Looking for Doper comments on recently released movies to help decide what to see.
I thought a thread with thumbnail reviews might be nice to have during this season where more adult themed films are coming out.
I have seen: Michael Clayton: Very good, Clooney is excellent and might be nominated for an Oscar for this role. Worth seeing. Gone Baby Gone: Liked it a lot - nice mystery with some great twists and a good ethical question at the end. (See my thread about Gone Baby Gone for more comments.) The Kingdom: Was OK, but feel free to wait for DVD…kept our interest, but had a few plot holes and not all that memorable.
Today we are trying to decide whether to see Lars and the Real Girl or We Own The Night - would like to hear what others thought about those films.
So, let us know what NEW films you have seen recently and give us a quick review and your own thumbs up or thumbs down.
(Try not to go off on tangents - if a film starts a huge debate, start a new thread - this is just a quick, “I liked it” or “It sucks” with a short review of new releases.)
Fido - 1950’s idealized world where zombies have been domesticated and are kept as pets/servants. I loved it, my friends hated it. Nothing new, but a neat spin on the genre.
30 Days of Night is a surprisingly good horror flick. A pack of vampires invade a small Alaskan town during the one month a year where the sun never rises. A tense, unexpectedly smart movie. Pretty gory, though, if that’s a turn-off.
My Kid Could Paint that: Fascinating and thought provoking. Excellent movie. The Heartbreak Kid: Deplorable main character, not that funny anyhow. Michael Clayton: Tom Wilkinson is phenomenal. Overall very good. Gone Baby Gone: Good performance by Ed Harris, Casey Affleck was also good. It felt longer than it really was but it was an enjoyable movie overall. The Darjeerling Limited: I think I enjoyed it but I’m really not sure. Wes Anderson movies are a different experience…they do look good though.
I’m going by what Metacritic lists as currently in theaters for my definition of recent, so some of these may be a little older.
The Darjeeling Limited - See it if you’re a Wes Anderson fan, otherwise, not so much. I loved it, and it is currently in contention for my favorite Wes film with The Royal Tenenbaums. Gone Baby Gone - I concur with your take on it, and given the grief that Ben gets for his acting maybe a career change isn’t such a bad idea. One heck of a first film, and his brother was damned impressive as well. Plus, I think I’m in love with Michelle Monaghan. The Brave One - Jodie and Terrence were very good, but overall it didn’t quite work for me. I’d give it a B- at best. The Invasion - Worst. Body. Snatchers. Remake. Ever. It looked like a different move was spliced together in post. Sicko - It’s Michael Moore, so opinions are going to be based on where you stand on the filmmaker and his politices more than on the quality of the film itself. Me, I liked it, but not as much as some of his previous work. Waitress - Lightweight fun, plus I really enjoy Nathan Fillion. Once - Was it as good as some of the buzz would have it? No, but it was pretty damned good, the music was absolutely integral to the story, and I’m in love with Marketa Irglova as well.
Gone Baby Gone - take a Valium to put in your drink afterwards, but seriously: very, very good–thought-provoking, intelligent, and haunting.
Elizabeth - not as good as the first one; visuals are gorgeous and everyone tries their hardest with the script, but the dialogue is cheesy and soap-opera-y. Elizabeth comes off as really shrill and silly a lot of the time.
Michael Clayton and Eastern Promises - everyone who’s come out of the theatres at these has been raving. I predict Oscar bait for February 2008.
I forgot all about Eastern Promises. The fight in the bathhouse was one of the most brutal segments of film I’ve ever seen. Just because Cronenberg is a bit more mainstream these days doesn’t mean he’s lost his Videodrome or Existenz era facility for causing audience discomfort.
Disappointing. Not anywhere near as good as its models, *Parents *and Shaun of the Dead, but a million times better than Black Sheep, the most disappointing movie of the year. A brilliant idea hamstrung by aggressively unfunny “comedy.”
We opted for: Lars and the Real Girl: We really liked it a lot. Despite being an American film, it was reminiscent of those quirky British films (Calendar Girls, Waking Ned Devine, etc.) where the whole village joins in on a bizarre series of events. You either buy into the story, or nitpick it to death. We bought into it and had a great time.
I agree with every word of that review, except the last sentence. It showed her weaknesses and insecurities more than the last film, true…but I don’t agree that she was shrill or silly.
30 Days of Night: I have to disagree; I thought it was boring and a waste of time. It’s different from other vampire films (the vampires are far less human; they were monsters, and strangely birdlike in manner), but for me, that wasn’t a good thing. There was little to no plot, zero character development, no backstory on the vampires, and in the end I was left wondering why the hell I should care. It was a story that could’ve been told in 20 minutes, for all that actually happened in the movie. Two thumbs blah.
Just saw American Gangster yesterday. Denzel was great, as was Russel (even though I don’t like him much). The film was good, had some interesting twists on the usual mafia/gangster theme and kept my attention. Worth seeing, but if you waited until it came out on DVD, that would be OK too.
Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead – A somewhat derivative and mechanical script is elevated by razor-sharp performances and pitch-perfect direction. In lesser hands, this would have been lurid melodrama. But director Sidney Lumet keeps a lid on the fireworks, dials up the naturalism, and hands the material to a phenomenal cast (Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke are brothers, Albert Finney is their father, Marisa Tomei is the trophy wife of the first brother who’s having an affair with the other). The mean-spirited plot isn’t very interesting; the incredibly detailed character work, down to the smallest of throwaway supporting roles, makes the film worth seeing.
No Country for Old Men – The Coens flirt with the masterpiece label on this, their best since Miller’s Crossing. Stark, spare, and entertaining as hell. Another great cast; Josh Brolin uses his limited range to his advantage, Tommy Lee Jones is perfectly crusty, and Javier Bardem is the scariest screen villain in recent memory. The camerawork is restrained, the dialogue is fleeting, and the characters are smart. One warning: the last half hour goes completely off the rails in terms of narrative convention; when you see this, judge it for what it actually is, not for what you expect it to be.
30 Days of Night: What a turd. I wouldn’t have chosen to see this movie, but it was Halloween and my best friend thought a vampire movie was just the thing to watch. Three of us went to see it, and we each came away equally unimpressed. Here’s a list of things about this movie that I hated:
Ugliest vampires I’ve ever seen. This is my kind of vampire.
I thought vampires were supposed to seductively pierce their victim’s jugular with their fangs and drink the blood, not animalistically rip out their victims’ throats.
