Movie Tab II

Dogma (1999)



Easily the weakest Kevin Smith film I've seen yet, but still entertaining enough to recommend. You won't find yourself revisiting it too often, because it isn't that funny and the dumbed down dialogue actively annoyed me quite a bit on this viewing. Jason Lee is still awesome in this, though. He is, and always was, the best thing about this film.

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"George, this is a little too much for me. Escaped convicts, fugitive sex... I've got a cockfight to focus on."

Quick jabs (and few longer ones) of the past 2 or 3 weeks:

Hard Candy (2005, Slade):
Wild Hogs (2007, Becker):
Julie & Julia (2009, Ephron):

When my girlfriend picked to watch this one, I was thinking: "oh boy, here we go." Surprisingly, I liked it quite a bit. I think it's well-paced and well-acted. There's nothing extraordinary about it, but it's just good fun to watch, especially if you like cooking like myself. I do however felt that the stories of Julie and Julia felt like 2 entirely separate stories and sometimes wondered why we needed so much background on Julie Child. Seemed a bit unnecessary...

A Man Apart (2003, Gray):
Tangled (2010, Greno & Howard):
Carnage (2011, Polanski): +



50/50 (2011, Levine): +

As a comedy, I thought this was rubbish, bar one scene where Rogan absolutely trashes Gordon-Levitt's character's girlfriend. As a drama however, I found it to be excellent. There is a good focus on character development and the disease that really engages you in the story and makes you feel for Gordon-Levitt's character. The scenes where he's finally crying out in desperation and anger are both moving and liberating for the audience and that scene where the doctors come take him away for the surgery are genuinely tear-inducing (to me at least). Gordon-Levitt does a superlative job by the way. Rogan on the other hand stuck to his trade, quickly becoming one of the most one-dimensional actors today.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011, Wyatt):
Midnight in Paris (2011, Allen):

Quite underwhelming Woody if you ask me: superfluous scenes, lack of depth, no character to really care for. Dissapointing.




Immortals (2011, Singh): +
Monsieur Lazhar (2011, Falardeau):
The Ides of March (2011, Clooney):


(He who does not know how to act poorly)

Are you Catholic? Just wondering, cause I was raised Catholic and this is my favourite Kevin Smith film. I also think it's one of the funniest.

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"A laugh can be a very powerful thing. Why, sometimes in life, it's the only weapon we have."

Suspect's Reviews

I'm not Catholic, but I get all the references and such. I just don't find it very funny, and the Jay And Silent Bob characters aren't as funny as they are in Smith's other films.

Immortals

The Sound of Music

Broadcast News (1987)



This was disappointing, as I was expecting something much more hilarious, but instead, it's a pretty limp comedy, but has a few standout scenes (the flop sweat scene had me laughing my ass off) and the three central performances were unsurprisingly solid. Albert Brooks was the standout, for me at least, considering I love him in every film I've seen with him, but Holly Hunter was the anchor that held this film- and my attention- together.

+

I still think it's different between living the references and getting them. I think it's his second best written script yet, behind Chasing Amy.

For me, his best written work is between Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back and Clerks.

Clerks (1994)



Speak of the devil, I watched this for the third time last night, just to see if it had fallen in quality like Dogma, but it's just the opposite. If anything, it's gotten much better.

La Dolce Vita (1960)



This may be the first foreign film that I've truly, irreversibly, fallen completely in love with. I just finished watching La Dolce Vita and I am completely blown away. I can't remember the last time a film has been so consistently entertaining; it's just one great scene after another. Clearly, there's a lot about Fellini's dissatisfaction with Italian society to be analyzed here, which I'm sure can be further discovered through repeated viewings of this epic nightlife odyssey. But at least upon this first time watching La Dolce Vita, I was totally mesmerized by Fellini's seductive vision of hip, 1950s Rome.

Many critics call this a cynical film. I think I disagree. Towards the end of the movie, during her fight with Marcello, his girlfriend tells him he's a fool for not seeing that he already has everything he needs. Perhaps she was right; perhaps Fellini's film is not cynical at all, but says, ultimately, that all you need is love.

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"Puns are the highest form of literature." -Alfred Hitchcock

Cocktail (1988)



I was expecting this to be bad, but it actually turned out to be a fairly engaging story, with a pair of charismatic lead performances from Tom Cruise and Bryan Brown. It's also got a nice stand-up-and-cheer moment when Cruise wins back his ex-girlfriend from her rich, uncaring father. All in all, good movie.

Last post, I said I watched about five new movies (read: movies I hadn't seen before) in the space of three months. Now I've watched seven in two weeks. Guess I'm improving.

Paul (Greg Mottola, 2011) -

Simon Pegg and Nick Frost are a pair of English geeks touring America who cross paths with the eponymous alien life form (voiced by Seth Rogen). It was about as good as I expected, with some decent gags and performances but ultimately a lot more lightweight than I'd like it to be.

