Films Recently Watched

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Nice!

just watched iron man 3.

was bored out of my brains / yawning by the end. i have no idea what this movie has to offer that the other 2 didn't deliver on. meaningless cgi action. good verses evil. witty one liners. moments of clever dialogue and wittiness. bad acting kid actors. i ... i don't know. it's hard to pin point what made the movie so boring for me. it just, did nothing. had nothing going for it. it was bland. furthermore, the audience was responding positively to it, laughing throughout. saying things like "yeah, that was actually really good" at the end. atm it's got 95% on rotten tomatoes on 40 reviews/ 8.5 on imdb from 7,931 users.

but i thought it was boring boring boring boring boring. had good bits. had bad bits. but mostly a bad film.

* the enemy in the film is good though. i'll give it that. again, there are good bits to this film. just overall, found it boring.

just noticed the movie isn't even out yet in america. maybe this is why the movie is getting so high reviews?? : |

2001 bluray- Watching this on a bigish screen in the dark at decent volume is the only way imho. I kinda got the dead pan humour with Hal a lot more this time round. Some bits are looking a tad dated now but for the most its still a stunning visual-audio space opera. 11/10

Yeah this film made in 1968, set in 2001 looks dated in 2013! REFUND!

  On 4/25/2013 at 8:58 PM, Jimmy McMessageboard said:

Yeah this film made in 1968, set in 2001 looks dated in 2013! REFUND!

I'll go knocking on Kurbrick's front door erm....doh!

On the 777 to India and back I sat through:

The Hobbit

Looper

Dredd

Total Recall

And at one point, my gf plugged her set of headphones onto my head so that I could experience jackman's vocal talents in Les Mis.

Faith in cinema shattered, fuck this gay earth.

  On 4/25/2013 at 8:58 PM, Jimmy McMessageboard said:

Yeah this film made in 1968, set in 2001 looks dated in 2013! REFUND!

lol, i don't think he was saying that at all. he gave the film a positive review! nothing factually wrong with saying a forty something year old film looks a bit dated.

Altered States

the first half of this was the second most accurate depiction i've seen on film of how it feels when i get high (first place going to Zardoz). Second half with the monkey man etc felt a little more hollywood, but the ending message of "eternity is a fearful place & true enlightenment lies in the present" matches up pretty well with the theme of my recent spiritual experiences

upstream color

still piecing it together, nice collage of moods. i've got a sense of the plot but there's a lot of why's i'm still following. really enjoyed it

  On 4/26/2013 at 6:29 AM, Adjective said:

upstream color

still piecing it together, nice collage of moods. i've got a sense of the plot but there's a lot of why's i'm still following. really enjoyed it

So...Upstream Color.

As most everyone who has saw it has said, very good looking film. Interesting mood. The biggest problem I am having (which I guess is similar to Primer in a way, albeit much more pronounced) is the acting. I think Shane Carruth is autistic or something. The dialog is like.....not human? Maybe that is the goal, not sure, but some of the emotional responses from the actors and dialog are absolutely ridiculous. "WHY?" "I LIKE YOU" "I'M SCARED" etc. For a more specific scene, please refer to the scene when the girl gets out of the hospital, and what he says/how he acts towards her. I am not sure how to explain it, other than it seemed like he felt the need to bludgeon his audience over the head with his depth and emotion. Also, I don't think he should have cast himself in this one. A. His acting is laughable. B. It comes across as some sort of weird M.Night Shyamalan-istic ego trip to assume that not only can you write your film, record the music, but also ACT IN IT AS WELL??! DUDE UR A RENAISSANCE MAN.

But no, seriously...had he picked an actor with a bit more of a weighty emotional presence, I think it wouldn't have been so cringey. I suppose I was hoping for a bit more hard sci-fi and less Lost In Translation moping around with muted dialog and lots of shots of girls hands and feet, and gentle caressing and "we are the most unique and affected couple in the world" sentimentality. This kind of thing makes me want to burn down churches and bath my self in the blood of infants while feasting on the entrails of a freshly killed stag after pillaging a village.

I read a review a few days ago of this film and it stated that "Shane Carruth has broken an unspoken contract between filmmakers and audiences that says watching movies should never require you to think, work or do any of the heavy lifting." While I generally agree with this in regards to his plots and the level of depth he put in to Primer (and possibly even this film, though this review is very off the cuff as I am still mulling over the details ), this movie feels like it is fucking oozing with that smug satisfaction, but it still feels absurdly emotionally stunted. Like how I was emotionally stunted when I WAS A FUCKING TEENAGER.

