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| billyweeds |
 Posted: Sat Dec 31, 2011 6:10 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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War Horse may be the best movie of the year. The qualities that make it a great film are probably the very same ones that will make people criticize it when they do--its earnestness and honest emotion are at odds with the irony of much of modern filmmaking.
Moneyball takes subjects--the machinations behind putting a baseball team together, the way money has perverted the process, and how one man changed the rules--that might have been dry and intellectual and makes them vivid, funny, and moving. But the subjects still involve baseball, and that's a no-no for a lot of people. And Brad Pitt still doesn't get enough respect for his acting.
Thor, which I enjoyed, is not vaguely a great superhero film. As for Hugo, I submit that if almost anyone except Scorsese had directed it, a lof of the people who are loving it would dismiss it as the twee, affected piece of work it is. |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Sat Dec 31, 2011 8:33 am |
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The battle begins. I liked The Adjustment Bureau but Limitless was much better. Source Code is another I'd put in my top ten and Hanna. As usual I've missed so many movies that TAB might even be in it. Midnight In Paris would be in my top ten of course. Syd, because of your comment about the 3d version of Kung Fu Panda 2 I waited till there was a 2D version showing and I finally saw it. I enjoyed it and the visuals were beautiful in 2D. I think I liked the first one better though. Crazy Stupid Love (is that the title?) would have been in my top ten if it didn't go south in the last 15 or 20 minutes. The same thing would keep Super 8 off my list. Captain America would probably be on. Bridesmaids would have been on my list if the last 118 minutes hadn't gone into the toilet.  I liked the new Mission Impossible but not in my top ten unless I can't find ten that would be.
I'd give the nod to Marisa Tomei as best supporting actress for her wonderful crazy performance in Crazy Stupid Love.
We are planning to see Mama Tómate la Sopa (Mama Eat Your Soup) next week. It is getting raves and is apparently an hilarious comedy. It's in Spanish of course but being a comedy I think i'll be able to understand most of it. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Sat Dec 31, 2011 9:48 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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Not that much of a battle between Gary and me except, of course, for Bridesmaids, which is #1 or #2 for me and obviously not for Gary.  I liked all of his other favorites quite a bit except for Hanna, which was only sorta okay for me, Mission Impossible, which I found needlessly complicated and overlong, and Captain America, which I didn't like at all. Source Code, The Adjustment Bureau, Limitless, Crazy. Stupid. Love., Midnight in Paris--all good by me. (Hate the idiotic punctuation in the CSL title, but I like to get the titles right, as you know.) |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Sat Dec 31, 2011 11:21 am |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12929
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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| I didn't like the lead human actor's performance in War Horse and it too many horse nuzzling scenes. I probably should put Moneyball in the honorable mentions. It fits in my mind somehow with Midnight in Paris. My list is based on how much I enjoyed the film as well as the quality, so The Tree of Life doesn't make my top 10 since I was looking at my watch for the last half hour. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Sat Dec 31, 2011 11:54 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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| I thought Jeremy Irvine was excellent in War Horse. (He was the kid, who I'm assuming you mean as the lead performance.) But that's the horse-race thing. (No pun intended.) |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Sat Dec 31, 2011 12:19 pm |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6961
Location: Black Hills
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A good year for sci-fi and fantasy...Source Code, The Adj. Bureau, Limitless, Midnight in Paris, The Tree of Life, and Take Shelter (which may or may not fit my categorization, depending on your take). I wouldn't put The Future or Another Earth on the list, though.
Horse films and sports films not my thing, but will eventually try to see Warhorse and Moneyball, because if I've learned anything at 3rd Eye, it's that good storytelling can always trump genre. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Sat Dec 31, 2011 12:57 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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| In a weird way, War Horse is not a horse movie and Moneyball is not a sports movie, so you may wind up liking both more than you suspect. |
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| carrobin |
| Posted: Sat Dec 31, 2011 12:59 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 7795
Location: NYC
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| I hate football but quite enjoyed "North Dallas 40" and "Semi-Tough." You can never tell. |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Sat Dec 31, 2011 1:20 pm |
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carrobin wrote: I hate football but quite enjoyed "North Dallas 40" and "Semi-Tough." You can never tell.
Both good movies. A good football movie from the past, besides some that are comedies from the 30's and 40's, was Saturday's Hero with John Derek. And as I'm sure most of you know, This Sporting Life is one of my favourite football movies, though it is Rugby Football. Friday Night Lights was a good football film. For all sports movies Slap Shot is up there with the best. Of course being made in the U.S. the American hockey player was the one who was made out to be the most intelligent and decent.
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| Syd |
| Posted: Sat Dec 31, 2011 3:11 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12929
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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billyweeds wrote: In a weird way, War Horse is not a horse movie and Moneyball is not a sports movie, so you may wind up liking both more than you suspect.
