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

[Jozanny]

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.

[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.

[bluevictim]

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.

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.

[DanielBenoit]

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

[DanielBenoit]

I'd never heard of this film Daniel until this

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

Harry Hill is hilarious .

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.

[Idril]

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.

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. I love Willem Dafoe in that movie, such a different role for him.

[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.

[DanielBenoit]

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.

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).

[Mathor]

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).

yeah I remember talking about this movie with you about 3 or 4 months ago when i first saw it, and thinking it was alright (one of the better animated films, but not one of the best). After a couple more viewings I kind of feel silly for not enjoying it as much as I do now originally. Wes Anderson films are sort of like that, though. They give back what the viewer puts in. I can't think of any of his films that I didn't have completely lukewarm feelings for and then slowly warm up to realize the underlying brilliance.

On Avatar: Haha, I mean, I'm sure there's people out there who didn't like The Dark Knight either. It doesn't make much sense in my mind, but oh well. Don't worry, the only Oscars he will win for this film are technical awards that otherwise would've been won by Transformers 2. Avatar exists as a trump card to the mediocre special effects awards they would've had to give Transformers. Anything keeping the worst film of all time from winning awards is nothing short of a savior, no matter how you look at it.

On Peter Jackson: His newest film The Lovely Bones is one of my least favorite movies of the year

[wessexgirl]

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.

Er yes, that's the point......he is a comedian .

Of course no-one in the audience was going to see it....the whole joke was in reference to the film being unknown, and having its music chosen on the X Factor. Harry's whole programme is about sending up what's on tv, and is extremely popular over here, winning all sorts of awards. I don't see how anyone can get upset about him. He does a lot worse to the soaps.....

[NickAdams]

Avatar, Avatar, Avatar:

This is the kind of movie that makes me question what is cinema. For a long time I held the belief that cinema was a purely visual medium and that non-narrative (pure cinema) was the id and the borrowed elements were merely ego and super ego. I could never criticize the id accurately, because it would always come back to: "that's it's nature"; however, each borrowed element, mixed poorly, raises the question of its inclusion.

The motion capture is amazing and during the moments that it's not, overall, the authenticity of the Na'vi's teeth keeps the illusion. A nice bit of detail was Jake's legs. The 3D, for the first thirty minutes or so, is extremely impressive; at it's best the depth created has an otherworldly dimension, at it's worst it looks like a shadow box (or one of those group magazine covers where everybody couldn't make it to the photo shoot at one time so they took pictures separately and photoshoped them together). There are some visual sequences that capture the energy and wonder naturally even though Cameron felt that he still needed a protagonist that has never been there before so we can be amazed through him. All of this would have been great, but the borrowed elements aren't mixed well and no matter how great a golden goblet looks, it can't make sewage taste any better.

So, what's borrowed? Everything that the passive moviegoer believes is essential to a good "flick". What's incorporated well? None of it. The characters are from the stock variety of Cameron's generation (more on that later), the story is of the going-native-noble-savage-great-White-hope variety (no offense intended), and the plot is of the there's-mulitple-chracters-so-if-nothing-is-"happening"-dramatically-to-one-we-can-focus-on-another-event-adventure variety.

Man did I enjoy this movie before the characters started to speak ... ok, there's a voice over narration from the opening shot ... so, I enjoyed this movie before Parker (Giovanni Ribisi) appeared on screen. That's not a criticism on his performance, but to the script. The exposition was ridiculous (Parker and Grace have been working together for how long? And he still has to explain the plot, I mean point, of the mission to the audience, I mean to her) and that "action" que was ... Parker-has-been-here-all-morning-so-lets-have-him-hitting-a-golf-ball-into-a-mug-to-say-something-about-his-chracter-but-we-won't-have-him-do-it-again-through-out-the-movie-but-right-before-Grace-walks-in-let's-have-him-speaking-on-my-mark-and-he-should-say-something-that-could-have-been-said-when-he-started-but-he's-only-saying-now-because-this-is-how-we-are-going-to-introduce-him. <-- that was the last one of those.

I can really go on forever, so one question of plot logic and then I'll close out.

If the military couldn't use computer imaging devices in the vortex, but as we saw in the final battle, audio transmissions were not effected ... WHY DIDN'T THEY DEVELOP SONAR FOR THEIR WORK ON THE PLANET?!

Avatar has been compared to many films, but let me tell you what it's not. It's not 2001. It's not Star Wars. "I di' naht hit her. I di' NAHT! Oh, hi Mark"

I'll tell you what it is ... can you guess ... nope, not that ... no, nothing to do with native ... give up?

It's Jurassic Park.

This is the "more on that later" section. Cameron, Spielberg, Lucas and others of the generation (don't even suggest Coppola) have this Joseph Campbell archetype addiction and have to litter their films with with stale figures that only Jeff Goldblum can overcome (others can overcome it, but are you doubting "The Gold"?!). I call these directors "The Awe Inspiring Generation" (Protagonist goes somewhere, or sees something new and they go slack jaw as big music play). At least Spielberg can go beyond the machine (you know what films I'm talking about).

Oh, and the score was uninspired.

If this was a segment of Fantasia, I would be giving it 10/10 ... but, it's "NAHT!"

On a positive note: I found the networking concept very interesting and with the links between the creatures on the planet, it would be interesting to know how it evolved. I might have enjoyed it a lot more if Cameron would have explored Pandora like his past 3D documentaries.

[DanielBenoit]

Yay, great review Nick. The world doesn't seem so lonley now that there are two people on litnet who hate Avatar (though I can't really say I hated it).

You hit the nail in the head on every point and should really write more reviews when you get the chance. I 100% agree with you when you define the Blockbuster generation as Cameron, Lucas and Speilberg, and NOT Coppola, because I've seen Coppola listed far to many times with them when he has nothing in common with any of them. That said, Speilberg is obviously the best of the three and knows how to make a great audience-catcher/mainstream film (E.T., Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Jaws, etc.).

