This is the thread where you list (/ talk about) the films you've seen recently. (v.2004)

i will update you all on eurotrip shortly.

one of those films that makes me want to bill someone for 100 minutes of my life that i'll never get back.

xpost -- Chaki, I thought Comic Book: The Movie was terrible, after a decent beginning; but Lion King 1 1/2 is one of my favorite movies of those 70-something, better than most of their theatrical releases.

one of those films that makes me want to bill someone for 100 minutes of my life that i'll never get back.

i mean it was totally bewildering and awkward and fuck. i saw a lot of bad movies last year but it definitely takes the cake.

I hardly ever see anything at the theater, though.

Home Movie - wonderfully bizarre documentary about strange homes in the US. A 70 year old woman who lives in a Hawaiian treehouse + a Louisiana man living in the swamp + nutty inventor's '60s futurism transforming home + robot == GOOD!

Leather good, though.

Justin Timberlake Live -- no.

I started watching the Directors' Cuts of the Alien movies, and was really disappointed (redisappointed) by Alien 3, so I still haven't seen Alien Resurrection. It's funny, because the first time A3 disappointed me, it was because it was the first of the series I was old enough to see in the theater, and I was all, you know, "Go aliens, you rock!" The second time, it was because I knew who David Fincher was and had more or less convinced myself the movie was better than I remembered.

(I know everyone says the fourth one is better, though, so I'll see it at some point.)

i like fear of a black hat better.

i reeealy wanna see the crazy jesus movie.

pieces of april
l'atalante
bill douglas trilogy
casablanca
ginger snaps
all the real girls

tokyo story
dogville
glengarry glenross

x-post haha

No offense to you, Lauren, but this phrase has always irked me. I always try to imagine what the person who says it would actually do if they could get that time back. 100 minutes! Make up for it!

I Huckabees - Saw a rough cut in SF (new David O. Russell film), Jason Schwartzman, Dustin Hoffman, Isabelle Huppert, Naomi Watts, Mark Wahlberg existential "comedy". funny in parts. The new Being John Malkovich in every sense.

Touching The Void-woah

Bande A Part- Why did it take me so long to see this? Wonderful.

i saw floating weeds(?) in the summer but missed tokyo story :(

who else saw cinemania? what did you think of it joan? I felt proper guilty watching it, I liked it a lot though. a lot.

i remember i preferred the guy who lived with his mum and tried to sneak into films without paying...

oh and the one who ripped food out of people's hands to make them shut up was great too

i glared at this couple slurping on each other behind me last week, not sure if that counts (could be jealousy too)

which one was the pretentious geeky guy? the one who was sympathetically drawn or the guy who was a philosophy writer? it must be the philosophy guy haha he ws a hoot. when that guy tells him there was a woman 'just in' (!!!) who loves 'french theorists and film' and his eyes about drop out with sadness and desperation. : /

the woman was batshit too. beat that girl up.

I liked how the guy who ripped food from hands was always goin on about he blubbed like a baby at films. certain films.

(This was all in the first week of the year, and nothing since. I curse you, grad school!)

I enjoyed wisconsin death trip! though I've never seen it.

I saw 'bugsy malone', last night.

U R INSANE

Otherwise, been DVD Central for the past month:

Bend it like Beckham: You saw it, you loved it, let's move on.

Shopping: Brit flick from early 90's only memorable for Jude Law's first pout and the soundtrack;

Spirited Away: One of the best Anime flicks I've peered at in ages.

Duran Duran: Greatest: Mullets, sweatbands, naked chicks and loud clothes. I weep for the 80s;

Princess and the Warrior: German flick that shows stalking and being mental can be a positive thing (from the same crew that did Run Lola Run).

I don't like most of those films you listed : /

lily-4-eva, crumb and bugsy malone I haven't seen tho!

I wanna pierre le fou. I love a woman is a woman.

I could loan you bugsy malone.

Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi -- fantastic (though this is a television show, just out on DVD). I don't like most anime, but this is head-snappingly packed with references and strange images. Reference points might be Spirited Away and the Simpsons, somehow.

