What is the last movie you saw? and rate it.

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Neely, I loved that movie when it was first released. I actually believe I saw that one in the theater. It was wonderful. The acting superb. Do you recall who directed it? I can't myself...failing old age memory.

I like Martin Scorsese. I was just going to list two films I saw recently; he commentated on the DVD for both of them. He's a big fan of The Archers.

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Yes Richard Attenborough. It was his obsession taking him 20 odd years to make. It almost took him to breaking point and bankruptcy, and although he won eight Oscars for it and gained worldwide recognition, he never made a penny out of the film himself.

Kundun was poor.

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Originally Posted by Neely

Yes Richard Attenborough. It was his obsession taking him 20 odd years to make. It almost took him to breaking point and bankruptcy, and although he won eight Oscars for it and gained worldwide recognition, he never made a penny out of the film himself.

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That's interesting. I like background stories - 20 odd years is a long time to remain dedicated to one project - he had to be obsessed!

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Kundun

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was poor.

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Was just reading about this film on Wikipedia. You might like to check out what they said. Oddly enough, it was nominated for four Academy Awards: for Art Direction (Dante Ferretti, art direction and Francesca Lo Schiavo, set decoration), Cinematography (Roger Deakins), Costume Design, and Original Score (Philip Glass). I think I would still be interested to see it considering that..they said the cinematography was beautiful and the score great. I don't know if it won any. The plot sounds a bit familiar but I might be thinking of another film similar to this one.

Moving right along....

Tonight I watched:

Bringing Up Baby ~ Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant

It's a screwball comedy, a little slapstick at times; but very witty and funny, too. The script and key lines were great. I laughed out loud quite a bit. I really, really enjoyed this old film. I can't get over that I have never seen this one before. Grant and Hepburn had perfect chemistry. I was surprised how well Cary Grant pulled off the comedy; but then again, he really just played his role 'straight' and it was wonderful. I found him very attractive in this film. He played a absent-minded professor and his geeky glasses almost made him seem more appealing. I don't know how he prevented himself from not cracking up, in many of the scenes; he really make one laugh and never he cracked a smile. Katherine Hepburn was adorable in this film; with much more girlish charm in her zany character of the scatter-brained Susan, than she usually exhibits. The dog and the leopard were really entertaining, too, as were the crazy cast of character actors. If you haven't seen this film, it's a 'must-see'. It's a good time and I am sure I will watch it many times over and still enjoy it emensely. The new release of the DVD was beautifully restored - now I know why they called it the silver screen. You can't beat the luminisence of the b/w film during this period. Definitely a 10/10 in the comedy genre. Loved it!!!

Avatar - We walked out of the theater. Me, Emily and Zach. Ten degrees below zero. We got into the car. Five minutes later Zach and I discovered that we really had to pee, really bad. I had drank two large sodas in the theater, and so did Zach. Soon enough we were bouncing up and down like little kids. Zachs house was only a couple of minutes away, but it seemed like forever. We even considered pulling over and peeing on the side of the road. Yes, we had to go that bad. But then a car drove past and we got back in, afraid of a police car driving by.

Soon enough after enough unbearable anticipation and suffering we got to his house and we ran out.

This pretty much parralells my experience at Avatar. All of a sudden shocking, tedious and you can't wait to get out.

Let me tell you my anticipation. This seems pretty much to be one of the best reviewed film out now. Ebert put it on his best of the year list. Many people on here loved it. People were comparing it to Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings. One detractor on this website, NickAdams, who had not seen the movie, but stated that he didn't care about the innovations in special effects, he cared more about innovations in narrative and character. I knew how he felt, being more thrilled by films like Werckmeister Harmonies than say 2012. But after all I heard, I thought of him being a bit close-minded, for if one treats Star Wars as a profound art film, then it will come out as a superficial mess with a fortune-cookie philosohy. But if you treat it for what it is, and that is a purely entertaining Saturday night-matinee, then you get one of the greatest films of all time.

Avatar is not one of them. It is no Star Wars nor is it no Lord of the Rings. People seem to have a habit of overreating to James Cameron's films, and whilst watching it I thought what a mediocre director Cameron was in comparison to Peter Jackson. Neither really make profound films nor a either anywhere close to the likes of Stanley Kubrick, but Jackson applies special effects in such a masterful way, that I was thinking about The Lord of the Rings the whole time I was watching this movie.

