DVD you have recently watched

Gangs of New York. DDL fantastic. Di Caprio unwatchable. Score draw. Ending stupid. Enjoyed the politics though, having just read the first two volumes of Edmund Morris's Teddy Roosevelt biography (is it time for the thread anticipating volume 3?).

Shadowlands. Last saw this about a decade ago, before I'd actually done a degree at Oxford. Corny, irritating jokes about being English ("the beer is too cold!"), but ridiculously, relentlessly moving. Cried pretty much continuously for the last 60 minutes. Perhaps a bit emotionally manipulative and clumsy.

Spinal Tap. Ha ha funny.

Red Dragon. Surprisingly funny. Ralph Feinnes superbly creepy. Edward Norton disappointing. Hopkins great, particularly pony tail, but kept thinking about C.S. Lewis during his monologues (see above). Hannibal is next up in my rental queue. Looking forward to it immensely.

Dazed and Confused. Not as good as I remember it.

Primer. Graceful, undistracting avoidance of explaining how the time travel technology actually works, while somehow showing what experimental research is like. Plot incomprehensible. Had lost me with an hour to go, and I didn't care about any of the characters enough to catch up. While I'm not known for my ability to understand tricky film plots (I had to have the twist in Sixth Sense explained to me outside the cinema), I am doing a PhD in theoretical physics, so I like to think I have a decent understanding of causality. Extremely disappointing.

Kingpin. See Dazed and Confused.

In the Cinema I saw:

Capote. Tedious.

The Proposition. Superb. All performances good or better (except John Hurt's, whose character was a redundant distraction, and whose overacting was a noisy distraction). Great soundtrack. Gruelling and violent without being pornographic. Recommended.

Cock and Bull Story. OK. Only found the slapstick funny (not the clever bits).

The winners are: Shadowlands, The Proposition, and that bit in Cock and Bull Story where Rob Brydon does his Al Pacino impression in the car.

Tonight I shall watch Contact.

I'm about to watch Bowling for Columbine. Skeptically, for sure.

S'alright.

i saw capote last weekend too. some of it was good. but i fell asleep towards the end.

Gear OTM on The Sopranos, though the scenes w/Dr Melfi are what therapy is like IMO. Not to say that isn't boring, of course.

In a near undefined future, people may have a Zoe microchip implanted in their nervous system to permit their families to retrieve the best moments of their memories and watch on video after their deaths. This process is called "Rememory" and Alan H. Hakman (Robin Williams), a man traumatized by an incident in his childhood, is the best cutter of the Eye Tech Corporation. The company is facing groups that oppose to the "Rememory" and the ex-cutter Fletcher (Jim Caviezel) is leading these opponents. When Alan is assigned to prepare the final cut of the memories of the Eye Tech lawyer Charles Bannister, his Zoe chip is disputed by Fletcher. Meanwhile, Charles finds that he has also an implanted microchip, which is against the rules of a cutter.

the problem with that movie is really in the last 20 minutes, otherwise it would have been a flawed but gripping sci-fi film.

Also, the bit when the machine gets destroyed by a terrorist is good. BANG!

Give it some time and then check out Unknown Pleasures again. The 2nd time I saw it I was much better, I was more accustomed to the pacing of the film and the dialogue.

Inside Deep Throat Some of the trials are so mindboggling! DT was a bad movie becuase women who watched it would think that having a clitoral orgasm (instead if a vaginal one) is acceptable?! Judges be crazy! Also, Bill Maher and Hugh Hefner pronouncing clitoris to rhyme with Dolores/taurus = GROSS. But then, so are they.

Rules of Attraction It cost me $5.50. I like Ron Jeremy's commentary: "James Van Der Beek's forehead is HUGE" So true, Ron, so true. I went to college with JVDB, so I like to imagine that this is some sort of bizarro Dr3w I'm watching. (Shannyn Sossamon is as punchable as half the girls who went there.)

i actually really, really liked unknown pleasures! i just thought it got slightly draggy at the end, but that might have been the late hour at which i watched it.

oh and 'deadwood: season 1'. i borrowed this relatively recently from a friend of mine, watched it, and i'm going to have to buy the set. the acting and writing on this show puts 'the sopranos' in proper perspective, quality-wise.

DVD - Wedding Crashers. (a friend rented it.) bad plot, bad dialogue, had its moments (unscripted?) though. best thing was where the angsty son says Vince Vaughn's character tried to seduce him, & Vaughn is so fed up with everyone that not only does he not bother to say the guy's lying, he insists on keeping the painting! cool.

hahaha that is like my least favourite movie ever!! it is so... gross

had a day of drinking ewith an old friend and received a midight call for boozing, so i closed down some bar in hollywood and tried to dodge a rush fan that kept tryong to give me and my friends the 'god is your true savior' talk that comes out when bros feel guilty abotut being douchebags

Trying to leap from one end of the film spectrum to another with back-to-back DVDs, I might've set my standard yesterday: Bresson's Une Femme Douce (like a Bunuel/Deneuve film on cough syrup) and Revenge of the Sith (not excruciating, but as the clips from the original make plain on the extras DVD, craps to Darth Lucas for turning a souped-up Flash Gordon into a postliterate Hamlet).

