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marantzo
Posted: Mon Aug 04, 2014 2:20 pm Reply with quote
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Just saw Sharknado 2 this morning. Ridiculous and funny. It was on our Space network.

I guess I saw it twice.
daffy
Posted: Tue Aug 05, 2014 7:21 am Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 1939 Location: Wall Street
I can't wait to see this on Netflix:

'The Dog', Who Had His Day On Film

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billyweeds
Posted: Wed Aug 06, 2014 6:49 am Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 20618 Location: New York City
Lucy offers an overwhelmingly silly story told in such beautiful images and with such superb editing that it emerges as very entertaining. Scarlett Johannson plays a woman who (for wildly convoluted reasons) gets to use more than the usual 10 percent of her brain and turns into a robotic, raging vengeance machine, killing innocent people willy-nilly in her quest for getting even. Morgan Freeman plays his usual cliche-ridden Voice of Reason. It's all idiotic, but Luc Besson films it so well that I liked it anyway.

Only 89 minutes long, too--always a plus for me.
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gromit
Posted: Wed Aug 06, 2014 9:50 am Reply with quote
Joined: 31 Aug 2004 Posts: 9005 Location: Shanghai
I made a trek to a dvd store tonight to try to find Lucy and Boyhood. The two new films I really want to see.
The store was closed, and it's disappointing since the Tesco closed two years ago and the resulting lack of foot traffic resulted in the other dvd store closing.
So just one dvd shop and no decent other store nearby.
And the one shop was closed...

I did stop at a more expensive dvd store on the way home and they didnt have either.
I think I saw Lucy here though ...

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whiskeypriest
Posted: Sat Aug 09, 2014 10:28 am Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 6916 Location: "It's a Dry Heat."
So here's the problem with The Hundred-Foot Journey, which I saw last night. Om Puri, who plays the patriarch of the upstart Indian family that has opened a restaurant in a small French village, is talking to Helen Mirren, owner of the established one, now two, star restaurant in the village. He's talking about writing to his son who in a year or so (judging by the number of Bastille Day fireworks, which is how you judge the passage of time in this movie) has risen to become a superstar chef in a rather austerely scientific restaurant - because, plot - to tell him about his growing friendship with his former rival, Mirren. They go to dance classes together, cook, pick flowers (they were looking for mushrooms), none of which they have shown in the movie - it's almost like I had a girlfriend! he says, and I realized - THAT was the movie I wanted to see, not the one I was watching, which featured a rather lifeless relationship between the increasingly broodingly good looking Indian superstar chef and a pretty if uncharismatic french sous chef,

Anyway, it is all by the numbers; you can smell every plot turn about three scenes before they happen, regardless of how improbable (and they are pretty much ALL improbable). But Mirren was good - granted she could probably have phoned the performance in and been good, it's pretty much her wheel house - and I really like Om Puri. And Lasse Hallstrom - Lasse directed My Life as a Dog forty years ago, a real favorite of mine - could have quite a career shooting food porn for the Food Network if the director thing does not work out, and the scenery is spectacularly beautiful. So, nothing worth rushing to see, but probably a pleasant movie to rent.

In case you were curious, yes I decided to write this solely so I could have the chance to write "Lasse directed My Life as a Dog". That's the type of guy I am.

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bartist
Posted: Sat Aug 09, 2014 12:29 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 27 Apr 2010 Posts: 6941 Location: Black Hills
Oh my god. No, really, I laughed.

100FJ set off my twee alarm, and I've grown more twee allergic in recent years.

Waiting for Boyhood to get here, but a lot of indie film bypasses the Hills, so can't get my hopes up. On the other hand, we just had a record-breaking flash flood, I had to buy a submersible pump in order to pump out 4000 gallons from the cellar and FIND the original sump pump which had stopped working, and that's just one of many experiences that should form the basis of a great movie....or suicide note...it could go either way.

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Syd
Posted: Sat Aug 09, 2014 11:22 pm Reply with quote
Site Admin Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 12887 Location: Norman, Oklahoma
100 Foot Journey sounds a lot like Mostly Martha without the cute kid (which I had no complaint about). It sounds like a movie I'll like, so I'll be there.

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billyweeds
Posted: Sun Aug 10, 2014 5:37 am Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 20618 Location: New York City
The Hundred-Foot Journey sounds like my working definition of unwatchable.
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whiskeypriest
Posted: Sun Aug 10, 2014 10:40 am Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 6916 Location: "It's a Dry Heat."
billyweeds wrote:
The Hundred-Foot Journey sounds like my working definition of unwatchable.
Oh, well, I guess it depends on your tolerance level, but to me it is more like a movie that, two years from now, I will not be sure that I have seen.

