[worry]

I haven't seen TRL for some reason but if you anti-Mallick you a certified squirm worm.

[Slow Ben]

I don't know whether a squirm worm is good or bad, but the only movie as plodding and boring as TRL was The New World.

[worry]

You certified, SB.

[Slow Ben]

Now I KNOW certified is good!

[amphibian]

The New World is a phenomenal movie. Wow.

The Thin Red Line, I liked because it made more of the actual rejection of war a thing. The boredom combined with alienation of both sides fighting and the civilians, plus the senseless violence, made it one of the better war movies I've ever seen.

I would watch the five hour versions of each - if they became commercially available.

Malick is not for everyone though. I get that, but don't get how you can put down New World.

[Tsundoku]

From IMDB:

"Terrence Malick was born in Ottawa, Illinois. "

No wonder you either love or hate his stuff.

This post has been edited by Sombra: 29 August 2014 - 06:07 AM

[Gothos]

Saving Private Ryan had one good sequence - taking the beach. As a movie it fails miserably. Thin Red Line was far superior and engaging. Neither one can hold a candle to the german/swedish co-production "Stalingrad", tho.

[worry]

Speaking of slow burners I just watched Under the Skin and really enjoyed it. Sci-fi minimalism, goes from chilling and clinical to something...not warm, per se, but more humane? Maybe. Definitely something to think on for a while.

[champ]

Just got around to watching a slow paced film again - The Man from Earth, not sure what it is about the film but it keeps me captivated throughout! I didn't want it to end, just wanted to keep hearing them speak and Johns story!

edit

SPR > TRL for me!

This post has been edited by champ: 29 August 2014 - 09:31 AM

[Abyss]

Briar King, on 29 August 2014 - 02:55 AM, said:

The New World had so much more potential but it became lost around the halfway mark to me. Another Colin movie that had potential was Alexander but no that failed to. I'm still waiting on a good Alexander flix.

I found both of those tremendously disappointing. I can't fault Mallick for ambition but his execution doesn't work for me. He tries too hard to humanize his subjects by downplaying the events around them (Alexander took over a frikkin continent, his love life is less interesting to me), at the expense of the story.

Gothos, on 29 August 2014 - 06:03 AM, said:

Saving Private Ryan had one good sequence - taking the beach. As a movie it fails miserably. Thin Red Line was far superior and engaging.

The sniper in the tower? The bridge at the end? ...those weren't 'good'? Nevermind the beach, which is almost unfair to hold any film again, TRL didn't have a single action sequence that came close to those, and largely because it lack any character to genuinely care about when the shooting did start.

[polishgenius]

Abyss, on 29 August 2014 - 02:46 PM, said:

Briar King, on 29 August 2014 - 02:55 AM, said:

The New World had so much more potential but it became lost around the halfway mark to me. Another Colin movie that had potential was Alexander but no that failed to. I'm still waiting on a good Alexander flix.

I found both of those tremendously disappointing. I can't fault Mallick for ambition but his execution doesn't work for me. He tries too hard to humanize his subjects by downplaying the events around them (Alexander took over a frikkin continent, his love life is less interesting to me), at the expense of the story.

Alexander isn't a Malick film. It was Oliver Stone.

I totally don't mind Malick's tendency to downplay the 'great events' to focus on the people within them, but if that's a complaint you have about his newer films, have you ever tried either of his old ones? Not that they don't focus on the people, but they're not really set during any great events, so it may not be so distracting to be looking at them instead of the wider picture.

Badlands in particular is phenomenal. And it has Martin Sheen in it.



TRL was never going to top SPR in terms of action scenes, because one's an action film and one isn't. The main problem with it I had was simply that the emotional tone was badly misjudged. Spielberg is one of my favourite directors but he does have an occasional tendency to mawkishness or saccharine, and SPR is perhaps the film (that I've seen, since I've avoided some of the more blatantly sugary films altogether) where it damages the whole work most.

Plus I don't like Tom Hanks very much.

[Slow Ben]

Abyss, on 29 August 2014 - 02:46 PM, said:

Briar King, on 29 August 2014 - 02:55 AM, said:

Saving Private Ryan had one good sequence - taking the beach. As a movie it fails miserably. Thin Red Line was far superior and engaging.

The sniper in the tower? The bridge at the end? ...those weren't 'good'? Nevermind the beach, which is almost unfair to hold any film again, TRL didn't have a single action sequence that came close to those, and largely because it lack any character to genuinely care about when the shooting did start.

Giovani Ribisi's death and the scene following are fantastic as well.


Plus, Nathan Fillion.

[Macros]

Watched Lets Be Cops last night.
Entertaining comedy. Plenty of laughs and a few genuine some stomach parts for me.
The two leads played off each other well and the villain was suitably cartoonish

[Illuyankas]

Saw Lucy and Into the Storm yesterday.

Into the Storm is a boring story with bad actors against the backdrop of FUCKING HUGE TORNADOS AND OH BALLS THAT ONE DUDE JUST GOT SUCKED UP INTO THE TWISTER ON TOP OF THE BURNING PETROL STATION AND HE'S TOTALLY ON FIRE AND ALSO IN A TORNADO also there are some rednecks and they're the best characters.

Lucy is the best comedy film of the year.

e: No, I'm serious. Lucy is fucking hilarious.

Spoiler

It has so, so many dumb things in it, even beyond the stupid premise. At the beginning when Lucy's scummy boyfriend is trying to persuade her to drop off the case for him, they cut in clips of a mouse approaching a loaded moustrap! And then a cheetah stalking an antelope! And then that cheetah catching that antelope as the gangsters pick Lucy up!

