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| marantzo |
 Posted: Mon Apr 18, 2011 9:38 am |
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| Our elevator is at floor 1949. All aboard who are coming aboard. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Mon Apr 18, 2011 4:16 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12944
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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Joe Vitus wrote: Watched the restored version of Sam Fuller's The Big Red One last night. At almost three hours, it should be exhausting, but instead it's absorbing. I really needed to go to sleep in order to wake up early this morning, but I kept telling myself "another half hour, another half hour." The movie pulled me in and held me.
I remember trying to watch the shorter version sometime back in the early 90's, but never getting passed the first half hour or so. Don't know why. Maybe the cuts really hurt it. But this version is amazing, and the sequence in the concentration camp is more powerful to me than all of Schindler's List.
I'm watching this now. They're in Sicily and just got rescued by Navy artillery. My testosterone is through the roof. |
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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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| Joe Vitus |
| Posted: Mon Apr 18, 2011 6:00 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 14498
Location: Houston
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| With Lee Marvin in every scene, how could you help it? |
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| Ghulam |
| Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2011 1:12 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 4742
Location: Upstate NY
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| Jay and Mark Duplass's Cyrus with John C. Reilly, Jonah Hill and Marisa Tomei is a funny take on a triangle consisting of a man, a woman and her grownup son. Enjoyable. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2011 6:20 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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Ghulam wrote: Jay and Mark Duplass's Cyrus with John C. Reilly, Jonah Hill and Marisa Tomei is a funny take on a triangle consisting of a man, a woman and her grownup son. Enjoyable.
Also very disturbing for a comedy IMO. One of my favorite films of 2010. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2011 12:39 pm |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6967
Location: Black Hills
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(current film talk, moved from Current Film, for some arcane reason)
[re Billy's post on The Conspirator] Wow, Billy, that is quite a cast, and I like both courtroom and period dramas, so I'm there. When it gets here.
Saw Jane Eyre (the umpteenth version, 2011) -- exquisite photography of gothic English rural landscapes and interiors, well-written adaptation, and seemed quite faithful to Charlotte B's novel. Like most British films, this one has Judi Dench in the cast, as Mrs. Fairfax, the housekeeper. Not familiar with the leads who played Rochester and Jane, but they seemed perfect, perhaps the more perfect for being unknown to me. This Jane seems more in keeping with Bronte's, being somewhat plain (or what passes for "plain" in the movie universe) -- contrast with the Orson Welles version, with Joan Fontaine, or the 90's version, with Charlotte Gainsbourg/Anna Paquin. It's like they finally got Jane Eyre right. Sally Hawkins is almost unrecognizable in this, as the mean aunt, if you know her from films like "Happy Go Lucky." (and if you don't want to know her, her scenes are fairly brief....I know there are Hawkinsophobes lurking...) |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2011 2:16 pm |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9016
Location: Shanghai
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Watched The Arbor, about the English playwright Andrea Dunbar. The film indulges in some interesting tricks to blend the concepts of documentary and fiction film. Actors portray Dunbar's twenty-something children and her fifty-something siblings, but when they speak, we hear the voices of the real family dubbed in.
There are also sequences in which some scenes from Dunbar's plays are enacted outside on the grass of the housing estate. And there are some brief clips of the actual Andrea Dunbar and her parents. It's a bit of an odd film -- somewhat eerily effective as it rehashes all of the harsh family history of drugs, drink and abuse in the next generation Dunbar was unable to write about after she died on a barroom floor age 28.
I'm not really familiar with Dunbar, but the film obviously plays off the very autobiographical nature of her writing, especially her first play entitled The Arbor after the street she lived on. Has anyone seen the film Rita, Sue and Bob Too!? Dunbar wrote the screenplay from her play -- her 3rd and last -- of the same name. . |
Last edited by gromit on Wed Sep 12, 2012 2:21 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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| Marc |
| Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2011 10:46 pm |
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Joined: 19 May 2004
Posts: 8424
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| The Adjustment Bureau is one of the most inept films I've seen in a long time. Ludicrous. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2011 11:38 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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Reprinted from Current, without italics or such:
The Conspirator was a huge surprise for me. I saw it as part of the Screen Actors Guild screening series. It's not a movie I would have made time to go see otherwise, because it's directed by Robert Redford, who hasn't directed a movie I've liked at all since Ordinary People in 1980, and the star is Robin Wright (Penn), whose acting habitually puts me into a deep snooze.
