Recently viewed films

laughingcrow · Post by **laughingcrow** » Mon Jan 12, 2004 11:25 am

Speaking of The Ladykillers, can I just big up the utterly brilliant original version of this film starring Peter Sellers and Alec Guinness....if you ain't seen it, see it!!!!!!

Goody2Shoes · Post by **Goody2Shoes** » Mon Jan 12, 2004 2:22 pm

Took a bunch of 8-year-olds to see Cheaper By The Dozen. Ugh. They liked it. I laughed once in 2 hours. Sadly, the dad is portrayed as an idiot who can handle the rigors of neither his family nor his job.

bobster · Post by **bobster** » Mon Jan 12, 2004 9:31 pm

Haven't seen it, but according to the people who report these things, "Big Fish" edged out LOTR this week at the book office and got the #1 spot. Very impressive B.O. (that's boxoffice, for non-Hollywood residents) for a movie that's being advertised as a sort of magic realist people story, even with some big stars.

Post by **BlueChair** » Mon Jan 12, 2004 10:11 pm

Check out the Ladykillers trailer at: http://ladykillers.movies.go.com/

It really does look awesome!

laughingcrow · Post by **laughingcrow** » Tue Jan 13, 2004 6:47 am

IF the Coen version sucks, (which it probably won't), I'm going to be like a dog on demented heat...for the original is GODLIKE!

Has anyone else seen it? I encourage any right-thinking denizens of the board to seek it out..

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/de ... ance&s=dvd

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASI ... 33-8000612

martinfoyle · Post by **martinfoyle** » Tue Jan 13, 2004 10:34 am

bobster wrote:Haven't seen it, but according to the people who report these things, "Big Fish" edged out LOTR this week at the book office and got the #1 spot. Very impressive B.O. (that's boxoffice, for non-Hollywood residents) for a movie that's being advertised as a sort of magic realist people story, even with some big stars.

According to this, http://movies.yahoo.com/boxoffice/latest/rank.html ,
LOTR comfortably stayed on top. Still the dubiously spun projected figures will create the impression Fish was number 1. The wonders of marketing.

bobster · Post by **bobster** » Wed Jan 14, 2004 10:08 pm

I stand corrected, and, as an LOTR booster, happ'ly so!

laughingcrow · Post by **laughingcrow** » Sat Jan 17, 2004 6:50 pm

Went to see Last Samurai.....meh. I thought the characters apart from Cruise's were weak, it was about half an hour too long, the relationship with the woman was unbelievable, it had a stupid schmaltzy ending, and Billy Connolly did the worst ever Irish accent.

Timothy Spall was good, as was the guy who played the head Samurai...apart from that, average at best.

pophead2k · Post by **pophead2k** » Sun Jan 18, 2004 12:24 pm

I bought The Apartment and Days of Wine and Roses on DVD yesterday. Jack Lemmon was a national treasure- my all time favortie actor.

Misha · Post by **Misha** » Mon Jan 19, 2004 12:59 pm

Went and saw The Cooler with Bobster over the weekend. It is really, really good, if you can suspend some of the believability issues. I liked the honesty of it...and the griminess of it...a lot of the gambling references went over my head, but not over Bobsters.

Acting was amazing!!!

Go see it!!!

Mr. Average · Post by **Mr. Average** » Mon Jan 19, 2004 1:52 pm

A few pages back within this thread, I made a few commens about 21 Grams while I was still using the "Verbal Kint" screenname. I have seen no other mention of it in this thread. I consider it an astounding piece of work.

I think we will be hearing about this film for some time to come. As I mentioned on my previous post, I feel that this film finally positions Del Toro as a lead, and not merely a 'support' actor. I cannot think of any other film where Del Toro is justly positioned as a lead.

bobster · Post by **bobster** » Mon Jan 19, 2004 6:04 pm

Well, my own enthusiasm was a bit more muted. I told Misha that part of my problem with it was that I actually knew a bit too much, perhaps, about the subject. (For example, no one in the movies EVER plays craps correctly. Explaining why would take WAY too long and would confuse everyone.)

Basically, I think it has some problems in that it tries to be a kind of dark fairy tale, but is too realistic in certain ways and anachronistic in others (again that's the Vegas knowledge creeping in...the film posits a mobbed up, large casino where the boss occasionally murders cheaters -- I found this hard to swallow in a contemporary setting. If they had set it during the eighties, when Vegas was slowly changing from its mobbed up roots, it might have been effective for me).

Still, the first half is pretty great, the acting is outstanding and it's pretty clever. You could do an awful lot worse.

---

I also saw "Peter Pan" over the weekend. I wanted to check it out because I like J.M. Barrrie's play and it had gotten some good reviews. However, bottom line: terrific visuals, uneven acting (the kid playing Peter kind of sucks, obnoxiously -- everyone else is good) and P.J. Hogan's obvious decision to render the story's sexual subtexts as texts which kind of drain the story of all tensions. (Peter practically leers at Wendy through the entire film -- since her love for him is no longer mostly unrequited, there's really no story left.)

martinfoyle · Post by **martinfoyle** » Mon Jan 19, 2004 8:04 pm

Saw Girl With The Pearl Earing, Runaway Jury and Paycheck over the weekend.
Johanson is great and the visuals are stunning in 'Earing, other than that it struck me as a superior tv movie. Paycheck was truly awful. Since this piece of junk was given a cinema release, the vastly superior but too similiar Cypher , http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0284978/ , will probably go straight to video in the US. A disgrace.
Runaway Jury was by far the most entertaining of the lot. Zippy pacing, wonderful ham acting by all involved, I loved it.

