Films Recently Watched

  On 11/18/2012 at 11:55 PM, yek said:

national lampoons christmas vacation

Yes! seasonal classic right there

the dark knight rises - national lampoons christmas vacation/10

  On 11/19/2012 at 2:58 PM, TRiP said:

The Master - not 'bad' but a tad' underwhelming /10

My review agreed but I think on home viewing it will improve. On first viewing you're looking to be wowwed and the film does wow in characters and acting, visuals but the lack of story leaves you underwhelmed. Some memorable scenes here for sure: the prison scene, the desert scene/

The woman in black

Left over from a halloween netflix queue rejig. Harry Potter wanders around a haunted island. The best bits were when the woman of the title made the kids selfharm but instead of showing more of that - they went bumps in the night and cheap scares. The ending was a strange message too.

I was sure the only nice person on the island was going to be behind the murders but maybe I seen too much miss marple.

I was also convinced that the son was still alive and faking the ghost stuff to keep people away from the house.

Apparently there is a sequel in the works

dawn of the dead (extended mall blah blah version 1978) - 7.5/10 - horrible actors, horrible dialogue, horrible music, the zombies are just people who've been painted turquoise, the camera hardly ever moves for the whole movie, the whole thing just looks and sounds ugly + cheap. Its great

the vanishing (dutch/french version 1988) - 8/10 - already knew the ending but still creeeepy stuff although the scariest thing was watching the trailer for the kiefer sutherland / jeff bridges remake afterwards ohhhhhhh maaaaaaan . still thinkin about this movie days later tho, the bad guy is pretty much what i would expect a real murderer to be like + the way his methods/motives are slowly revealed is pretty chilling maybe because it mostly seems realistic. maybe it dragged a bit at certain points but overall its pretty good + gives a lot to think about

the shining (US version 1980 ) - 8/10 - some of the extra scenes seem a bit pointless but still better than most other stuff. maybe the shorter version is a better film but the extra parts are mostly still interesting. Although the bit where sheley duvall sees the skeletons in the ballroom has got to be one of the corniest things kubrick ever did, it looked like something youd see in a fairground ghost train or whatever you call those things

ghost train

ghost train it is then or alternatively haunted house either way it looked stoooooopid

also another bit that was even worse is when shelley duvall was pacing around the room just talking out loud to herself just to let you know whats going on in her mind " IM GONNA GET IN THE SNOWCAT..........ME AND DANNY ARE GONNA ESCAPE........IF JACK WONT COME WELL JUST LEAVE HIM HERE....THEN IM GONNA STAR IN POPEYE WITH ROBIN WILLIAMS...." then danny is all like "dannys gone away mrs torrence" being a little weirdo... that bit was horrible no wonder they cut it out. Its funny all those people think that film has hidden meanings and all that but some of the longer stuff is really pretty ropey.............but still its mostly smashing + wonderfgul and i will give it 8 stars out of a possible total of 10 stars the end

shelley duvall is so hard to look at. Does she have grave's disease or something?

I saw Argo the other day. What a piece of shit. Ben Affleck clearly made it as a means to run around on film trying to act like a boss again. It sucked. He sucked.

It gets 3/wonderfgul.

Finally saw the dark knight rises, it was plenty stupid and basically a retread of batman begins. At least it was better than the god awfull the dark knight. So I give it 5/batman begins or 8/the dark knight

  On 11/21/2012 at 7:35 AM, lumpenprol said:

shelley duvall is so hard to look at. Does she have grave's disease or something?

Sorry but it's got to be done...

The Bay: 7/10

Good use of 'found footage' style.

Holy Motors: 9/10

This started as a 7 right after I'd watched it but I keep thinking back to it and, three days later, it's a 9.

the comedy

7/10

The dark knight rises - 10/10 one of the best movies ever in my opinion, perfect conclusion in all ways.. also, bane fucking rules.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (Finchers) - 9/10

Eyes Wide Shut - 10/10

sinister - jump scares. fucking nonstop jump scares. 3/10

dredd 3d - pretty cool! also the first 3d movie i've ever seen. 7/10

black dynamite - i'll never get tired of this movie. 10/10

  On 11/23/2012 at 1:38 PM, chimera slot mom said:

The dark knight rises - 10/10 one of the best movies ever in my opinion, perfect conclusion in all ways.. also, bane fucking rules.

