Seen any good films lately? [3]

Pettytyrant101 wrote:

It does, its just somehow they are not interestingly presented, and its the scripts fault.
....
The problem is you find out all this out in one scene of some badly written exposition and that's it.
It would be like if in Firefly instead of a slowly unravelling mystery of River, revealed through actions and narrative, he had just told you everything interesting about her in one speech in one scene and then left it at that.

Mmmm...that makes sense. There was a director's commentary to the deleted scenes from "Serenity" that had a whole lot of exposition on Inara and the life and training of Companions. There was also a lot of exposition from the True Believer villain who's stalking them.  I remember Joss said things like "I loved and fought for that scene, but then I realized the only one who was interested in it was me," and "It was explained to me that the more we let him talk the less scary he became", or words to that effect.

So it seems that Joss Whedon as a writer has a weekness for nerdy exposition!  
Nothing at all wrong with that, as long as he has a good editor following behind him

Love in the Afternoon with Audrey Hepburn and Gary Cooper.

that's one of the movies where the title would scare you away if you didn't know who was in it. The combination seems so unlikely it almost has to work.

Speaking of horrible titles, there's a new BBC series called "Call the Midwife". Blech. What were they thinking? Even if that did get the blood pumping, how many bloody times can you call the flippin' midwife?

Its not only the title but the content I thought was a bit iffy, if it hadnt had Audrey and Cooper, without their charm its quite an unpleasant story.

there's a new BBC series called "Call the Midwife". Blech. What were they thinking? Even if that did get the blood pumping, how many bloody times can you call the flippin' midwife?- Haly


I think its on about series 3 or 4 here, so rather a lot it appears!

I have watched an episode, I quite liked it, but there was nothing else on and it wasnt in English.

If they named it "Call the Actuary" I'd probably be more inclined to watch it.  Just sounds like trying desperately to have all this heartwarming crapdoodle piled into it.

yeah its full of heartwarming crapdoodle

I started watching that a couple years back when I visited some old family friends in Oxford. I thought it was an alright show, interesting enough. Of course I only saw the first two episodes, so the heartwarming crapdoodle may not have been in full swing yet.

I just finished Dark City.
My older sister's boyfriend pressured me into borrowing it about three months ago, and I finally got it off the shelf tried it out. It was alright actually. I didn't expect much from it considering that The Boondock Saints is another one of his favourites. (Talk about blech).
Still, it had an eery atomsphere. The ominous "strangers" were very well done in my opinion, and although the final third of the film was so-so, the story developed in carefully placed reveals and hints in a way that helped draw you into the midst of things and make the world believable.
There was this one rather disturbing stranger called Mr. Hand. The actor, Richard O'Brien, was apparently also in The Rocky Horror Picture Show and has a long history of playing creepy-ass characters. According to IMDB he's also in Robin of Sherwood so I might spot him in that eventually.

I don't ever want to watch Dark City again, but it was quite interesting. As someone else said on here earlier, it was a "thinking person's Matrix."

Yup O'Brian is in Robin of Sherwood, but not until series 3, he is a reoccurring character, easily my favourite story he is in is Crom Cruac.

I watched a film called Sabotage on the plane back from the U.S. it is a post governator Arnie film. Not sure I liked it or not.... and not sure whether Arnie was supposed to have been a good guy or bad guy by the end. I think bad guy but the way it portrayed the final act seemed to be glorifying what he did.

Anyone else seen it?

No I haven't. I saw a trailer for it a while back though.
I just looked up reviews for it, and it has a 20% on Rotten Tomatoes, so I'm probably not going to see it either. Sounds like a gore-fest with little actual meaning involved. Like you said, the film wasn't even able to deliver a clear message about it's main character.

I like the "pink panther" films with Peter Sellers they are so daft, half the time your slapping your forehead in humerous desperation And Peter got away with calling his 'man servant, Cato, all sorts of names about his orientalness like, "it nearly blew his little yellow skin off!", "I bet his little yellow brain is thinking of something right now!" etc

Some absolute classic physical comedy scenes in those films.

I recently watched the live-action Scooby-Doo movie from 2002 when it aired on Cartoon Network. I wasn't really expecting much, but I watched because I had nothing better to do and because I'd been watching a bit of Mystery Incorporated recently. It was actually pretty funny and had a lot of jokes aimed at older teenagers and adults. I was surprised to see during the credits that it was written by James Gunn, better known today as the writer/director of Guardians of the Galaxy. But that did explain a lot.

"I can look at myself nak-ed."

I thought everything with Fred was great. My dad (who grew up with the original cartoon) watched too, and his favorite joke was Shaggy saying "Mary Jane? That's like my favorite name!"

So I got some my weekly Netflix dvds (that's about how often I can get around to mailing them back) and among them is this new film called Blue Ruin. It's a murder-thriller suspense thing, and is supposed to be very good. I'm probably going to watch it tonight, anyone else seen it or heard of it?

Watched it, it was great!
It had a slow build-up, nice cinematography, likeable characters (but morally gray characters), a satisfying ending, and it wasn't too long either: a nice 90 minute film.
Blue Ruin was clearly aiming for the idea of traditional family feuds. Especially in the South, I suppose, these sorts of things can go on for a very long time. Seeing a film about it makes you realize how much more entrenched the idea of "an eye for an eye" can be in places where a large proportion of families have had some of their members killed by other countries, tribes, or sects.
Anyway, thoughtful and good.

P.S.
It has some very violent moments too.

Watched Warrior again yesterday, great movie. And the soundtrack is really good.



There's also a couple of songs from the group The National if anyone's heard of them.

I like Tom Hardy. I think he's a great actor. Some of the characters he's played you would'nt recognize him. Underrated ? I dunno but, he's taking a steady climb up. This trailor looks interesting ?

I nearly watched that last night, but then they didn't have it at the rental place.
Anyway, definitely planning on seeing it soon!

Eldorion wrote:I recently watched the live-action Scooby-Doo movie from 2002 when it aired on Cartoon Network.  I wasn't really expecting much, but I watched because I had nothing better to do and because I'd been watching a bit of Mystery Incorporated recently.  It was actually pretty funny and had a lot of jokes aimed at older teenagers and adults.  I was surprised to see during the credits that it was written by James Gunn, better known today as the writer/director of Guardians of the Galaxy.  But that did explain a lot.

I vaguely remember seeing that at the cinema (back when tickets were 3 quid) (I was a big fan of Scooby Doo growing up, some of the Video movies they made in the 90's were almost equal to Toy Story etc in terms of entertainment) and I've watched it at least once since when I've been channel hopping, it's a relatively simple, but entertaining family film, with Rowan Atkinson in full bored pay check mode, it does what you expect but it is surprisingly funny. I seem to recall reading Gunn was only responsible for the draft of the script (apparently his version was closer to PG-13/15 rating with frequent lesbian/drug references: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0267913/trivia?ref_=tt_ql_2) though I'd agree it's a surprising jump to Guardians.


Though I remember my 12 year old self was dissapointed by the sequel...

Gunn only writing the draft would make sense. While I was surprised at where they took some of the humor, the whole thing felt a little too close to Disney Channel in terms of tone for a James Gunn movie.

I don't plan on seeing the sequel, but if it comes on TV again and I happen to be in front of it ... who knows.

Watched " kiss kiss bang bang" tonight, oh my gawd ! Val Kimer was great, he played a gay detective, Robert Downey Jnr was his erratic self, muttering at a 100 miles per hour inter spaced with his signature stop/start speak. It was chaotic, & silly & quite good fun. I loved kilmer's sarcasm, he had some very funny lines !