12 Years a Slave
10/10
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12 Years a Slave
10/10
Sunset Boulevard
10/10
A fantastic film that I never got round to seeing until recently, such a shame it took me this long! Recommended to anyone who, like me, has somehow managed to avoid this masterpiece thus far..
Anything Else: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0313792/
This is an old Woody Allen movie about a comedian (Jason Biggs) who is supporting an annoying agent (Danny DeVito) and a annoying girlfriend (Christina Ricci) as well as another comedian (Woody Allen), almost as annoying as the other two, and needs to break free, but isn't quite able to until the end.
Score: 8/10
Directed by the celebrated Marcel Carné, this is an unfortunate dud in a long list of successes.
Starring a very young Jacques Charrier and Jean Paul Belmondo it purports to show a picture of
rebellious French youth in the manner of the 'angry young man' and 'crazy mixed up kid' scenarios
of UK and US films of the 1950s.
An earnest young science student from the well-off right bank of the Seine gets pulled into a group
of youthful neerdowells who live off of their wits and spend all of their time cavorting around left
bank bars, but he finally comes to his senses when the girl he falls for is killed in a car crash.
The credits state that it was from 'an idea by Charles Spaak' but not, I'm afraid, a good one.
However, scenes of Paris are always worth watching and Pascale Petit, who plays the main female
interest, was an absolute sweetie. 4/10
(1/10)
I finished watching Jack Reacher today, which is available on both Netflix, and Amazon Prime, which means that if you pay the yearly fee to get free 2-day shipping from Amazon then you can also stream many of their movies and TV shows for *free* (as opposed to having to rent it for 4.99 for 24 hours).
Anyone who is familiar with Netflix and Amazon Prime knows that their selections consist of movies and shows that are generally a couple of years old (with few exceptions), and it seems like the worse a movie or show is, the sooner it becomes available. I could be wrong about this, but that's the way it seems to me. So, Jack Reacher was released in theaters in December 2012 and here we are in January 2014 and it's already available on Amazon Prime, and that seems like a quick turnaround to me, but I decided to give it a try anyway. Sometimes, movies that don't do so well in theaters turn out to be brilliant.
Now, the first sentence of this post was, "I finished watching Jack Reacher" today. That's because I started it a few nights ago, and couldn't finish it. I started it at night and was too tired to get very far into to it and hadn't seen enough to form an opinion, other than "Well, maybe this movie is the type that starts out slow, and gets better."
When I finally finished it I found out that it didn't get better - it never got better. But, it was so comically bad that I at least got some amusement out of it.
My husband saw that I had started watching it but didn't finish, and so he decided to watch it while I was at work and he sent me a couple of texts about it that pretty much tell you all you need to know:
"Unnecessary cleavage!" (he's not the type to gripe about cleavage)
"Jack Reacher is long, like one of those turds that wraps around the bowl."
And it is long. It is 2 long hours of really bad acting and stiff delivery. When I finally got around to finishing the movie, I was able to laugh out loud when I saw the unnecessary cleavage that my husband was referring to in his text, but I wouldn't tell anyone to watch this movie just to see how bad it was. I've seen better B movies. Also, I had no idea what his "Unnecessary cleavage!" text was about until I saw the movie, and that could have prompted my laughter more than anything.
I saw that Tom Cruise will be developing a sequel to this, which is just great, but he's Tom Cruise and he can do whatever he wants.
'Hunger' simply 10, very very good
Ha ha ha! That about sums it up. We watched Jack Reacher last week. It was long, tedious, implausible with rubbishy characterisation. A typical Tom Cruise film. Then this week we watched Oblivion which is basically Jack Reacher but with a futuristic setting and flying machines. Yawn.Quote:
Originally Posted by Shalot
Jean Gabin stars as Georges Simenon's iconic Inspector Maigret whose avuncular exterior conceals a steely resolve to bring criminals to justice in the French courts. In this case, the villains are a trio of American gangsters who arrive in Paris to kill a man who is a potential witness for the prosecution of a gangland boss in the USA. They manage to gun the man down in the street but the shooting is witnessed by a police officer who is amazed to see another car pick up the wounded man, leaving both the villains and the police stymied as to who has taken him or where he could have gone. Maigret's team at the Sűreté have the task of painstakingly tracking down the wounded man before the killers are able to find him.
