Please report back!
I am genuinely clueless. Isn’t American Sniper about a real-life psycho that they turned into a hero for the movie? I have no idea if that is true, but that is what the liberal-media tell me and I never had the interest to investigate. Just curious what is up with that movie.
As I mentioned in several threads at the time, as I was watching Spotlight it occurred to me that this was the best movie of the past 10 years. My opinion has not changed.
I would also give a nod to The Martian, which I’ve already watched quite a few times.
(bolding mine)
Seems to me that whatever description I give will be torn apart and pigeonholed by you so that it jibes with what you want to believe about it. I have better ways to spend my time. How about you fight your own self admitted cluelessness, borrow it from the library, and YOU can let ME know what it’s about. I saw it, thought it was fantastic (formed that opinion all by myself, even!), and moved on with my evening. Your enjoyment or lack thereof will have no bearing whatsoever on my thoughts about the movie.
Bradley Cooper is a hell of an actor.
American Sniper can also be just a movie. I guess.
Anyway, hope to hear back from y’all on The Congress. Given the wide range of votes on IMDB, I’m interested in hearing where some on the SDMB lie on that scale. 
He was also the only white guy invited to a party the Obamas hosted at the White House according to Dave Chapelle.
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[Moderator warning]
Casey1505, personal insults are prohibited in this forum, and that whole post was inappropriate for the tone of this forum. Do not let this happen again.
[Not moderating]
I haven’t yet seen Fury Road, but of the movies I have seen, it’s got to be either The Martian or Guardians of the Galaxy. The former was the finest hard SF I’ve ever seen, and the latter was the most fun I’ve had in a movie since at least The Princess Bride.
For that matter, I think the second-finest specimen of hard SF I’ve ever seen was Gravity. It’s been a good few years on that front.
This is true. I have a friend who did the lighting for that party. She told me last month that it was all black people at the party (it was sponsored by or in honor of BET) except for Bradley Cooper.
Dave Chappelle talked about it on SNL.
Yes, um… I was replying to a post about Dave Chappelle having said something about the party; I actually quoted the post. I know it was on SNL because he just hosted SNL and has otherwise been mostly absent from the public eye for the past few years. Thanks for, um, clarifying, tho. 
Another vote for Mad Max Fury Road.
Also, The Babadook and The Witch were terrific, and Whiplash was amazing. I’d cut my own throat before watching Boyhood again, though. 3 hours of pretentious dreck.
I watch a lot of films but there haven’t been any truly great ones in last three years. If I had to pick the best ones per year, they’d be as follows:
2016: Swiss Army Man
2015: The Lobster
2014: Interstellar
All three of these stand out to me for being so weird – it’s nice to watch a story that’s so original, even if the execution isn’t perfect.
The most recent truly great film I’ve seen is Her. As Richard John Marcej points out, it was initially released in 2013 but didn’t see wide release until the following year, so maybe it still counts as the “best movie of the last three years”.
I found the initially plausible premise interesting (i.e. what Penn was signing away) but the movie lost me when it took a left turn into Cool World.
Kind of lost my wife and I too, but when she came back and saw the devastation caused by the global addiction to, as you put it, “cool world” - I found that to be extremely effective and brought me back into the movie, even more engaged, if that’s possible.
The Martian.
You might be interested, but I don’t think you’re gonna be happy…
*** SPOILERS ***
[spoiler]This was awful. Truly awful.
The first act is 45 minutes long and is paced slower than coal turning into diamonds. None of the characters are believable at all, though some of the actors do give typically decent performances, particularly Harvey Keitel. Every character, in addition to not being believable, is loathsome. I didn’t care about anyone and actively hated a few that I was supposed to sympathetic to.
The second act was painful to watch. The animated parts weren’t even interesting. For one, the concept of an “animated zone” was unbelievably stupid. Why would anyone do that in the first place, set something up where you’ve essentially taken LSD but somehow have to function as if you have not? The first scene where she’s driving her car and the desert turns into an ocean and she finally goes over a cliff, for instance, was ludicrous; people would be dead. Then, she’s already seeing herself and everything around her as a cartoon, but for some reason the tap water contains ANOTHER hallucinogenic drug??? It was also inexplicable to me why they mostly stuck with a pastiche of classic 1930s-50s style cartoon art, and even that wasn’t done well.
The third act and the ending were beyond terrible. I spent 2 hours watching this and at the end had no resolution whatsoever beyond the real world being a terrible place, terrible people getting what they want at everyone else’s expense, and our protagonist being significantly worse off than she was when the movie started.
I couldn’t even tell you what themes they were trying to explore. There was no examination of the nature of reality, no look at what it means to be human, no exploration of how we trust our senses… nothing at all.
A better movie with a similar subject (the digitizing of actors) was made way back in 1981. Looker is a flawed and dated film, but it is at least engaging: there is conflict, the characters have real motivations. And not least, there is a resolution to the story beyond the story just ending.
If you and your wife were 2 of 13,000 that saw this film, I’d guess that you were 2 of 13,000 that enjoyed the experience; The Congress was execrable IMO. In fact, it was so bad that I consider it a public service to warn people away from it.
DO NOT WATCH!
Zero stars; zero thumbs up.[/spoiler]I posted that review on IMDB, of course.
Hunt for the Wilderpeople. Quirky, charming, funny, and an engaging story line.
I’ve seen it too and loved it. No way I’d put it at the top of a list of the last three years, though. It isn’t even the director’s best movie. What We Do in the Shadows is even better.
Fair enough- I guess I was looking for something different that want yet mentioned. Fun movie though.