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Originally Posted by YesNo
Sometimes I run across a title that's so silly that the film almost demands to be watched.
In this instance the reason for the title completely escaped me as it has nothing to do with the story which is filmed entirely in the village except for some indoor parts on set.
On those occasions when I visited the village, I don't recall seeing any robots or zombies but then I wasn't really looking for them.
*****Quote:
Originally Posted by Emil Miller
Sorry, but I'm having trouble getting around a new browser.
[QUOTE=Emil Miller;1301751] /QUOTE] The Spy in Black (1938).
Possibly issued as a propaganda film for the coming war, this WW1 story has been critically acclaimed for its accuracy in portraying an attempted espionage plot to sink a major part of the British fleet by submarines.
It's very well done and convincing in its no-nonsense approach to the story. 8/10
Given the state of Britain today the title might be considered a contradiction in terms but this American produced film concerns a German spy ring that has infiltrated top-level political circles during WW1.
The master spy is played by Boris Karloff as a sinister crippled ( why are they always crippled?) butler serving in the house of a senior politician and who is planning the bombing of the entire British cabinet by zeppelins in an attack on London.
Unbeknownst to Boris however, the female lead, posing as a German, is in fact a British counter agent who eventually foils the assassination attempt.
This film is a real curiosity with the British police running around firing guns that would make your average Englishman wet his knickers at the thought that police would be so ungentlemanly as to use those nasty firearms in the fight against any criminals, let alone enemy agents.
The American accents are thankfully kept at a low pitch which gives the film an air of authenticity but the creepy Boris Karloff figure is over-the-top and tends to undermine the plausibility of the story.
6/10
Nightcrawler 3/5. Great acting, but only a serviceable borderline satirical plot.
Birdman 4/5. A brilliant mess.
The DUFF: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_duff/
A duff is a Designated Ugly Fat Friend whose use value is to make her friends look good in comparison to her (or him). This is a story about a teenage duff who finally realizes what she is. There's a mean girl to get even with. There are the duff's two friends who tolerate her because she is worse than they are. There are two guys. One is her attractive neighbor who is the mean girl's boyfriend when those two are not fighting. The other is the guy the duff is infatuated with.
Without giving away too much of the plot, the duff realizes she is a duff and deals with it and gets the guy. Which of the two guys she gets, I'll leave to your imagination. Although it shouldn't be too hard to guess.
It was a charming teenage rom-com with some goofy adults who were as entertaining as the teenagers.
Score: 9/10
Hot Tub Time Machine 2: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/hot_tub_time_machine_2/
As you'll note from the low ratings from Rotten Tomatoes, if you want to enjoy this movie you will have to be in a special mood. If you find that happy place, this might be worth your time, but there would also be better things to do.
The idea behind the movie is that if you pour in the right chemical concoction, invented in the future, into the hot tub and drink enough alcohol, you can go backwards or forwards through time. You may even get into another parallel universe. This allows you to save or destroy things by monkeying with your past or future.
There are, however, some humorous and touching moments which justify the higher Rotten Tomatoes score than the following movie received:
Paul Blart Mall Cop 2: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/paul...art%20mall%20c
The main thing I learned from this movie is that "stupid" and "funny" are not synonymous although they often go together.
In this story we see Paul Blart acting as the overprotective parent and accidentally saving the day in Las Vegas.
I was looking for something funny in this movie and almost stopped watching it. I can't believe I saw the whole thing. As far as comedy entertainment goes, it is right up there with The Merchant of Venice.
The Wedding Ringer: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_wedding_ringer/
I must have been in that happy place last night because I thought this movie was way better than Rotten Tomatoes scored it.
This is the story about a rich groom who does not have a best man and he is due to marry a woman in a fancy (aka expensive) wedding in a couple of weeks. (Now you might think this is unusual, but I recall picking out the best man from the guests who showed up at our wedding, but it wasn't fancy: Total cost was about $300 which was a lot for graduate students in those days.)