Does anyone have a copy of saturday night and sunday morning they can lend me? I've been wanting to see it for *years* now.

Malamondo (Paolo Cavara, 1964)
In the Bedroom (Todd Field, 2001)
Terms of Endearment (James L. Brooks, 1983)
Satan Returns (Lam Wai Lun, 1996)
Airport (George Seaton, 1970)
Red to Kill (Billy Tang Hin Shing, 1994)
Women in Revolt (Paul Morrissey, 1971)
The American Nightmare (Adam Simon, 2000)

Netflix has sent The Abyss, which I queued cause of its mention on the Mel Gibson thread -- it reminded me, I never actually got around to seeing this movie during that Summer When All The Movies Were Underwater.

bbc4 last night showed 'Russian Ark', that russian film set in a museum with set pieces taken from russian history happening within it. 96 minutes long and filmed as a single shot, quite a feat (especially as some of it had to involve a crane of some kind).

it's on again next friday night if anyone's interested.

andy

Fog of War - the last half was a bit of a letdown, with McNamara not offering much in the way of insight, nor exploring his role. The criticisms of Morris for letting McNamara get away with it are weak, though - he did a fine job of pointing that out himself, esp. with the prologue.

*pouts*

*pouts some more*

Um, hey Ned, having any luck with the Easter eggs? If not, I know which tracks the hidden videos are so you can just go the direct route. Unless you're not interested.... ;)

As for me... I only seem to remember The House of Sand and Fog and Cheaper by the Dozen. I adored the former so much that I'm actually kinda desperate to see it again (and fuck the hataz, I thought it was a moving and thoughtful film). The latter was a nice little bit of light cinematic fluff made kinda special by virtue of the fact that it was a "family film" where most of the adults were fully fleshed-out characters. I'd love to see more films, though.

And I saw Dark Days again recently. Just as good the second time.

I've been using Netflix for Alias and Babylon 5 lately, so haven't seen as many movies; Scream (woo) and Loony Toons: Back in Action (woo) on DVD, My Big Fat Greek Wedding (ugh) on cable.

Ha, on the LTC commentary track just now: "The language at the time was Aramaic. Now, you're not gonna do it in Aramaic."

Last movie I tried to finish was Murder By Numbers, which I generally liked due to increasing Sandra Bullock tolerance.

#1. Ok then craps out from the middle on.
#'s 2-6. Absolutely happy I've finally watched these films. They've all caused some sort of psychic shift to happen in me. Or at least molecular.

Housekeeping (Bill Forsyth, 1987)
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (Mel Stuart, 1971)
A collection of local (Mpls-St.Paul) shorts including: Revenger ("City Council Productions," 2003, short); Draw the Pirate (Jeff Hopkins, 2003, short); The Standoff (Michael Newell, 2004, short); Lovers (Nikolas Allen, 2004, short); Power Lunch (Darren Roark, recent?, short); The Shadow of Digital Living (Phoenix Perry, 2002, short); Color of Light (Brian Dehler, recent?, short); P.1 (Seth Wiley, 1999, short); Knights in Shining Plastic (Eli Ljung, 2003, short); Living Dead Girl (Jon Springer, 2003, short); The Glass Bottle (Brian Dehler, 2003, short)
The Corpse Grinders (Ted V. Mikels, 1971)
My Man Godfrey (Gregory La Cava, 1936)
The Triplets of Belleville (Sylvain Chomet, 2003)
The Ten Commandments (Cecil B. DeMille, 1956)
The Last Temptation of Christ (Martin Scorsese, 1988)
The Legend of Bigfoot (Ivan Marx, 1975)
Peyton Place (Mark Robson, 1957)
James' Journey to Jerusalem (Ra'anan Alexandrowicz, 2003)

got a copy of stray dog, at the weekend.

Heh. Yes there are -- it's Criteirion, after all! -- some scene-specific commentary and apparently a documentary on Tarkovsky, among other things. Haven't seen any of that yet, though.

