list/discuss/rate - your recently watched movies

I watched Trance and Stand Up Guys over the weekend. The former is a triumph of Style over Substance but entertaining enough for a Friday night. Stand Up Guys was a very pleasant surprise. I laughed and cried my way through that film. I am a fan of Al Pacino anyway but it was way better than I expected. Recommended.

Ronin 47

Thoroughly vapid and tedious tale of a white guy adopted by a Ronin family in feudal Japan and raised as their own only to be betrayed... I think.   I stopped caring after the first half-hour. 

Craziest movie I've watched lately was D.E.B.S. I happened across it on one of the encore channels last weekend. I mean a movie about teenage lesbian crime fighters how can you turn the channel?

Poltergeist

Unfortunately this early '80s classic holds up about as well as spaghetti that's been sitting in water for two days, almost causing one to wonder why this kid-flick is so legendary with adults in the first place.   Maybe in 1982 it was new, scary, good-looking, instead of the geriatric, tame and grainy film we now have.   Talk about not being able to go back.

Atavachron wrote: The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug More than acceptable chapter with plenty of action, monsters and orcs but little sentimental nonsense-- and one awesome dragon.  The most obvious problem with TH:TDoS is the budget and its unconvincing animates where real actors or carefully rendered CGI might have been (at least in the Rings films), limited location footage, and not quite as charismatic cast.   But the early risings of Sauron link things up nicely and the pace of the movie only occasionally drags.

Pretty much with you on that - found it hugely enjoyable & can't be bothered with those who bemoan switching of characters & not sticking strictly to the original text. What Jackson's doing here is the main story of The Hobbit + extra material to link as seamlessly as possible to LoTR.

Nice one Mr Jackson & yes, I did see it was you eating the carrot in one of the opening scenes.

Pacific Rim.....us versus creatures from another dimension who all looked a lot like Godzilla.

I watched "True Grit" with Jeff Bridges and actually enjoyed the flow of it. The character actors were outstanding and Jeff Bridges himself was hilarious. He took on a very impressive role and there are scenes that made me bust out laughing because his character was so realistic.  The lines of the script held my interest and they were very creative. It's a very laidback western film with dark humour and creative scenes. You must be in the right mood for this film.  

dr wu23 wrote: Pacific Rim.....us versus creatures from another dimension who all looked a lot like Godzilla. Good action, mediocre characters and plot.

Found it somewhat unintentionally funny mostly because the actress portraying Mako Mori looks exactly like the student counselor at the college I attend. (who's probably the last person I can imagine willingly inflicting physical harm on anything)

Seen quite a few movies recently, by the way, but I don't have time to write reviews for them yet. Planning to watch a couple more in the weekend.

Swedish silent horror film putting an interesting spin on the mythology surrounding the Grim Reaper. Maybe it's because the version I saw had a modern electronic-industrial score by Loke Rahbek (an extremely prolific Danish punk musician) but it feels surprisingly modern for a silent film in the way it's told, can definitely see how it inspired The Seventh Seal.


Speaking of Alejandrito I've seen his newest film and first in several decades. It's very autobiographical but with a lot of surrealistic flourishes emphasizing the unreliable narrator as it's AJ himself reflecting upon his childhood decades later, kind of reminds me of a cross between Isabel Allende's House of the Spirits and Terrence Malick's Tree of Life though the sense of humour is very characteristically Jodorowsky's own.



Kind of amusing seeing a samurai film ape spaghetti westerns so blatantly in its visual style, considering how much Sergio Leone was inspired by Kurosawa. I'm a huge fan of the comic book this is based on, and while the English dubbing job oversimplifies the plot greatly it still preserves the combination of incredibly skilled swordplay and weird dreamy meditative feel I like so much about this stuff.


Jim Jarmusch takes on the vampire mythos, the result being his best film since the 1990s and one of the most interesting vampire movies to come along in a very long while. He gets a lot of mileage out of the entire "vampires as metaphor for disillusioned aesthete junkies" motif by approaching every aspect of the narrative from a new interesting angle, and his cultural inside jokes being way better integrated than they used to. (surprised that Tilda Swinton has not been cast as one of the undead until now)


Edited by Toaster Mantis - May 05 2014 at 03:03

Bloodsport

A movie that has shaped-up to be one of the best martial arts films ever with tight direction from Newt Arnold, dynamic but realistic choreography by real life protagonist Frank Dux, a thoughtful script, Jean-Claude Van Damme at his athletic peak and Bolo Yeung in his best role, Bloodsport disappoints few.   Sure the characters are dopey, there is no one all-important fight competition is Asia, and Frank Dux's "life story" may be just that, but combined with Paul Hertzog's scintillating score it deserves its high place in martial arts cinema.