Anyway, the bride clearly doesn't love the groom and the same goes for the groom's appreciation of the bride, but they think having the perfect wedding will remedy that problem. Unfortunately, the groom doesn't have a best man to tell him he is making a mistake and the bride's girlfriends are too dumb to see there might be a problem here. So the groom hires a best man and they all try to fake it.
Everybody gets what they deserve which is why this is a comedy and there were plenty of laughs (regardless of what Rotten Tomatoes' critics think) to justify watching it.
Score: 8/10
Love, Rosie: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/love_rosie/
One misunderstanding leads to another and keeps a couple apart for years. The experts at Rotten Tomatoes apparently didn't have a good time.
Here's my score: 10/10
Edit: To add a bit more to this. The initial misunderstanding involves each of the couple thinking the other doesn't want to be with them and so they push the other one away out of self-sacrificing generosity and then come the comical coincidences that give them over and over again opportunities to get back together only to keep them apart. It seems they can't do anything right and so they give up trying. But don't worry. This is a fairy-tale rom-com. Whatever fairy godmothers were keeping them apart get off their butts and the ending is happily ever after.
Burying the Ex: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/burying_the_ex_2015/
Here's another rom-com, zombie flick that deserves a better rating than Rotten Tomatoes gave it.
Max had a wonderful girlfriend, Evelyn, who wouldn't let him eat meat and didn't like his brother bringing girls to their apartment for sleepovers, but when she folded his collector-quality horror posters that was the last straw. She had to go. It turned out she died accidentally before he could give her the bad news. Unfortunately, he also promised to be with her forever in front of a Satan bobblehead who was going to make sure he kept that promise. After a short period of depression, he got over her and found another girl. About this time Evelyn figured a way to dig herself out of the grave to claim Max forever as he promised. His brother tried to save him but Evelyn, who was by now some sort of zombie, was almost too much for him to deal with but not quite. In the end they did get her buried again so Max and his new girlfriend could live happily ever after.
Going over the plot, I can sort of see why the rating was so low, but it was entertaining especially in how the plot went from "burying the ex" to "berrying the ex", but that's too difficult to explain.
Anyway, I had a good time.
Score 10/10
Barry Lyndon - Stanley Kubrick
Loved it the whole way through. It made me want to read a big George Elliot novel (or I suppose a Thackeray novel but since I've never read him it wasn't considered). Beautifully shot, and I loved the costumes and clothing. I hated Barry and wanted him to die (and his son too as punishment), but I was happy when he fired into the ground during the final duel so he redeemed himself a little in my mind.
9/10
Eyes Wide Shut - Stanley Kubrick
Interesting movie. I read afterwards about all the detail put into Cruz and Kidman's roles and all of the 'real psychological tension' they were facing during the shooting which surprised me because I felt they both gave horrendous performances. The scenes where it was just the two of them on screen were actually just bad... (especially the scenes where one or both of them had to act either drunk or high)
I'll still give it an 8/10 though.
Barry Lyndon is objectively the best Kubrick film. I know this because it is my favorite and everything I like is good.
Also, 2001 sucks.
2001 is good. Dr. Strangelove sucks.
Your move.
What's wrong with Dr. Strangelove?Quote:
Originally Posted by Clopin
I actually don't know, I just remember watching it a few years ago and not being too impressed. My opinion might be different now.
I think I remember Dr. Strangelove. Is that the one where the guy is riding the nuclear missile like a horse. For some reason I think he forgot to stay in the plane.
