Recent Movies you Watched

[SeijiSensei]

I watched the movie version of John LeCarre's Tinker, Tailor, Solidier, Spy a week or two ago, and I must say that despite some excellent performances, the script was a muddled mess. I haven't re-read the novel in quite some time, but I re-watched the 1979 BBC version with Alec Guinness in the role of Smiley. A seven-part mini-series gave Guinness the opportunity to develop a subtle and complex personification of a subtle and complex character. Gary Oldman does a fine job in the role, but there just wasn't enough time to recount this intricate story in a two-hour film. As one example, Smiley's pivotal meeting with Jim Prideaux occupies nearly an entire episode of the mini-series, while getting just a few minutes of screen time in the movie version.

I'd put Guinness's work in Tinker, Tailor on a par with his performances in Bridge over the River Kwai, Doctor Zhivago, and Lawrence of Arabia. For younger audiences who know him only as Obi-wan Kenobi, please avail yourselves of the opportunity to see this master of the English stage and cinema in some of his other fine roles Here's is his IMDB entry for reference.

[james0246]

^Never go from Star Wars to Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. That is just awful advice. . You'll end up driving more people away than toward Guinness.

Better to start with some intermediate affair. The Ladykillers, The Lavender Hill Mob and The Man in the White Suit are great places to start to experience the wonder and joy that is Sir Alec Guinness' long and fruitful career.

[SeijiSensei]

Personally I'd start with Bridge on the River Kwai. The "Ealing" comedies are funny, but I prefer watching Guinness in dramatic roles. Everyone is upstaged by O'Toole in Lawrence, but Guinness's sly Arab monarch is another great and subtle performance.

[Akito Kinomoto]

Mega Shark VS Crocosaurus

The main attraction wasn't as awesome as the title and let's say nothing about the characters or story. I think when you realize the titular monsters are inconsistent in size as the plot demands that there's no point in creating any sense of scale. The Saltwater Crocodile VS Great White Shark episode on Animal Face-Off was better than this. A low-budget film to be sure but there's been better money-constrained works.

At least I laughed.

[Kudryavka]

I just watched Secret Rats of NIMH and it was good...

[Solafighter]

Watched Jack Reacher last night. Was the most expensive nap, I ever had. Expected a lot more but in the end, it was plain boring.

[Akito Kinomoto]

Monsters (2010 film)

This monster flick is different from most of its ilk in that the human characters are the stars of the show and are worth caring for; I think when you realize that you want Andrew and Samantha to make it back home instead of seeing a land octopus destroy things that director Gareth Edwards created a film where the monsters actually feel like monsters and not glorified action stars. The movie does have some plot-induced stupidity regarding the way our protagonists travel and the writing seems to convey mixed messages about the aliens being a natural force of nature, an invasive species, and homesick but the film isn't about them; it's about our characters. I'm not going to call this movie anything more than good but overall it knows what it's doing.

[Master_Yoma]

Total Recall (2012 ) Well the it wasnt to bad at all but the old one was far better at less that one had the 3 boobed girl in it

[Xellos-_^]

watch OZ the great and Powerful yesterday.

I give it a 7.5 nothing ground breaking but entertaining and the special effect in the end was fun.

[ArchmageXin]

Originally Posted by Xellos-_^

watch OZ the great and Powerful yesterday.

I give it a 7.5 nothing ground breaking but entertaining and the special effect in the end was fun.

Agreed. The trailer was great but that was pretty much all there is great. The witch of the West ? (Fireball girl?) was so....unbelievable.

[creb]

http://vimeo.com/user5393374/badmotherfucker

5 minute short.

[KiraYamatoFan]

Watched Olympus Has Fallen yesterday.

For someone like me who watched several action movies in my lifetime, I'd give it a 7.9. The scenario is not the most original, but the quality of the action scenes, the intensity of several scenes, the effort put by director Antoine Fuqua (who also directed Training Day, Shooter, King Arthur and the excellent Tears of the Sun) in making this thing look real, and the solid play by the actors helped a lot gathering my interest in this. In the end, I had my big share of fun.