I won't defend What's New Pussycat? (Allen has always hated it), but there's been lots worse from Woody all by himself in the last decade.

it's a minor-league film, but i'd be happy to watch it again if i find it on IFC in a couple years.

bonnie and clyde, too. these movies confused me as a kid.

The Toolbox Murders Total crap horror flick I rented based on some Fangoria award it got last year. I never learn.

Slither Loved it.

Nice to hear good things about Downfall. I've got that one at home to watch tonight, but I'm having a hard time getting excited about a 3 hour long Hitler film.

Quicksand = Mickey Rooney, Peter Lorre, noir. Rooney gets caught up in one mess after another just 'cause he couldn't keep it in his pants. Entertaining. Part of a super cheap-o noir collection I just bought for $7.99, chock full of good low-budget classics.

The Army Of Shadows = Lino Ventura, Simone Signoret, Paul Meurisse, Occupied France, a 12-ft. DeGaulle...Oh, man. As I said on I Love Film it's possibly my favorite Jean Pierre Melville film. And just one of my favorite films, period. Copy (boot) of the recent Canal+ release with English subs. See this at Film Forum later this month if you're in NYC. Criterion coming soon (I hope)?

Last night: Young Mr. Lincoln : Not as sappy as I expected and Henry Fonda as Young Abe was remarkable. The trial scenes were great. Beautifully shot, designed. Classic John Ford is pretty unbeatable.

call northside 777 -- wonderfully dated, with lovingly detailed descriptions of the lie detector test and an early version of fax.

the vanishing -- too much backstory for the psycho, i don't care what he thinks, he's just a fucking psycho. but the rest is good.

Just about every character I like in the Sopranos gets wasted - iirc there's a body bag in the post for Ralphie Cifaretto in this series :-(

I'm also currently running through the last Dr Who series while I wait on the new one starting.

Flightplan - Worst movie I actually sat through from 2005. Starts glacial and lifeless, the images blue-tinted and sterile. When the plot finally gets going, the story only gets more offensive and unbelievable with each development. The people who made it are going to hell.

I really enjoyed it, and it's probably the first dvd in ages that I haven't fast forwarded through/skipped a chapter for the boring bits.

team america
pather panchali
napoleon dynamite (for maria to see)
wrong turn
dogtown and z-boys
sideways
wedding crashers

plus, 4 kidz movies for rufus. spent about 30 bucks. i can't be bothered to rent movies. i hate the pressure. even netflix was too much pressure for me.

Yesterday in the mail: Chinatown, Monster, and something about the guys in the American Ballet Theater.

Moog - I had to turn it off because my girlfriend was falling asleep while watching it. Instead of putting it off for later, I wrapped it up and dropped it in the mail the next morning. There has to be a way to make the material interesting, though.

Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room - Awesome. Never really understood the whole story. This movie entertained and explained. I loved how it dug into the personalities behind the whole thing. And I was surprised to see titties in a serious documentary.

Roger & Me - Finally saw this. I used to hate Michael Moore. Right around the time everybody I knew turned on him for supporting Ralph Nader in 2000, I saw Bowling for Columbine and my attitude softned. Fahrenheit 9/11 was good, too. I saw it in the theater. This movie is great. I could feel the rage in his editing. The scene where he cuts between the Christmas party with Roger speaking, and the deputy guy standing there while the family drags their Christmas tree out of the house onto the front lawn just floored me. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. I am officially a fan of Michael Moore.

DiG! - Great movie. Don't care about either of the bands, but I really enjoyed this movie for no reason that I could put into words.

Rize - Unintentionally hilarious. I felt embarrassed for most of the characters a few times.

Capote - I've written elsewhere about why I didn't particularly like this: too much a by-the-numbers "serious" Hollywood film - from the chic-drab cinematography and art direction down to the pacing (way too slow) and the oh-the-humanity portentousness of the direction.

The White Diamond - As in Grizzly Man, Herzog's nose for the serendipitous serves him well. Though it lacks the focus and cumulative power of that film, it's still a fun ride that packs a few jolts.

quite a wonderful ending, too.

- Havoc. yes, famous for Princess Diaries boobs, but I watched it because of Barbara Kopple's involvement. It's not as bad as you'd expect, Hathaway is quite good as the sarcastic, bored rich girl looking for thrills/'the real, man.' The undertaker from Six Feet Under is a gang leader/crack dealer, he's not bad either. The whole thing is wasted by the worst white-boy poseur caricatures ever to make it on screen. Check it out for Joseph Gordon-Levitt's ten minutes of screen-time, bizarre in a most amazing way.

- Junebug. Turned it off 15 minutes in. Fuck it, life is too short for stupid movies.

I also saw Kiss Me Kate (1953), which is a very funny and grown-up musical, with timeless wit and style, and makes you wonder again why Hollywood just doesn't make them like that any more.