And then Morgan Freeman gives the worst lecture ever to a crowd of interested looking imbeciles!
"Procreation!" *dozens of clips of animals banging, then a girl fucking a dude in a car overlooking a city*
"Reproduction!" *a dozen clips of animals giving birth, ending with a lady and her new baby*
"Dolphins developed sonar because they use 20-25% of their brains!" *20-25% of my brain dissolves and flows out my ears*

And then when Lucy's had the drug released into her bloodstream she goes into a hospital to get the drug packet removed (by shooting a doomed schmuck on a table in front of the surgeons) and the drug is a synthetic version of something released by pregnant women that allows her to (deep breath) have superstrength, ignore pain, see through walls, read minds, type fast, change her hair length and colour, knock people unconscious, levitate people, read electronic signals, type even faster, manipulate the matter in her hands to double and deform it, spit lightning, extrude nanomatter that eats machinery and produces a supercomputer with all the knowledge she acquired with her superbrain, travel through time, travel through space, literally become a god, and learn to drive (phew), she has the stupidest cringiest phone call to her mother ever!

"Hey mom."
"Hey honey, how are you?"
"I'm great. I took a magic drug and now I remember everything. Even that cat we had when I was one."
"But honey you were one when we had that cat, you can't remember it."
"I totally do. I also remember what your breast milk tastes like. And what the womb was like. I'm completely fine and not on drugs. I'm not crying."
"That's nice, dear."
"Love you guys!"

It's comedy gold!

This post has been edited by Grand Chef of High House Decay: 01 September 2014 - 11:48 PM

[worry]

I finally reinstated discs from netflix so I watched Iron Man 3. I'll do Thor 2 (blech) and Cap America 2 (hooray) soon. You guys probably already know this, but it was pretty...uneven. Cool ideas alternated with terrible ideas at a breakneck pace! Anyway the whole reason I'm posting this is I wanted to say I hope Miguel Ferrer got paid a bunch for his role. He's on screen like 2 minutes, why even bother hiring such a notable actor? He's instantly recognizable by everybody, of course, but he's not "big" enough to be considered stunt casting by any means. Such a weird way to spend a movie budget.

[worry]

The recent documentary about her is pretty good. I get why some love her and some hate her. I think she gets a lot of flack as an insult comic -- because she's a woman -- compared to a contemporary like Don Rickles who gets absolutely nothing but admiration. Though she could certainly be a lot more acidic, and I suppose her politics were more outspoken and could be vile, and her focus in recent years on fashion was decidedly shallow territory -- but I also don't think her importance in stand-up can be overstated (alongside Phyllis Diller and Moms Mabley).

[QuickTidal]

Finally got around to seeing AMAZING SPIDERMAN 2.

I still like Garfield as Parker and especially Spiderman.

BUT

Man this movie is overstuffed with bad things. The maudlin relationship stuff, the Matt Dillon / Electro character was pretty poorly scripted, as was Harry Osborne, and don't get me started on Rhino.

The last act/action setpiece was just fine, and I liked that he fights Electro for most of it and just when he thinks he's done he has to fight the Goblin (I refuse to refer to Harry as the Green Goblin, that is SUPPOSED to be his father) as well. But he doesn't exactly feel overtaxed and I think he should. We never exactly get an exhausted Peter who can't summon the energy to fight anymore, making mistakes...which is what I wanted to see I think.

The Sinister Six stuff is clunkily shoehorned in at a level that is astonishingly poorly done. I get their intention to try to get up to a Marvel-esque multi-film-character world (as is evidenced not only by the Six suits, but also by having Felicia Hardy in there for a future Black Cat appearance), but man this was NOT the way to go about it.

It doesn't exactly suffer from the multiple-villain pitfalls of Spiderman 3....but it doesn't exactly avoid them either. We should sympathize with Dillon and we don't He basically starts out as nice guy, and then goes full-on evil. There is no middle ground of grey area that there should be. We also get a Harry Osborne who's development amounts to "I'm sick with the same thing my dad was, gimmie your blood Spiderman." and that's it. They are supposedly "best friends" (or at least the script tells us they are) but I never get the feeling they are anything but acquaintances. So both villains get less screen time and depth of character because Marc Webb wanted to have both in it. Which is a bit sad. The bets villains (The Joker, Loki) are the ones who we are allowed to get inside their heads. I could not tell you what is really wrong with Electro or Harry in their heads because I'm never allowed to see it, I'm just told they are evil now and must be stopped.

Also, did they ACTUALLY, ACTUALLY show me the very last shot/sequence of the film in the TRAILER?! The webbed-up sewer lid being swung in slow mo at Rhino is the shot the film ends on...and that was a key moment in one of the main trailers. That's like the worst thing I can fathom someone who cuts a trailer DOING.

An entertaining final act of action doesn't make up for the fact that this movie is an unmitigated mess.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 08 September 2014 - 03:54 PM

[worry]

There was a Cinemax free weekend so I watched We're the Millers. I didn't like it that much so I think I'm at the lower end of the spectrum here (most found it formulaic but amusing). I found the cast affable and that kid from Son of Rambow did a particularly good job in a role that's usually personality-less, but I just didn't find much of it funny (somehow I already knew Offerman's family's quirks, which had the most potential but must have been spoiled by promotional stuff cuz I certainly didn't read up on the movie privately).

[Gothos]

Just seen The Conjuring. Severely disappointed. For a few minutes near the beginning it was creepy enough but descended into full blown predictability and jump scares. I'll give the movie some credit for having not-completely-retarted hunters, but that's about it. Western horror still can't hold a candle to east asian.

[worry]

I watched Thor 2. Not much to say about it except it was still lugnut dumb but a lot better than the first one. Roughly three times better. In other words I give it 3 stars.