

for art's sake:  6/10
for film and plot's sake:  5/10  (there is some sort of story, but it is really convoluted)
overall:  3/10

I just saw Fight Club. With pretty low expectations, I was really surprised. Gripping plot and psychology, powerful  and convincing performances, even from Brad Pitt. Interesting choices for the visuals. Very neat development. Wow. Blown away. It's a shame I missed the opening 20 minutes or so due to Hattie and the North and not paying attention to the time.

I'd give it a 9/10, based on what I've seen.

The Dead Girl - one of those movies that follow 5 different people who never actually meet in the movie but all have some sort of relation to the main event-"The Dead Girl", including the girl herself and the last day of her life, nothing new was okay for a Friday night viewing - 5.5/10

964 Pinocchio - this was stupid, Im getting tired of weird movies that are weird for the sake of being weird! although there was nothing weird about this, thin plot, gross out moments, annoying parts that go on way too f**king long, I guess a comparison can be made to Tetsuo The Iron Man which I thought was much more of a visually stimulating film, 964 Pinocchio...not even close, hmm maybe this is cool when you're 18 and wanting to branch out into strange cinema outside of David Lynch, (by the way I love Lynch) but f**k this movie! -  1/10

City of Rott - Animated zombie film, every part of this film done by one guy, I applaud the effort, but way too adolescent for me, its pretty much geared towards a video game crowd, nonstop gore - human kill zombie: guts, maggots, entrails, splatter, <reverse> zombie kill human: guts, maggots, entrails, splatter...and so goes the entire movie... which we didnt actually watch all the way through, about 45 minutes in we just fast forwarded through the rest - 2/10

lame weekend for movies, hopefully next weekends batch is better! 

Edited by mithrandir - June 22 2008 at 03:34

Jim Garten wrote: TGM: Orb wrote: I just saw Fight Club. With pretty low expectations, I was really surprised. Gripping plot and psychology, powerful  and convincing performances, even from Brad Pitt. Interesting choices for the visuals. Very neat development. Wow. Blown away. When that came out in the UK, the critics were appalled, one of whom (not usually given to outrage) stated it was one of the most aboninable films ever produced: "it is an inadmissible assault on personal decency. And on society itself. At its Venice Film Festival world premiere in September, it caused well-justified outrage as a movie phenomenon well in line with the current tentative but threatening revival of Nazism" I avoided the movie for ages, but eventually watched it, loved it & purchased it - I personally didn't see the parallels seen by various critics - what I did see was a well written, scripted, acted & filmed piece of cinema of which Norton, Pitt & Carter should be proud, as opposed to: "In any well-adjusted society, its stars would feel a backlash of public indignation well beyond the box-office" No accounting for taste, eh?

I wonder how the reaction to the next film adapted from a Palahniuk novel will be. Choke will be coming out sometime soon. I don't know how they're going to pull it off. The book had anal beads featured quite frequently.   Trailer for Choke.

While all of you are watching all of these pseudo-movies, I have found a piece of lost cinema that easily rivals anything created since... Genesis, if you happen to believe in the Old Story.... Actually, only Plan 9 from Outer Space can stand next to this movie in terms of quality, dialogues, acting, plot, budget, special effects, continuity, etc, etc, etc. When you watch such a movie, you get so happy. Really, I do. On one hand, you realize there are far more idiotic people than you, and two, well, the movie is just plain magic, magic, utter magic. This masterpiece is Robot Monster, a sci-fi opus magnum that is just... incredible. Where if not there could you find this dialog that easily rivals Hamlet's soliloquy?

stonebeard wrote: The Host Excellently shot and fresh monster movie, but the characters were not developed well. The main protagonist is annoying in trying to convey an immature father, and his father is crazy in a bad acting way. No real gore, but some interesting monster attacks. An interesting ending recalls chemical warfare, but is perplexing and not very feel-good, but certainly not as soul-killing as The Mist. Pretty good, but not amazing. 6.5/10

I actually thought the characterization was much better than in most monster movies, but perhaps that's just a result of me having been born long after the post-Alien slasherification of the monster movie.

stonebeard wrote: ^ well, yeah. characterization sucks in monster movies. But the older sister, brother, and father (especially sister) have main roles, but don't do much or even have much of a story.

Hmmm. What you say reminds me that someone on the DreadCentral.com forums said that the problem with horror movies today is: Even the good ones are good horror first and good movies second.

I think I'm becoming rather disillusioned with the horror genre. Being a horror fan myself I feel like a huge hypocrite saying this, but it sometimes looks like a big part of the problem is that subset of horror fandom who don't care about things like plot and even suspense - but only how violent a movie is.

It's not that I can't enjoy a mindless splatterfest like Bad Taste or Friday the 13th or even 30 Days of Night, though the entire torture horror fad (or "torror", as you could call it ) that broke into the mainstream with Saw doesn't interest me so it's IMO a good thing that this sub-genre is fading back into the underground. It's when these splatter movies constitute 99% of horror movies aimed at adults, I feel like going "Houston, we have a problem!".

some of the scariest movies in my book are rated PG, Poltergeist and The Haunting(original), just goes to prove that true Horror doesn't have to be graphic, or set out to shock or disgust an audience, good Horror nowadays is a bit of a lost art, I'd like to see some aspiring film makes take a toned down approach to Horror, at the same time I guess that doesn't drive an audience to the theater either, hmph....

Edited by mithrandir - June 23 2008 at 20:46

^False... Everybody needs to see four Chaplin movies before death strikes:

Edited by The T - June 24 2008 at 02:38

stonebeard wrote: Well, I for one think the original Saw was a horror classic. It had very in-depth characterization (as all of the Saw movies do, though their plots keep getting dumber), not all that much gore, and was pretty genuine.

I completely agree & even though you found the sequels disappointing, in terms of plot (which OK, I can agree with to an extent), I've not yet seen any of the Saw movies which I personally found sub-standard (I think the worst plot was maybe the second movie, but that was overshadowed by the interplay between Saw & the detective, who (face it) only had to do as he was told & sit there talking to be reunited with his son...

As a horror franchise goes, I think Saw rates extremely highly (especially when you see what they did with Hellraiser... )