Recently viewed films

[crash8_durham]

just saw Harry Potter for the 2nd time. I find it very entertaining. My wife complains about it not following the book but considering this movie moves very fast for 2 and a half hours and still leaves out so much I am not sure what else they could have done with a 700 + page book.

[miss buenos aires]

I saw History of Violence yesterday, and I thought it was extremely well-done and thought-provoking. Is redemption possible, or do our sins insist on catching up with us? Is forgiveness possible, or even desirable? What are the consequences of violence on the perpetrator? Is violence a genetically, or socially, determined tendency? Really great.

[Mr. Average]

Walk the Line.

Completely unremarkable, save for a great performance by Reese Witherspoon as June Carter Cash. Phoenix (sp) is hyped as extraordinary but I certainly did not see anything special in the performance.

And who knew that Reese could actually sing. As does Phoenix, she sings all of the material in the film...and unless this stuff has been "Britany Spears mixed and remixed", she really has a beautiful singing voice.

I kept waiting for the biographical angle that would provide the unique insight into the mind of Johnny Cash, but all of the usual suspects line up, take a number, and are dutifully represented here. The screenplay manages to create some excitement around a solid melodramatic core, and the excitement is generated primarily by the live performances.

I expected more. All early years. Maybe what I was looking for was the stuff of legacy, and an understanding of where Mr. Cash saw himself as an artist and a performer. They must be saving that for "Walk the Line 2".

Or not.

[johnfoyle]

Saw Flightplan . Good fun but goes to hell about twenty minutes from the end when a plot twist removes any tension from the plot. Director Robert Schwentke has a wonderful style in his visuals , as already shown in Tattoo (2002).

In the ongoing French Film Festival here in the IFI , Dublin

http://www.irishfilm.ie/cinema/season2a ... =59&SID=92

I've seen Eros Therapie ( pretentious , smug rubbish , too episodic , with lazy performances by all concerned ) and Les Temps qui Changent (excellent , Catherine Deneuve and Gérard Depardieu giving their best performances in years , in a warts-'n-all depiction of contempoary life in French Tangiers) . Later this I week hope to see 13 (Tzameti) .

As usual it's been a pretty good selection , even if they have denied me my latest fix of Monica Belucci by not featuring Bertrand Blier's Combien tu m'aimes? ; hopefully that'll pop up in the new year.

[selfmademug]

Yesterday with my mom I went to see the current version of Pride and Prejudice. Won't they please leave this masterpiece alone for a while? It seems like a new rendition comes out every year.

It wasn't outright horrible or anything. The scenery is unstoppably magnificent, and the Bennets' home was refreshingly chaotic and charming (to say nothing of beautiful) and gave a better sense of the eccentricity of the family. The social detail is great, e.g., you really get a sense of the difference between the first ball and the later one thrown by the Bingleys, and I liked the camera work very much. And God knows it's great to see Donald Sutherland in a film that's not a total dog, and Dame Judy as a despicable character; they're both so good. But the added scene at the end is wincingly bad if for no other reason than that it has NO REASON WHATSOEVER for being there.

Matthew MacFadyen was a very Heathcliffe-style Mr. Darcy and seems a good actor, but I think Colin Firth still wins for his genuinely annoying and peevish but believably sympathetic portrayal.

Tom Hollander makes an excellent Wickham; I've adored him since seeing him as Guy Burgess in Cambridge Spies.

And I am now offically sick of Keira Knightley's underslung grimace of a smile. But that's just me. I think she's a pretty good actress, really, and she does a good job of Elizabeth. I just couldn't stand seeing her teeth by the end of the film.

My mother adored every minute of it, however, and that was the point in going, so I'm glad I went!

[miss buenos aires]

Saw Harry Potter this afternoon, and enjoyed the hell out of it. It made me laugh, and then, yes, it made me cry.

Here is my question: does anyone know where I might find a copy of the songs that Jarvis Cocker sings during the Yule Ball? I would be much happier if I could hear him sing, "Dance like a unicorn/ Stay up until the break of dawn" whenever I wanted.

[miss buenos aires]

Aha! There is a soundtrack. Never mind.

[miss buenos aires]

WHY DOES AMAZON NOT HAVE THE JARVIS COCKER SONGS ON THE CD? And why won't iTunes let me buy only the JC songs? This calls for some serious pouting.

[mood swung]

I had the same laughing/crying reaction to Harry, MBA. And I thought of you when I saw Jarvis (and I only knew who he was due to the fact that both RS and Blender have "What is Harry Listening to?" featurettes this month). My fave of the Potter films thus far.

