The Movie Review and Discussion Thread

[Diesel]

Originally Posted by SquidPuppet

We need a new crazy movie (a replacement) that everyone gets excited about and we can all dissect it.

[Show spoiler]

[SquidPuppet]

Originally Posted by Diesel

[Show spoiler]

[Show spoiler]Too heavy

[Marcus Wright]

Tai Chi Master

Movie - 4.5/5
If you are a martial arts movie fan or Jet Lee fan, this is the movie to get.
I still think that this is the most entertaining and probably greatest martial arts movie ever made. Some of the action scenes are unbeleivable.

PQ - 3.5/5
The print seems to be heavily damaged, but stll overall look is passable and some scenes are really good.

AQ - 3/5
It was average at best. Dated sound design, but not bad by any means. The dubbed version is quiet good actually.

Overall - 4/5
Highly recommended for martial arts, Jet Lee and action fans. I still think this is the best martial arts movie ever.

[KilloWertz]

Originally Posted by Diesel

[Show spoiler]

Sorry, nobody can dissect that movie better than Martin Liebman.

[Diesel]

Originally Posted by SquidPuppet

[Show spoiler]Too heavy

Originally Posted by killowertz

Sorry, nobody can dissect that movie better than Martin Liebman.

So true....

[Al_The_Strange]

Originally Posted by SquidPuppet

Will you be watching the two sequels in the future? I actually enjoyed The Girl Who Played With Fire more than Tattoo.

Yep. I blind-ordered the trilogy box set a while ago, and now that I've seen one of them I know I'll be watching/keeping it. When it comes in, I'll check out the sequels right away.

[Al_The_Strange]

Originally Posted by killowertz

Sorry, nobody can dissect that movie better than Martin Liebman.

That was the best review ever!

[Romulus]

Ugh, woke up this morning for my 830 German Class (), only to find out that all classes are cancelled today for a whopping one inch of snow!

Coming from somebody who used to live in Colorado this is stupidly absurd.

Which leads me nicely into my next review:

Beowulf (2007)

This movie is stupidly absurd. I really enjoy the original folklore story and Zemeckis and company did a pretty good job of butchering it. I hate the different interpretation of Grendal's mother, regardless of her beautiful nature. I also felt that they sacrificed wonderful character elements in favor of an adapted story.

2/5

[jhiggy23]

Originally Posted by SquidPuppet

We need a new crazy movie (a replacement) that everyone gets excited about and we can all dissect it.

I'm gonna try to find one

[Foggy]

Originally Posted by SquidPuppet

We need a new crazy movie (a replacement) that everyone gets excited about and we can all dissect it.

Well this is hitting Blu-Ray later this year...

[Show spoiler]

[BladeRunner2007]

Inception 5/5

[Batman1980]

A Christmas Carol - 4/5
PQ and AQ 5/5
Excellent little Christmas movie about a man that needs to reassess how he lives his life and treats others, also really makes me wish the Bill Murray version would get the blu-ray treatment.

[Foggy]

Originally Posted by Darth Anakin

A Christmas Carol - 4/5
PQ and AQ 5/5
Excellent little Christmas movie about a man that needs to reassess how he lives his life and treats others, also really makes me wish the Bill Murray version would get the blu-ray treatment.

REALLY?!?!

[Diesel]

Originally Posted by Foggy

Well this is hitting Blu-Ray later this year...

[Show spoiler]

I did not see that movie. I DIID NAAWT.

[Foggy]

Originally Posted by Diesel

I did not see that movie. I DIID NAAWT.

Oh Hai Diesel

[Diesel]

Originally Posted by Foggy

Oh Hai Diesel

Oh hey Foggy whats up?

[Show spoiler]

________

The Expendables will be watched tomorrow and not today as planned.

[Foggy]

Originally Posted by Diesel

The Expendables will be watched tomorrow and not today as planned.

Expendables was one of the best comedies from 2010

I would tell you why, but that's confidential, I can not tell you, anyway, how's your sex life?

[Monkey_Boy]

"Mulholland Drive"
(This post is loaded with spoilers, so don't read unless you've seen the movie at least a few times.)