Dr. Stranglove has a 99% critic approval rating and a 94% audience scoreon Rotten Tomatoes. What about didn't impress you? Maybe you should watch it again as a reevaluation.Quote:
Originally Posted by Clopin
Dr. Strangelove is an excellent satire of conservative foriegn policies and the jingoism/xenophobia prevelent in the American populace. It made fun of rampant militarism and the race to build ever more destructive weapons. The movie also satirizes the tying of masculinity to who has the biggest gun; in the case of this movie, that is a literal metaphor. The guy riding the missile like horse has an extremely large penis.Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
I don't really think it sucks I was just bantering with Lykren :(
Come to think of it it could have been a large penis although he did wave that hat like he was riding some animal in a rodeo. I saw the movie too long ago to have an opinion on it.Quote:
Originally Posted by HCabret
This one's a real weirdo and concerns two scientists in love with the same woman. After they invent a method for replicating inanimate objects, the woman marries one of them: much to the disappointment of the other who, after successfully experimenting with animals, gets the brilliant idea of replicating the woman so that he can marry the replica.
Needless to say, things do not go according to plan and the story ends sadly.
Directed by Terence Fisher, whose downward spiral later included The Earth Dies Screaming, one wonders why he so obviously hit the skids after the excellent So Long at the Fair.
4/10
This has James Cagney doing his usual tough guy act as a reporter for an American newspaper based in Tokyo before Japan and the USA were at war. The story revolves around a secret, albeit unlikely, Japanese plan for world domination that falls into the hands of Cagney through an agent working against the Japanese.
Cagney prints the story in his newspaper and starts a series of events that leads to him smuggling the plan to the outside world after the usual roughhouse scenes that were a hallmark of Cagney's films.
Although the film is obviously a propaganda piece, the settings are convincing with real Japanese actors speaking in their own language to add authenticity to the story.
7/10
A Walk In The Woods
I had high hopes for this movie because I loved the book and I admire the actors.
However the movie is only loosely based on the book. I think if you take Bill Bryson's book and then superimpose Robert Redford's age and sensibilities on it, you get this movie.
I still enjoyed it.
I rate it, 2 worn-out hiking boots and a half-finished trail.
the lastest one I watch is "A beautiful Mind". Well, it's awesome we know it.
Love how he overcame his paranoid schizophrenia and pursued his passion.
of course an 9 for the wonderful movie!
Dumb and Dumber To was the last film I watched.
Not bad, although not as good as the first one. Took a bit of time to warm to it. Perhaps due to a twenty year gap between films.
I loved the Dumb and Dumber films.
Did you see the prequel one they did? If so, is it any good?
Hey, Emil. They continued to make movies after 1960s as well! :D
Papaya and I watched "Dreamgirls" last Saturday and it has been a major disappointment. The storyline was so-so, songs were nothing to write home about... Great acting but to no particular end.
I am quite surprised that it's got so many award and such critical acclaim.
I only saw two of them, the original Dumb and Dumber (1994) and the more recent Dumb and Dumber To (2014). I didn't know there was a prequel. Whether they are "good" or not would depend on who you are talking to. My wife, for example, refused to watch them after seeing the trailers. I could see them again.Quote:
Originally Posted by Number 34
I saw "Meru" and "Everest" recently. Both are mountaineering films: Meru is a documentary about the ascent of a legendary face on the titular peak; Everest is a dramatization of "Into Thin Air", Jon Krakauer's best-selling book about a tragic Everest expedition.
Both movies are duplicitous. Meru features climbing star Konrad Anker, and co-stars all the equipment of his sponsor, North Face. After one failed expedition to the unclimbed face on Meru, the team returns and succeeds. But the movie fails to mention that the face had been bagged (on a slightly different route) by a Russian expedition a couple of weeks earlier. The movie recounts some of Anker's climbing history: his two most famous partners were Mugs Stump and Alex Lowe. Mugs was a famous "dirt-bag" climber. He was one of America's greatest climbers, but was never sponsored, and never had a guide's license (although he sometimes picked up cash guiding illegally). Alex Lowe was one of America's early professional climbers -- heavily sponsored and sent off on expeditions funded by clothing and equipment lines. Both Lowe and Stump died in the mountains -- Stump in a crevasse fall on Denali and Lowe in an avalanche in the Tibetan Himalaya. Anker, it seems, has chosen Lowe's route over Stump's (personally, Stump is one of my climbing idols).