8. Rent (Widescreen 2-Disc Special Edition)
DVD ~ Rosario Dawson
Average Customer Review:
Release Date: February 21, 2006

Our Price: $15.76   Used & new from $8.20  

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wth?

beau travail - i'm still trying to work this one out in my head, having just finished it, but it's a extremely well-directed, very well-acted, and interestingly referential film. it's beautiful to look at, in almost every respect, and it has one of the most unexpected soundtracks i've heard in any film (legionnaires stomping through the desert to the strains of 'safeway car' by neil young, and that last omgwtf scene, which i love)

return of the living dead: necropolis - hoo-boy. an 88-minute long point-by-point rebuttal to the argument that there's no such thing as a completely bad zombie film. i understand that the films in this series have their own set of rules, ones that are mutually exclusive to those in romero's films, but come on. i mean, a zombie who is aware enough to engage in a mocking conversation with an old acquaintance of his? it actually goes something like this:

zombie: i knew you were going after my ex-gf
dude: bro, you're fucked up! i'll kill you!
zombie: i'm already dead, ha ha ha
dude: ...
zombie: so come on, bring it, you pussy. oh and i'd like you to meet a new friend of mine...
(dude turns around)
dude: mom??
zombie mom: arghhh...

peter coyote is in this with the weirdest, most maniacal smirk frozen on his face throughout the entire film. he plays a mad scientist, etc. there is a brief, clunky stab at resident evil-level satire near the beginning. they also apparently filmed at chernobyl for some scenes.

Julien Donkey-Boy
Second viewing. Still not sure what to think overall. Favorite parts: Herzog=roffles, Julien's poem, scene with Pearl walking in the field which looks incredible, Oval on the soundtrack. Least favorite: biggest sucker-punch ever. I mean sure, it's viscereally effective (it worked on me anyway), but it feels despicably cheap at the same time.

Love & Pop
First live action movie by Hideaki Anno, the director of Evangelion. Interesting. Visually: lots of failed experimentation-for-its-own-sake with occasionally brilliant results. Here, Anno's still all about the same flavor of existential angst that informed Evangelion; he also still likes perving on high school girls shocka. The closing credits are great though.

I loved it. Excellent FX and a thrill-a-minute joyride combine to make this a great zombie flick!!1! Actually looking forward to the sequel, if there is one.

As good as everyone told me it was. I've seen few things quite as lovely, though it seemed like it didn't know quite how to end.

This past weekend I watched Fallen Angel (I liked it but it dragged and the plot fizzled once Stella was no longer around) and One Nite in Mongkok, pretty good but not OMGWTFthatwasawesome like I was expecting.

ripley's game - this makes that damon film from a few years back look like a pretender. malkovich is awesome here, better than i've ever seen him, and the rest of the cast isn't too shabby either: dougray scott, ray winstone, lena headey, etc. bonus points for the use of the saint etienne song 'mario's cafe' in a party scene. i'll probably try to catch this again sometime, it bears repeat viewing.

Spearhead From Space, Episode 1. 7/10

Kung Fu Hustle - much, MUCH better than I'd anticipated. Probably the most purely entertaining film I've seen all year, some great performances throughout and the sets and fights are jaw-dropping. Very funny indeed in parts too.

The Descent - I didn't much like Neil Marshall's Dog Soldiers so my hopes weren't very high for this, but was pleasantly surprised - the first half in particular works brilliantly to establish pounding claustrophobia and the general nastiness of their plight. Once the troglodyte beasties come in things get slightly more by-the-numbers, but I enjoyed it nonetheless and the final scene has an elegance and sadness that rarely finds expression in modern horror. Gorgeous use of the cinemascope framing at times too.

OTM

but there's some not-so-good stuff. penelope ann miller's awful character should have been amended after the first draft of the script, for one. i don't think she does a bad job, but she's given such a shit character to work with, it only goes so far. it slows down the film just a little too much, and it's another female character that exists solely to fall for and then have doubts about the lead character, but who still blindly follows him until his inevitable doom. though despite her not-bad performance, i still have to note that it seems as though some genius scientist took penelope ann miller's DNA, injected a healthy dose of additional hotness and a hell of a lot more talent, and created naomi watts.

and while everyone talks about the ending at the train station as a great set piece, i found the very ending by the train (SPOILER), when carlito runs into benny blanco one last time, to be some of the shittiest directing i've ever seen. it's not a long bit, but there's about half a dozen cops just down from the train, a conductor standing right there, benny shoots carlito and then there's this awkward twenty seconds where benny and luis guzman's character just stand there watching while p.a.m. weeps over carlito, guzman explains his motivation, and then benny shoots him. it played as very awkward and it felt a little rushed and weak.

Bubble-
I like recent Soderbergh very much and don't like people who don't. I mean really, if someone dismisses these pop experiments (Full Frontal, Solaris) as "indulgent" than they're focus is too far away from concept of form to be trusted. Even Ocean's Twelve had this Godardian command/awareness of film langauge applied to a celebrity magazine in motion surface that made the writing of critics who felt obligated to express dislike of "indulgance" and "celebrity" seem worthlessly petty in comparison.

In "Bubble," every element of its minimal components is laid out very precisely and the porportion between what remains ambiguous and what is narratively known maximizes the genuinely tragic aspects of the story. Anyone who wrote that the director didn't care about the working class characters had their review written before they walked in the theater.I could have done without the the Bob Pollard acoustic guitar strummed score though honestly.

