Quoting number8 (view post)
ritch:
"How is education supposed to make me feel smarter? Besides, every time I learn something new, it pushes some old stuff out of my brain. Remember when I took that home wine-making course and forgot how to drive?"
--Homer
War of the Worlds containing conceptual ingenuity? There's a rare assertion. I really like the movie so I'm all too aware of all the incessant flack and criticism it gets. You'd likely get eaten alive for talking so kindly of it on a less amiable forum.
Or, at the very least, you'd get a knee-jerk lecture on why the son sub-plot is a complete and utter travesty which dilutes any merits the film may ostensibly hold.
Good to see some fans of the movie actually do exist.
Welcome to Match-Cut. :crazy:War of the Worlds containing conceptual ingenuity? There's a rare assertion. I really like the movie so I'm all too aware of all the incessant flack and criticism it gets. You'd likely get eaten alive for talking so kindly of it on a less amiable forum.
Or, at the very least, you'd get a knee-jerk lecture on why the son sub-plot is a complete and utter travesty which dilutes any merits the film may ostensibly hold.
Good to see some fans of the movie actually do exist.
Hey, I didn't say it was a paragon of exquisite and important filmmaking. It was, however, quite good in many respects. Dakota Fanning's perpetual screams and the much harped-upon 'son resolution', aside. It's not without it's problems, sure, but it also has some really admirable virtues.
So, yeah. Thanks for the welcome. :P
While the movie follows true events, it certainly has the convenient feeling of events happening at the last second before... You understand.
A bit overlong, and filled with eye-rolling moments, I get here, what many get from the talked-about trailer trash scenes in Million Dollar Baby, a much better movie.
That's not to say that there isn't good in this movie, because there is. Amy Adams is extremely good in her one-two scenes that she gets, foreshadowing a scene that becomes all the more effective because of her performance.
And then there's Angelina Jolie, who mostly cries and cries for the middle of the film. She does a fine job of it. That's not what I'm getting at though. The first twenty minutes, and the latter part of the film show talent that I've never seen from Jolie, or an actress for quite some time. She has an amazing grace, especially when she is with her son, that made me think I was seeing a masterful performance. Even when she's riding on rollerskates (something I'd like to know a little more about), she's in a certain zone that most actresses can never achieve.
Eastwood may have reached the tip of this era as a director, but I don't want him to stop making movies. As mentioned in the previous paragraph, there is some great work that he does here.
This was good, not great.
The asylum scenes, while possibly being accurate to what happened, still had that feeling of been there, done that from previous asylum films.
Also seemed like the whole charade should have fallen apart even faster than it did here. What, did the kid never speak at all? Five sentences out of his mouth and it should have been obvious that it wasn't her son.
Then again, I guess that wasn't the point. The point being that they thought a woman wouldn't put up any kind of fight. Really seemed to reduced the conflict down to that of a fight against sexism instead of a fight against wide-spread police corruption.
By the way, terrible poster for this movie. It looks like Angelina is going to eat her child.
Out of 4 stars:
The Guest: ***1/2
Furious 7: ***
The Tale of Princess Kaguya: ***
It Follows: ***1/2
Just a milquetoast film all around. A few hours later, and all that really sticks with me is Jolie's ability to cry with conviction. Rather poorly structured and lacking much in the way of impetus; the LAPD is a characterless villain, the mother-son relationship is stunted, the film's focus annoyingly wavers and lacks conviction in its study of sexist qualities in the 1920s, the asylum scenes a grab bag of previous cinematic concoctions, and so on. Eastwood just seems mismatched here, unable to really give the film the gritty determinism to match Jolie's fierceness, instead content as most Eastwood films to coast on a slow, muted and jazzy tone, which works for his more thoughtful and spiritual works, but here just seems to undermine the ferocity with which he asks Jolie to play the role. An unfortunate "Oscar" film, taking a serious and real life event and injecting it with stale "prestige." Yawn.
Recently Viewed:
Thor: The Dark World (2013) **½
The Counselor (2013) *½
Walden (1969) ***
A Hijacking (2012) ***½
Before Midnight (2013) ***
Films By Year
I don't see this getting anything more than a Jolie nomination, and perhaps something like Art Direction.
I'd say Jolie most likely, but the art direction really wasn't anything memorable save for the ranch and her workplace.
Out of 4 stars:
The Guest: ***1/2
Furious 7: ***
The Tale of Princess Kaguya: ***
It Follows: ***1/2
it would be a blockbuster.
Very good movie. I liked it better than Million Dollar Baby. It's a really frightening commentary on how things haven't really changed a bit in our law department. It's an Eastwood movie through and through, and I don't have a problem with the manipulative strings Eastwood tried to pull. The mise-en-scene is truly remarkable along with Jolie's already praised performance (she tones down the crying from her performance in A Mighty Heart).
Sure why not?
STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI (Rian Johnson) - 9
STRONGER (David Gordon Green) - 6
THE DISASTER ARTIST (James Franco) - 7
THE FLORIDA PROJECT (Sean Baker) - 9
LADY BIRD (Greta Gerwig) - 8
"Hitchcock is really bad at suspense."
- Stay Puft
She tones it down?
Good Lord.
Er, Jolie barely cried in that movie, until the near end. The only crying that was done prior to that is short and handled nearly offscreen. She definitely ups it in Changeling, with Eastwood concentrating in on her at every chance possible. Both are good performances though, in different ways.
I actually thought this was really bad. I was with it for about the first 20 minutes, and then it just got messier and cheesier and more overwrought. It had a lot of the elements I didn't like about Mystic River. Sometimes Eastwood just tends to play a scene so histrionically that it becomes laughable. It also felt like at least four different movies crammed into one (child-loss drama, asylum drama, courtroom drama, crime scene investigation drama, etc). Aside from Jolie and maybe the serial killer, the majority of the performances were quite crappy. Especially the head of the police department guy. Then again, they didn't have much to work with. I hate when movies are completely, utterly ridiculous and think they can get away with it by stating that it's a "true story" first.
Overall, I felt myself cringing a lot and wondering if it would ever end. Too bad it fell apart so early and so massively.
THIS MOVIE IS HORRIBLE.
No.
This is much better than Gran Torino.
Sure why not?
STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI (Rian Johnson) - 9
STRONGER (David Gordon Green) - 6
THE DISASTER ARTIST (James Franco) - 7
THE FLORIDA PROJECT (Sean Baker) - 9
LADY BIRD (Greta Gerwig) - 8
"Hitchcock is really bad at suspense."
- Stay Puft
Oui.
Close enough to where I don't see one sticking out in particular.
The Oscar pool scene near the end is 2008's biggest 'are you fucking kidding me' moment, rivalled only by the ash falling in slo-mo from the cop's cigarette after the child's confession. I never thought it was possible to make the mass murder of 20 children seem weightless, but Clint managed it in that one shot. This is completely freeze-dried filmmaking, utterly lifeless to the point of kitsch. Kinda surprised it dodged a best picture nod, really.
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