Take a simple example. In The Lord of the Rings Jackson uses the beating of the Ring-Wraiths wings as a hallucinatory and atmospheric dread. The theater becomes silent as the stereo blurts out the minimalistic pounding draining out eveything. When you think about it it's quite poetic. Now despite my youthful passion for the films when they first came out over seven years ago, I now consider The Lord of the Rings to be despite its landmark influence on special effects, I no longer see it as a great film. But Avatar is not even a good film and is infinitley more tedious than even a second of the nine hours of the three LOTR films.

What's even more insulting is that the special effects at times, or rather most of the time, are so obviously. .. . .special effects. CGI today is used so indulgently that it all seems all too cartoonish. LOTR, before the CGI explosion, used it to an extent in which is was supposed to convince you that it was reality. For every second I saw Gollum, I was utterly convinced that he was real and that Mordor was a real place. The texture of monsters like Shelob seemed so realistic that I was truly freaked out. Here, there are some rather beautiful images, but everything looks like a special effect and are utterly unconvincing. The whole time I was thinking "oh look how well done these special effects are" and not "wow I hope the blue aliens survive". See. I cared so little about this films world and characters that I even forgot what those creatures are called. This has got to be one of the most passive movie going experiences I have ever had. So much was happening on-screen, but I was completely shut-off, it was as if a great distance existed between me and the screen.

That said, somewhere under here lies the film so many critics were talking about. The avatar thing is fascinating and the way it is gone about is enthralling. The romance between one of the creatures and the main character is charming and rather beautiful, and Zoe Salanda's performance as the films herorine (all animated mind you) is quite convincing and rather good. But all of this, all of the wonders done with the special effects and story (despite the weak dialouge and screenplay) are put to no good use with James Cameron's arrogant, indulgent and awful direction which has no skill or respect for aesthetic effect or even special effects themselves. He just throws this well-done CGI at you and puts no life or feeling into it. There was not one second of the film in which I felt like I had entered the films world. Not one. My mind was in the theater the whole time.

Now of course James Cameron's going to get nominated for Best Director and his film may even get a Best Picture nomination, as well as nine others, just like with Titanic, because Hollywood is always immedietly impressed with a special effects film that is halfway better than something like Transformers. Sitting through Avatar is nowhere near the pain and torture of sitting through Transformers, but at least everyone else in the theater thinks so. Avatar is bound to be named by the general public as one of the greatest films of all time just as much as they did with Titanic and LOTR. Though that may be, fifty years from now, Citizen Kane will still stand tall. 4/10

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Originally Posted by DanielBenoit

Gummo - Some may say that director Harmony Korine is unfair and condecending towards his characters, presenting them as dumb, racist white trash, and while the extremity of this film may create a convincing argument for that (for its content is not gracious or subtle) it is too shallow an interpretation in this otherwise haunting and hypnotically strange and disturbing film.

Yes before viewing this I had heard all about the films contnet; the cat-drowning scene, the depictions of racism, the extremely odd logic of the film, which consists of a series of surreal vignettes concerning a small Ohio town which had been hit by a tornado.

At the begining we are presented with many explicitly disturbing things, not least one of them being the drowning of a cat by two teenagers, then them going to the grocery store to sell it. One of the teens narrates and talks about his friend "some say he's evil". At this point we certainly agree, knowing very well that most serial killers began with killing cats. But they don't kill for enjoyment, or at least partly. Their hunt is in a sense a strange and offbeat means of survival, it's Korine's modern twist on the hunter-gatherer culture. What the grocery store does with the cats I don't know and probably don't want to know, but that doesn't matter. The point is that they are killing cats, but why is it so much more disturbing than if they were killing bears or wolves.

There are many deep and simple snapshots just like this throughout this exploration through this hic town in mid-western America. Take one in which a girl figures out she has AIDS. She goes to a doctor and learns that she's going to have to have her breasts surgically removed. She despairs over the fact that she won't be able to get a boyfriend after that because "boys are like that". Which raises an uncomfortable and yet deeply troubling question: Do we as a society place all the value of a women in her breasts? If so, what is she to men when she no longer has them? The answer is deeply troubling.

This film is a masterpiece of poetic and despairing moments concerning suicide, murder, Satanism, sexuality, death, old age, racism and blue-collar culture. Korine makes a masterful use of different film mediums to convey his visual poetry, which is effective at all times with haunting voice-over narration by the two teenagers. Just take the opening sequence in which one of them describes the tornado that hit. To hear his voice and the things he says so simply is chilling.

