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| Rod |
 Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2009 12:50 am |
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Joined: 21 Dec 2004
Posts: 2944
Location: Lithgow, Australia
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I liked Iron Man but I also said apart from Robert Downey it was nothing particularly special. But I did really like Hellboy II. It's really creative, not just slick.
BTW: my piece on Jesus Franco's Vampyros Lesbos:
http://ferdyonfilms.com/2009/01/vampyros-lesbos-1970.php#comments |
Last edited by Rod on Sun Jan 04, 2009 5:32 am; edited 2 times in total
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A long time ago, but somehow in the future...It is a period of civil war and renegade paragraphs floating through space. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2009 12:55 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9016
Location: Shanghai
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| Good to know. I liked Hellboy, but had planned to skip the sequel. If it's even reasonably solid, I can pass it on to the nieces after I watch it. |
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Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number. |
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| whiskeypriest |
| Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2009 1:58 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 6916
Location: "It's a Dry Heat."
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In Bruges makes an interesting companion piece to Labyrinth of the Faun. Both movies being at least in part about moral choices and consequences. More after I think on them.
Two great films, by the way, although in different ways. |
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I ask you, Velvel, as a rational man, which of us is possessed? |
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| jeremy |
| Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2009 7:03 am |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 6794
Location: Derby, England and Hamilton, New Zealand (yes they are about 12,000 miles apart)
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Rod wrote: Hellboy II: The Golden Army is hands down last year's greatest comic book/FX/action movie. It far excels Iron Man for humor and spectacle, and easily outclasses The Dark Knight for depth of feeling. Melds the best elements of the first film with Del Toro's deeper, more meaningful Pan's Labyrinth mythos, and achieves both a lunatic poetry and high comedy. Ron Perlman and Doug Jones have magnificent chemistry.
I was pleasantly surprised by Hellboy II. I caught it on the plane, expecting to skim through it, but out of the cornucopia of films that is BA's video on demand service, it was one of the few I watched with, in as much as the conditions allowed, rapt attention.
Incredibly, given the lunacy, Del Toro managed to envoke an almost Tolkien pathos for the doomed peoples of our myths and imaginings and his 'green' monster could have come straight out of Princess Mononoke and it brought to mind a similar sense of man's careless trusteeship of his own world. And all this was kept secondary and within the confines of the surreal comedy of a comic book.
Perhaps my main criticism of was that the film lacked dramatic tension or character arc - the horns of dilema were filed flat. The standard plot device of submitting to the villain's demands to save a loved one was not really worthy of the film, which may have been why it was underplayed. Unfortunately, nothing much was used in its stead to generate much interest in what was a largely predictable finale. All was secondary to the big finish demanded by the budget. Even the heroine's sacrifice was too signalled to generate much surprise or sorrow. |
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I am angry, I am ill, and I'm as ugly as sin.
My irritability keeps me alive and kicking.
I know the meaning of life, it doesn't help me a bit.
I know beauty and I know a good thing when I see it. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2009 11:51 am |
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Site Admin
Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12944
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson's done their top 10 list. Being David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, they do the top 10 of 1918.
http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/
I've seen the #1 film, The Outlaw and his Wife, which proves that Scandinavians were doing depressing films long before Bergman. It must have something to do with those long dark winters. The film's okay, just really bleak.
Outside of that, I've seen the Chaplin films A Dog's Life and Shoulder Arms, which are two of my favorites among his shorter films. (They're more like half-length films that real shorts.) I've seen a lot of the shorts at #10 since I have the Arbuckle-Keaton collection and I've seen a lot of Harold Lloyd. I've also seen The Sinking of the Lusitania, an animated propaganda film by Winsor McCay, who's remembered for Gertie the Dinosaur and the comic strip Little Nemo in Slumberland.
To tell the truth, it really wasn't that great a year. The Chaplins would top my list, but I'd have trouble coming up with a top 10. |
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Rocky Laocoon foretold of Troy's doom, only to find snaky water. They pulled him in and Rocky can't swim. Now Rocky wishes he were an otter! |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2009 12:12 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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Three netflix rentals yielded nothing especially memorable but some worthwhile viewing.
Snow Angels was directed by David (George Washington) Gordon (Pineapple Express) Green and was all over the map quality- and tone-wise. To call it a downer would be almost beside the point. The plot encompasses...
SPOILER IN WHITE
...the disappearance of a child and a murder-suicide
...but is generally too unbelievable to make any of it pay off. Yet the acting by Kate Beckinsale and Sam Rockwell is good enough to make it interesting-as-it-passes. Both Rockwell and Beckinsale are cast wildly against type, he as a born-again Christian alcoholic drifting into full-bore madness and she as a blue-collar rural type. Sound hard to swallow? It is, but they both give it a good whirl. This is far from a must, but you might want to check it out.
The Furies is a black-and-white Western epic directed by the cult favorite Anthony Mann and starring Barbara Stanwyck, her frequent male co-star Wendell Corey, and Walter Huston in his final role, along with a raft of well-known character actors including Judith Anderson, Beulah Bondi, Blanche Yurka, Gilbert Roland, and Thomas Gomez. This obviously would like to be thought of as a great movie, and flirts with greatness in the over-the-top grandstanding by Huston and Stanwyck as well as some glorious vistas. But the plot is somewhat too plotty and the script somewhat too talky to reach those heights. It's certainly worth seeing, however.