Dunno, think Shane needs to stop listening to drone music for a little bit.

P.S All of that said, I could very well end up coming back to this one and liking it just as much as I liked Primer..but then again, 2004 was a long time ago and that headspace is a myth, I think. *shot pans over hands and feet as the glide across a mattress, soft lighting fills the room, wind chimes in the background, maybe some ambient gamelan music too. who knows. a tear slips out of Reid's eye as he remembers the past, or is it really the future?*

Also, for those who have seen Upstream Color; this may be of interest to you:

I just listened to the (quite excellent) podcast on Grantland network with Wesley Morris and Alex Pappademas and they gently but resolutely ripped on Upstream Color. I'm no longer that interested, but will catch it when it's out on video. Carruth basically toured the country explaining the fucking movie, which is probably sufficient indication that it's not very successful at doing what he wanted.

what's funny is that even the reviews I've read that rip it apart saying it 'doesn't make any sense' actually lay out with accuracy every discernable element of the plot and appear to understand it perfectly, they just well didn't like the movie for other reasons. The plot in this one is a lot easier to follow than Primer i think. I don't think the acting was so much the problem as Reid described above, but the script.

  On 4/26/2013 at 8:57 PM, John Ehrlichman said:

what's funny is that even the reviews I've read that rip it apart saying it 'doesn't make any sense' actually lay out with accuracy every discernable element of the plot and appear to understand it perfectly, they just well didn't like the movie for other reasons. The plot in this one is a lot easier to follow than Primer i think. I don't think the acting was so much the problem as Reid described above, but the script.

I too initially felt that maybe it was (and probably is) the script, but I also couldn't help but remember the little things that I didn't like about Primer...one of which is the delivery of a lot of the lines. As with Primer, I never felt that the supporting cast were all that horrible, and that it was primarily Shane Carruth.

I still can't get the extremely juvenile feeling that this film left me with out of my brain. Again, not so much in the story it self but the way everything was conveyed. Maybe I am just too much of an asshole now to appreciate it.

I watched Primer a while back & while I didn't dislike it it felt kind of like if the guy from Pi had made Pi

Oh, I think Primer was vastly better than Pi.

I think Primer was the last movie I rented from Blockbuster.

R.I.P BLOCKBUSTER, YOU WILL BE MISSED.

  On 4/26/2013 at 6:29 AM, Adjective said:

upstream color

still piecing it together, nice collage of moods. i've got a sense of the plot but there's a lot of why's i'm still following. really enjoyed it

It's available for download May 7th so hopefully I can enjoy that once more before I get too far into the many interpretations hitting the interwebs

right, yeah i think some things were left open. In some ways the movie was sort of using the concept of Invasion of the Body snatchers but with no clear agenda on the part of the symbiotic entity, beyond just an unexplained will to survive and infect other hosts. I like how Carruth manages to take an old school science fiction concept and sort of turn it upsidedown into a more character driven story. IT feels in some ways more grounded to reality (where things are generally more confusing and ambiguous) than another movie that would have a similar entity possession concept in it. All the tropes associated with those type of movies like some kind of alien takeover the government plot, or people ganging up together and acting overtly strange to the uninfected do not take place in Upstream Color.

Shane Carruth is trying too hard.

Film and great stories should flow from the artist.

Not be forced out like a turd.

Not be annoyingly complex.

He made this film for himself and a few people that will love it for its mystery.

I just wish he would have kept with the abstract ideas to let them make sense and drive the story instead of the horrible romance dominating within the film.

Bad story direction choice imo.

If you are going for obscure/esoteric, then don't half ass it.

Dive head first and make Jurgen, A Comedy of Justice the film.

It can probably not be done, but would be amazing if done well.

i think i know what you're talking about, reid. when i first saw primer i was expecting some big reveal explaining why a lot of the acting was so stiff and emotionless. like, these guys are traveling through time and their whole attitudes just seem way off and the things they say/how they say them was just flat out weird at times. but by the end of the film i realized this was probably just the result of this being shane's first movie and whatnot. shame that it sounds like some of this is present in the new one as well.

  On 4/26/2013 at 6:53 PM, thanks robert moses said:

This kind of thing makes me want to burn down churches and bath my self in the blood of infants while feasting on the entrails of a freshly killed stag after pillaging a village.

 

 

wisp - niagara falls ist krieg