Cache-
This was a lot like a horror film in practically every basic plot component. It's a simple story of the manifested terror let out by a man's inability to acknowledge and accept a major moral transgression from when he was very young. My favorite aspect of Haneke's films is his sense of pacing. There's this absolute sense of control that can be seen in the fluidity from the end of one scene into the beginning of the next, powerful contrasts between loud and soft, fast and slow that gives the film the kind of soulful tension that couldn't be achieved if one was limited to genre codes to tell the story. For example, thinking about the prescence of the naturalistic sounds as opposed to an oppressive musical score used to telegraph suspense/drama. Basically the naturalistic elements and the empty spaces are used as to sharpen the edges of for the moments of attack.

Hostel-
This may sound weird but the thing I like the most about Eli Roth's approach in both of his flawed films is the respect he shows for his characters. Just as in Cabin Fever, Hostel has small moments that reveal the friendship between the main characters/victims that you simply don't find in most horror films in which writers and directors never successfully define their characters beyond bland genre archetypes. This should lead to the moments of horror to occuring as sadly tragic events but Roth's biggest problem seems that he can't communicate aything dramatic in a straight way. The "sick humor" gimmick is revealed as a crutch that his approach leans on because when he needs to, he can't deliver a dramatic/horffic moment straightly.

It was so RUBBISH!

I watched the first bit, fell asleep, woke up, watched the last bit, then spent the rest of the weeknd trying to find a window of opportunity to watch the middle bit.

What a boring family.

Zu Warriors of the Magic Mountain
what a crazy-ass movie...one of the weirdest things I've ever seen, and somehow not at all what I expected. Great set pieces and actual kind-of-scary ghost-fighting too, plus Brigitte Lin.

Tai Chi Master
I thought I'd rented a version of this that stars Jet Li, so was disappointed when it turned out not to be, but I hadn't seen a kung fu film with dubbed voices in so long that it was fun to watch one again. Good lady fighters too, though the plot could've been better.

The Nomi Song
This was just amazing, really intrigued me and made me very sad, and was inspiring too somehow.

California Split : Fun Altman. Elliot Gould great, Segal good, female characters underdeveloped. Will watch again with Altman's commentary.

California Split : Fun Altman. Elliot Gould great, Segal good, female characters underdeveloped. Will watch again with Altman's commentary.

I Am Curious (Blue) - not quite up to IAC (Yellow) for me, but Lena Nyman still has her moments. Less explicit sex, different politics (more church, less state), fewer surprises. The complete project is still more compellingly curious than, say, Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice or Medium Cool.

xpost

No, m coleman, but you should at least admit you only watched 1/3 of Pluto, unless you finished it (and it's not superficial, but satire). And phrase the specifics of your disapproval in terms other than "ewww, crossdressing" if you're worried about seeming dragophobic.

TV series starring Jeremy Brett. This is the best Sherlock Holmes I've ever seen. The mysteries are ok but Brett is fantastic.

In This World

Dead Man

No way. Hostel started out a little funny (though I'm not sure how long you can milk Animal House-in-Amsterdam stoner humor + boobs for laughs, at some point we've heard it all), but the actual horror part was bog-standard sadism without anything witty or innovative going on.

Cabin Fever was working the same angle (updating an '80s b-genre - kids in the woods getting killed), but the actual horror parts were far superior (open-wound fingerbanging, etc.) without the gruesome 'how long can you stand to watch' garbage.

I felt like Hostel was insulting to my humanity.

aguirre: the wrath of god - one can see where francis ford coppola got some ideas/stole some shot from for apocalypse now, and the two films are quite similar thematically in the "dangerous upriver journey, people getting picked off one by one" sense, but this one doesn't peter out at the end with gratuitous bullshit. it EXPLODES at the end with HUNDREDS OF MONKEYS. i love this, utterly awesome and surreal and haunting and funny and weird.

sorry bout the sarcasm, Dr M., laid it on a bit thick, it's more about being in love w/my own voice than hating transvestites. if BonP meant to satirize drag itself, then I missed that. superficial was the wrong word, the characterizations just seemed thin to me.

monkey explosions are always good

(even more fun given that Peter Lawford may be playing his bro-in-law JFK; Burgess Meredith, doing Whittaker Chambers to Henry Fonda's Hiss, was a recovering blacklistee; amid the gay expose plot, homo actors Laughton and Will Geer; and Fonda, America's Embodiment of Liberal Virtue, had been directed on Broadway by Laughton and lashed out at him in a rehearsal as a "fat little faggot.")

Hannibal. Fine.

A Beautiful Mind. YAWN.

Word Wars -- Documentary about the US (semi)-pro Scrabble scene. DOPE.

totally totally otm. word to latebloomer!!

i thought hostel was way more of a satire of xenophobia (or xenophobic ignorance) than it was xenophobic itself

Team America World Police
This was kind of funny but it wasn't the laff riot that I'd been led to believe. Most of what I laughed at were things having to do with the puppetry itself, and/or Kim Jong-Il.

Ghost in the Shell
I liked this, and was all settled in for an epic denouement, and then it all seemed to end rather abruptly. The one or two clips that I'd seen from it before, and what prompted me to rent it, weren't so much representative of the whole. It was great at plunging into the action without tediously relaying a lot of expository background info, which I like, even if I find it confusing at first.

Howl's Moving Castle
Awesome.

Lord have mercy! I didn't remember it that well from the Dekalog. Might have to be followed by heavy drinking (I did).