A documentary like this succeeds on the basis of scenery and the personalities of the climbers. The scenery was good; the climbing scenes and the personalities dull.
Everest was an Imax, 3D production. It felt tricked up, to me. In some over-dramatic scenes on the Khumbu ice fall, crevasses spanned by bridges made from ladders appeared to be bottomless, which, I think, is not a feature of the ice fall. Worse, the story-telling was amateurish. What exactly happened to the group that hunkered on the South Col during the storm, unable to find the tents? If you want to know, read the book. The movie fails to tell the story.
The dramatic center of the story is Rob Hall's phone conversation with Keira Knightley (who plays his pregnant wife, back in New Zealand). Hall is stuck near the top of Everest, dying, unable to come down. It's dramatic, but Keira Knightly? Come on.
A couple of minor quibbles: First, the movie talks about how Everest had been climbed only by "professionals" prior to the guided trips, which began a few years before the events of the movie. Huh? The English expeditions -- all the early Everest expeditions and the first ascent in 1952 -- involved no professional climbers, except the Sherpas. The Brits were experts, but amateurs to a man. European expeditions did include Alpine guides, who were professional, but English expeditions did not. Second, the movie has some of the clients talking about climbing Mt. McKinley. Barack Obama has now changed the highest North American peak's name to "Denali", but no climbers would have called it "McKinley" in the 1990s, when the film takes place. The name "Denali" was already firmly established.
I enjoyed both movies, but I would not recommend them to anyone less interested in climbing than I am.
Yes but by then they were just going through the motions.Quote:
Originally Posted by Scheherazade
The prequel was called Dumb and Dumberer. Jim Carrey, Jeff Daniels and the Farrelly brothers weren't involved with it.Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
I'll look for it! Thanks, Number_34!
I just finished watching "Matinee". Rotten Tomatoes thought it was pretty good and so did I: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1041870-matinee/
After seeing "Burying the Ex" and hearing from Rotten Tomatoes that Joe Dante directed better movies, I had to look for some. "Matinee" is one of his comedies.
The story is situated in Key West throughout the Cuban Missile Crisis. People were reasonably afraid that nuclear war was about to start. Undeterred by the fear of disaster a nearly ruined movie maker was going to try to scare the audience at the local theater with radioactive man-ant (mant) mutants hoping the real crisis would drive people to the theater to watch his fabricated one and save his career.
There are two and a half high school couples to provide the love interest. The "half" is a jealous ex boyfriend who was released early from juvenile detention because someone liked his poetry. He wasn't pleased to find that his ex-girlfriend moved on. The other couple is a mix between the son of a career military man and the daughter of parents who would likely be anti-military.
Yeah, it's complicated, but entertaining.
Score: 10/10
Phoenix, German film. Praised by critics. A little slow in the beginning. Some say it's like Hitch's Vertigo, well, not exactly. Must see again to fully appreciate. Excellent acting. Don't think there is a moment of humor. Sad about her woman friend, seemed unbelievable a little -- why did she do what she did? No reason. Film for Film Studies class, that good.
Watched Wit a tv movie based on a play with the same name. Emma Thompson stars and is brilliant as usual. It's a very gripping movie about cancer and the treatment for it. My professor in my literature and medicine class told me that it is shown to any students studying to be a doctor to show them the importance of empathy and bedside manners.
"The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" (1962) http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/man_...berty_valance/
This was number 45 on the BBC list of the 100 best American films. It was directed by John Ford. http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/201...american-films
There are at least two other John Ford movies on the list ("The Searchers" and "Stagecoach") which makes me suspect the list as much as seeing Citizen Kane being number one. Suspect it of what? Of being artsy-fartsy? Pseudo-cultural? Well, the library display is hard to miss and I figured I could use some culture. I suspect it of generating enough desire in me to watch something I probably would not waste my time on were it made more recently.
