I just saw “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford”, it is an amazing film. Casey Affleck as Robert Ford and Brad Pitt as Jesse James. It is a haunting and beautiful western. The analysis of Robert Ford as a person is very lush as he moves from someone who idolizes Jesse to someone who fears him, and ultimate his killer. The performances by each is absolutely phenomenal, as is every performance really. Brad Pitt cuts a frightening Jesse James, and Casey Affleck plays a very haunted man.
Oh, I didn’t mean she was a good actress (though she had some moments) but she was easy on the eyes 
. Just beware the damn singing pearl :mad: . I HATED that bloody thing.
As for the killer sheep, it’s a great parody of “nature gone amuck” movies, and I’d recommend it to those people, though as I mentioned, the gore is pretty heavy.
Waitress, Ratatouille, and Offside. Haven’t seen any of them yet… any (non-spoilery) thoughts?
Just finished Skinwalkers. I watch a movie while I work on the elliptical machine. It takes a few days, but it gives me something to do and makes the workout less arduous.
I wanted to see it in the theaters, but it only lasted one weekend here. For good reason. I’ve seen worse movies, but it was pretty mediocre.
Speaking of worse movies … I’m in the middle of The Black Scorpion. OK Joan Severance is easy on the eyes and I figured it couldn’t be *that *bad. I was wrong. I mean, I know, it was a less than b movie, but I thought it could have *some *redeeming quality. I was wrong again. Bad writing, bad acting, bad plot. Bad action scenes. Joan just cannot fake fighting. (But she fakes sex very nicely.) Oh well, live an learn.
In the workout queue: Stealing Beauty.
I find it hard to believe that Khadaji found a movie worse than Skinwalkers.
Ditto everything said about The Assassination of Jesse James….
Eastern Promises was good, but I wouldn’t say great.
The British version of The Office. Very good, but not as great as people make it out to be.
The Maltese Falcon (up with the times, ain’t I?). Pretty good. Worth seeing for how cool Bogey is.
Speaking of old movies, I recently watched A Streetcar Named Desire because of various recommendations. After it was done I checked out the Dope to learn that it was ruined by a couple of Very-Relevant changes made to adhere to the code of those days. (Not that I wanted to watch a rape, but after the way that they left it, I kept expecting them to reveal a mangled up face from cuts from the mirror.) It’s a mediocre movie ruined by fuddy-duddies. Just Google-Image pics of Marlon Brando from when he was in shape. I can’t think of another reason to watch that movie.
I have Night Watch and Day Watch in my Blockbuster queue.* Are these recommended, and it is necessary that I get them in order?
- I have to keep balancing them to make sure that Night Watch (“Very Long Wait”) gets to me before the sequel (Day Watch, which is “Available”). I sent a recommendation to BB that they allow you go group movies together to make sure that they come in the desired order (similar to how multi-disk series are put in your queue by default).
In the Bedroom, Sissy Spacek plays a mother who loses her only child, causing strain in the marriage.
American Beauty, made in that 4-year period where Kevin Spacey was in contention as Wonderfully Talented, before he made the transition to Whatever Happened To Him?
A History of Violence. I’m sorry, I fell asleep during parts of this one, the night before the movie had to be returned.
Heat, will watch it tonight. Never seen it before, either.
Purgatory - I have one question: Why isn’t this movie better known? I picked up a reference to it somewhere (possibly on this board) and decided to rent it. Good decision. Nice acting, decently original story, just a pleasant jigsaw puzzle with all the pieces coming together nicely.
The Hidden Fortress - very good. I always find it distracting when I literally can’t understand a word of what the actors are saying (I find myself waiting for them to say proper nouns, and in Japanese I easily miss even those), but this is one movie that didn’t suffer. Originally wanted to see it because I’m a Star Wars fanboy and they say George Lucas took a lot from this film, but apart from the opening scene which is pretty much the “R2-D2 and C3P0 in the desert” scene I didn’t notice much. Absolutely loved the fire party scene. Excellent acting by the princess.