Prime - This is the movie with Uma Thurman as the older yet still very sexy shiksa goddess who gets involved with a much younger Jewish guy from a fairly conservative family. There is also a surprising connection between Thurman and the young guy's mother (played by Meryl Streep) which propels much of the tension and comedy in the film. Despite the many implausibilities, the script is smart and funny - a lot of this ground has been covered by Woody Allen and others, but it still feels fairly fresh, and the acting is pretty good all round.

Before Sunset - This is built around a very similar premise to the original, Before Sunrise - except this time the city is Paris and the action takes place mainly in the day rather than at night. Also, this is more backward looking, since much of the conversation this time around centers on looking back at what happened in the previous film and how, though it might have seemed fairly inconsequential at the time, it affected the lives of the two characters. Unlike the first one, this movie pretty much plays out in real-time, and there is consequently a greater feeling of tension as the ticking of the clock becomes more noticeable. Your interest in this will pretty much rise and fall with how interesting you find their conversation, which tends to wander, in that self-obsessed, relentlessly analytical manner familiar from Linklater's other work.

and...

'kingdom of heaven' - this movie is pretty good. definitely a lot better than 'gladiator', for whatever that's worth. at least here our dull central character is surrounded with some interesting supporting characters. the overtures ridley scott and co make towards equating this particular part of history with the current situation in the middle east are clumsy but heartfelt enough, i guess. the action scenes are good but they've been done a million times before (though they're done especially well in this film). from what i've heard, the 194 minute(!!!) director's cut fleshes out some subtleties here and there, but i'm not sure i'd feel up to investigating further. i'm pretty sure it would also explain the never-explained, curiously dismissed boat sinking that results in bloomps making his way alone to jerusalem. the journey is never really explained, characters who seemingly drowned on the boat are in jerusalem later in the film, and so on....

orlando bloomps plays an elfen warrior from france who is working as a blacksmith when discovered by his father, liam neeson, a crusader named godfrey. soon he's on the road to jerusalem for glory and what not. neeson plays the doomed father figure role as well as he usually does, jeremy irons broods a lot and then leaves, david thewlis is pretty great as the knight hospitaller of bloomps' bunch, and edward norton gesticulates nicely from behind an iron mask. but the best performance in the film belongs to ghassan massoud as saladin, the leader of the muslim army. i rather liked his final line in the film when asked about jerusalem's worth "nothing. everything." (not the banal sentiment but the delivery).

eva green is pretty mediocre and anachronistic as sibylla, brendan gleeson plays a boorish fat templar with raver-dyed hair and serves no purpose other than to be an asshole, and marton csokas as the evil templar leader 'guy of lusignan', who is responsible for a pretty nasty defeat in the desert. those three characters are pretty one-dimensional, even moreso than the rest of the cast. bloomps is pretty weak as a star, and the film feels a little empty once we come to the last act and it's him and the scattered remnants of rohan against the armies of mordor or whatever the fuck is going on in this movie at the end.

actually i enjoyed it well enough, but i like this sort of thing when done well.

Hood of the Dead - Zombies in Oakland. Looks like a hundred bucks, but surprisingly watchable.

Ripley's Game - John Malkovich, Ray Winstone. I really, really liked this movie, I can't believe it didn't get released in theaters.

Brain Candy - Funnier than I remember.

Tonight - Return of the Living Dead 4: Necropolis (the director of 8 Legged Freaks apparently made TWO sequels to Return of the Living Dead last year, filmed at the same time using the exact same cast, lolz) and Nothing.

and a cdrw containing 28 Days Later as a divx, recorded from the tv about 3 months ago and forgotten since. unfortunately it was too large to fit on one disk so there was a 30 minute intermission whilst i burnt the second hour. film was good though. divx quality surprising as well given that it was recorded as half-pal resolution.

you should! havent seen the movie tho.

A History of Violence
Somehow unsatisfying, but pretty good.

Gear, have you checked out Joss Whedon's other stuff much?

if I remember it correctly, it was as bonkers as this Dennis Wilson bio-pic I saw on cable one time.

I loved it. Not as much as Crash, but still extremely good! I loved the ending so much.

Natural City - South Korean version of Bladerunner with no character in sight that i would feel even a slightest degree of sympathy for.

Flightplan - it would be so much better if they switched the Arab guy and Jodie Foster's roles. Seriously.

Here's the IMDB listing

http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0100715/

Technically it's about Dennis AND Brian. The last like, thirty minutes cover '66-'83 in an an inanely breathless manner (Brian goes crazy, Dennis meets Charles Manson, Murry dies...). There's even a fake Christine McVie character.

X2: x-men united - this is really good, better than the first x-men film. brian cox is a pretty sinister villain and bryan singer films him in a manner that only heightens his more vile characteristics. it did feel like it led up to an anti-climactic ending for some reason, but i don't necessarily think that's a fault of the film but rather typical for the serial nature of the story.

Dead Ringers - my wife had never seen it. even tho I am a huge Cronenberg fan this movie the snores. Its as if everything of value in the film can be gleaned in the first few scenes, and then it just drags on interminably.

