Kelly’s Heroes - This should have been a great war/caper flick, but it fell flat. I’m not sure if it was supposed to be primarily an action film or a comedy, but if the former they forgot to include any excitement, and if the latter they forgot to include any jokes. And I wanted to kick Donald Sutherland’s ass for being such a dweeb. This suffered by comparison to the movie I watched immediately before it:
The Score - Now this is a caper flick!!! Involving characters, high tension, fun plot twists. I just wanted to kick Marlon Brando’s ass for being such a dweeb. Nah, just kidding–but he does insist on using a sillier version of his “Godfather” voice.
Darby O’Gill and the Little People - Watched this because of discussions on the SDMB. Very amusing, great primitive special effects, and I can see why the banshee scared the hell out of every kid who saw this.
Rififi - Had mixed feelings about this classic. The caper itself was pretty great, but I generally loathed the characters, and was creeped out by the rampant misogyny.
Pirate Radio: Excellent flick, funny on multiple levels of intelligence, nice storyline, engaging timeline re: the 60’s, interesting characters, and you give a damn about who does or doesn’t go down with the ship. I was happily surprised, and I expected to like it in the first place.
Death at a Funeral <the more recent version> Good enough, but I’d already seen the first one, and not much stood out this time around for me. Still funny, just hard not to compare to the first.
Clash of the Titans <the new one> Had it playing in the background, after having already seen it in the theater. It was…lamer than lame. I can’t think of anything good to say, except I can’t remember crap about it even after having seen it twice, so it probably wasn’t excruciatingly bad, just terribly boring. Oh, ok…big black Pegasus. Gotta love that. But yeah. That was about it. And I’d like to see more of the guy’s mentor, in some other movie. Otherwise…wasted time.
Inception: On initial viewing, a good movie, takes you away entirely. And I personally came away 99 percent certain that on 2nd viewing, I will enjoy it equally well, even as I try to connect some dots; on 3rd viewing I will be taking notes; and if by the 4th viewing I’m still ‘Ok, I don’t know what the hell was going on’, I still will really enjoy the movie! So, that’s a thumbs up or two.
Funny to see this (under both its titles) in two consecutive posts after mine–if we’d been doing five instead of four, Pirate Radio would have been my fifth.
I tend to watch movies only on DVD and have lately been going through a box of public domain films I picked up cheaply. The last four were:
Murder by Pictures. Cheap programmer with a photograph as a Mcguffin and a solution that is painfully obvious nowadays. Interesting seeing Gail Patrick pre Maltese Falcon, but that’s not a reason to see it.
The Stranger. I was surprised this was available. Directed by and starring Orson Welles with Edward G. Robinson as a Nazi hunter searching for a war criminal hiding in a Connecticut village. Loretta Young plays Welles’s fiancee/wife. Not one of his best films (he listed it as his least favorite), but both he and Robinson are at the top of their game.
Murder at Midnight. Plodding murder mystery. Opening scene is moderately interesting, but only in retrospect; while watching it, it seems terrible. Very good twist ending, but by that time, you don’t care.
Kansas City Confidential. Excellent caper film that seems to have influenced Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs. A masked criminal mastermind gets together a gang to rob a bank; he is the only one who knows what everyone looks like. John Payne is caught up and nearly takes the fall before being released to clear his name. Three great heavies: Lee Van Cleef, Jack Elam, and Neville Brand. Full review here.
Seraphine - remarkable movie, incredible story. The pacing and the cinematography are unlike anything I have ever seen (and this was streaming Netflix to Wii) before. Story tells itself so well through other means that subtitles are unnecessary.
Step Brothers - not worth it. It is funny, but tries too hard and no pay off to most of the shenanigans.
Man on Wire - overrated. Lots of preparation goes in to stupid stunts. Follow your dream. I think King of Kong and a hundred other “documentaries” on Youtube make the point better.
National Lampoon’s Vacation enjoyable does not hold up well. I remembered it being a tighter movie but just seems like a bunch of 5 minutes skits leading to a single joke now.
Oh, I thought it was great. Terrific characters and a lot of fun overall. As a rock ‘n’ roll pedant I was irked by a couple of anachronisms (i.e., records that weren’t released until after the pirates were shut down). A shame that the outrageous nude scene didn’t make the cut, but it’s in the deleted scenes on the DVD.
