The MOVIES thread

mistasparkle* · Post by mistasparkle* » Sun Mar 28, 2004 7:31 pm

Starsky and Hutch - This movie had so much potential to be funny/cool with an amazing cast, and a great 70s theme... but thats all it had, potential. I felt like I was waiting the entire movie for something funny to happen. There were a few moments here and there that were funny, but most of it was pretty predictable stuff. Ben Stiller was pretty good, but not his best performance. On the other hand, Owen Wilson sucks. I've gotten so sick of the Owen Wilson character: the self-worshipping lady killer. It was bearable when he first started, but role-after-role it's gotten so tired and obnoxious now, that he probably actually does love-himself as much as his characters do. Vince Vagn is always good, but you can see how poorly written the movie was to begin with, when even he doesn't pull laughs. Maybe my expectations were too high, but.... I give it a thumbs down

mistasparkle* · Post by mistasparkle* » Sun Mar 28, 2004 7:35 pm

The Last Samurai -

zzzzzZZZZZzzzzzZZZZ
It looked good, but it was boring as hell. And Tom Cruise winning vs. 5 samurai in a swordfight in that 1st battle....???

WEAK!

Ocean11 · Post by **Ocean11** » Sun Mar 28, 2004 8:00 pm

Interesting - Mr* makes a dramatic bid for 'Iconoclast of 2004'. Everybody else says TLS it's either great or good.

However, when I get round to seeing it, something tells me I'll agree with Mr*. From the trailers I've seen, Thomas Mapother plays Tom Cruise as usual.

mistasparkle* · Post by mistasparkle* » Sun Mar 28, 2004 10:05 pm

I was actually really looking forward to seeing TLS... and I can't say I didn't hear critical things about it before I saw it. That along with the fact that it's only been a few months since I watched the shogun miniseries (which I thought was pretty good, and handled the western/japanese contrast better) added up to disappointment. I mean it had great production, and It looked great. But Cruise's character's transformation from mercenary to samurai just seemed so trite and hollywood. I just didnt buy it....

But either way it wasn't a bad movie, it just didnt live up to my expectations.
I would still recommend seeing it for kicks anyway...

Post by **enderzero** » Tue Mar 30, 2004 4:58 pm

Open Range - This Kevin Costner directed cowboy flick shines in one area. Robert Duvall. This man is truly a great. Costner delivers a few lines well but overall both he and Annette Benning are unimpressive. The story seems a bit rushed. The love story is undeveloped and so is the pretext to them being "free grazers" (what's a free grazer?). The open range shots are few and far between and they never clearly define where they are (was that New Zealand?). Some landmarks would have been nice. The shootout isn't too bad if not incredibly predictable but the bad guy is just too bad and I didn't even like the kid that much either. I wasn't much impressed with this one.

SpeedCricket · Post by **SpeedCricket** » Thu Apr 01, 2004 8:31 pm

Qwik K.Costner movie formula:

1. Make a shitty romance movie involving sports.
or
2. Make a shitty action movie (must have horses in it no matter what - even WaterWorld had horses!)

If K.Costner is lurking: DANCES WITH WOLVES does not give you permission to make crap on screen jerksticker!!!!

Post by **enderzero** » Thu Apr 08, 2004 7:27 pm

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind I liked it. A lot! It even got its own thread.

Post by **enderzero** » Wed May 19, 2004 2:25 pm

Holy Crap I haven't seen a movie in 6 weeks! This thread was on the 5th page back! Saw a couple on the flight though.

Big Fish Well it was worth watching but not entirely what I had hoped for. The Ewan MacGregor parts are entertaining and give the movie a kind of O Brother feel but the insistence of Billy Crudup that his dad come clean with him before he dies was annoying. It all lead to an incredibly predictable "that's just the way dad was" conclusion.