Also, Chinatown, which was excellent. Sleek young Jack Nicholson and nasty old John Huston and brittle, tragic Faye Dunaway.

session 9 - really tight, beautifully shot horror film. kind of reminds me of the shining in the way, being set in a creepy, desolate location and being less about anything supernatural and more about madness. i knew this was shot on DV but it doesn't look it. the plot is pretty simple, five asbestos removal workers set to work on an abandoned insane asylum and they start to be affected in very different ways by their time in the building. great cast (peter mullan, david caruso, josh lucas, brendan sexton III, paul guilfoyle some other guy who also co-wrote it), great score, very creepy.

running scared - not the crystal/hines buddy caper but the paul walker batshit-fest from earlier this year. this movie is INSANE. seriously, you fucking loons who think tony scott is hot shit should see what this director does here. james kramer, i think it is? it's pretty simple, paul walker playing this mob flunkie who loses a gun he's supposed to dispose of and the adventures resulting from his pursuit. it feels like a weird, fucked-up fairy tale in some of the set design and character POV, and apparently that was the intent, the director planning it as an insane adult fairy tale of some sort. some of the shit here has to be seen to be believed, it's so over the top. it's also probably the most violent non-horror film i've seen to come out of mainstream hollywood, i'm not sure how it got an R-rating.

Bonus disc has making of doc and Formula One doc. It's pretty great.

Bad Timing - one of Roeg's best, a Theresa Russell perf for the ages

World Music Collection (or some other crap name like that): Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan - not nearly enough live stuff
History Of Violence - fucking awesome, one of the best endings of any movie ever

a friend of mine has completed a subtitle file that is a vast improvement .. do we have any kind of ILX torrent shenanigans going on? everyone should see this movie, it's probably my favorite science fiction film ever

Instead I saw Born to Boogie, which was rubbish.

I think it aged rather well, and certainly didn't deserve all the hate it got at the time it was released. Sure, it drags at times, Ralph Fiennes doesn't get it, and it has little to do with the original series spirit.

But: Uma Turman is perfect in this role and has great fun in what could be disaster of a role for any other actress.

And the rest - what not to like? Stunning visuals, big multicolored teddy bears (the chasing bears scene!), mechanical wasps, Mother, Uma in leather, Alice in Wonderland references, perfect stoner movie!

Oh, and Sean Connery as a bad guy with the best moustache he ever had in a movie and in full Scottish regalia.

Maybe it wouldn't be as bad if it wasn't heavily edited (from 150 minutes down to 89) by Warner Brothers. It would be interesting to see the director's cut.

> Stunning visuals, big multicolored teddy bears (the chasing bears scene!), mechanical wasps, Mother, Uma in leather, Alice in Wonderland references, perfect stoner movie!

makes me wonder why people complain about this:

> it has little to do with the original series spirit.

did they watch a different original series to the one i did because all the above, or something like it, was always there.

to answer the question: Battlestar Galactica Series 1 DVD 3. only 3 episodes of series 1 left to watch so i'm rationing them out...

creep - franka potente passes out while waiting for a subway to find herself locked in and trapped in the london underground system. she's stalked by a creepy would-be rapist acquaintance, assisted by some homeless people, and stalked by a maniac with an underground lab somewhere in the catacombs. it's all pretty ridiculous but reasonably entertaining and brutal.

But, Dada, as much as Uma was a poor choice for Emma Peel, she was able to pull it even with some bad dialogs and overall goofiness of the movie - that's what she's good at. And you can clearly see she enjoyed it - that's why i liked her. Even though i don't happen to find her attractive either.

Batman Begins - Christian Bale's Batman voice is HORRIBLE, but he is ace as Bruce Wayne--I find his subtlety and tendency to be the big void at the center of a film, allowing other actors to play off him, to be wildly appropriate. The biggest thing I noticed (after viewing it for the first time since seeing it in theatres) is what a fantastic performance Cillian Murphy gives--a great awareness of the underlying campiness of the whole concept, but a sensibility that indicates that he is aware there is truly a great noir story in there too. I found him to be really refreshing alongside "great" actors giving stock performances (Liam Neeson, Morgan Freeman, Rutger Hauer), while great performances (Michael Caine, Gary Oldman) seemed rather underused. It seems painfully obvious Christopher Norton was doing everything in his power to NOT make a summer action movie (I wonder if the hideous batmobile was almost a fuck you to studio execs who demanded a car chase sequence), but the production design and atmosphere do a great job of capturing the vibe of the Jeph Loeb Batman stories and Gordon is straight out of Year One.

uhhhh.... replace "genuine and good-spirited" with "drunk and stoned"?

What else...E.T., for the first time in 15 years; am now convinced it's Spielberg's best film.

i liked it better second time round.

The Thing is the best film John Carpenter has ever made. Classic on so many levels.

>to answer the question: Battlestar Galactica Series 1 DVD 3. only 3 episodes of series 1 left to watch so i'm rationing them out...

Koogy, if you've been enjoying series 1, then series 2 will blow...your...mind (as Mark Cousins used to say). Am about 2/3s of the way through it and it's rapidly turning into my favourite recent TV show.

I know not of this PhD, but I think you should do it if it is in WATCHING FILMS.

I watched a couple of minutes of Battlestar Galactica last night. It looked rubbish.

I wonder if I should nick that poster from work.

Hang on, that's Buck Rogers.

Currently watching My Best Fiend, which has caused me to request Klaus Kinski's autobiography from the library. It's a lot of fun, though the subtitles seem a bit iffy.

