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| gromit |
 Posted: Tue Feb 17, 2015 12:12 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9010
Location: Shanghai
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I thought Birdman was a lot of fun.
Had me laughing quite a bit.
Oddly, the only thing that didn't work for me was the Birdman/magical stuff.
But I'm good at ignoring/minimizing stuff I don't care for if I like other parts of a film. And the Birdman stuff wasn't exactly bad, just didn't seem necessary or well-integrated into the rest of the film, imo. |
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Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Tue Feb 17, 2015 12:25 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9010
Location: Shanghai
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Watched Foxcatcher and was fairly disappointed.
It had a drab, flat look.
Steve Carell's portrayal seemed rather one-note and monotonous.
And I didn't feel like the script ever figured him out.
Was Du Pont just an insecure rich jerk who felt he could do whatever he wanted? Did he have mental problems?
The climax seemed rather banal. And the ending rather dull,
Even if that's the way it actually happened, I would have preferred to have DuPont do the deed in the wrestling gym and then tell the other wrestlers to keep training. Something like that would have been more dramatic and interesting. I just had real trouble getting involved in the film. I think the look, the pace, and Carrell were all letdowns.
Tatum and Ruffalo are good, but again there was something dissatisfying about the script -- so the brother relationship partly came off and was partly amorphous. At least Foxcatcher bumped the ludicrous Gone Girl out of my 2014 Top Ten. And Sienna Miller was attractive, but not my type. And she had very little to do in a rather small role. Mostly she just said Hi and acted maternal. Redgrave was good, but her part was also real small. |
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Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Tue Feb 17, 2015 12:51 am |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6958
Location: Black Hills
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| A range of opinions on Foxc. here - still waiting for it to show up in outer bongolia. My praise for Sienna was in American Sniper, where she had to the emotional hod carrying for the family. |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Tue Feb 17, 2015 8:11 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9010
Location: Shanghai
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My so-far Top Ten for '14:
1. Boyhood
2. Grand Budapest Hotel
3. Birdman
4. Whiplash
5. The Theory of Everything
6. Chef
7. Foxcatcher
8. The Imitation Game
9. The Rocket (Aus/Laos)
10. Citizenfour
I really liked the first 3, the next 3were good, while the bottom 4 all were decent but with significant flaws. I think I've posted on all of them.
Hell, I haven't seen that many 2014 films, so here's the rest of my list:
Not My Cuppa, But A Few Good Moments
11. Gone Girl
12. The Immigrant
13. Angriest Man in Brooklyn
14. Leviathan
Stinkers
15. Lucy
16. A Touch of Sin
17. Only Lovers Left Alive
My To-see List:
Interstellar
Winter Sleep
Selma
The One I Love
Force Majeure
Memphis
Has anyone seen any of those last 3?
And is there anything I'm missing?
I'm not sure if I'll try Nightcrawler or American Sniper -- not my kind of films. |
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Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Tue Feb 17, 2015 9:25 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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Nightcrawler is an excellent film. American Sniper is just okay. The One I Love is a must-see, though not without flaws IMO
Selma is the only film of the year besides Boyhood that I would characterize as "great." Interstellar is totally unwatchable, though I "watched" it in its entirety, feeling imprisoned. For reasons too complicated to go into, I could not leave. Believe me, I would have. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Tue Feb 17, 2015 10:18 am |
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Site Admin
Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12921
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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| I like The One I Love a lot. It's a little hard to describe without giving too much away, but it's basically a three-actor movie, and one of the actors (Ted Danson, as the marriage counselor) is off-screen most of the time. The rest is fun and, well, odd. |
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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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| whiskeypriest |
| Posted: Wed Feb 18, 2015 10:44 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 6916
Location: "It's a Dry Heat."