I'm a little scared that the protagonist I've had the greatest emotional involvement with recently was Morvern Callar.

(& having read an interview with director lynne ramsay abt the film just reinforces my confusion/doubts wrt the 'intentional fallacy')

Having said that, getting middle America to see a supremely tasteless film just 'cause Tom Hanks is in it = classic.

And I downloaded Starsky And Hutch last night.

I saw this in the cinema a few weeks ago and kept falling asleep too. But it is a good film.

Also seen recently:

Infernal Affairs: slow burning, Hong Kong set cop thriller; (no kung-fu or much John Woo'esque gunplay, so "progressive"; interesting concept of police mole in gang/ gang mole in police / identity crisis; looks good; leads all very sexy; 6/10

[fans of HK/JohnWoo: if you haven't seen it yet, see Shiri: Korean cops vs terrorists action flick ]

(The commentary track is by the director and Lane, which is very cool.)

hilarious

stupid end

yeah, OK.

Yes, and thus on your advice I outright stole it instead of paying to see it.

even Shaft was better.

it would have been a x-post.

I hear he owns a lot of cars.

I've just put in The Singing Detective, the remake, but will probably have to watch it in two bits since dinner's in the oven. I'm trying to be neutral about it, going in.

(Also rented Lost in Translation, School of Rock, and The Jimmy show).

RDJ is great in it, naturally. If no one else watched the original, you can tell he did.

the premise is ok in an eco-ripoff kind of way: disgraced priest and troupe of actors solve child-murders in norman-ruled english hamlet; witchy woman framed when rilly it's the paedo frenchy lord. but not a second goes by without a but-but-but fact error or wonky line or bit of illogic going by. like the priest giving an english sermon at the start; Reformation, hello! or our heroes' investigation leading to the death of a monk who Knew Too Much, which rubs the King's Justice (!?) wrong cos the monk was going to "turn King's evidence" (?!?!). it devolves pretty quickly into an SNL parody: Law and Order: Medieval Intent.

Young Frankenstein -- still my favorite Mel Brooks movie, probably my favorite Gene Wilder movie, can't get the deleted scenes or outtakes to play on my DVD player (I think I've about used it up), $10 at Borders happy fun time hello.

White Oleander -- Goldilocks and the three bears, except Goldilocks is kind of hot in that "she's not actually younger than my girlfriend, but she's playing someone ten years younger than herself, hrm" way and the bears all suck.

School of Rock -- fun. I like Jack Black, but the kids stole this movie, I think; it was nice to see him show that he can be funny even when he tones it down a notch or three.

Ugetsu
House of sand and Fog
Crash
Elephant

Tonight I saw Elephant. I thought the movie was made near perfectly. I really loved all the long long shots and I was confused as to how it was made (i guess many nearly similar takes) Fur Elise was played a little too often and I got a little afraid that it'd get all preachy when the bad kids came in.

I barely remember the book, but the movie reminded me of the timeless/surreal quality of Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine. Like, it didn't really make all that much sense, narrative-wise, and a lot of the stuff was random, but it didn't matter at all.

The 2 Towers –Extended Edition DVD
Got this for Xmas - needed to be seen before going to see ROTK. Too much to say about it - and too late to resurrect TTT thread now I guess...

Idle Hands (TV)
Odd horror/comedy thing set in amongst US slacker/stoner suburbia types (haha yeah like I'm an expert on these classifications)
Not very horrific, not very funny, but adequate.

The Funeral (TV)
1930’s low-key morality play Gangster/Revenge thing – Christopher Walken makes it worth watching, as he usually does with these things...

Return Of The King (Cinema)
I could go on a bit about this - but as per TTT above, a bit late in the day now maybe. Jaw-dropping and childishly exciting special effects bits, of course. I finally skimmed bits of the LOTR book after seeing this - had never read it and didn't want to know plot stuff before seeing all the films - and was quite surprised how unrewarding it looked. I had a vague idea it was supposed to be for kids, but wasn’t expecting the writing to seem so simultaneously bizarre and childish...I don't know what the hell I was expecting, mind.