Another amazing insight into subtitle world.

Ed Wood for about the fourth time, and it remains my favourite Burton film.

We also decided to dump cable tv and the tivo this weekend, to see if we actually miss tv. I think we won't.

'gregory's girl' - this is great! i like the randomness of it all and all of the supporting characters are wonderful. and the bait-and-switch at the end is ace.

'the hidden' - still awesome.

'infernal affairs' - i watched this in advance of seeing 'the departed' next month. i think it's really, really good, but i also think there could be a little room for improvement. we shall see.

Pride & Prejudice: The Keira Knightley version. I'm not a huge fan of Austen, but I found this really enjoyable. Gave that whole becorsetted & behatted period a bit of youthfulness. Mr Darcy wasn't half as awful as I expected, in fact he was rather good.

Pretty in Pink - for the nine-millionth time. I still hate that they changed the song for the movie, it sounds horrid. Horns? Bleuch. Jon Cryer is and always will be the only reason I continue to watch this movie. God bless Duckie Dale.

The original was so much better, I agree.

My Beautiful Laundrette. . . I never would have guessed this was made in 1985

I don't think I've ever seen this, but I kind of remember it being a perennial favorite at the TLA (local art house/repertory cinema I went to a lot at the time).

Me (as mentioned on other recent threads, with comments):

House of Flying Daggers (I felt a lot less involved with the characters than I did with those in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, but I still enjoyed it, particuarly on a visual level), Mean Girls (pretty good, but I haven't seen many of these teen comedies), and Talk to Her (good, though I didn't find myself caring a whole lot about the main protagonists).

The Wild One

Rebel Without a Cause

The Girl Can't Help It

Gidget

Where the Boys Are

Bikini Beach

Ocean's Eleven

Manchurian Candidate

A Raisin in the Sun

Posting in movie threads is a Maguffin with you sometimes, Morbius.

I am wondering about getting Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me for a fiver. My attempt to watch the series again was unsuccesful.

An awesome central performance and great support throughout really tied it all together and I'd say this is probably the film that I've most *enjoyed* watching this year. Apparently there is a "Director's" version which slowly fades to black and white from about an hour in, anyone seen that?

I'd never seen Last Tango in Paris before, and I rented that as well, without really knowing much about it at all. There was far more craziness than sexiness, which I hadn't expected. Also, the ending was a surprise to me. (There really were an unusually large number of depressing films in the 70s, weren't there?)

also charlie and the chocolate factory, the tim burton one. very cool! i loved the colours and sets.

Watched The Proposition DVD, with commentary - yay Nick Cave! 3/4 the way through he excuses himself with "Uh, I'm gonna fuck off & have a fag, okay?" Bless him.

also, oldboy was uneven but kinda wonderfully shocking.

'Devil & Daniel Johnston' --- really good & bittersweet, made me afriad of doing drugs again

'Wordplay' --- Pretty fascinating and funny! I thought Bill Clinton's part was really inspiring, actually. I thought it was funny they put Jon Stewart on the back of the DVD all big when he was hardly in it and surprisingly annoying. I had a hard time getting into the competition until the end of it, which was super suspenseful.

'Borat' --- Disappointing and not all that funny. From all thee hype and lawsuits, I thought it'd just be vignette after tricky vignette, but there were only like six of them. The plot was really slow and stupid. Maybe only a half hour of it was good. The only part I really liked was the Kazakh national anthem.

'Dead Ringers' --- My boyfriend didn't want to watch it because he thought it'd be creepy. No, it wasn't creepy, it was MINDNUMBING FUCKING INCOMPARABLE CREEPY. In a stupid way, I was disappointed I didn't get to see how all his self-designed tools were used.

'Network' --- Totally not what I expected. So completely insane and wonderful! Not that I expected it to be not wonderful, but I thought it'd be just some 'hard life in the hard news' thing. But, man, how insane! The Ecumenical Liberation Army, haha.

Network is brilliant. I do not want to see Giger tools in action, though.

http://static.flickr.com/43/77348603_9da8e9c007_o.jpg

Devil and Daniel Johnston is good. My GF totally loved it, i had to dig through a bunch of old tapes and found a couple Daniel cassettes dubs that i had. she listens to them all the time now.

I have had Barry Lyndon Netflixed and unopened for almost a month. I just can't schedule quality time for me and Stanley.

Send it back and wait for the re-remastered one this fall.

I need to sell my copy of Full Metal Jacket too.

Withnail and I - Finally got around to watching it after Netflixing it about a month ago. It had some very funny moments. It kind of reminded me of Sid and Nancy for some reason, even though it's set in 1969 and seems to have not much in common - I guess it's kind of a story of the late '60s "swinging London" come-down/aftermath as filtered through a mid-'80s post-punk perspective. I think it would have been better if the characters had been fleshed out a bit more - to shed a bit more light on their motivations - but it had some great gags.

recently watched:

Zodiac
Chinatown
Raising Arizona
All of Me
Nashville
Little Miss Sunshine
Waking Life

Punk: Attitude by Don Letts
Lagaan

This Film is Not Yet Rated – taught me a lot of shit that I did not know about the MPAA: all the raters are SECRET but they get the PI lesbian duo (apparently this is a REAL THING!) to track down all 8 raters and find out their kids are all like in their 20s. Aw shit. Made me want to see Boys Don't Cry. There is a fair amount of disappointing filler, tho.