The opening scenes of War Horse are a pretty conventional horse picture; not so much after the captain buys him.
The reunion scene reminded me of the reunion at the end of Seventh Heaven, which I made fun of when I reviewed it.
Edit: sorry, that's 7th Heaven. The review is at the top of the sadly neglected "Third Eye Film Reviews". |
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| jeremy |
| Posted: Sat Dec 31, 2011 4:56 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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| I will cry at Warhorse. I can tell beause my eyes moistened during the trailer. I wasn't sure why. Leaving aside incipient dementia as an explanation, I concluded that it was due two things, neither of which have anything to do with concern for the fate of a horse or a young man at war. FIrstly, I think my emotions are triggered by the film's elegaic treatment of England. Spielberg's love affair with te English countryside and a certain English gentleness that accompanies it is a like an unexpected compliment from a friend that is all the more disarming for being sincere but misplaced. This English idyll never real existed, it is a founding myth ingrained in English sensibility as much as the idea of the West is in America. Secondly, England, or a certain idea of England, never recovered from the slaughter of the FIrst World War. Row upon row of white crosses stretching across the French and Belgiain counryside bear testament not just to individual sacrifie but to the very idea that England and the British Empire were worth dying for. In some ways this was a good thing, but this learning cost England its soul. It is why we are both cynical and envious of the capacity of Americans to simply love their country. |
Last edited by jeremy on Sat Dec 31, 2011 5:11 pm; edited 1 time in total
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Sat Dec 31, 2011 5:02 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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| Jeremy--I cried more at War Horse than at any movie I've seen since 1954 when, at the age of 14, I saw Gone With the Wind for the first time, started crying a third of the way through and didn't stop until the end. With War Horse, I forget exactly when I started crying, but the same thing happened. Non-stop until the final credits. And I still wouldn't call it a tearjerker. It gets all its tears without undue manipulation. It's just a flat-out great movie, one of Spielberg's two or three best ever. |
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| inlareviewer |
| Posted: Sat Dec 31, 2011 6:05 pm |
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Joined: 05 Jul 2004
Posts: 1949
Location: Lawrence, KS
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For reasons specified in The Lobby, haven't been up to many new movies, but did manage to get two in before the pall fell. Perhaps predictably, am directly between the poles of reaction on Hugo. Scorsese! certainly uses 3D in imaginative and thematically apt ways, Ben Kingsley has a fine old time digging into the baddie, the technical/decor elements are breathtaking, and the clockworks-logical-yet-unpredictable storyline would hold even without 3D. That said, it didn't exactly hustle its narrative way along; the magical Melies reconfigurations almost seemed a different film entirely (which, in context, is probably the whole point); certain performances seemed more about tone than content; and a nascent pallid quality to The Kid's admirable work (no doubt conjoined with my own raw and demented state) kept me detached from what was clearly intended by the auteur to turn me into a identifying-with participant in his adventure. Definitely a considerable and worthy film, with some real gasp-inducing moments and surprises, and obviously lovers of film history and/or the director cannot afford to pass it by -- yet its effect dissipated sooner than I might have expected it to.
Conversely, A Separation is a must-see. The hype has not been overblown -- of this year's seen flicks, only Melancholia burrowed deeper in my cineaste's subconscious, only Beginners carried more specific personal resonance for this child of divorce/lifelong radical. Actually, would have to jump back to 2010 and Another Year to cite a post-millennial film that so intimately culled extraordinary emotional and psychological results from ordinary people/situations; indeed, need to go further back, to Hitchcock for plot control, Renoir for character truth, Bergman for implicit profundity. Must urge all who can to see it in a cinema, and if it doesn't come to you, keep an eye out for it on video. Part psychological study, part sociological treatise, part legal mystery, it is above all a painstakingly truthful exercise in behavioral realism as it follows the anything but clear-cut dissolution of a marriage in modern-day Iran. Director Asghar Farhadi in one fell stroke earns comparison with the master filmakers cited above, his command absolute, the entire cast beyond praise, with Laila Hatami and Peyman Moadi mesmeric and heartbreaking as the husband and wife, and Sarina Farhadi, the director's daughter, trumping any possible charges of nepotism as their centrifugal child. There's far more to it than meets the eye, and what meets the eye is arresting, compelling, and finally devastating. It's a safe bet to emerge as Foreign Language champion at the annual Bald Gold Man With A Sword derby, and may well get a Best Picture nom as well, which, as seldom, would be wholly justified. Don't miss it.
Next week/year: Iron Lady, Descendantsand something else, but I forget what. Back to the saltmines. Happy New Year, allez. inla out. |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Sat Dec 31, 2011 6:32 pm |
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| Happy 2012 everyone and fuck the Mayans. |
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| Joe Vitus |
| Posted: Sat Dec 31, 2011 7:25 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 14498
Location: Houston
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| Gross, necrophilia! |
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