The House Bunny is basically Legally Blonde meets Revenge of the Nerds, as a deposed Playboy bunny becomes "housemother" for a sorority full of "loser" chicks and makes them popular by making them the sluttiest-looking gals on campus. It would be completely without merit were it not for Anna Faris in the title role. Faris has a wide-eyed appeal that makes the whole thing go down very easily. But it's not in any sense "a good movie." However, it might suffice for a "leave your brains in the popcorn bowl" evening. It did okay by me. |
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| lady wakasa |
| Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2009 2:23 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 5911
Location: Beyond the Blue Horizon
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Syd wrote: To tell the truth, it really wasn't that great a year. The Chaplins would top my list, but I'd have trouble coming up with a top 10.
The Oyster Princess: hilarious (even for early Lubitsch). Especially the wedding dinner and the outbreak of the foxtrot epidemic.
I Don't Want to Be a Man is... it's funny, although there's a lot of alcohol in it (I'm not so into drunk = funny) and the gender-bending is really unexpected for 1919.
Stella Maris is also good, in a style that became more widespread a few years later.
But she left off von Stroheim's Blind Husbands, Griffith's Broken Blossoms, Hayawaka's Dragon Painter, and (surprisingly) Shackleton's South. I understand this is opinion, but South really should have been at least mentioned.
There are definitely better silent years, but... yeah, I see Thompson's point. There *were* a lot of significant things going on in 1919. |
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| jeremy |
| Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2009 2:39 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 6794
Location: Derby, England and Hamilton, New Zealand (yes they are about 12,000 miles apart)
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| The House Bunny was the most wrong-headed film I'd had the misfortune to watch since the last one I saw starring Adam Sandler. It made me want to hit someone. |
_________________
I am angry, I am ill, and I'm as ugly as sin.
My irritability keeps me alive and kicking.
I know the meaning of life, it doesn't help me a bit.
I know beauty and I know a good thing when I see it. |
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| jeremy |
| Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2009 2:41 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 6794
Location: Derby, England and Hamilton, New Zealand (yes they are about 12,000 miles apart)
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| And while we're on the subject of stupid, who thought it a good idea to give a PG rating to a film featuring simulated oral sex, nowever supposedly comical. Yes, I'm referring to the latest lame-brained vehicle for Jim Carey. Note to Hollywood - you are not obliged to keep the clown in business, just say, no. |
Last edited by jeremy on Mon Jan 05, 2009 3:40 am; edited 1 time in total
_________________
I am angry, I am ill, and I'm as ugly as sin.
My irritability keeps me alive and kicking.
I know the meaning of life, it doesn't help me a bit.
I know beauty and I know a good thing when I see it. |
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| jeremy |
| Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2009 2:46 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 6794
Location: Derby, England and Hamilton, New Zealand (yes they are about 12,000 miles apart)
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| Just a thought, but wouldn't Adam West be better off spending his billions on poverty reduction, providing employment opportunities, boosting the hard press law enforvement agencies and crime prevention schemes rather than squandering his unearned dollars on boys' toys and running around in fancy dress solving a handful of crimes on an ad hoc basis. |
_________________
I am angry, I am ill, and I'm as ugly as sin.
My irritability keeps me alive and kicking.
I know the meaning of life, it doesn't help me a bit.
I know beauty and I know a good thing when I see it. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2009 2:58 pm |
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Site Admin
Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12944
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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I've seen a lot of footage from South but I'm not sure if I've seen the film itself. A lot of the film from that expedition was abandoned in Antarctica and recovered a long time after. I saw an Omnimax presentation of it a few years ago called "Shackleton's Antarctic Adventure," which was also released on IMAX. Not the same film as The Endurance, which was released about the same time.
Shackleton's become a big industry in the last few decades. |
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Rocky Laocoon foretold of Troy's doom, only to find snaky water. They pulled him in and Rocky can't swim. Now Rocky wishes he were an otter! |
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| ehle64 |
| Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2009 3:24 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 7149
Location: NYC; US&A
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| OMG, i loved [i]Snow Angels.. . *sigh*[/i] |
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It truly disappoints me when people do something for you via no prompt of your own and then use it as some kind of weapon against you at a later time and place. It is what it is. |
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| mo_flixx |
| Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2009 4:54 pm |
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Joined: 30 May 2004
Posts: 12533
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Great title for a film, but after reading Rod's review I'd say pass.
Jesus Franco sounds kind of interesting though. |
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| Ghulam |
| Posted: Mon Jan 05, 2009 2:15 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 4742
Location: Upstate NY
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The Hungarian movie Werckmeister Harmonies (2001) is a haunting, eerie 145 minute long story directed by Bela Tarr about a drab town during a hard winter. A circus-like show arrives with a real dead whale and a mysterious man called the "Prince". Big crowds gather in the town square who go on a rampage and enter a hospital, destroying everything in it, throwing the patients from their beds to the floor. The movie consists of only 39 long shots, each without a cut, with the camera taking long shots, then zooming in, then going to a different room or to the exterior without a break. The allegorical plot is not very clear, but the movie stays interesting till the end. I would not however want to see it again.
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| gromit |
| Posted: Mon Jan 05, 2009 4:08 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9016
Location: Shanghai
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Ghulam, my review of WH can be found at the top of Page 7 of the Review thread here, if you are interested. Funny, but my first thought when reading your comments was that I need to see that again. I was really transfixed by the film, and particularly liked the whale as open-ended metaphor.
I consider Werckmeister a great film, and have been disappointed that Tarr's Man from London (2007) hasn't turned up here yet. |
Last edited by gromit on Mon Jan 05, 2009 8:13 am; edited 1 time in total
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Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number. |
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