Shiri (TV)
Korean action movie (all guns and explosions rather than martial arts) based on South Korean FBI-types versus North Korean sleeper-terrorists-types. OK but nothing special. Best bit is at the start when you see the NK operatives being trained – brutal kill-or-be-killed type severity.

The Recruit (Video)
Hollywood twisty-thriller with Al Pacino – OK but nothing much to bother about.

Jeepers Creepers 2 (Video)
Quite entertaining monster movie – classic setup of isolated group being picked off bit by bit - great couple of episodes with ppl being whisked off into the air. Also a couple of nice SFX bits involving the ‘can’t be killed’ nature of the Beast – eg it grows a new head in real-time

Cube 2: Hypercube (TV)
Even more incoherent and pointless than the first one, althought it actually tried to give it more of a plot and social framework – conspiracy theories, a multinational weapons corporation, a computer hacker, an inside agent, even a daft 'love interest'...But in the end it felt like being browbeaten by some pessimistic existentialist with an overly slim grasp of ideas too big for them. The visual monotony in this one was even worse too, as every room inside the cube looked identically white/metallic. Almost as bad as some real modern architecture. At least in the first film they were trapped in something that had a vague 70’s Disco feel to it (which may be why it seemed more redolent of Hell).

Return Of The King (Cinema - again)
This time I went to see it in a more comfortable and much emptier cinema – the Minas Tirith battle scenes impressed me even more than the first time of viewing. Shelob still made me almost feel sick (fairly spider-phobic)

Amateur (Video)
I’d had this recorded & unwatched since 1996(!)– I was desperate to watch a film but hadn’t hired one so I rummaged through my old videotapes in the cupboard. (I also ended up finally watching a Horizon documentary about the electronics/defence industry that I had got taped for me in 1985 because it had stuff in it that I worked on - it was a strange experience watching a 20-yr old TV programme about your past life..) Anyway – an amnesia-thriller, the theme being that some evil sod can turn into a good guy by losing his memory. An interesting notion – & only thing I liked in Total Recall - but i wonder whether 'personality' and not just 'identity' is composed of learned interpretations & behaviours...or is there some underlying biochemical engine that would make you the same 'kind' of person ?

One Hour Photo (Video)
Somewhat surprised by this – it wasn’t the Serial Psycho Killer kind of thing I expected, and it was all the better for it. It was more thoughtful and ambiguous in the way it made the main character pathetic and lonely rather than evil, tottering on the edge of desperation-fuelled disturbance, damaged by his lack of close human contact. In a way, he was even ‘moral’ in his actions. At the end there was bit of an unsatisfying implication that he had been the victim of some abusive childhood – a bit too ideologically sound and causally convenient, that. It would have been more interesting and disturbing to leave it possible that his psyche was a result of a background within the parameters of a ‘normal’ upbringing – no special mistreatment required, just a roll of the dice that resulted in a sparse framework of family around him and a distant-ish kind of mis-connection to them.
Robin Williams can be a deeply deeply irritating persona – not unlike Jerry Lewis or Jim Carrey when at their manic worst – but like both of those, he can be oddly affecting when he really tones it down, perhaps partly as a consequence of the contrast. (I remember a particularly striking example of this effect - seeing Norman Wisdom on TV in 1981 - a deeply chilling play, ‘Going Gently’, where he played a hospital patient dying of cancer...It was scary.)

Ballistic: Ecks vs Sever (Video)
Supposed to be a kind of ‘2 expert killers in conflict’ thing, but don’t ever waste your time watching this film – dire crap. Even the action sequences have that exasperating multi-angle multi-camera fragmented cutting thing … and that horrible ‘same explosion showed several times in succession from diferent angles’ thing … AND that crap slow-motion ‘character-appears-holding-big-gun-facing-down-oncoming-vehicles’ thingzzzzz…
There was zero moral ambiguity, a ridiculous shallowness of character, no interesting cinematography or directing, the same predictable consequences to every blokes-in-body-armour v chick-in-leather-jacket scenario, and every car-chase sequence ends in some crashbangwallop explosion. It was maybe supposed to be a Comic Book Adventure, but it didn’t even entertain on that level – it presents itself as some kind of ultra-stylish John Woo thriller, but it’s more like the fucking A-Team.