I've never commented on DKR because it made me sad how I didn't enjoy it the way everybody else did :(

I almost fell asleep in the theater

We need to talk about kevin - had to turned it off 30 minutes in, what a dull fucking movie.

  On 11/23/2012 at 4:24 PM, Obel said:

  On 11/23/2012 at 1:38 PM, chimera slot mom said:

The dark knight rises - 10/10 one of the best movies ever in my opinion, perfect conclusion in all ways.. also, bane fucking rules.

 

I've never commented on DKR because it made me sad how I didn't enjoy it the way everybody else did :(

I feel the same way about black dynamite.

a stupid and badly cast film that tries hard to have a good moral but is misses the mark by throwing around too many jokes and corny musical numbers 2/10

directed by one half of the duo that did blair witch- so of course he cannot res ist some shaky camera moments and, of course, he completely forgot to have a story (or a point) for this mess 0/10

a fun little movie from robert rodriguez that takes advantage of the exploitation genre to deliver as many verbal shocks and bloody violence as it can cram into 1.5 hours. 5/10

phase IV - 8/10

the andromeda strain - 8,5/10

amadeus - 8,5/10

holy motors - 8/10

burn after reading - 7,5/10

Jacques Audiard's

rust and bone - 7/10 it's a bit hollywoodesque after all... pretty intense nonetheless...

un prophete - 7/10

the beat that my heart skipped - 7/10

Richard Linklater's

tape - 7/10

slaker - 6/10

before sunrise - 5/10 it's so corny, geez...

gremlins - this movie doesn't make any sense, gremlins can't touch water and there's snow everywhere...

society - lol yeah just wait for the ending...

total recall 2012 - lol, didn't mind it...

2 days in new york - bleh, 6/10

lawless - 6/10 not that good

the dark knight rises - lol, i won't piss on this cause i ain't got enough piss...

paranorman - 7/10

9/10

A great film. It's about female sex tourism in Africa. If you're into dark humour and misanthropy, this is what you need.

Rust & Bone was pretty damn good.

As usually happens when I have a bit of extended time around a holiday I find myself on Netflix searching for interesting documentaries. I discovered several over the past couple of days that I thought were worth sharing so here we go:

Happy

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This film travels the world to find out what makes people happy in a variety of countries, rich and poor, young and old. Along the way we discover which cultures produce the most and least happiest people. Interestingly one of the happiest cultures also has the most people per capita who are over 100 years old. Coincidence? I think not. 

Surviving Progress

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A particular line in this film struck me: first Ronald Wright explains that as far as we can tell our physical brains have remained unchanged for eons, and that we are basically the same people that we were in the stone age. Then Wright says "We are essentially stone-age hunters, running 21st century software: our knowledge, on hardware that hasn't been upgraded for 50,000 years, and this lies at the core of many of our problems."

This reminded that although our technological knowledge has increased by a fantastic amount, our progress in the areas of compassion, empathy and tolerance are lagging far behind. It seems that in some ways many primitive animal parts of the brain have not moved very far beyond the stone age. This doc was produced by Martin Scorsese.

Indie Game

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This film explores the world of independent game developers - those who have no intention of working for a large  corporation such as EA or Valve. Their vision is highly personal and often quirky, and although their motivation is to do things "their way" they are also in pursuit of the possibility of becoming overnight millionaires (which has happened to a few indie developers who debuted a hit game on platforms such as Xbox Live or Valve.) The content of the film focuses mainly on the developers of Braid, Meat Boy and Fez.

Moog 

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I felt that this doc was not quite up to the quality of the others above,  but I have a soft spot for anything about Bob Moog and there aren't many (if any) other documentaries about him. I was lucky enough to meet and speak with him at a couple of summer NAMM shows which were held here in Nashville back in the 90's. A few years after that I attended a fascinating lecture that he gave at Vanderbilt University. He's a quirky guy - very unique, funny, and probably one of those few people really deserving to be called a genius.  The film was interesting because it presented a few short glimpses of his personal life, which is a very rare treat.