The Thin Red Line - all right, but left me feeling like I missed something. Not a bad movie, but I didn’t get the greatness.
The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys - except for the HUGE tempo and mood change at the end, I liked it. The opening scene has two boys practice triangulation by sawing down a wooden lamppost and having it crush a bottle they put on the ground, while they stand motionless just outside its reach. Dead cool.
Henry - Portrait of a Serial Killer - no. Didn’t do it for me at all, especially not the ending.
This is England: Very good coming of age story about a very young British skinhead in the early 80s. I liked that it didn’t fetishize the violence or the nazism. Very low key, which makes the ending a shock.
Thank you for smoking: Funnier than I thought it would be. Gleefully nihilistic. You cheer for the lead, even though he’s an utter scumbag. Lot’s of iconic actors well used. Rob Lowe in particular is brilliant.
Fantastic Four, Rise of the Silver Surfer: Oh my god, was this bad. Bad on so many levels. I didn’t think it would be great, but I didn’t think it would be this bad. Quite possibly the worst big budget movie ever made. It’s certainly a contender.
Dog Soldiers: Entertaining low-budget soldiers versus werewolves movie. Pretty good for the genre. Recommended.
OK, here is how bad The Black Scorpion was: I didn’t hate Rise of the Silver Surfer… Now, if I didn’t hate *that *and I gave a bad review to The Black Scorpion - well imagine how bad it must be.
Donnie Darko - I rented it because I read a scathing review of *Southland Tales *that tore the directer Richard Kelly a new one, but still conceded that Donnie Darko was still wonderful. The movie is messed up, but days later I’m still thinking about it so it couldn’t have been all bad.
Wuthering Heights - Caroline is a capricious nutcase and Heathcliff is a sadistic stalker, that’s the Victorian image of love? I’ve been on a classics kick lately and since I have no intention of ever reading it I figured I could at least give it an hour and a half of my time.
The Way Home - A subtitled Korean film about a young spoiled boy whose dropped off to be taken care of by this sweet mute grandmother. Very touching, but I think something was lost in translation.
Having just finished reading Lonesome Dove for the first time, I’m in full Lonesome Dove immersion mode, so:
Lonesome Dove (the miniseries) - fantastic, perfectly cast, maybe the best mini-series I’ve seen, along with Smiley’s People, QBVII, Pride and Prejudice and the House of Cards.
Return to Lonesome Dove - bleeeeh, preposterous dialog, 90s hair. Jon Voight was okay as Woodrow Call, but otherwise this was predictably disappointing.
Streets of Laredo - Not. Good. Despite the lovely photography and decent performances from Sissy Spacek and George Carlin (!) this one just doesn’t compare to the original mini series, though it’s marginally better than Return to Lonesome Dove.
…should I bother with Comanche Moon, or give it up?
Sitnam, I’m glad to know I’m not the only one. I think both C & H were totally Axis 2, if you know what I mean. The only character that outdoes them on the personality disorder scale is wretched Sue from Jude the Obscure, or as I like to call it, Jude, I wish you WERE more obscure.
MirrorMask blows me away. Ever since I first saw it, I’ve been looking for movies that beat it in the visual department. The Fountain had some moments, but so far nothing has come close. Anyone have some suggestions?
Black Sheep, which was, indeed, hillariously good. A movie about man-eating killer sheep. What more could you want? Note to the more sensitive viewers, however… There are some scenes that are -very- graphic.
Wit. I make no bones about the fact that I have a celebrity-crush on Emma Thompson. I rented this as a ‘stay in one night and just be by myself’ film, and… Wow. Heavy material, excellently done and… Sad. Not much more to say about it than that.
I’ve heard Danny Boyle’s Sunshine is supposed to be pretty good. It’s next on my Netflix queue so I’ll report back.