Above average policier with Gabin giving a characteristically laid back performance. 8/10
The Wolf of Wall Street: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wol...et_(2013_film)
One take away from this movie is how to sell something: Make the buyer aware of a need and then have an inventory that supplies that created need. Don't describe what you have prior to identifying the need in the buyer.
The movie is long with wild parties and inane behavior to get you caught up in the plot and make the time pass quickly.
I can't see anything wrong with it, although I wouldn't want to see it again, but then there is no need to see it again.
Score: 10/10
Ah yes but notice the grey and black dog that growled at Tom Cruise for 5 seconds, I know that dog and it took over a month of training to teach him how to act like that. If the dog understood Scientology it probably would only have taken a day.Quote:
Originally Posted by TheFifthElement
August: Osage County 9/10 I grew up in a town just a few miles from this setting, so this whole movie was like coming home for me. Even some of the family dynamic s. I thought everyone gave a good performance.
All is Lost 9/10 a tour de force by Robert Redford.
Best Man Down: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1885300/
The library labels this a comedy, but it's more of a drama. Although the best man got drunk during the wedding reception, this is nothing like the Hangover series which were definitely comedies. He not only acts ridiculously at the reception, he also dies afterwards.
The plot pulls all the pieces together nicely. The best man's death disrupts the plans made by the survivors, but the resolutions seem to me better than they could have anticipated.
Score: 8/10
We saw this last night. My wife told me she read a review of the movie that said something like, "If you think your family's bad, wait till you watch this movie."Quote:
Originally Posted by qimissung
I would have expected that Barbara (played by Julia Roberts) would have weighed 100 pounds more than she did. Also, from my limited experienced, the problem of abusive people like Violet (played by Meryl Streep) is that they don't take their medication not that they deliberately drug themselves more than is necessary. Barbara's 14 year old daughter (played by Abigail Breslin) seemed in character when she wanted to watch some TV show rather than go to the funeral, but other than that she seemed too quiet. Her mouth should have been running more helping to wind up the anger her mother and grandmother were projecting on those unfortunate enough to be around them. Also the TV show would have been something like Spongebob not some old movie classic. I can't think of any teenager that would have wanted to watch that movie.
So, some of the plot didn't ring true to me, but my experience and imagination are limited. I can't deny that such abusiveness is real, but that doesn't mean I trust Tracy Lett's description of reality.
Score: 8/10
Updated from the 1930s to the 50s, this is loosely based on Scott Fitzgerald's short story Babylon Revisited and has a stunningly beautiful Elizabeth Taylor as the daughter of Walter Pidgeon who plays an impoverished American living in Paris but refusing to give up living in the style to which he'd once been accustomed. Van Johnson is the American writer revisiting the city after some years when he was stationed there with the US army at the end of WWII and where he meets Taylor on the day that Paris is liberated. The story is told in flashback and recounts their marriage and Johnson's lapse into alcoholism when his novels are rejected. Both Taylor and Pidgeon give good performances and there are some amusing one-liners for the roguish father but Johnson's all at sea in his part and unconvincing as the writer. Eva Gabor plays herself as a much married gold digger and Donna Reed is good as Taylor's embittered sister who wanted Johnson for herself in this glossy romantic family saga typical of the 1950s. 7/10
In seven episodes this takes some viewing but holds interest by virtue of its convoluted plot.
The problem is that spy stories had been done to death by 1979 and, to my mind, the film no longer carried conviction despite some excellent supporting roles to Alec Guinness's rather bland performance.
Having the head of British intelligence as an aged and rather prissy academic who collects old books while performing mental gymnastics with his Russian counterpart mirrors the eccentric Sherlock Holmes's struggle against the evil Moriarty, so the scenario is somewhat motheaten. 6/10