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| I enjoyed the oneI saw - The One I Love - immensley. And anything I might say beyond that is a spoiler. |
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I ask you, Velvel, as a rational man, which of us is possessed? |
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| Ghulam |
| Posted: Thu Feb 19, 2015 1:56 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 4742
Location: Upstate NY
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Julianne Moore lives the part in Still Alice. The screenplay and the dramatization are just adequate. No threat to Michael Haneke's Amour.
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| bartist |
| Posted: Thu Feb 19, 2015 9:46 am |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6958
Location: Black Hills
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billyweeds wrote: ... Interstellar is totally unwatchable, though I "watched" it in its entirety, feeling imprisoned. For reasons too complicated to go into, I could not leave. Believe me, I would have.
Trapped by the powerful gravity field of the black hole... |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Thu Feb 19, 2015 1:01 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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Ghulam wrote: .
Julianne Moore lives the part in Still Alice. The screenplay and the dramatization are just adequate. No threat to Michael Haneke's Amour.
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Quite right, but Amour was so real it was painful and almost sadistic. I think Haneke has serious, serious issues. Just watching the trailer for Funny Games, I wanted to file a petition to have him institutionalized. But, yeah, talented for sure. |
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| Befade |
| Posted: Fri Feb 20, 2015 12:51 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 3784
Location: AZ
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Quote: My friend who sends me disks with movies he pulls out of the Internet supplied me with a few to watch over the long weekend, but the only one I've had time to watch was "Birdman." And I'm still not sure how I feel about it. I like Gromit's theory of the final scene, though. And I love the New York theater setting, and the unusual camerawork. The actors were all terrific. And now I want to read some Raymond Carver. But I still can't really decide whether I liked the movie or not, though I liked quite a lot of the things in it.
Carol............It's not easy to go against the flow.....but I didn't like Birdman.....it didn't resonate anything for me. I've read the Raymond Carver book......liked it a lot......didn't think the film replicated it at all. I guess high energy quirkiness isn't my cuppa.
I liked Boyhood but it didn't pack a punch. I'm not interested in Imitation, Theory, Sniper. Punches came from Foxcatcher (I almost wrote Flycatcher), Selma, and A Most Wanted Man. I liked Nightcrawler a lot. Performances that stunned me were Steve Carrell and Channing Tatum. I liked Reese and Wild. Whiplash struck me as overly intense. Will see Still Alice but don't find the subject matter appealing.
Did I read that 75% of Academy voters are white males? That is certainly a determining factor. |
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Lost in my own private I dunno. |
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| carrobin |
| Posted: Fri Feb 20, 2015 1:48 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 7795
Location: NYC
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It seems to me that my ambivalence about "Birdman" is caused by my general dislike of the characters. They were (mostly) interesting, but not people i'd want to be around for any length of time. The daughter and the ex-wife were okay, but otherwise the egos and fantasies and rants and desperation got rather overwhelming. That's not to say I couldn't like such characters (Alan Bates won me with a desperate, egotistical, ranting character), but in this movie, I mostly switched between feeling sorry for them and getting impatient with them. (Otherwise, Mrs. Lincoln, I liked it.)
The only other Oscar film I've seen all the way through was "The Imitation Game," which I liked, partly because I've always been interested in Turing and the Enigma machine in general. (I was surprised during Cumberbatch's interview when he said he'd never heard of Turing before reading the script.) I do want to see "Boyhood" and "Wild" but I think I can skip "Sniper," although I may watch for it to come up on Netflix just because of the controversy. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Fri Feb 20, 2015 6:42 pm |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6958
Location: Black Hills
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| "McFarland USA" -- Hoosiers AGAIN?? |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Fri Feb 20, 2015 6:45 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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bartist wrote: "McFarland USA" -- Hoosiers AGAIN??
Can't wait to see it. Three guesses why. If you know me you only need one. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Sat Feb 21, 2015 11:11 am |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6958
Location: Black Hills
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KC?
But you're staying quiet on 3 Days to Kill and Black or White...or I missed your reviews. |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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