The Mosquito Coast An 80's movie starring Harrison Ford and River Phoenix. The dad (Ford), a zany inventor, gets fed up with life in America and heads to Central America to live Swiss Family Robinson style. There are some fun and some very pretty scenes before everything goes bad and the incredibly stubborn Ford loses it. Worth watching... on TV.

Big Shit · Post by **Big Shit** » Fri May 28, 2004 2:18 am

Wow, Lupin the 3rd movie!

spidermonkey · Post by **spidermonkey** » Fri May 28, 2004 9:48 am

That's almost sacrilegious...

Post by **enderzero** » Fri May 28, 2004 1:40 pm

You mean Donnie Yen as Goemon?

That is fantastic! Jason Lee as Lupin?! I just hope it doesn't disappoint.

Post by **enderzero** » Fri May 28, 2004 2:13 pm

Oh yeah - movies.

Coffee and Cigarettes This Jim Jarmush collection of 5 to 10 minute shorts is a really fun introduction to this filmmaker. I have heard of him often but now plan to check out more of his work. The movie focuses on short meetings over the movies namesake between a vairety of film and music celebrities ranging from Steven Wright and Roberto Benigni to Bill Murray, The RZA, and The GZA. The pairs of Iggy Pop and Tom Waits and Bill Rice and Taylor Mead are both particularly clever ones. An interesting thing about this very enjoyable movie is that half of the shorts were actually shot in the late 80s and shelved until Jarmusch got around to finishing the others.

A Guy Thing ugghhh. I tried to watch this hopelessly lame and formulaic romantic crapedy that even Jason Lee cannot save twice and have twice turned it off.

The Pounding Machine: The Life and Times of Mark Kerr This HBO film is a pretty interesting look into the sometimes depressing life of Ultimate Fighting champ turned Pride burn out Mark Kerr. Come along for the ride as he battles with drug addiction and and a shitty relationship. The really interesting part is the behind the scenes look at Pride fighting and its history.

The Triplets of Belleville This fantastic animated film from France was Oscar nominated for Best Animated Feature and Best Song. The movie follows a funny old mother as she follows her constantly oblivious bicylcing son as he is kidnapped and taken to New York to bicycle for gambling mobsters. The animation is top notch and story is incredibly engaging considering it is almost completely devoid of narrative and dialog. I highly recommend checking this one out.

ed9k · Post by **ed9k** » Thu Jun 03, 2004 10:56 am

So the movie "Something The Lord Made" Wasn't nearly as good as I had anticipated, but oh well....got to see Alan Rickman!

May
This is a story of a girl "Making" friends.....really good is all I can say.

Rent it now! I command you!

Spider
We saw this one last night. I must say I liked this movie quite a bit too, although it was rather unsatisfying at the end. The film itself is quite stunning as far as the way that it looks, and it's got some great mindfuck moments.....it's just kind of slow and plodding so don't be expecting to see something along the lines of, say,

The Rundown
Stiffler and the Scorpion guy make for some good old fashioned great tasting less filling action fluff......a good time, but the diarrhea was terrible.......

Post by **enderzero** » Thu Jun 03, 2004 11:46 am

Something the Lord Made As ed9k said above it was not quite what we had hoped. The story was interesting and the acting was superb (both Mos Def and Alan Rickman) but the writing was serious Hallmark Hall of Fame. We are talking some real melodrama here, wrought with unsatisfied homosexual tension. And what is up with the title anyway?

Troy Speaking of latent homosexual melodrama... Here we go, take a bunch of greased up, muscled, long-haired pretty boys in skirts and send them around slapping each other for 3 hours and you've got the summer's first blockbuster. Talk about hissy fits - Achilles and Agamemnon, Achilles and Eudorus, Achilles and Patroclus, Achilles and Hector. Achilles was pissed at everyone. But I went into this movie with low expectations, and they were met. So chalk this one up in the worth seeing column. I was quite surprised by Eric Bana as Hector after his awful performance in last summer's The Hulk.