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Syd
Posted: Sun Aug 10, 2014 9:55 pm Reply with quote
Site Admin Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 12887 Location: Norman, Oklahoma
The Hundred Foot Journey has some fine acting, has some scenes that moved me to tears, is a genuinely beautiful film and really needs to have maybe twenty minutes excised, because it has severe plot resolution problems, to the point that I was expecting closing credits a half hour before the movie actually ended. The film is not actually a comedy, although it has some amusing moments. How could you have a comedy where the matriarch is burned alive in the first half hour a scene that is recapitulated when the restaurant in France is set afire by a xenophobic bastard and the family has to conquer racism in the French village where they finally settle?

I differ from whiskeypriest in that I really like the young couple, who have to face the fact that they love each other and are also rivals.

This is the only film I've ever seen in which I was moved to tears by the preparation of an omelet. I got the impression that Catherine le Bon was actually playing Helen Mirren's daughter, which would make sense of the end of the movie.

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jeremy
Posted: Mon Aug 11, 2014 9:17 am Reply with quote
Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 6794 Location: Derby, England and Hamilton, New Zealand (yes they are about 12,000 miles apart)
I saw "The Guardians of The Galaxy" and pronounced it likable. I watched it in 3D and, unusually for me, didn't find it a distraction or a disappointment. Someone put a lot of effort (and money) into creating the various worlds and effects on show. For the most part, the design was impressive and in keeping with the light and comic tone, though the 'arch' villains could have done without being quite so Skeletor and friends obvious. "Guardians" didn't really do subtle...or deep or edgy or much else beside deliver some well put together comic thrills and spills. A few episodes of mild swearing and a couple of risque jokes aside, the film, which came replete with moral lessons and a happy ending, felt more Disney than marvel.

"Peter, your ship is FILTHY"

"Oh, she has no idea. Put a black light in here and it's like a Jackson Pollock painting."

The Peter alluded to above, is Peter Quill the all-American (albeit that he's half alien) libidinous rogue and eventual hero of the piece. His character could have been irritating, but Chris Pratt played him with a degree of self-mockery and not a little charm. I was surprised that I didn't even hate him when he took his shirt-off to reveal a chest the size of a top of the range fridge-freezer. As you are probably aware from the trailers, Quill is one of a group of alien misfits, including a genetically modified raccoon and a sentient tree, who, as the title suggests, find themselves charged with saving the galaxy from the bad guys.

It now seems obligatory for all women in sci-fi and fantasy films to be highly independent, Ripley-esque amazons, albeit they must also remain slim and sexy to fit into their highly practical, shiny outfits. For those of us whose bodies aren't or perhaps never were what they once were or what they are now required to be, it's quite a relief to see these women doing it for themselves, and still deign to fall into the protective arms of the hero at the requisite moment. For female characters in the male space of the comic book world, the price to be paid for not being a damsel in distress is the ability to both attract the male gaze and deal with its unwanted attentions. You can look, but don't touch. Certainly, Zoe Zaldana's Gamora made a fine and fine-looking green, warrioress thing. She seems to be cornering the market in women of colour in sci-fi movies at the moment - though, in a cute intertextual reference, a barely recognisable Karen Gilliam (Doctor Who) played Gamora's blue tinted rival, Nebula, and was, If anything, the more badass and fascinating of the two.



"The Guardians of The Galaxy" was fun (for all the family) though I can't say I'm looking forward to the clumsily primed sequel. With no real grit or subtext and the excitement of the new dissipated, I'm not sure their's enough substance to sustain my interest for another two hours.


***½ (out of five)


Last edited by jeremy on Mon Aug 11, 2014 6:05 pm; edited 3 times in total

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whiskeypriest
Posted: Mon Aug 11, 2014 9:41 am Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 6916 Location: "It's a Dry Heat."
Syd -

While your last comment would make a certain amount of sense, I find it hard to believe that a movie that goes out of its way to avoid anything not completely obvious would leave such an important plot point unstated.

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Syd
Posted: Mon Aug 11, 2014 10:24 am Reply with quote
Site Admin Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 12887 Location: Norman, Oklahoma
whiskeypriest wrote:
Syd -

While your last comment would make a certain amount of sense, I find it hard to believe that a movie that goes out of its way to avoid anything not completely obvious would leave such an important plot point unstated.


It looks like you're right. Otherwise Marguerite would have been given a last name. I probably misheard something.

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whiskeypriest
Posted: Mon Aug 11, 2014 7:52 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 6916 Location: "It's a Dry Heat."
syd -

In a more subtle movie the absence of a character's last name might be a clue to look further. Not this one.

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billyweeds
Posted: Mon Aug 11, 2014 10:22 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 20618 Location: New York City
I could scarcely ever figure out what was going on in Guardians of the Galaxy, but I was having too much fun to care. It's a whizbang hoot of a movie, too silly to be truly thrilling, but funny, snarky, and--occasionally--sweet as can be. The soundtrack is the real key for me: rather than the stentorian concoctions of John Williams, we get classic rock. What a relief.
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