What an eye-opener. This is a seriously underrated movie, a real beauty, with great direction, cinematography, and acting--particularly by Wright, who has finally dumped the jerk and his last name and come through with her best performance since The Princess Bride.
The Conspirator tells the story of Mary Surratt, the boarding house owner who was tried as a co-conspirator in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Her defense attorney is insightfully played by James McAvoy, who has the real lead in the movie, and supporting roles are handled well by Evan Rachel Wood, Danny Huston, Alexis Bledel, Colm Meaney, and--in award-worthy turns--by Tom Wilkinson and Kevin Kline.
If I was to be picky, I could say that certain scenes are overly talky. Big whoop. This is a must-see. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2011 11:39 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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Marc wrote: The Adjustment Bureau is one of the most inept films I've seen in a long time. Ludicrous.
This goes beyond opinion into being just plain wrong. The Adjustment Bureau is wonderful.
Not to mention which: if someone else posted this, Marc would be the first to demand the reason for the opinion. It's lame to just claim "this movie is inept" without explaining why you think so. IMO the movie has expert chemistry between two mightily attractive stars in an enchanting love story woven around an exciting mystery. In other words, a modern Charade and everything that Duplicity failed to be. Over to Marc. |
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| Ghulam |
| Posted: Wed Apr 20, 2011 12:49 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 4742
Location: Upstate NY
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Mike Leigh's most accomplished film to date, Another Year, is a look over four seasons at a warm hearted middle age professional couple and their positive interactions with relatives and friends. Exquisitely sensitive direction.
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Wed Apr 20, 2011 6:45 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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Ghulam wrote: .
Mike Leigh's most accomplished film to date, Another Year, is a look over four seasons at a warm hearted middle age professional couple and their positive interactions with relatives and friends. Exquisitely sensitive direction.
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Totally agree. As you will see when I announce my Blanche nominations. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Wed Apr 20, 2011 7:05 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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A new independent film called Fly Away deals with the codependence and denial of a single mother coping with an intolerable situation. Her 16-year-old daughter is severely autistic and makes life a 24-hour-a-day nightmare, with middle-of-the-night shrieks and daytime tantrums and weird eating habits and, more and more frequently, dangerous physical attacks.
Her ex-husband (the girl's father) and the school principal (the comedian Reno) push for institutionalization, but mom can't bear the idea. The 85-minute movie is about her journey toward enlightenment.
Janet Grillo wrote and directed this wrenching little item, and Beth Broderick as the mom, Ashley Rickards as the daughter, and Greg Germann as a potential love interest for mom, are superb. Fly Away is far from fun, but in the realm of disease-of-the-week movies it's one of the best I've ever seen.
Side note based on Google research: Grillo's ex-husband and the father of her autistic son is director David O. Russell (Three Kings, The Fighter), so it's safe to assume this is at least partially her/their own story. |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Wed Apr 20, 2011 7:27 am |
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Another well made movie that I definitely won't see.
The Adjustment Bureau is playing here and I was going to see it. I looked it up and read multiple capsule critic reviews on a link from Imdb.About half of them said it was very good and about half said it was lame. Of course this didn't help me decide at all. Then I read Marc's "capsule" review this morning and thought I had my answer, until I read Billy's view of the flick.
Goddammit, I still don't know if I should see it or not. As usual the best movies here are animated and all dubbed in Spanish. Don't they think the kids here can read? |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Wed Apr 20, 2011 8:59 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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It's obvious The Adjustment Bureau is polarizing. To me, it's probably either the best or second-best movie of 2011 so far. To others--Marc, for instance--it stinks. This ability to inspire strong opinions is IMO one of the hallmarks of a great movie. In other words...
Gary--See it. |
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