[Xagzan]

Memoirs of a Geisha

Initially I confused Gong Li for Koyuki

[james0246]

Evil Dead (2013) - What a strange film. In terms of remakes, Evil Dead is a complete success. It manages to step nicely into the shoes left by the original film, while also branching (pun intended?) off in it's own unique directions. The core story is the same (five 20-somethings go off to the woods, encounter an evil magical book, then demons start showing up), but the subtle nuances added to the film help to suspend the audiences disbelief as increasingly crazy shit happens yet no one decides to leave.

The remake focuses on Mia (Jane Levy), a troubled young women with a strong addiction to cocaine whom, with the help of friends and family, retreats to an old cabin in the woods in order to go cold turkey. The suspension of disbelief is established when Mia, for various reasons, is possessed, but no one believes anything weird is actually going on because many of her symptoms are similar to patients going through withdrawal (or at least that is what one of the friend, a nurse, tells us early on). This is a nice set-up since it allows crazy behaviour and tension to mount without insulting the audience's intelligence too much. (There's also some nice character set-up along the way, but this information (concerning Mia and her brother's relationship, or their mother's abnormal death/life) is never delved in deeply enough to actually matter.) And when things really do turn pear-shape, that's when escape becomes physically impossible.

What follows is a nice bit of gore and some fun sequences, but the horror is minimal and the suspense is almost non-existent (strangely enough, the television premier of Hannibal, which I saw the night before, was far more horrifying and even gory than Evil Dead - just goes to show that gore only is horrifying in relation to it's realism). Their are some nice moments (seeing Jane Levy in full Deadite makeup is quite scary, and there are at least 2 scenes of brutal bodily harm that are a little cringe inducing), but overall the film seems very rote with almost habitual movement between one gory scene to the next. The finale is still a hoot, though.

I think the biggest failing of the film is it's unerring respect for the original. While it is nice to see lots of little details that only fans of the original movies would understand, ultimately the remake never truly escapes the shadow of the original, instead it seems to enjoy simply being a remake.

There is some nice direction and good gore, and while the characters are a little too generic the acting is still above average. The film is definitely worth seeing, and I would be interested to see how the uninitiated react to the film (the audience I saw it with were clearly all knowledgeable of the original as well as the many rip-offs). 80/100.

---

The Croods -

Spoiler for slight film spoilers...:

There is a moment near the end of the film when Ugg (the father character played quite well by Nicholas Cage) is separated from his family by a cataclysmic event (literally the separation of the continents), and while hiding in a cave - waiting for the end with only a small torch for comfort - he starts painting the world as he knows it. What follows is an amazingly emotional sequence that stands as one of Dreamworks best written scenes to date. Pictures of his family emerge, crude images representing all he knows and loves and accepts as important in the world. As he finishes painting, looking at his creation, he sits back and admires his world, his life. And then the light goes out, seemingly indicating Ugg's death.

Sadly, the scene is ruined shortly after, but for a few briefs seconds I thought The Croods would become something truly interesting and exciting: a family/kids film that actually tackles the concept of death. Too few modern family films actually attempt to make death understandable or even acceptable. Instead magic and silliness always pops up just in time to save everyone, which is not only an insult to the audiences intelligence, but an insult to the world as it exists. But for a moment there, The Croods was perfect.

The Croods is an absolutely beautiful new film from the rapidly dominating animation studios of Dreamworks (as Pixar slowly destroys it's good will by producing boring and trite stories that can only interest 5-year-olds, Dreamworks, Sony and a few other animation studios are quickly rising in to fill the very noticeable performance gap). Colours explode and wash the screen with luscious hues and images that are as otherworldly as they are beautiful. And while the story itself is somewhat juvenile, the acting is quite good and the direction and editing fairly tight. Their are some hiccups and a totally unnecesary ending, but otherwise this is a damn fun film. 78/100.

[Obelisk ze Tormentor]

I just watched Journey 2: The Mysterious Island (the one with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson in it). It’s a braindead movie. Silly to its core. It doesn’t help that most of the dialogues and the jokes are really awful and forced, especially the lines delivered by Michael Caine’s adventurer-gramps character. Ugh. Still, this movie was never meant to be taken seriously and I had fun watching our rag-tag group being chased by a variety of giant animals. Some scenes manage to generate a chuckle or two from me. Plus, the run-time is short and the visual FX is pretty to look at. At least the Journey movie series aren’t as bad as Spy Kids series.

