Aaron Eckert’s face as he realizes he is fighting aliens is worth the price of admission. He has that WTF look that I can picture a real Marine Sgt would have on their face in the event this really happened. Outstanding acting.
I liked this movie. The critics were wrong.
What a crazy career:
Sixth Sense: Cool, obvious ending just knowing there was a twist but fine.
Unbreakable: LOVE Unbreakable, fantastic soundtrack, the look of the film…
Signs: Fine, I liked it. Spirituality in Sci-Fi is a classic staple actually
The Village: Didn’t see it, but figured out the ending…
Ok, NOW at this point in his career…I read about the pitch meeting he had over Lady in the Water. And the point of the article was to kind of make you side with MNS. But I immediately said, “Uhm. The suits are right. You don’t need this much money to make that film.” The rest is history. Never saw it though
The Happening. I had no problem with it. Come on guys, it really is just a B-Movie. Not everything has to be fantastic. But between MNS backlash, and maybe a little bit of people being tired of Zooey and Wahlburg, this is supposed to be one of the worst films ever? Please. Haven’t seen anything since. But I found it funny that After Earth didn’t even advertise that he was the director.
Masters of the Universe.
And Signs was awesome.
Yes, there is a filmed version of the play. Unlike the David Lynch film, and like actual stage productions of the play, the actor playing Merrick did not wear any make-up to look like the actual “Elephant Man,” albeit, he did alter his voice, and walk with a limp (and a walking stick). This is the thing that got the critics all in a snit, IIRC. It was so elegant not to use ugly make-up, and the Lynch film was making Merrick into a Universal-style monster, blah, blah-- neglecting the fact that this is what Merrick really looked like. (He was quite short in real life due to a bad spinal curvature, and John Hurt was normal height, but otherwise, looked pretty much as Merrick had looked in life.) I’m not sure what production the play was a taped version of-- Glenn Close was in it, so probably US, but I don’t know if it was produced just to air on TV, or if this was the Broadway cast. It aired, IIRC, on ABC. You can probably stream it somewhere.
Aha:Amazon has it.
The only film called “The Postman” I’d heard of until now was “Il Postino,” a mild, lovely, poignant, highly praised drama about a postman in rural Italy who comes to love the love poems of Pablo Neruda.
So, when you guys started talking about how it was not as bad as critics made it out to be, I thought, “okay, that’s a little weird, but whatever.”
Then, when you started talking about all its high-action scenes, I thought, “what were you guys smoking when you watched this movie?”
A second of googling cleared it all up for me, of course.
I never disliked the film because Costner. He’s fine at his job, and the visuals are indeed stunning. I do dislike the film because Noble Savage + White Guy Better At Injuning Than The Injuns.
The same is true of The Last Samurai, BTW. I mean, I actually like that movie, it has some gorgeous shots and Ken Watanabe can be mai hasubando but goddamn the cultural appropriation was strong in that one.
Dutch. Always my first thought with these kinds of threads. I wouldn’t use the word unjustly because I don’t know how to gauge that, but it’s 14% on RT and I don’t think I’ve ever heard or read anyone say anything good about this movie. Yet I find it a rather touching, well-acted, more-or-less solid film within a common genre/formula. Ed O’Neill gives a very good performance and I think there is surprisingly good chemistry between him and the kid. I’m not saying the movie’s a masterpiece, but I find it mystifying why it seems to have left almost no positive impressions at at all.
I could never understand why Daredevil is so vilified. I would put it in the middle of the pack when talking about superhero movies. Not as good as Iron Man or Captain America, better than The Fantastic Four.
Yes. I saw the play after it hit Broadway, so I know how it’s performed* I agree that some critics were annoyed by what they might have seemed as gross depicxtion of an actual deformed Merrick. But, to be realistic, even if someone had turned Pomerance’s play into a movie (instead of simply filming a stage production), I have no doubt that they would have made the actor up to resemble the real Merrick. The objections on that basis are foolish.
*Pomerance’s play started off-Broadway, but was too big a hit to stay in a small theater. I’d already read the play before I went to see it.
I was also sensitive to the topic because I had read of Merrick’s case long before. I stumbled across a copy of Ashley Montague’s book The Elephant Man: A Study in Human Dignity later on, and was fascinated by the story when I’d read it in more detail. I thought it would make a great play, and started going about writing one – when I learned of Pomerance’s play. Damn! Scooped again!
I dunno, I’m not seeing cultural appropriation in it. It’s ahistoric, but that’s not the same thing, IMO.
But you repeat yourself…
Was he? IIRC, the only thing he was better at was shooting a gun, and at the climax oif the movie, the Sioux rescued him and not the other way around.
Yes and Yes!
No, it doesn’t.
Fwiw i agree - don’t know about ball games but it foreshadowed an awful lot about the second Iraq invasion. Very smart.
It doesn’t quite reach the heights of Big Trouble in Little China or* The Adventures of* Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension!, but it does sit nicely on the shelf next to them. I think Sandra Bernhard and Richard E. Grant are two of the best bad guys in cinema. They are definitely World Crime League.
The Spider-Man reboot gets unfairly derided just because it’s a reboot and people reflexively roll their eyes at reboots.
They haven’t been great, mind you. But they haven’t actually been bad either. They’re perfectly mediocre stories with very very good lead actors. Garfield and Stone are great in these. The stories haven’t matched them so far, which is unfortunate. But the movies are OK rather than awful.
The Golden Child. Not great, but not the total train wreck everyone makes it out to be.
I’ll second that; it did a nice job of toying with (or if you want to get all lit’ry about it, “deconstructing”) action-movie tropes and cliches.
I completely agree, it’s a farce, and it’s funny as long as you’re not expecting too much from it. If it was anyone but Stallone, it would have gotten better ratings, I’d bet, but he was very good in it.