All right, guys, I found "Mulholland Dr." for sale on DVD and decided to grab it. I was especially excited to watch it after opening the case and finding a list of Lynch's clues in order to help you figure things out (however, I didn't read them because I wanted to watch it "fresh"). It started off interestingly enough; a woman is about to be killed just as some idiot kids slam into her limo, killing everyone but the woman. We follow her for a bit then things get... weird. Naomi Watts shows up playing 'Betty', coming out of an airport with two creepy old people who continue smiling in a creepy way. Even in their limo, leaving Betty behind, they continue with the creepy smiling as the creepy old woman seems to force her creepy self to pat the creepy old geezer's leg. Then there's a cut to a director being forced to cast someone he doesn't want to. Then back to Betty who finds the woman in the car wreck in her Aunt's shower. We find out she has amnesia and she gets her name from a poster of Rita Hayworth hung up on the wall. At one point the director arrives home to find his wife in bed with Billy Ray Cyrus. (My gawd, what a blow to a man's ego! I mean, Billy Ray Cyrus? Really?) There's also a dude with a deformed head giving orders through single word sentences and... telepathy? We focus on a weirdo telling another man about his dream and then fainting (or dying, I'm not sure what the hell is going on) when a scary looking hobo appears around a corner. (Found it completely surprising that when I tried to back it up to the beginning of the chapter to see if I missed something, it took me to the beginning of the movie! When I attempted to see where the next chapter was, it skipped to the end! No chapters?!?! You mean I haveta actually FF and REW for a few seconds when I wanna see sumpthin'? What is this, the days of VHS?! ) When I come back to the director, he's talking with The Cowboy who speaks in the ancient language of "Horse Puckey". Later on, a weird gypsy woman then appears on Betty's Aunt's doorstep. Later I'm not really understanding the need of the woman in Diane's apartment and why we needed to spend time with her, or why Betty and "Rita" wouldn't tell her that there's a putrid, rotting corpse of a dead woman in there. At the 1hr40min mark, I finally understand the "sexy thriller" part in the synopsis on the back of the DVD. Makes zero sense when Betty tells Rita that she loves her. I start wondering, "Why exactly does she love her? What the crap is going on here?! This 'relationship' seems crammed in to make the movie a 'sexy thriller' because up until this point, there was ZERO sexual tension between these women; one woman can't remember if she's straight or not, the other wants to "do it" for the first time with a strange, amnesiac woman who she found naked in her elderly Aunt's shower and owns a purse full of (probably stolen) bundles of hundred dollar bills with a weird key. Also, the acting is terrible! I mean really terrible! This movie came out in 2001, what's the deal with everyone sounding like they're in a play? Especially Watts! In what way is this movie 'addicting' (as it is described by The Washington Post in a quote on the DVD)?" After sex, the two women go to a theater and for some reason Betty shakes like she's having a seizure when the idiot making no sense on stage (I mean, is my mind supposed to be blown by the fact that a dude holding a trumpet isn't really playing it?) makes the houselights flicker. It's at this point I begin asking, "Where's the friggin' plot?!" By the end, which is just insane, I am thoroughly confused and a bit frustrated... until I have a sudden thought; most of this movie seemed to be a dream because twenty minutes before the end seemed like an awakening from the dream. However, things continued to not make sense. So, I watched it again (which is probably the beginning of the "addiction" that The Washington Post was talking about), clues in hand, to see if I could figure this thing out, or to confirm that I'm apparently an idiot.