O Lucky Man! – Finally after years of wanting to see it! Did not like it as much as If... and it was way longer than I expected but v v good nonetheless. Pretty damned INSANIAC. It always cracks me up when the writer/actor writes his character w/dozens of women throwing themselves at him (see also "Darjeeling Limited," but it was actually funny in "O Lucky Man"). DVD 2 had a neat retrospective of Malcolm's career w/funny commentary from his kids.

Who Framed Roger Rabbit? – All the dirty jokes in this slipped by me at first youthful viewing (see also rewatching Little Shop of Horrors).

Borat: OK film, terrible DVD. There's NO COMMENTARY??? I'd've LOVED to have heard a few words from all the people that got pwned, for one. Especially the ones that are suing.

We Are Marshall. Surprisingly watchable...I was afraid it would be a major cheesefest. Depends on how you feel about sports movies in general, I guess. It's no Seabiscuit/Miracle, but I found it enjoyable and moving.

I've been catching up on the so-called canon, I guess. Contempt on Thursday, Paths of Glory tonight (omg so good), The Passenger a couple of weeks ago. (Didn't think much of The Passenger except that amazing penultimate shot.) Next in the queue: Killer's Kiss, Touch of Evil, The Third Man, Shadow of a Doubt, Double Indemnity.

YAY! Love The Third Man...esp Anton Karas & his magical Zither of happiness!

Oh and some horror films:

Leslie Vernon: Behind the Mask – A fake docu about people making a docu about a Real Serial Killer who is of course he classic horror movie bad guy. Pretty damn pretentious for what it is! It's like reading a short story interspersed with a bunch of college sophomore pieces of literary criticism on the short story which was maybe written by a grad student. Srsly at one point Leslie Vernon explains he wants his killings to have a lot of (cannot spell) yarric? yhrric? imagery which of course in this film's clever-clever contrarian way is "representative of the vagina." hahahaha. But it had a nice twist ending and was pretty fun when it wasn't over-explaining itself and how smart they are.

Anatomy – Ridiculously crap movie about some obsessed anatomist who uses the enplastication process on pretty ladies' bodies (who he has murdered by giving them a hypodermic shot that turns them into plastic). VERY boring and glaringly dumb abt human bodies.

i saw 'the departed' recently, first movie i've watched in months. loved it. the relationship btw the psychologist and di caprio's character was kinda ridiculous tho.

and the ending really bummed me out.

Tried to watch 2 episodes from season 2 of Six Feet Under but quit on each. This show was so hit and miss. Too many different writers.

Watched Heat (Michael Mann) for about the 999999th time and it gets better EVERY TIME. At this point I'm thinking Natalie Portman's performance should have got an Oscar.

Waking Life... For all its inherent flawas I like this... I see it as another love letter to Austin, kind of like Slackers II. Why does RL like Tosca though, ugh, omg, ugh!!! Fuck those guys.

the lives of others
master and commander
black hawk down

i really want to see that movie based on the raymond carver short story "so much water so close to home". i think it's australian-made?

The Fantastic Four - way way better than the the Spidey movies or Superman Returns.

catch-22

I have a 750 of Maker's Mark and some organic popcorn. Do I want to watch Collateral or Miami Vice?

HEAT, BITCH

hot fuzz was really funny although maybe not as much so as bad boys 2

'clerks 2'. not recommended.

Twin Peaks gold box -- I've never seen season 2 before; so far (4 eps in) it's not as weird as I thought it would be. and what happened to the season 1 commentary tracks?!

Experiments in Terror: some interesting, none scary

Miami Vice: Director's Cut leaves out "We get down if the play calls for it." ;_;

'clerks 2'. not recommended.

-- That one guy that hit it and quit it, Sunday, 25 November 2007 17:19 (1 hour ago) Link

I am a complete sucker for Kevin Smith - I even read his books - but this really is not that great. For Completists Only as they say.

Miami Vice: Director's Cut leaves out "We get down if the play calls for it." ;_;

-- milo z, Sunday, November 25, 2007 7:07 PM (19 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

neither of them have "moves get emotional and the wrong people die" ;_; ;_;

messy, even.

although it's my favourite film of 2006, the trailer still kind of owns it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B34-q7LE5mA&feature=related

yes! esp. the scene where they bust in and steal the drugs

Miami Vice was badass. uglier and grimier than the (still cool) television show.

But I'm a Cheerleader! – holy shit this is the sweetest & most tender chick flick I've ever seen. <3

God Told Me To – I don't even recall adding this to my netflix queue. I'm pretty sure I thought it was a documentary. Well, I watched the first ten minutes of some orange Californians pelted by red paintballs, shot in queasy cam and with lower production values than fucking "Behind the Green Door." And, then I stopped watching.

Time After Time – A little overly precious but very fun. Malcolm McDowell got hitched to the Kate Bushalike costar; Jack the Ripper totally predicts Chigurh! (Minus actually being terrifying in any way.)

Fast Food Nation (I recently had a burger. Shit.)
Devil (-> quite liked that one)
And soon the darkness (? THink that's the title)