28 Film Discussion Threads Later

[Sven]

Also, Jennifer Lawrence was just awful. Please tell me I'm not alone in noticing this.

I liked her casual style, but it was off for this film. She's clearly a natural, but two-dimensional superhero arcs are not for her.

Now, if you wanna talk about January Jones, on the other hand...

[MadMan]

You mean Jones was bland enough to be in a superhero movie? I haven't seen her on Mad Men, but she was pretty dull in X-Men: First Class.

[TGM]

People were thinking that about a solo Wolverine movie and look how that turned out.

Hint: [

Show Spoiler

It was shit.

]

Of course, it hardly turned out to be an actual solo movie about Wolverine, but rather more of a showcase of all the mutants rejected by the main trilogy. The upcoming Wolverine, on the other hand, sounds like it may be an actual solo movie for the character, so we'll see...

[baby doll]

As far as minor early Bergman goes, Summer With Monika doesn't have flashes of brilliance so much as moments of interest in the midst of general mediocrity.

[Ezee E]

Of course, it hardly turned out to be an actual solo movie about Wolverine, but rather more of a showcase of all the mutants rejected by the main trilogy. The upcoming Wolverine, on the other hand, sounds like it may be an actual solo movie for the character, so we'll see...

This. It may as well have just been another X-Men title.

We saw some snippets of what the solo Magneto was aiming to be, and those are the best parts of First Class.

N

[Raiders]

Superman Returns love makes me happy. It is probably my favorite superhero film since X-Men jump-started the trend 11 years ago. That or Lee's Hulk.

[transmogrifier]

Hunger - 74

Loved the structure, the decontextualizing of the first half as we follow a handful of characters who have plunged into the inhumanity of the prison (though the young policeman crying was a little on the nose, and something out of a more Ron Howardish movie), and seeing the erosion of the physical form, the second half with someone determined to take his body back and use it to make a change for the better, or at least provide him one last piece of freedom. The long scene with the priest is a great dividing line between the two, (making the piss mopping scene all the more elongated and pointless, at least where it is situated in the film related to the rest of the structure).

McQueen has a good eye and an already well-developed editing rhythm, but there are hints that he may like to gild the lily a bit in terms of how he approaches his narratives. As impressive as this debut is, I'm not looking forward to Shame all that much, because the premise bores me to tears, and I'm not sure McQueen would be the director to transcend it - he'd be more likely to take it far too seriously. Someone feel free to put me straight on that, however.

[Dead & Messed Up]

Holy crap, Dead Ringers was heartbreaking, repulsive, involving thriller-making. I feel funny that after falling for the admittedly lavish Black Swan, here is a film that plays the drama a bit closer to reality, a bit harsher, and ends up all the more tragic for it. Jeremy Irons is never less than riveting. Although his two personalities are bifurcated in a basic way, with one as smarmy id, the other as effete superego, he keeps both performances subtle, so that the Mantle twins play as people instead of archetypes. I was a bit leery once Cronenberg introduced the Giger-esque medical tools, and their presence may be a bit too much as far as misdirection goes, but I suppose it is a way of showing the grotesquerie bubbling beneath the twins' eerie symbiosis. There's something sickly about their connection, and that only increases, until they take their final circle around the abyss. What a fantastically disturbed piece of filmmaking.

[Boner M]

Combat Shock - Plays like Taxi Driver if Travis was unemployed, had a wife and the baby from Eraserhead to deal with, and Hermann's lush noir-jazz was replaced with a worn-out Moroder LP playing two rooms down. A queasily atmospheric cry of Reagan-era despair, wherein the anger and conviction transcends the lack of professionalism in almost every department.

[Boner M]

he'd be more likely to take it far too seriously. Someone feel free to put me straight on that, however.

No, that's about right.

Not sure how a premise can bore you to tears, though.

[transmogrifier]

No, that's about right.

Not sure how a premise can bore you to tears, though.