[BlueChair]

Unlike Mr. Average, I saw Walk The Line and truly enjoyed it. Sure, they focused a LOT on the whole romance/drug side of Cash's life, but anyone who has read his autobiography will know how huge a part of his life that was at the time. Sure, they could have looked at Cash's life past 1969, but I'm kind of glad they didn't make Joaquin and Reese look like old people. I never find that kind of thing all that convincing.

[bobster]

I, too, saw "Walk the Line" this weekend. I enjoyed it. It's a very sweet love story when you boil it all down. Like Mr. Average (I think) I was slightly more taken with Reese Witherspoon, and she really is a shockingly good singer. Love to see her in a musical some time. Still, a good but not great film...I probably enjoyed "Ray" more, even though it's a far more flawed film. Still, a very good biopic and I really, really liked the opening, with the slowly growing sonic build-up as we approach the almost volcanic sonic tension at Folsom.

Also saw "A History of Violence" at a truly horrific bargain theater in Norwalk, CA. Like Senor Vez, I was really impressed by this movie. It's still playing in my head. Also, like Vez, I was utterly delighted (in a nasty sort of way) by William Hurt. It's a wonderfully imaginative bit of casting that cannot be described without giving away too much of the movie. David Cronenberg is a genius of genre filmmaking.

Will be seeing, I hope, both "Pride and Prejudice" and "Harry Potter" within a month or two...but first I have to finish reading both of the books!

[bobster]

Oh, and I almost forgot I finished watching "No Direction Home" via DVR last night (from it's slighly muddy-looking PBS b-cast...are they deliberately doing this to sell DVDs?). Freaking marvelous stuff...To those of you who have the DVDs, is there longer versions of the concert footage on it? If so, that's reason enough to buy it.

The concert footage in which we learn that, yes, people really, really were booing at Newport (and lots of other places) after all and, not only was Bob not bothered, but he gave the best performances I've ever seen from him (though I haven't seen all that many performances from my Bobsterish namsake, mainly just the occasional TV appearance and his bit in "The Last Waltz") was just something else again.

On the other hand, I could have really done without the post film "conversation" between Scorsese and Charlie Rose. I swear, the only unpretentious thing about Charlie Rose is his first name.

[El Vez]

I honestly think that William Hurt is going to pull a Ned Beatty and cop at least an Oscar nomination for his one scene although if Oscar doesn't figure out how to hand off one of those little golden men to Ed Harris sooner or later then they're gonna have some serious 'splainin' to do.

Felt like taking in a little genre filmmaking yesterday so I watched The Ice Harvest. I was actually quite suprised by how little comedy there was in the film because in the one tv spot I caught they were pretty clearly marketing it as this year's Bad Santa. Pretty dark little noir film although it never quite gets a rhythm going and I got the feeling that some essential plot points/character development got left on the cutting room floor because there were some abrupt shifts that made it hard to get in the spirit of the movie.

[VonOfterdingen]

"The Beat That My Heart Skipped" - Very French, very hip and very good. Kind of "The Piano Player" meets "Mean Streets"

[Mr. Average]

"Ice Harvest"

A riveting film. Great dark dark comedy. So many obliquely funny lines and situations that I was uncomfortable laughing in an environment where the audience was not laughing along. The dark comedy rides on a very powerful undercurrent of lonliness and despair. All set on Christmas eve. But it has nothing to do with Christmas. I think about 50% of the audience let the film ambience choke the comedy. Too bad, because there is some very clever and funny stuff.

Lonely. Dark. Funny as hell.

If you recall a film called "A Simple Plan" which also featured Thornton, this works on that same plane, but with the comedic overtones. An interesting study in how people react once they find themselves caught up in a bad situation.

[martinfoyle]

Am I the first one here to have seen King Kong? Whatever, it's great fun. Time will tell whether it'll be considered a classic, it's certainly extremely entertaining. Naomi Watts plays a blinder, Jack Black gives a refreshingly tic free performance. The pacing is just about right, you really dont notice the 3 hours go by. By all means see it in a cinema.

[Otis Westinghouse]

I think it opens here this weekend. Wanna go! No-one seen Narnia yet? I will next week. We so rarely get to the cinema together, my wife and I. Last saturday a part we were going to was cancelled when the hostess got double pneumonia, so we decided to keep the babysitter booked and go to the cinema. Nothing on! Would gladly have seen Keira Knightley pout in P & P, and really wanted to see Broken Flowers when on, but the excellent Cambridge Arts is trying to stop itself going bankrupt and so had Narnia and Harry Potter on. So we opted for Flightplan. Got the tickets in the afternoon to avoid queuing and getting in late, then youngest child got a raging temperature and had to go see a doctor. So no cinema that evening. One day...

[VonOfterdingen]

Am I the first one here to have seen King Kong? Whatever, it's great fun. Time will tell whether it'll be considered a classic, it's certainly extremely entertaining. Naomi Watts plays a blinder, Jack Black gives a refreshingly tic free performance. The pacing is just about right, you really dont notice the 3 hours go by. By all means see it in a cinema.