I watched Eastern Promises but I wasn’t too impressed with it. It was not bad but there were things about it that bothered me.
Saw Heat, was quite entertained by Pacino’s scenery-chewing. It was about 20-30 minutes too long, but it wasn’t a bad 20-30 minutes.
Also, I happened to catch Pulp Fiction on one of the Showtime channels this hotel has, a movie I was contemplating renting a few weeks ago (so it kinda counts for the OP). Some thoughts:
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The pace of the movie is surprisingly languid at times - the amount of time spent, for example, getting Vincent and Mia ready to go on their “date”. Listening to Jody talk about her piercings. Like Heat, you could’ve trimmed some time from this movie but the film isn’t really worse for having it in there.
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Conversely, I appreciated the time the film took in developing the characters. Though, at times, it took too much time - Butch in the taxi cab has always been my least favorite part of the film.
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Vincent is a particularly inept criminal. He’s coming back from Amsterdam, obviously hiding out because he’s been tagged with some other crime and is waiting out the statute of limitiations. He gets his car keyed w/o figuring out that it was Butch that did it, he takes his boss’s wife out on a date where she O.D.'s on heroin, he shoots Marvin, he gets pissy at Mr. Wolf, he gets pissy at Jules, he destabilizes the Pumpkin/Honey Bunny situation, and, of course, he puts the gun down in the kitchen when he goes to the bathroom at Butch’s apartment.
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I never really had the courage to actually look at the Gimp throughout his moment in the sun. This time, I noticed he was laughing at Butch prior to being knocked out.
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It holds up well. It doesn’t scream “1994!”, likely because the films conventions and cultural references are much older. One of the things that I’m finding I notice more and more in films of this period is the lack of cellphones, but it doesn’t really bother me all that much in PF.
Just watched that tonight. Fantastic movie. I suspect that Herzog and Kinski were probably actually going insane during the filming of that movie. I wonder if anyone died during the rafting scenes. Have you seen Fitzcarraldo? Another Herzog/Kinski collaboration on the Amazon, although Kinski was a replacement for Mick Jagger after something like 9 months of shooting. From what I’ve read, it was much more of an ordeal than Apocalypse Now to make. Now I have to see Woyzeck.
Children of Men. Another great post-apocalyptic movie with terrific performances by Clive Owen and Michael Caine (I didn’t even recognize him).
Days of Heaven. I think I rented this one on the recommendation of this board. Wonderful movie, with beautiful cinematography. It was only shot at dawn or dusk and took something like a year to shoot. Terrence Malick supposedly threw out the script and had the actors improvise. It probably helps when you have Sam Shepard doing the improvising.
Kinski was, according to Herzog’s documentary My Best Fiend. You know the part where Kinski’s character beat the natives when they tried to run off with bananas and such? That wasn’t in the script–the actual natives that they were working with were really stealing food from the set and Kinski himself was actually trying to beat the shit out of them to get them to stop. The guy was a nutter. He threatened to walk off the set daily on almost every film he ever worked on, and on Fitzcarraldo he was actually ready to write the whole thing off and literally row away until Herzog told him, “I have a rifle, and if you row away I’m going to shoot you and then shoot myself.” He was bluffing, but it (obviously) worked.
No kidding. The real dude Kinski’s character was based on tried to get that ship over the mountains or whatever and either died trying or just never really got anywhere, I don’t remember; but the consensus was basically “don’t even try it or everyone will die”, and Herzog actually did it.
I have to resurrect this thread. I’ve seen a few of the recommendations listed so far and I loved them so I need more.
Recent rentals:
Michael Clayton: The Grisham court suspense genre is not really my bag but decided to see it being nominated for an Oscar. I saw it and it wasn’t my bag.
Gone Baby Gone: Fantastic, the Afflecks have a niche and they do it well. I want to say more but I haven’t worked out the Spoiler boxes yet.