Fog of War This seemingly autobiographical documentary is the story of Robert McNamara, most famous for being Secretary of Defense during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. He also had a hand in planning how the US handled Japan during WWII. While full of interesting tidbits, this movie is very confused and draws no real conclusions. It felt to me like McNamara was just trying to get a bunch of stuff off his chest. He seemed to be saying, "Look, I know that I am partially responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths in my life, but I was doing the best job I could at the time. Yeah I know some of the decisions might be wrong in hindsight, like firebombing Tokyo, dropping nuclear weapons on Japan, getting involved in Vietnam...but I did invent the seatbelt." There are some obvious similarities to be drawn between those times of the past and what is happening right now, unfortunately this film misses many a chance to make these apparent.

Goemon · Post by **Goemon** » Fri Jun 04, 2004 1:41 am

Movies I saw on the airplane the past week:

Girl with a Pearl Earring
What a great movie! If you don't like period pieces though, this may not be for you. I want to see this on a bigger screen though and check if the airline cut out some sexiness.

Love Actually
This decent British romantic comedy did not make me throw up. I guess the airline also cut out a storyline about people in a pr0n shoot.

Starsky and Hutch
Booooo! I had this on in the background while I read a newspaper. I kept waiting for something that would make me laugh, but that moment never came. What a waste of Snoop Dogg.

Along Came Polly
This was a pretty standard, formulaic romantic comedy with Ben Stiller, Jennifer Anniston and Phillip Seymour Hoffman. It was relatively painless, compared to Starsky and Hutch. And I did like the basketball scenes with Hoffman.

And for some reason, they played Almost Famous, but they completely cut out the airplane scene. I understand that they can't show a near-crash in a film being shown on an airplane, but...why show that movie then? It was a pretty critical part of the story.

Post by **enderzero** » Fri Jun 04, 2004 2:09 am

Definitelty no echi in GWAPE. But aren't Hoffman and Azaria funny in ACP? "Are you for scuba?" still has me crackin up.

Zatoichi Cue bleach blonde Takeshi Kitano kickin some ass... now! This is a pretty damn good movie for a samurai flick although the much improved sword slashing flesh CG couldn't compare to the amazing realism seen in Troy. However the plot is solid from beginning to end, the acting is great, and the tap dancing samurai finale is the best ending to a Japanese movie I have seen in a long while.

Goemon · Post by **Goemon** » Fri Jun 04, 2004 2:24 am

Yeah. Azaria was good too. I'd forgotten about him and his hippo story. I thought Alec Baldwin's "Mazel!" was good too.

Post by **enderzero** » Mon Jun 21, 2004 10:17 am

What the#$*! Do We Know?! Maybe more commonly known as "What the Bleep," this strangely (mis)guided movie takes you on a journey from quantum physics to new age self help via some kind of strange half animation sub plot starring a deaf woman. I think The Stranger reviewer Emily Hall summed it up well here:

I never got around to figuring out what a quantum leap is, but now I know: It's when you make a short jump from quantum mechanics to New Age self-help kookiness. That's what happens in this ungainly, inane film, which purports to be about quantum physics but is really about the power of positive thinking, with a midlife-crisis plot (starring Marlee Matlin) and some childish cartoon figures and a series of talking heads who can't stop using the word "paradigm."

Scarface I can cross this one off of the "can't believe I've never seen" list. ehhh... The best way I can describe this movie is "dated." Not that it wasn't good in its time (1983) but I found the required suspension of disbelief a little much to muster. Unfortunately, an interesting plot surrounding the influx of Cubans to Florida (where are the actual Cuban or Latino actors?) is marred by bad dialog and lack of ingenuity. It was rather violent (you may have heard), but not in a good way like, say, The Godfather. A young Michelle Pfeiffer (in her early 20s) is smooooookin hot though.

