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| Befade |
 Posted: Wed Sep 24, 2014 5:15 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 3784
Location: AZ
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| My favorite grandma. My mother died when I was 19. |
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Lost in my own private I dunno. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Sat Sep 27, 2014 8:57 am |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6958
Location: Black Hills
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| Homefront, in spite of my liking for Statham as an action star, is pretty standard stuff. Winona R does a passable meth whore, but it all just felt like an acting chore. The script is drab and riddled with cliches, and the arc as routine as smoking out yellowjackets from a hole in the porch. |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Sun Sep 28, 2014 1:58 am |
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Site Admin
Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12921
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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| Le Doulos just didn't work for me. Nicely photographed, but I couldn't identify with any of the characters, and the plot didn't make much sense to me. Perhaps if there were fewer characters who looked alike it would make more sense. Well, at least I could tell the women apart, which would have been helpful if any of them had much of a part in the movie. |
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I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Sun Sep 28, 2014 9:19 am |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6958
Location: Black Hills
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| Mr. Nobody - somehow missed this 2009 scifi film, which does a fine job of exploring the idea of alternate timelines in a man's life. Good ensemble w/ Jared Leto, Diane Kruger, Rhys Ifans. If Cloud Atlas flopped for you, try this one - less ambitious, more successful. Nice mix of romance, psychology, and philosophical musing. |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Sun Sep 28, 2014 9:29 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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bartist wrote: Mr. Nobody - somehow missed this 2009 scifi film, which does a fine job of exploring the idea of alternate timelines in a man's life. Good ensemble w/ Jared Leto, Diane Kruger, Rhys Ifans. If Cloud Atlas flopped for you, try this one - less ambitious, more successful. Nice mix of romance, psychology, and philosophical musing.
Will watch this soon. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Sun Sep 28, 2014 11:32 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9010
Location: Shanghai
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I recall thinking Mr. Nobody was kind of a snooze.
But I'm having trouble remembering much at all about it.
I might re-watch it if I can dig it up ... |
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Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number. |
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| carrobin |
| Posted: Sun Sep 28, 2014 11:54 am |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 7795
Location: NYC
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| Just finished watching Olivier's "Henry V" on TCM. One of the most beautiful movies ever made--but of course I'm a nut for medieval manuscripts. I really liked Branagh's version better, but I can't take my eyes off Olivier's screen. |
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| yambu |
| Posted: Sun Sep 28, 2014 3:16 pm |
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Joined: 23 May 2004
Posts: 6441
Location: SF Bay Area
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I love both versions. My favorite speech is the tavern keeper Mistress Quickly telling Falstaff's drinking friends that he has just died.
"He's in Arthur's bosom", when she means that he is with Abraham.
I have read that a modern physician hearing Quickly say "...for I saw him fumbling with the sheets and play with flowers and smile upon his finger's ends... for his nose was as sharp as a pen...." would diagnose it him with encephalitis.
A recent and superb PBS series called "The Hollow Crown" has produced Richard II, Henry IV both parts, and Henry V. |
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That was great for you. How was it for me? |
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| whiskeypriest |
| Posted: Sun Sep 28, 2014 4:34 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 6916
Location: "It's a Dry Heat."
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| They are very different versions, and reflect their times. And both very good. I prefer Branagh's version, which is more brutal. Plus it has Emma Thompson. |
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I ask you, Velvel, as a rational man, which of us is possessed? |
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| yambu |
| Posted: Mon Sep 29, 2014 5:33 pm |
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Joined: 23 May 2004
Posts: 6441
Location: SF Bay Area
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The Adjustment Bureau is a light sci-fi where a mysterious but altruistic syndicate manipulates future history by controlling present-day lives.
As in The Departed and Good Will Hunting, Matt Damon is a lady killer of the most charming persuasion. The three films are so similar in this regard, you know he is given free reign. I could let the camera just roll on. |
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That was great for you. How was it for me? |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Wed Oct 01, 2014 11:58 pm |
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Site Admin
Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12921
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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Brothers and Sisters of the Toba Family is a 1941 Ozu film in which the father of the family dies suddenly at a birthday celebration, and the family discovers that he was guaranteer of a bad debt, and they will have to sell off the family estate to pay off as much of the debt as they can. There is one old house left, but it is uninhabitable, so the widowed mother and youngest daughter (and a maid (?) and mynah bird) wander from one ungrateful child to another, always finding themselves unwelcome as they conflict with an already settled family, and finally settle in the supposedly uninhabitable shack. Finally, one unmarried son who went to China to make his fortune returns and gives his brothers and sisters (except the youngest) a stern talking to, and invites his mother and the youngest sister to come with him to China. This is a solution that, in retrospect, has a four year life expectancy, tops, but they didn't know that in 1941.
This isn't as strong as An Inn in Tokyo or There Was a Father, or any of the Noriko trilogy, and gets pretty heavy-handed when the prodigal son returns. I found it most intriguing as a precursor to the much subtler and better Tokyo Story, with which it shares some themes. There's a bit of a class conflict here as well, as the youngest daughter wants to work like her best friend, and her older sister is outraged that a woman from their upper class family would actually work like a peasant. She has a better, if brief, shot in China, which is kind of like the frontier to these people. |
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I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Thu Oct 02, 2014 4:26 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
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Location: Shanghai
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I didn't find Tokyo Story to be subtle. Some things are repeated two or three times so thatcyou have to get the message. I found it rather a disappointment, considering it's widely acclaimed as a Great Film.
I do think There Was a Father is very potent and impressive. |
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Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Thu Oct 02, 2014 6:59 am |
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Site Admin
Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12921
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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gromit wrote: I didn't find Tokyo Story to be subtle. Some things are repeated two or three times so thatcyou have to get the message. I found it rather a disappointment, considering it's widely acclaimed as a Great Film.
I do think There Was a Father is very potent and impressive.
Tokyo Story is definitely more subtle than Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family. I'm not sure why it's singled out over Late Spring, Early Summer (my favorite) or There Was a Father. |
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I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Thu Oct 02, 2014 8:14 pm |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6958
Location: Black Hills
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| Thanks for Sharing is funny and warm, the naturalistic acting well suited to theme, but a part of me was asking, as Gwynie asks when she learns of Mark Ruffalo's sex addiction, "is that a real thing?" The film certainly makes a case, but it is still not entirely clear to me how a lot of the behavior differs from "young people being horny and having a crap-ton of casual sex." Maybe what I'm saying is that "obsession" might be more fitting than "addiction. " |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| carrobin |
| Posted: Sat Oct 04, 2014 4:30 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 7795
Location: NYC
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Just saw "Peeping Tom" on TCM. I had seen the start of it many years ago when I still had a black-and-white TV, early '70s I guess, and it was late at night so I wasn't really watching, and I wasn't impressed. When it came on this afternoon I figured I'd give it another shot, and it was worth it. For one thing, despite being a British thriller of a certain age, it was in color, and rather intense color at that. I still wouldn't put it very high on my list of favorite thrillers--too many Hitchcocks for that, anyway--but it was pretty enthralling all the way through.
It did bring to mind one of those questions I often ponder--why is it that, when approached by a threatening man in a movie, women always just stand there and scream instead of taking off like scalded rabbits? Men often do the same, though without the scream. Rather like those scenes in which someone is being pursued down a road by a car, and you wonder why they don't just get off the road. One of those eternal movie mysteries. |
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