This is a troubled and deeply disturbing film whose style and subject matter will immedietly turn off many people. Those who cherish experimental art cinema know who they are and will seek out this film, if you are still watching Twilight, you may not be ready for this film just yet. It has a beautiful pace and is masterfully directed by the young Korine and hardly ever fails at what it does (except at the more light-hearted comedic parts). And despite its disturbing images, it does have heart and moments of tenderness you are shocked to find. There is a beautiful scene in which one of the teenagers pays to have sex with a prostitute. She turns out to be a weirdly motherly and innocent girl who looks like she walked out of a cartoon from the 50's. Instead of having sex the two talk and she mothers him in an odd and tender way. When I say this film has heart, I mean it is embedded under all of the despair and suffering of this horror, just like at the heart of every human being. 9/10

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I'd never heard of this film Daniel until this :lol:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ibs1akHKzU0

Harry Hill is hilarious :lol:.

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That's interesting. I like background stories - 20 odd years is a long time to remain dedicated to one project - he had to be obsessed!

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Well it was an on and off project, largely dictated by funding issues. In his own words he did make a lot of "crap" in order that he could help fund his one real project - though he was certainly obsessed.

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Originally Posted by Mathor

Avatar - 10/10 - I wasn't looking forward to this movie. I mainly saw this to prove how good it WASNT. No amount of bias can bring this visual triumph down. And no, it's not because the visual triumph is such a spectacle, it's because it is paired with a story that is surprisingly amazing.

This movie does everything you would dislike in a movie. It's filled to the brim with special effects, it's about 75 percent animation, the last 1/3 of the movie is one long action sequence. These are things which one could normally safely say ruin just about any movie. James Cameron proves that he is the exception to the rule. So much intricacy is put on developing the story, that by the time the action rolls around, you're praising god that it's there. This movie is the 'Ben-Hur' or 'Jaws' of our era. This film does things with motion that I did not know were possible. Okay, James Cameron, after months of thinking this was a TERRIBLE concept for a film (with a story that from the trailer seems pretty wishy-washy) you've proven me wrong. I should have expected this.


EDIT: One other point. This is the only movie I've ever seen in 3d where the 3d enriched the experienced. I have been adamant that 3D ruins the viewing experience, that it is distracting, that it really has no place in cinema (and 99.999999 of the time I'm right). To this and all points, Cameron, Touche.

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I am just so confused. I seriously feel like I've seen a differrent movie from everybody else. Everybody's saying how absorbed they were and how it didn't seem all that long, for me, my God was I passive throughout the whole thing, and man did it seem like five hours. Another problem was that I was almost entirely indifferent to the entire film. It was certainly a million times better than pieces of crap like Transformers, but I was just utterly indifferent the whole time.

Believe me, I wasn't expecting an art film. I came into the theater in the Saturday night-matinee mindset. I was ready for some kick-*** action and special effects, and was ready to forgive all of the expect cliches one is bound to find in a action movie. But James Cameron to me just used all of his effects to no good use by just putting them up there on screen. As I've mentioned before in my review, maybe it's best to parallell the scenes with the flying Ring-Wraiths or when those big elephants come in LOTR with any of the battle seqeunces and you'll see that Peter Jackson is the superior director. Also, take another example from Star Wars; there was an utter excitment in hearing and seeing those lightsabers come out before a dual. It was perfect and enthralling. Avatar had no effects that enthralled me in any way as those other two films.

Sorry if I keep on writing about Avatar, but I am very troubled by this film.

Well, I have been asking Netflix to take me back, and this morning I watched Midnight Cowboy straight through for the first time, and then went and bought the novel so that I could contemplate the bleakness of the human condition even more. Three stars. I'd rate it higher but thought the flashbacks were not fully integrated into what motivated Joe Buck into his flights of doomed aspiration.

Even for its release date, however, I don't see why it was rated X even 40 years ago. The hard core sexual activity is heavily suggested, but never shown.

The story hit me hard though, and I have been awhile trying to talk myself out of feeling that most of us wind up like Ratso and Buck, or I might, at any rate.

I've seen it before but The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou was on Comedy Central last night and since I greatly enjoyed the first viewing, I thought I would take in a second. I do love Wes Anderson's odd sense of humour. This isn't his best outing but I really did find it charming and the music...the acoustic David Bowie songs sung in Portuguese...was the icing on the cake.