Also, I agree with you on the score. Most of the time I wouldn't bother with knit-picky details about the score in another type of film, but Avatar is a science-fiction action film and should have an insipered score to match the images. I'm sure I need not say any more about the score to Star Wars and LOTR and what it did for the films.

That coffee-cup-putting thing really bothered me as well. I love idiosyncratic characters, and if he had been doing that in most of the scenes he's in I would've loved it, but he does that for one scene, just to introduce his character and it's kind of insulting. Same goes for Grace's introduction. She smokes only a couple more times in the film, and unless nicotene is not addicting on Pandora, I would be suspecting her to be smoking in almost every scene she's in. Again, a minor detail, but after seeing as many movies as I have, you begin to pick up on the logic behind films and I feel a bit cheated when the only reason that character smokes is to show us at her introduction that she is a likeable *****.

[NickAdams]

Lol, thank you.

I liked it a lot more than I thought I would. I'll tell you what though: I have never been in a theater, with that many people and yet the only sound came from the screen.

I don't really like Apocalypse Now (blasphemy, but I've seen it only once and I've already put Do the Right Thing on my re-watch list).

I'm still stunned that Spielberg directed Munich.

Definitely: the scores for both Star Wars and LOTR are good enough to be on my Ipod.

@ likable *****.

I could knit-pick some more. I don't think the language worked at all, because I could tell the Ethnic background of each actor by the accent they spoke with, but maybe Cameron wanted a collective feel.

[NickAdams]

'Pride and Glory", based on the classic novel by Jane Austen … no, that's not right. Ok, I'm thinking of "Mad Dog and Glory", which makes more sense because Uma Thurman is in that one. This one was written by director Gavin O'Connor and Joe Carnahan. Yeah, I know "Narc" was good, but if you remember "Smokin' Aces" then you won't be surprised.

So, "Pride and Glory" is the story of Ray Tierney (Edward Norton) and his investigation … no, that's not right. It's about Ray's brother-in-law Jimmy Egan (Colin Farrell)… no, no, that's not right either. Then it's definitely about Ray's brother Francis Tierney Jr. (Noah Emmerich), right? Oooooooh, it uses multiple characters to explore its themes of police corruption and family. Then it's similar to "Traffic", which used multiple characters (each having a different level of involvement) to explore the drug trade. But, "Pride and Glory" has a moor intimate feel. The characters relationships are not so far removed; it's more like "Zodiac" and it's exploration of the serial killer, so instead of Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal) we have Ray who is our central character, but we still get private moments with the other characters he's connected … I'm going to stop there, because this movie isn't as good as either of the ones I mentioned.

This movie is about the mysterious circumstances surrounding the killing of four New York City Police Officers. We get a taste of the people connected, mostly working class officers and low-low-lower class Hispanic drug dealers, but there is a rule: only moments of sensationalism or sentimentality (there is an emotional breakdown scene that follows another). YOU FOLLOW IT OR YOU'RE OR BANNED.

There are quite a few officers in the Big Apple, but it doesn't matter: we need Ray Tierney to solve this case. Why? Because, we don't want to be BANNED. He has a scar and a past and this is discussed, in such an attempt to be subtle that it's not, in a bathroom.

Anything more would be a spoiler, but I'll add this: Ed Wood was more subtle in his themes. It's about family, really?

And Scorsese, there's a barroom fight that will make you blush … or just embarrassed.

[DanielBenoit]

I don't really like Apocalypse Now (blasphemy, but I've seen it only once and I've already put Do the Right Thing on my re-watch list).

Blasphemy is damn right Did you watch the Redux version? Watch the original. While the Redux version is good, the extra scenes are unnessicary and long.

'Pride and Glory", based on the classic novel by Jane Austen … no, that's not right. Ok, I'm thinking of "Mad Dog and Glory", which makes more sense because Uma Thurman is in that one. This one was written by director Gavin O'Connor and Joe Carnahan. Yeah, I know "Narc" was good, but if you remember "Smokin' Aces" then you won't be surprised.

So, "Pride and Glory" is the story of Ray Tierney (Edward Norton) and his investigation … no, that's not right. It's about Ray's brother-in-law Jimmy Egan (Colin Farrell)… no, no, that's not right either. Then it's definitely about Ray's brother Francis Tierney Jr. (Noah Emmerich), right? Oooooooh, it uses multiple characters to explore its themes of police corruption and family. Then it's similar to "Traffic", which used multiple characters (each having a different level of involvement) to explore the drug trade. But, "Pride and Glory" has a moor intimate feel. The characters relationships are not so far removed; it's more like "Zodiac" and it's exploration of the serial killer, so instead of Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal) we have Ray who is our central character, but we still get private moments with the other characters he's connected … I'm going to stop there, because this movie isn't as good as either of the ones I mentioned.

This movie is about the mysterious circumstances surrounding the killing of four New York City Police Officers. We get a taste of the people connected, mostly working class officers and low-low-lower class Hispanic drug dealers, but there is a rule: only moments of sensationalism or sentimentality (there is an emotional breakdown scene that follows another). YOU FOLLOW IT OR YOU'RE OR BANNED.

There are quite a few officers in the Big Apple, but it doesn't matter: we need Ray Tierney to solve this case. Why? Because, we don't want to be BANNED. He has a scar and a past and this is discussed, in such an attempt to be subtle that it's not, in a bathroom.

Anything more would be a spoiler, but I'll add this: Ed Wood was more subtle in his themes. It's about family, really?

And Scorsese, there's a barroom fight that will make you blush … or just embarrassed.

Lol, your reviews have an edge and I like em'.