The movie is a rom-com situated in the wild, wild west where ranchers want an open range and immigrant settlers want their fences.
The main theme is who will Hallie, a young, illiterate, but cute woman pick for her husband? She could pick Ransom Stoddard, a lawyer who comes to town to bring law and order but who can't shoot a gun, or she could pick Tom Doniphon, a rude, but decent guy who can shoot a gun and more importantly can shoot better than Liberty Valance. For some reason Doniphon has not shot Liberty Valance yet although Valance has done enough to have justified a shooting. I suppose Hallie could consider Valance as a possible beau, but Valance is more useful as the bad guy who makes the differences between Doniphon and Stoddard stand out. Eventually Valance goes over the top one too many times and Stoddard challenges him to a duel and, just as the title promises, someone shoots Liberty Valance out of love for Hallie.
I admit I enjoyed the movie although it would not make my top 100 list. One hundred is a very small number. I think it was more interesting than Citizen Kane.
Score: 8/10
Edit: The movie was based on a short story by Dorothy M. Johnson which I just finished. The story was more realistic than the movie which exaggerated the characters making Stoddard too genteel and Doniphon stand out too much in the town. There was no political theme in the story between ranchers and settlers. The marshal was competent and generally ignored. He was not the buffoon the movie turned him into. But the movie got the romance underlying the story correct.
Score for the story: 10/10
The last movie I saw at the cinema was Inside Out. Some of the small children were a bit upset, which did not surprise me. It was very good, but my favourite Pixar film of those I have seen is Wall-E.
I saw "Phoenix", too. It was overrated, in accordance with the principle that all holocaust films must be given 4 stars by critics, lest the critics be drummed out of the club.Quote:
Originally Posted by byquist
Would have to put "Liberty Valance" in top 100 -- super-evil vs. innocence and courage, courage to the point of foolhardiness. But, he risked his life. Plus the Duke controlling events so smoothly. Great story. Stewart showing his specialness.
John Ford's "Liberty Valance" movie was good enough to lead me to reading Dorothy Johnson's short story. There was also a hit song by Burt Bacharach and Hal David that Gene Pitney sang based on the movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDN4L7cAQf0
My problem with the movie is that after reading the story, the movie seemed shallow and sentimental. I remember having a similar experience watching "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" after reading the novel by Anita Loos: The novel was great; The movie was mediocre in comparison.
What made the movie disappointing was precisely the super-evil vs innocence theme. John Wayne was a poor choice for Bert Barricune (Tom Doniphon in the movie). Bert was a drunkard and a cattle thief, not the John Wayne anti-bully who could stand up to Liberty Valance when no one else could. Bert could shoot, but so could others in the town including the marshal. Valance had a reward on his head and did not come into town lightly. Ranse Foster (Ransom Stoddard in the movie) was not a nice James Stewart sort of guy who came to the wild west with a law book in his hands. He was educated enough to be able to read Plato in Greek. However, he was also a lazy drifter who scorned those who tried to help him. He spent his time wasting his life preparing to kill Valance because Valance humiliated him earlier.
What made the story memorable was Bert's love for Hallie to the point that he risked a murder sentence by killing Valance so that his rival could marry her and then pushed Ranse to get some basic ambition so Hallie would be happy. Johnson pulled this story off with surprising economy. It was a perfect example of "show, don't tell" writing.
Behind boisterous student high-jinks in an English university town lies a world of existential angst with a dramatis personae of fairly stock characters.
There is the frigid professor whose frustrated wife seeks solace with the working-class student with a chip on his shoulder.The token black African student overplaying his hand as he tries to be more like the English than they actually are. The shy student whose diffidence makes it hard for him to fit in and is killed in an attempt to do so.
Despite the paucity of plot, the acting is good: especially Paul Rogers as the professor who discovers the truth about his wife which leads to her student lover being sent down.
7/10