Okily-dokily, after I'm done with the second viewing... it's time for a third. (I do believe this addiction thing just might be true afterall.) I was able to discern, from my second time going through, that it was indeed a dream, by the camera falling into a pillow after the dancing, so this leads me to the conclusion that the characters are "intentionally fake". From this perspective, I was actually able to piece things together a bit more. However, confusion still lingered, so I turned to the cliff notes of the modern age: The Internets! This is where I found that the movie is a darker version of "The Wizard of Oz". I was also able to understand the significance of certain pictures, since I had no idea about the history of such paintings and their supposed connetion to Betty/Diane. (I'm a cartoonist, but that's about as "artistic" as I get.) Yeah, I had to "cheat" a bit, but I don't think I woulda ever pieced together that she was raped by her Grandfather or was a call girl because of Camilla if I hadn't. I mean, nothing is really all that clear... not until you can grasp what is going on... and I needed a little help. What I find interesting is that after gaining some knowledge and watching it a third time, the "funny parts" (such as the incompetent hit man having to kill more people than he should have or the director walking in on his wife with the pool man) are no longer funny; the sloppy hit man is Diane's psyche imagining how he coulda botched the job when he was taking care of Camilla; the dialogue, that the director's wife and lover speak when he first sees them in bed, could be the exact words Diane heard when her Grandmother walked in on the two of them; the pink paint being smeared over the family jewels seems to be symbolic of Diane's lost innocence when her Grandfather violated her, and all three characters are covered in it by the end of the scene symbolizing that this event had affected them all. It's flippin' crazy, man! The color symbols don't stop there! Apparently black is a position of power at some points and red is prostitution. Having this in mind, whenever I saw Rita/Camilla in black and red, it symbolized her position in Diane's real life; she was the one who was pulling the strings whenever Diane slept with someone; Camilla was Diane's "pimp". This was especially evident when Rita/Camilla was wearing a red blouse wrapped in black. On their way to the theater, I noticed that Rita was all in black and Betty, for the first time, was in red. Implying even more that this is indeed what their real life relationship was. Flippin' crazy! I'm very glad for The Internets since I was also able to understand what the crap that woman was singin' about and why it made the two of them cry so hard.

This is truly one of the saddest (if not THE saddest) movies I've ever seen. Only problem is that unless you're good at identifying metaphores and symbols in a seemingly nonsensical storyline, you ain't cryin' by the end, you're scratchin' your noggin. This absolutely sucks for me because I don't have friends or family that're into thinking about movies, or doing a little research in order to figure something out (which I LOVE doing), so this is one (of a few movies) that I'll always have to watch alone. It's cool, though, I've always wanted to own a weird movie that took some time to understand!

5/5

On a sidenote, went over to IMDB and found that the movie was estimated to have a budget of $15 million and that it only pulled in just over 7. Guess there aren't alotta people who like thinkin' about movies, huh?

[SquidPuppet]

Originally Posted by Foggy

Well this is hitting Blu-Ray later this year...

[Show spoiler]

[Al_The_Strange]

Next greatest blind-buy: “The Social Network.”

The art of photography involves taking an uninteresting subject and making it interesting, and sometimes a moving picture can do the same. David Fincher proved his competence with “Fight Club,” “Zodiac,” and a bunch of other fine films; in the hands of a lesser director they probably would have been average, but for the most part Fincher’s films are unique on many levels.

His latest film, “The Social Network,” tackles a subject that immediately seems uninteresting: the creation of Facebook. But thanks to quality direction and writing, and a good heaping of dramatization, the movie is surprisingly worthwhile. It may not have a whole lot of conflict (certainly nothing physical), but it does exist on a deeper emotional level. Combined with a decent pace, an interesting narrative style, and a few amusingly comic scenes, the film does entertain.

It’s the characters that take precedence though. Like a modern-day “Citizen Kane,” it tells the story of a man’s rise in wealth and power, with a taxing cost. The portrayal of Mark Zuckerberg is certainly and deep and insightful character study, regardless of how realistic it may or may not be. All other characters receive fair treatment, and all together they present some fascinating themes about society in the modern age and the supposed value of social standing. I can’t say that the story itself is great, but it does manage to keep itself moving with hardly any drag.

The film is competently made, as expected. The photography is very solid. Acting is great from all actors; Jesse Eisenberg seems perfect in the lead role, and I found myself enjoying the performances of Andrew Garfield and Justin Timberlake, as well (the latter of which is especially surprising). Production value seems high, for this is a slick and polished-looking film. The music score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross is pretty darn awesome.

For the past few months it seems like I’ve seen nothing but rave reviews over this film. Is it good? Sure. Is it the next greatest American masterpiece that truly defines the modern age? Maybe. Is it Oscar worthy? Well...we’ll see…

4/5 (entertainment: 4/5, story: 3.5/5, film: 4/5)

Recommendation: Sure.

Al likes this Blu-Ray. It shows perfect video quality; it may be a bit dark and I think I did spot some banding, but for 97% of this film it looks exceptionally sharp, clean, and clear. Sound quality seems okay for the given sound design. Some of the dialogue (like the opening scene) was amidst background noise or music; never too much, but enough to be a slight annoyance. The music stands out very well though, and most dialogue is clear and easy to understand.

PQ: 5/5, AQ: 4.5/5