21 Grams Everyone warned me that this movie was a real downer. I can see what they were talking about, but I think it worked. I would characterize it more as confusing than depressing. The timeline is all over the place and I think I need another, maybe less sleepy, viewing to fully understand it. Sean Penn and Benicio Del Toro are flawless as to be expected, but the real show stealer is the beautiful Naomi Watts whose starred in films have now been elevated to the status of must see.

Post by **enderzero** » Thu Jun 24, 2004 11:10 am

The Terminal A Steven Spielberg movie. That about sums it up. It is well made and a bit cliched but fun. Tom Hanks, as on as ever, plays an Eastern European trapped at JFK airport when his country dissolves mid transit. The story unfolds from there as he makes friends in the airport and leads a semi-normal life in the international transit lounge. A bit of S.O.D. is required, but it is expected and doesn't reallt detract too heaily. Catherine Zeta Jones plays the flight attendant love interest and looks just about the best she ever has. There was something very different about her appearance in this film. I enjoyed this movie but wouldn't put it on any "Best of..." lists.

Post by **enderzero** » Fri Jun 25, 2004 7:35 pm

Fahrenheit 9/11 A very powerful and moving movie and very well made. Click here for the full review.

The two hour runtime went by like it was 20 minutes. The message is never clouded, issues are never confusingly handled, and it never feels overly ambitious. The flow of the film is the best of any of his documentaries yet. On top of that, Moore continues with his uncanny ability to put a pit in your chest and well tears in your eyes one minute and have you busting out laughing the next.

SpeedCricket · Post by **SpeedCricket** » Sat Jun 26, 2004 5:44 pm

I need clarification:
Just saw Mulholland Drive for the first time. Though it has kept my mind occupied, was it great or just strange?

Post by **enderzero** » Sat Jun 26, 2004 6:40 pm

I tend to think strange. I have only seen it once and have heard it gets better on repeated viewings but it really seemed to me like an exercise in the bizarre. I can see Lynch nudging his buddies and saying, "check this out, I can make this completely normal movie for the first half and then just send it into fucking plan nine from outer space land and people will still think I am brilliant." I guess that is the difference between someone like him and the kind of stuff that Kauffman and his buddies have been doing. Their stuff is bizarre but satisfying while Lynch's (well at least Mullholland Drive) is just frustrating. I liked the little Twin Peaks-isms, though and should probably watch the film again.

Post by **enderzero** » Sun Jun 27, 2004 9:16 am

Whale Rider A very beautifully made movie about a Maori village and their traditions. This film hosts the amazing debut by the young Keisha Castle-Hughes (at the time age 11) who completely steals the show as Paikea. When her grandfather shuns her in his search for a new leader for the tribe, Paikea takes it upon herself to learn the ancient traditions. It is a many times told story of overcoming one's social limitations, but this film does it masterfully.

Post by **enderzero** » Fri Jul 09, 2004 11:14 am

Spiderman 2 This movie has received serious critical acclaim with a 94% composite on RT. While I had a fun time with it I don't think it is quite deserving of a score like that. Tobey Maguire plays a great Peter Parker, that cannot be argued with. Kirsten Dunst is a starlet and Alfred Molina does a great job as the evil Doc Ock. Unfortunately there is just a little too much suspension of disbelief required to call this a masterpiece. I was also a bit bothered by the way that everything went wrong for Peter for the first hour and a half of the movie. He might as well have been played by Ben Stiller. But I had a great time with this movie none the less. It is action-packed, fun-filled, well acted, and even a bit touching. It just isn't really the kind of movie that sticks with you after you leave the theater.