Ink (2009) - Incredibly efficient, especially technically. Low-budget effects manage to seem high-end. The story has elements familiar enough that they need little explanation. One point of inefficiency is that while the pace is fine, a slight all-around trimming wouldn’t hurt. There are also a few weak actors, but the little girl is surprisingly one of the best.
Stagecoach (1939) - Pretty much the definition of the classic Western. John Wayne and Monument Valley are made famous. And John Ford does not disappoint; all the human drama of the story is captured.
Moon (2009) - Watching the extras on DVD makes you realize just how complicated it was to put this film together. Watching the film, you completely forget about all that and get drawn into the emotional power of it. Science Fiction at its best (with some great nods to the past thrown in).
8 1/2 (1963) - Normally I find Fellini’s films insufferable. The self-referential opening made me think I would hate this one too. By the end, however, I had been won over. There’s a genuine and honest element in this that I haven’t seen in his other films.
How To Train Your Dragon: Good animated movie. A teenage boy captures a dragon and becomes friends with it. Then he has to convince his town to stop killing dragons. Worth watching.
Clash of the Titans: Action movie about Greek mythology. Not worth watching at all - not even good action scenes. A bad remake of a movie that wasn’t that good to start with.
The Losers: An action movie that works okay. A team of commandos gets set up by an evil mastermind and strikes back. Good to watch if you’re looking for mindless action thriller.
Kick-Ass: Best of the four. A comedy-adventure about people with no powers deciding to become superheroes. Pretty violent in an over-the-top way.
eta: Is this supposed to be only movies we saw in the theatre? Or does it include movies we saw on DVD? Because I may have to change my answers.
Seraphine - remarkable movie, incredible story. The pacing and the cinematography are unlike anything I have ever seen (and this was streaming Netflix to Wii) before. Story tells itself so well through other means that subtitles are unnecessary.
I didn’t realize Seraphine was on netflix streaming. Score! I’ve been wanting to see this. Thanks for the heads up!
Inception Good, somewhat flawed. Didn’t have the crazy connections you get in dreams. A good thriller, but Synechdoche, New York captures more of the dreamworld’s character.
Winter’s Bone Very good. Acting was top-notch. You really believe the actors were the people they were pretending to be. Grim, but not poverty-porn like Precious. Had a good thriller/detective plot too.
Restrepo. Awsome documentary about a base in Afghanistan. Nail-biting suspense. Highly recommend.
The Day After Tomorrow I saw this in a bar, subtitled with the sound off. Horrible, but made for good MSTing with my friend. I enjoyed the cold front that chased people.
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice: Light on mental stimulation, heavy on fun. Nicolas Cage was born to play a disgruntled 1,500-year-old magician with abandonment issues. (This is perhaps why he seems so out-of-place the rest of the time.) Nothing to do with Fantasia apart from a name, a sorcerer, and an apprentice, so if you’re looking to do a comparison and/or wank about the greatness of the Disney classic, stay at home and save yourself the trouble (Ebert, this means you).
The Last Airbender: Insipid. There are zero lines of dialogue that aren’t clunky exposition, most of which is redundant, including a voiceover that serves only to tell the audience what’s about to happen (not that the characters won’t tell you again as they’re doing it). The 3D was added as an afterthought, and as a result the visuals are dark and drab. Stay away, unless you can get a private showing to MST it with your friends.
Predators: An enjoyable throwback to '90s action movies, in that it’s a movie (unlike, say, Gamer), has a plot, and in any given scene the cinematography is such that you can tell what’s happening. Nothing outstanding, but the aforementioned qualities alone are rare enough in the genre these days to make it worthwhile.
Twilight: Eclipse: Got dragged to this on a date. I have no clue what happened in it. My date looked kinda like Kristen Stewart, so there’s that.
Well, I guess I saw Three Kings, if that counts, and liked it. But my Netflix queue has contained the following movies, in some cases for several years:
The Hurt Locker
The Kingdom
Syriana
Extraordinary Rendition
In the Valley of Elah
Lions for Lambs
The Home of the Brave
Stop-Loss
Redacted
The Green Zone
My wife keeps moving them down and moving her stuff up to the top. Some of these movies were added to the queue during the Bush administration.
I was irked by a couple of anachronisms (i.e., records that weren’t released until after the pirates were shut down). A shame that the outrageous nude scene didn’t make the cut, but it’s in the deleted scenes on the DVD.