HungupStrungup · Post by **HungupStrungup** » Mon Jan 19, 2004 10:43 pm

I liked Runaway Jury too. It's no classic of course, but it would be hard for any film with Dustin Hoffman, Gene Hackman and John Cusack as the leads to suck.

bobster · Post by **bobster** » Tue Jan 20, 2004 1:01 pm

martinfoyle wrote:Paycheck was truly awful. Since this piece of junk was given a cinema release, the vastly superior but too similiar Cypher , http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0284978/ , will probably go straight to video in the US. A disgrace.

With the exception of "Face-Off", John Woo's U.S. film career has been truly sad. For some reason, when he was in Hong Kong, he could do a film that was pretty much non-stop action and still tell a great story.

Apparently, mainstream Hollywood is afraid that a decent story will get in the way of action. Sad.

laughingcrow · Post by **laughingcrow** » Wed Jan 21, 2004 6:06 am

HungupStrungup wrote:I liked Runaway Jury too. It's no classic of course, but it would be hard for any film with Dustin Hoffman, Gene Hackman and John Cusack as the leads to suck.

gotta love Rachel Weisz too....c'mon!

girl out of time · Post by **girl out of time** » Wed Jan 21, 2004 12:18 pm

i saw "shadows" by john cassavetes (1957)......a really interesting film about the new york life in the late 50s: the beat generation, racism, the night life, the sexual revolution,.....really interesting concepts........plus an awesome photography........it was like seeing a slide show of the william klein´s photographies of new york.........just amazing!!!!!!!!

girl out of time · Post by **girl out of time** » Wed Jan 21, 2004 12:35 pm

more info on this film......(from yahoo movies)

........When actor John Cassavetes, frustrated with the lack of reality in movies in the late 1950s, decided to direct his own low-budget film, a new form of cinema was born. Defined as "an improvisation" in the closing credits, SHADOWS concerns three New York siblings whose mixed racial backgrounds create tension in their relationships. Hugh (Hugh Herd) is a dark-skinned jazz singer who can only find work that belittles his talent; Lelia (Lelia Goldoni), a light-skinned aspiring writer; and Ben (Ben Carruthers), the youngest, a light-skinned ladies man who spends his nights searching with his white friends for conquests. Hugh and Ben argue over Ben’s inability to accept his racial background, an issue that reaches its boiling point when Lelia develops a relationship with Tony (Anthony Ray), a racist. The film boasts a gritty, compelling style, and Charles Mingus’s bouncy jazz score enhances the frenetic camera work to give it a documentary-like feel. The performances, all naturalistic and seemingly unrehearsed, add even greater realism to Cassavetes’s vision, resulting in a visionary work that is widely considered the first independent American film.
MPAA Rating: PG.

Cast and Credits

Starring: Ben Carruthers, Lelia Goldoni, Hugh Herd, Anthony Ray, Rupert Cross
Directed by: John Cassavetes
Produced by: Maurice McEndree

Gillibeanz · Post by **Gillibeanz** » Wed Jan 21, 2004 3:08 pm

I just watched Jeeper Creepers 2. Pretty good movie. Im terrible - after watching it I wont go upstairs in the dark on my own. Next day i'm fine!!

miss buenos aires · Post by **miss buenos aires** » Thu Jan 22, 2004 2:09 pm

The Battle of Algiers just got re-released here...I went in prepared for a classic, but I was underwhelmed. For one, I kept falling asleep, which I don't think is suposed to happen in a movie with so many explosions. Then I did the classic falling-asleep-during-a-foreign-movie monologue: "it's okay, I speak French, I don't need to have my eyes open to read the subtitles...is that French?...maybe it's Arabic...I bet I can kind of understand Arabic..." The clunk is my chin hitting my chest.

A rope leash · Post by **A rope leash** » Thu Jan 22, 2004 2:50 pm

The film is supposed to have parallels to modern day events. Apparently, the French couldn't hold on against the constant pecking by native "insurgents".

I watched Confessions of a Dangerous Mind the other night, and enjoyed it very much.

martinfoyle · Post by **martinfoyle** » Thu Jan 22, 2004 6:50 pm

Human Stain is opening here tomorrow. Is it any good? It's getting mixed reviews. Scary Movie 3 is also opening. I know that will be shite, but, I suspect, enjoyable shite. We'll see.

laughingcrow · Post by **laughingcrow** » Fri Jan 23, 2004 10:58 am

Went to see American Splendour....brilliant brilliant briliant

martinfoyle · Post by **martinfoyle** » Sat Jan 24, 2004 6:59 am

Human Stain is a terrible mess. The earliest indicator of this was the unnecessary voiceover, i.e. the film tanked at the previews. The big problems are the leads. Kidman is horrendously ott, acting way outside her range, truly cringingly bad, while Hopkins, recognising this, phones in his performance. The sad part is that there are some good stretches, mainly the scenes not involving the leads. Not surprising considering Robert Benton's track record, http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000914/,
he probably thought he could fix things in the editing. Not so, not so. Dreadful tagged on ending to clarify things as well.
Scary Movie 3 is enjoyable shite, Charlie Sheen shining as always.

laughingcrow · Post by **laughingcrow** » Thu Feb 05, 2004 2:44 pm

Big Fish....good story, well told. Ewan and Albert are good, Helena Bonham-Carter is a boring actress. Nice to see a giant being employed in a film instead of using some CGI stuff, you don't see many of them around these days since the old wars of the north, so that was refreshing.

Good film, but no Oscar winner. Cool soundtrack though...

Man Of The Hour - Pearl Jam
Dinah - Bing Crosby
Everyday - Buddy Holly
All Shook Up - Elvis Presley
Five O'Clock World - The Vogues
Ramblin' Man - The Allman Brothers
Let's Work Together - Canned Heat