Roger Ramjet · Post by **Roger Ramjet** » Sun Jul 11, 2004 9:34 pm

Well what a weird but great movie this was! How can a movie be depressing and uplifting at the same time? Tells the life story of Harvey Pekar (sp?), a rather gloomy file clerk living in Cleveland that decides to write his own comic books after befriending Krum, illustrator for various underground comics such as Hector the Cat. Harvey is a miserable cunt, but you can't help but like him and the cast of weird and wonderful characters in Harvey's life are fantastic. My favourite is Toby, the most likeable, near autistic geek you could ever meet, with a real love for White Castle fast food and an inspiration from Revenge of the Nerds. Why this movie is so likeable is hard to decribe, as generally his life is rather gray, but the movies' hard reality, unexpected hilarious moments and excellent comic book-like visual style really took me along for the ride. I also really liked that you got to see the real people the movie was based on, in little mini-interviews during the movie. I loved the jelly-bean scene in the studio with Toby and the real footage of Harvey on the letterman show. A quirky film, and a little slow paced, but like a mellow friend ultimately very endearing. Four thumbs up (out of a possible five thumbs).

mistasparkle* · Post by mistasparkle* » Sun Jul 11, 2004 11:48 pm

watched In America last night, for lack of anything better to watch. I would sum it up by saying "meh!"

Started out promising with an indie feel and interesting storytelling... but it quickly devolved to sappy cliche crap. I thought Djimon Hounsou was really good, but it wasn't enough to make me like the movie.

mistasparkle* · Post by mistasparkle* » Mon Jul 12, 2004 12:07 am

Also saw The Fog of War, and thought it was good. I definitely came out of it thinking that Mcnamara, as controversial of a character as he was, has certainly learned the lessons of his mistakes, and has much wisdom to share. I gotta disagree with teh 3ndar... Unlike "other" recent documentaries that have a well stated direction, this one does not. Not having a distinct well stated case does not necessarily make a documentary confused. It just makes it objective, which I think is what made it powerful in it's own way. It lays all the cards on the table and leaves opinion for the viewer to determine. I didn't think the seatbelt bit was trying to say "hey I saved as many people as I killed," as much as it was trying to point out how he approached problems statistically (like he did in reaching the objectives set for him as secretary of defense).

The filmmakers never hammer you over the head with indictments of the current admin's approach to war, which it could have done easily. Instead it objectively presents the wise lessons learned by McNamara, which in and of themselves (when applied to current events), make a very compelling argument against Bush's approach.

Roger Ramjet · Post by **Roger Ramjet** » Mon Jul 12, 2004 12:13 am

Yeah, saw the trailer for that one while going to see American Splendour. Looks like something I would like to go and see. How much archivial war footage does it contain, especially of the Tokyo fire-bombing and the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings? I am a sucka for that kind of shiznit. Also how much does it go into the reasons and planning of the bombings. You know the kind of stuff I mean?

mistasparkle* · Post by mistasparkle* » Mon Jul 12, 2004 1:43 am

It had quite a bit of war footage, including terrifying footage of a 280mm artillary cannon firing a nuclear shell (which is something I've never seen before). and... it did get into the reasoning and psyche that went into the firebombing of tokyo and nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

I've still got a copy of it on my drive if you wanna grab it from me...

Post by **enderzero** » Mon Jul 12, 2004 11:50 am

Dims - if you are into Japan during WWII info you would dig that movie for sure. I am not saying that it should have been a Moore-esque expose on the current adminsitration, I just think it felt unfocused. Even an semi-objective documentary should have some kind of thesis. It seemed a bit more like a biopic confused for a docu.

Anchorman I don't usually use emoticons in movie reviews but I give this one a

. This movie was everything I had hoped for. It isn't the funniest movie ever made but there were enough side-achingly funny scenes to make it well worth my time. The stars are great (Ferrell, Steve Carell, Vince Vaughn, Paul Rudd and even Christina Applegate are all funny) and the costumes are fantastic. There are enough memorable (quotable) lines to put this bad boy on par with Zoolander and it is chock full of cameos (Jack Black to Luke Wilson). My only criticism is that Fred Willard was underused and really not very funny. Kudos to SNL writer Adam McKay on his directorial debut. I can't wait for the deleted scenes and outtakes on the DVD.

teh Forum

teh Forum

The MOVIES thread

Starsky and Hutch

Um, yeah

Mullholland Drive

American Speldour

In America