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Originally Posted by Idril

I've seen it before but The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou was on Comedy Central last night and since I greatly enjoyed the first viewing, I thought I would take in a second. I do love Wes Anderson's odd sense of humour. This isn't his best outing but I really did find it charming and the music...the acoustic David Bowie songs sung in Portuguese...was the icing on the cake.

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I think The Life Aquatic had some of the most outlandish scenes in Wes Anderson's movies. For example, the unforgettable pirate scenes (when Zissou gets them off his ship and when they go rescue Hennessey and the bond stooge from the pirates) were crazy, hilarious, clever, and thrilling. I think it's the only Wes Anderson movie where a major character dies. Life Aquatic and Royal Tenenbaums were my two favorite Wes Anderson movies, but I really like them all. Have you seen Fantastic Mr.Fox? I loved it, and I think that's saying a lot because my expectations were pretty high.

Gates of Heaven - What a sad, poetic and strangely off-beat and funny movie. A documentary about more than just pet cemetaries, it's going to take more than one viewing for me to dig this one up. Cinema at its finest. 10/10

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Originally Posted by wessexgirl

I'd never heard of this film Daniel until this :lol:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ibs1akHKzU0

Harry Hill is hilarious :lol:.

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Hmm, while I mildly appretiated the humour, I didn't care for his treatment of the films content. He treats the film as if it's some kind of snuff film made by a lunatic or as if it's just some meaningless MadTV sketch. While the chair wrestling scene as well as some others are supposed to be funny in an absurd way, there are many scenes of great insight that this comedian seems to treat as jokes. Yes it's a weird and disturbing film, and yes everything he mentioned about the film is in it, but he treats it like something it's not. Besides, nobody in that audience were going to see it anyway.

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Originally Posted by bluevictim

I think The Life Aquatic had some of the most outlandish scenes in Wes Anderson's movies. For example, the unforgettable pirate scenes (when Zissou gets them off his ship and when they go rescue Hennessey and the bond stooge from the pirates) were crazy, hilarious, clever, and thrilling. I think it's the only Wes Anderson movie where a major character dies. Life Aquatic and Royal Tenenbaums were my two favorite Wes Anderson movies, but I really like them all. Have you seen Fantastic Mr.Fox? I loved it, and I think that's saying a lot because my expectations were pretty high.

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I haven't seen it yet but I think it's the only Wes Anderson movie I haven't seen. I've read some glowing reviews of the movie so I should get over the whole animated movie thing and just watch it. The pirate scenes were something else. I loved that Hennessey was shot in the chest at close range but yet within minutes is running around simply holding his bloody chest like it was nothing but a flesh wound. :lol: I love Willem Dafoe in that movie, such a different role for him.

It's official, The Fantastic Mr Fox is my favorite Wes Anderson film. After many watches, this is the most wonderous of his films (all of which are pretty equally wonderous). This movie rewards repeated viewings to fully comprehend, kind of like all Wes Anderson films. The funny thing is the plot is almost nonsensical, but it doesn't really matter. Every bit of humor in this movie is far more intelligent than I knew humor could be. This movie is better than Up in my opinion (though arguable Up is just as good in other ways). When I saw Up I knew I had seen a good movie, though ignored some of the moreso cliche childish things, knowing I had just seen an animated movie directed towards a younger audience. The Fantastic Mr Fox, however, feels right at home.

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Originally Posted by Mathor

It's official, The Fantastic Mr Fox is my favorite Wes Anderson film. After many watches, this is the most wonderous of his films (all of which are pretty equally wonderous). This movie rewards repeated viewings to fully comprehend, kind of like all Wes Anderson films. The funny thing is the plot is almost nonsensical, but it doesn't really matter. Every bit of humor in this movie is far more intelligent than I knew humor could be. This movie is better than Up in my opinion (though arguable Up is just as good in other ways). When I saw Up I knew I had seen a good movie, though ignored some of the moreso cliche childish things, knowing I had just seen an animated movie directed towards a younger audience. The Fantastic Mr Fox, however, feels right at home.

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Hmmm, I have a special trust for films that get better on repeated viewings, and while I very much liked Fantastic Mr. Fox, I didn't find it to be one of the best of the year. Now thinking about it, I find those long shots and complex sets, as well as the wonderfully crude animation to be truly amazing and bravely unique. Maybe I should go back to see it. I need some revitalizing energy after the tedium of Avatar (I know I need to stop with the rotten apples).