Btw, Captain Nemo’s Nautilus submarine looks pretty lame in this movie. Is Nautilus supposed to look that lame in Jules Verne’s The Mysterious Island novel? (I only read 20,000 League & Center of the Earth)

[MUAHAHAHAHAHA]

Watched "To Catch A Thief" (1955). While I enjoy the cat and mouse game, I don't quite like the pairing of Cary Grant and Grace Kelly. I couldn't feel the chemistry between them, it feels rather forced, perhaps partly due to the their age gap. Anyway, this does not hinder me from enjoying another of Alfred Hitchcock's classics.

[SeijiSensei]

Originally Posted by MUAHAHAHAHAHA

Watched "To Catch A Thief" (1955). While I enjoy the cat and mouse game, I don't quite like the pairing of Cary Grant and Grace Kelly. I couldn't feel the chemistry between them, it feels rather forced, perhaps partly due to the their age gap. Anyway, this does not hinder me from enjoying another of Alfred Hitchcock's classics.

It's not at the top of my list of Hitchcock films either, but I've only seen Kelly in a few films, and in this one she is breathtakingly beautiful. I was only seven when she married Prince Ranier to become the Crown Princess of Monaco, but her decision and the glamour that surrounded their wedding were certainly topics of conversation among the adults in my family. Those were the days when the large-format magazines like Life and the Saturday Evening Post were staples in many American homes, ours included. I recall that the Life photographers seemingly could never get their fill of shots of Kelly.

Grant is better in North by Northwest, though perhaps that is as much because it is a better film overall. (I still think his performance opposite the young Katherine Hepburn in The Philadelphia Story is one of his finest, and she is, of course, "yar.") Kelly is less regal, but no less lovely, opposite James Stewart in Rear Window, one of my favorite Hitchcock films. Stewart was considerably older than her as well, but somehow they made for a more believeable couple than Grant and Kelly. For many people, though, I suspect that scissors scene in Dial M for Murder may forever be the one that persists in our memories of Princess Grace.

By the way, in honor of the passing of Annette Funicello, I'll just mention that I discovered today that Hulu carries her film, Beach Party, with Frankie Avalon. She wears a two-piece bathing suit that exposes only a bit of midriff, while most of the other girls sport fairly skimpy bikinis. There are a variety of stories about Annette's choice of bathing suit. The Times obituary today said that she agreed when Walt Disney asked that she not expose her navel, but I've heard other versions that indicated Walt didn't want her to wear a two-piece suit at all and capitulated only when Annette promised to wear the relatively modest number she sports in the film. Most boys were probably less interested in Annette's navel than in another part of her anatomy prominently displayed on the cover of the VHS videotape box for the film.

The Times obituary writer slyly made reference to Annette's busty figure when he wrote, "Young males enjoyed watching her blossom into womanhood, while females liked her because she was sweet, forthright and plain nice." Yes, she did "blossom" during her years on the Mickey Mouse Club.

[KiraYamatoFan]

Originally Posted by Xagzan

Memoirs of a Geisha

Initially I confused Gong Li for Koyuki

When watching Memoirs, I really wished Koyuki would play a role in it, especially how it was only 2 years after her performance in The Last Samurai.

[Tougarashi]

Originally Posted by Master_Yoma

Total Recall (2012 ) Well the it wasnt to bad at all but the old one was far better at less that one had the 3 boobed girl in it

Ya, that's the only climax of the series. What I don't like about the whole story is that Kate Beckinsale had to play a badass. Jessica Beil is ugly as a horse and she's a saviour. It was like what the hell. The last scence Kate drop dead, I was like Oh shit!

Originally Posted by KiraYamatoFan

When watching Memoirs, I really wished Koyuki would play a role in it, especially how it was only 2 years after her performance in The Last Samurai.

Agree, Koyuki would have been better instead of that chinese girl. It's a pain to see chinese girl playing geisha role. It was like , what !? Geishas are imported from China ? boo!

[MUAHAHAHAHAHA]

Originally Posted by Tougarashi

Agree, Koyuki would have been better instead of that chinese girl. It's a pain to see chinese girl playing geisha role. It was like , what !? Geishas are imported from China ? boo!

Koyuki with her height and killer legs.

Really too bad. I first saw her in Engine with KimuTaku, and since then I have watched a few of her other dramas. As a female myself, can't say I don't envy her look and body, lol.