Well, the story of a sex addict and how hollow his life is.....God, I'm bored just typing it out.

[MadMan]

Rom-com premises usually bore me to tears. I think I see where trans comes from with the crying and the sadness and the being bored :P

[StanleyK]

A second viewing of Blissfully Yours didn't improve it as I hoped it would. Joe is great at using ambience (mostly the dense vegetation and droning sounds of the forest) to amplify his character's emotions and establishing moods. But the characters here are very thin and even their small gestures (which mostly involve caressing; Orn caresses her belly; Roong caresses Min's dick; both women caress his peeling skin), which I understand carry great significance, don't resonate at all. As such the long stretches of stillness and silent walks through the woods aren't captivating, but actually really boring. Weerasethakul is probably my favorite director of this past decade on the strength of his following three movies, and his natural filmmaking prowess makes Blissfully Yours still worth watching, but it didn't really do anything for me.

[Li Lili]

I saw Carnage by Roman Polanski with Judy Foster, Kate Winslet, Christoph Waltz and John C. Reilly. Base on the play by Yasmina Reza.

Anyone has seen it ?
Anyway, I thought it was extremely well played and done since the film is based on the acting and the dialog, very incisive, ironical and sharp dialog. The film is mainly set in a living room during almost all way through (it lasts 80 minutes).
With only 4 characters, each one perfect in their acting, one location, one event (a little fight of 2 young kids) to launch the reason of this meeting, Polanski manages to keep a flowing pace.

[Qrazy]

So a few months ago or a year or so two montage videos were posted here. One was a year in review. The montage was tight but the movies it featured were terrible. In the other video the montage was loose but the movies featured were good. So I thought hmm, what if I combined the strengths of both of these and did one myself? The result is the following. Took me a while to grab all the films but the editing itself only took 2-3 days.

http://vimeo.com/33495157

The only annoying part was the xvid watermark that crops up from time to time. I don't know how to remove it. Anyway, hope you enjoy. If you do please pass it along!

[Melville]

Good stuff. What are the movies with the guy lighting a cigarette and the guy balancing a glass on his head?

[Dead & Messed Up]

Excellent work, Qrazy! Obviously I wish a couple more movies made it on there, but that speaks more to the challenge of fitting everything possible into six minutes. Good, simple editing, and a wonderful variety of films. The music selection has me listening to Nameless Furs for the first time on Spotify right now.

[Qrazy]

Good stuff. What are the movies with the guy lighting a cigarette and the guy balancing a glass on his head?

The Man from London (Tarr) and Khrustalyov, My Car! (Aleksei German) respectively.

[Ezee E]

Well done. How'd you find all the clips?

[Qrazy]

Excellent work, Qrazy! Obviously I wish a couple more movies made it on there, but that speaks more to the challenge of fitting everything possible into six minutes. Good, simple editing, and a wonderful variety of films. The music selection has me listening to Nameless Furs for the first time on Spotify right now.

Thanks! (Handsome Furs)

[Qrazy]

Well done. How'd you find all the clips?

Pirated.

[Ezee E]

Pirated.

With trains, I guess there's at least a theme. Trying to do a 2011 movie one myself, and it's pretty tough!

[Qrazy]

With trains, I guess there's at least a theme. Trying to do a 2011 movie one myself, and it's pretty tough!

Yeah this made it a lot easier. I just had to remember my favorite films with train sequences (with help from match-cut of course) skim through and cut that sequence and then further cut down my favorite shot from the sequence. Plowing through dozens of full films for the right shot would be brutal.

[Morris Schæffer]

Good job. Well worth the effort!

[Ezee E]

Yeah this made it a lot easier. I just had to remember my favorite films with train sequences (with help from match-cut of course) skim through and cut that sequence and then further cut down my favorite shot from the sequence. Plowing through dozens of full films for the right shot would be brutal.

Just been taking random sequences so far.