Attack the Block (Joe Cornish, 2011) - +

Much more like it. A low-budget horror-comedy based around aliens invading a London estate and the handful of disparate human characters that make a stand. Not quite as good as I expected (then again, the praise was very high), but I recommend it. Great performances by largely unknown actors, some impressive set-pieces - admittedly not that great a horror, but when it's effective, it's effective.

Drive (Nicolas Winding Refn, 2011) -

Very impressive. Technically brilliant, great soundtrack and amazing performances all around. Definitely not perfect, though, as its storyline (understandably) feels a little underdone and the film sort of falls apart a bit towards the end, but otherwise, wow.

Bridesmaids (Paul Feig, 2011) -

Never mind the hype, this is decidedly average. At least it's probably better than The Hangover Part II, but I don't think that's too hard to do.

Red Dog (Kriv Stenders, 2011) -

Not my thing at all.

Four Lions (Chris Morris, 2010) -

The expectations may have gotten a bit too high for this one, but it's still very good. Based on a handful of bumbling terrorists as they repeatedly attempt to strike out against the system, it's not quite laugh-out-loud funny for most of the time, but it's definitely clever and thoroughly audacious. The ending was something else as well.

The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick, 2011) -

I don't know, somehow giving this a rating after one viewing doesn't quite work. It feels like it should be a , but honestly, viewing this for the first time will probably do something to your mind. Some of the visuals are amazing, but these are tempered by a somewhat lacklustre "life in the fifties" narrative dominating the film's running time. Makes me wonder what Malick cut out of the final product. Will definitely re-watch.

Entertaining? I thought it was boring as hell. The only good thing was the babe.

I've been trying to carve out some time to see this for a few months now. Aside from Days of Heaven (which I just couldn't seem to get into), I'm a Malick fan, and usually when the people I know hate his films, that means I'm in for a treat. His stuff is just so visually, emotionally, and intellectually heavy, though. Maybe a mid-week evening flick.

Before Sunset (Richard Linklater, 2004)

***MINOR SPOILERS***
Like the first instalment, Before Sunset absolutely works as a stand alone film, with all the charm, humour and emotional power of its predecessor. The chemistry between Hawke and Delpy seamlessly carries over even though the two films were made 9 years apart, and the super script with Linklater's stream-of-conciousness dialogue and the subtle camera and editing techniques combine once again to produce a hyper-realistic experience.

It's not so much a follow up as a completion, as I realised part way through how incomplete Before Sunrise now feels with the addition of a second meeting. The same would be true, I think, had I only seen this one. There's something tiny lacking from both, and the simplest way I can put it is that they lack each other. Together they're the closest to a perfect romantic tale that I've seen.

As Jesse remarks at the start of the film, in the context of his book, ambiguity is a good test of whether a person is a romantic or a cynic. The film ends so suddenly that for a while I felt taken aback, but realised that the conclusion was simply echoing Jesse's sentiments from the very start. It's a perfect note to end on, really, as the utterance of those words, "I know", could mean so many things. For the cynics amongst us, the final moments must be strikingly similar to the first film. To the idealists and those with a more romantic view of the world, it's starkly different.



Before Sunrise / Before Sunset as one story -

Invocation of my demon brother (Anger, 1969)

The Tempest (Jarman, 1979)

The Conformist (Bertolucci, 1970)

The Raid: Redemption (Evans, 2011)

Dawn of the Dead (Romero, 1978)

Ok, I say this in like 0,5% of all cases, but that rating is just half a popcorn too low.

Pump Up The Volume (1990)



I had my problems with it in the beginning, but by the end, Pump Up The Volume totally won me over. It kind of encapsulates (at least for me) being a teenager. Not being able to speak your mind (especially when you really need to). And even though I never really thought much of him in the past, Christian Slater is superb in this.

The Three Stooges - LOVED IT. I haven't laughed this hard in a long time. The cast does a good job in recreating the Stooges' brand of slapstick mayhem, and the directors obviously love the source material. My fave Farrelly Bros. movie since Dumb and Dumber.

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"You, me, everyone...we are all made of star stuff." - Neil Degrasse Tyson

https://shawnsmovienight.blogspot.com/

Part 3 of my 70s Thriller season. Again any rep you'd like to kindly leave I'd appreciate if you followed the links and did so in my Movie Musings thread. Hope that's not coming across as too demanding and douchey!
















This is a terrifically bitter and cynical film, right down to its fantastic tagline - “As American as apple pie.” With its evocative visual style, bleak and stark tone it is a truly disquieting, paranoia-fuelled political thriller. This is a film that is quite clearly a sign of the politically troubled times it takes place in, born out of the rash of political assassinations (JFK, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Bobby Kennedy) that occurred throughout the 60s, and more predominantly the countless conspiracy theories that they spawned, particularly those surrounding the murder of John F. Kennedy. After all, in cases such as these............................

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