I asked about Fred MacMurray's heroic physique playing off his character's nebbishness, not so much to make a point as to see if knowing that Captain Marvel's visual look was modelled on Fred would cause any of the women present to tear off their clothes and throw themselves at me. So, still no luck there.

Errr,anyone?

ikiru
daughters of the dust
through a glass darkly
guantermera (i prolly spelled it wrong, some cuban film)
trainspotting (not the first time, obv)
last twenty minutes of "cheaper by the dozen"

I might see the Alamo, but I'll probably wait 'til video.

holy christ. see this now. its on region 2 dvd. on vhs in america, but the dvd looks so great that if you have region 2/pal capabilities, the dvd is a must.

School of Rock was disappointing too. It just wasn't as funny as it should/could have been. There weren't half as many good inside jokes as I'd been promised. At the end, I just really wanted to see Spinal Tap again. which, I guess, isn't a bad way to end..

Just saw Suicide Club, which was crazy. I liked it, but it was surrealy disjointed; what was with the Rocky Horror bit in the bowling alley? My favourite was the wild teen-pop band, Dessart/Dessert/Desert... so spooky. I liked the generational stuff, too.

WERNER HERZOG EATS HIS SHOE (Les Blank, 1979)
OFF THE BEATEN PATH (Jason Stephenson, 2004)
THE SADDEST MUSIC IN THE WORLD (Guy Maddin, 2003)
TRIP TO THE ORPHANAGE (Guy Maddin, 2004?)
SOMBRE DOLOROSA (Guy Maddin, 2004?)
ODILON REDON (Guy Maddin, 1995)
BUGS! (Mike Slee, 2003)
SISSY BOY SLAP PARTY (Guy Maddin, 1995)
RAISING HELEN (Garry Marshall, 2004)
LES MISTONS (François Truffaut, 1957)
BLONDE VENUS (Josef von Sternberg, 1932)
TOMMY (Ken Russell, 1975)
CRUISING (William Friedkin, 1980)
THE GOOD, THE BAD & THE UGLY(Sergio Leone, 1966)
SHREK 2 (Dreamworks, 2004)
DOWN WITH LOVE (Peyton Reed, 2003)
DOGVILLE (Lars Von Trier, 2003)
OFF THE LIP (Robert Mickelson, 2004)
VALENTINO (Ken Russell, 1977)
FASTER (Mark Neale, 2003)
DRACULA HAS RISEN FROM THE GRAVE (Freddie Francis, 1968)
DUTCH LIGHT (Pieter-Rim de Kroon & Maarten de Kroon, 2003)
THE NUTTY PROFESSOR (Tom Shadyac, 1996)... I babysat.

i say "playtime" three times, too bad it's closing so i can't see it again.

i watched badlands last week and fell in love all over again!

you know badlands really takes on a whole new dimension when you consider it as one of the last of a cycle of movies inspired by arthur penn's bonnie and clyde.

Huh? Do explain -

6ixtynin9
Closer
The Awful Truth
Hold Me While I'm Naked (kick ass ILF dudex!)

I just saw it too, and I agree. I basically liked it, though.

Also recently...(I've discovered that one thing you can do while feeding a baby is watch movies, so I've been watching boatloads, just subscribed to Netflix)...

George Washington
All the Real Girls
Shattered Glass
It Happened One Night
Boxcar Bertha
Thirteen
Love Actually
The second Thin Man movie, whatever it's called
Miracle On 34th Street (never seen it before)
...and a bunch more.

Next up: the 20th anniversary edition of Scarface.