Oh yes - saw it monday. It's quite a ride, though things get out of hand at Skull Island. It's almost like there's a whole Jurassic Park movie built in the movie. Still a joy to watch. The gorilla himself is flawless.

[miss buenos aires]

Flightplan kind of sucked, anyway.

Watched Mystic River on DVD last night. Sean Penn left tooth marks all over the scenery, and did that Laura Linney speech just come out of left field, or what? And the Kevin Bacon subplot was silly, especially since he went from receiving some fairly heavy news to laughing and smiling on the phone. So, I was not impressed. Except with Tim Robbins.

[Otis Westinghouse]

Knowing this more or less anyway made it far less painful to have to miss it (it was just the tight-arsed scrooge in me wincing at the waste of £12 that really suffered!). if it had been, say, Broken Flowers I would have been desperate. Still, a sick kid's a sick kid. I was, however, looking forward to the prospect of a corny, far-fetched plane movie and Jodie Foster's always watchable. have had me fill of aeroplanes with Lost though (oh my gawwwd - Boone dies, Clare has her baby, Jack flashes back to getting married, Jack realises Lock is responsible for Boone's death, the Korean couple spoke to each other again, about 5 entirely silent extras appeared to look at the baby - all in one episode!).

[alexv]

Saw King Kong with my five year old son, and I am pretty sure that he's going to remember this experience for a very long time. As others have pointed out it is a great thrill ride of a movie, a silly thrill ride, but a ride nevertheless. We've been talking about paintings a lot lately, and this movie is a reminder of how the screen can be used like a canvass by a great visual filmmaker. By the way, the next time I see it (on DVD) I will try to count the number of mindnumbingly large close-ups of Naomi Watts. If the old theory that a director's love of his female star is measured by the number of close ups is correct, Jackson is besotted. Funnily enough, her close ups exposed a number of continuity mistakes such as a stain on her face disappearing in the next close up, or lipstick coming or going at random. They must have been thinking about the effects. Jack Black, an actor I dislike intensely, was his usual blot on the horizon. Bizarrely enough, as I was watching him hyper-emote, Welles' performance as young Kane came to mind. The other actors tried gamely, but ultimately the movie is just the roller coaster ride of animals, fights, ship wrecks and a very large ape.

[miss buenos aires]

Question for those who've seen King Kong: was Adrien Brody's play at the end supposed to be bad? Because it seemed like it was supposed to be bad, but that didn't really fit with anything else in the story.

[martinfoyle]

I got the impression the play was one of those plays that starts out funny but gradually gets horribly serious by the end. I suffered many John B. Keane plays that were like that. Since the film was jumping between scenes at the time, Brody/Driscolls play does appear to be cliched since we only see bits of it. So it's hard to say it was bad or not.

[alexv]

Agree with Martin. It looked as if Brody was moved while seeing it, but the dialogue, acting and playgoer reaction all struck me as mannered. At the time, Kong was invading Times Square and all I was interested in was the great reproductions of Times Square. Nothing in the story connected emotionally with me. I was struck how at movie's end some women in the audience (alas no men) were wiping tears away. The "beauty/beast" and "man destroying innocent animal" things were overwhelmed by the sheer spectacle. Let's just say that Naomi Watts fell from such dizzying heights, and landed in the hands of the ape or in the water or in soft jungle beddings so many times as to make her survival more the work of movie magic than the inherent humanity of a big ape.

[Tim(e)]

** SPOILER ALERT! **

Was that the play that Ann Darrow had been trying to get a part in at the beginning of the film? Perhaps it served two purposes - to remind Jack Driscoll of what a fool he was to let her go, and to tie the beginning and the end of the film together(?).

Maybe I am an insensitive bastard, but I found the scenes involving Ann Darrow performing in front of Kong (juggling etc) and the scene on ice in Central Park, to be just mind-numbingly inane. Sure the scene on ice was supposed to create a contrast between the chaos Kong was about to face and this moment of tranquility being the closest he would ever come to his life on Skull Island, but it dragged on and was as cheesy as all hell - so cheesy in fact, for a moment I thought we had drifted into a production of King Kong on Ice. The "performing Darrow" scene was to my mind absolutely pointless and worse, it felt far too unnatural.

The brontosaurus stampede was just cartoon-like and the giant insects thing has been done a hundred times before - forget Jurassic Park, this was getting closer to Indiana Jones and The Mummy. So much of what occurred on Skull Island in this production was unnecessary and ultimately let down the amazing CGI used to create Kong.

I will buy the DVD eventually (it is still a good film... just disappointing for a Jackson effort), but I definitely will not bother with the big screen again.