The Resident Bitch's Movie Log

MovieMeditation's isn't even stickied up there!! And he won the MoFie for Best Movie Reviewer.

But Omnizoa is already up there??? Messed up.

It is a little messed up, but I can't say I'm particularly bothered by it. I'm sure if I messaged a mod I could get mine stickied.

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I don't care about my thread being stickied (but it would be nice if they did put it on the front ). What I really want is some of the dead threads being cleaned up.

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Letterboxd Profile: https://letterboxd.com/GatsbyG/

Stickied threads are for plebs.

But seriously, I remember how my original review thread (which I started back at the beginning of 2008 and haven't updated since 2010 or so) used to be stickied but it got unstuck while so many other threads by less active users managed to remain there. Rather amusing.

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Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

Yeah, I don't get that either.

ADMITTEDLY, I asked Yoda about being added, but I looked through several of the threads and noticed how some of them are dead or even just two pages in length. I figured those'd be filtered out.

Yoda did say that it doesn't get asked about a lot so maybe you just gotta ask if you want your thread up there.

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Movie Reviews | Anime Reviews
Top 100 Action Movie Countdown (2015): List | Thread
"Well, at least your intentions behind the UTTERLY DEVASTATING FAULTS IN YOUR LOGIC are good." - Captain Steel

I never look there. I only end up on a review thread if it is on now playing, or through using new posts which i always forget to do.

Cinderella (Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson, Hamilton Luske, 1950)
Imdb

Date Watched: 5/30/16
Cinema or Home: Home
Reason For Watching: I figured I ought to rewatch it for the 50's list
Rewatch: Yes, though it's been at least 20 years

As I said in my Snow White review, I've never been overly fond of princess movies. However, I vaguely remembered liking this particular one with its cute mice and other critters. Well the mice are cute and the animation is gorgeous but I don't have a whole lot else positive to say about it.

The characters are extremely one dimensional, the romance is flimsy at best ("We danced for a few hours, and I don't know your name or anything about you and can't remember your face well enough to describe it to the people searching for you, but I remember you being hot and you left this shoe behind and, damn it, I'M IN LOVE AND I'M GONNA MARRY YOU!!!" ), the songs bugged me ("A dream is a wish your heart makes..." Really? My heart's wishing for some pretty f***ed up s***, then) and I was really irritated by two particular characters: the fairy godmother and Lucifer.

What good is a fairy godmother, anyway? She lets you suffer YEARS of abuse at the hands of your stepmother and stepsisters, only to suddenly appear to do what? Give you a taste of something good - a pretty dress and a ride to the royal ball - only to suddenly take it away and return you to your sh!tty life with your sh!tty step-family? What the hell is that?

As for Lucifer, it wasn't the character himself that bugged, but was the way he was portrayed and the way he came to his demise. Apparently that "mean old thing" being chased out of a high window and presumably plummeting to his death is justified by... What, exactly? I mean, what did he do that made him so damn "mean"? Scratch the dog? Make a mess on the floor Cinderella had just cleaned (for which she started to chase him with a broom with the obvious intent to beat him with it)? Unsuccessfully attempt to hunt some mice? Try to stop those same mice from stealing a necklace? And... umm... umm... sleep a lot? Man that sure is one evil cat and he definitely deserved that comeuppance...? Oh and as for the stepmother and stepsisters, their comeuppance for their actual cruelty is... nothing. Not a damn thing. But that cat sure had it coming. WTF, Disney? WTF?



But even through all that, there was something undeniably charming about the whole stupid thing and I'd be lying if I said I didn't get some enjoyment out of it.

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I can't stand Cinderella. One of my least favourite Disney films, you were too kind to it.

Funny review though

Sounds like something I would say.

Also, ****. I should be on that.

8MM (Joel Schumacher, 1999)
Imdb

Date Watched: 5/30/16
Cinema or Home: Home
Reason For Watching: What better way to follow a Disney princess movie than with a film about pornography and murder?
Rewatch: Yes

Basic Premise: A private investigator is hired by a wealthy widow to determine whether a snuff film she found in her dead husband's safe is genuine.

This film is fairly by the numbers and a little predictable. There are also a few things that bug - like a bizarre and distracting score, a nearly bloodless throat-cutting scene, and a villain who won't STFU during a fight with the hero. However the film's strength lies in its cast.

Nicolas Cage is rather un-Nicolas Cage like with a relatively restrained performance as the P.I. Joaquin Phoenix is amusing as the blue-haired porn shop clerk Cage hires to assist his investigation. And James Gandolfini and Peter Stormare are pretty great as a couple of sleazy pornographers Cage is chasing. Catherine Keener also appears in a pretty much throw-away role as Cage's wife and Norman Reedus appears in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it scene as the victim's scuzzy ex-boyfriend.

There's nothing high-brow or particularly original about this film, but it's a pretty solid piece of entertainment and I can think of much worse ways to spend a couple of hours.

Didn't know Joel Schumacher directed that. Shame on me. I am, for some reason, the President of his MoFo Fan Club.....

That's funny, also WHAT!? Phoenix and Cage in the same movie?

Great work MV, just caught up and repped where appropriate. Added The Reckoning to the ever growing list of films to look out for and people keep praising the remake of 3:10 so guess I'll have to get round to watching that too one day

Thanks for all the rep. I thought the original 3:10 was solid up until the infuriating ending, but the remake for me is something so much more. The characters are much more developed and the performances are pretty intense. It was a top ten movie for me a few years ago. It's slipped a few places but I still really love it.

The Reckoning is a really beautiful film. I hope you like it.

I quite liked the remake of 3:10, too. I'm me. It's a western. You'll probably like it, Chyp.

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5-time MoFo Award winner.

Not Cool (Shane Dawson, 2014)
Imdb

Date Watched: 6/12/16
Cinema or Home: Home
Reason For Watching: Shane Dawson
Rewatch: No

This is the first movie I've watched this month and Shane Dawson - director and star of Not Cool - is largely at fault for that. I stumbled across his Youtube videos at the beginning of the month and was instantly hooked. Dawson's dealt with a lot of personal issues and he talks and jokes about them all the time in his videos. His humor is self deprecating, raunchy, and frequently homo-erotic. I have no idea how many of the videos I've watched now and I find him very funny and very relatable. So when I found out that he had made a movie, I was more than a little curious.

That said, under normal circumstances this is exactly the type of movie I avoid. I like raunchy humor when it's improvised but in a scripted movie like this - which is basically a teen sex comedy only centered around college aged people - it usually doesn't work for me. Not surprisingly, I didn't even crack a smile at most of the jokes here. But I didn't hate it.

If you cut out the "funny" parts of Not Cool, you're actually left with a sweet story about a once popular guy who finds out that being Prom King in high school means nothing in real life and learns to put others ahead of himself while finding love in a very unexpected place. The trouble is that if you cut out the "funny" parts of it, you're only left with maybe 30 minutes of worthwhile film.

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I don't think I've ever heard of that movie, or Shane Dawson.

I'd never heard of him either until I stumbled across a video with him in it. He's been making videos since 2008 I think and has a lot of subscribers. He's published one book and has another coming out soon, but I still had no clue.

Then again until a couple of weeks ago all I ever really watched on Youtube were music videos, Buzzfeed videos, random cat/animal videos, and planted aquarium tutorials.

A Streetcar Named Desire (Elia Kazan, 1951)
Imdb

Date Watched: 6/12/16
Cinema or Home: Home
Reason For Watching: 50's list
Rewatch: No

This was definitely a challenging film for me. Normally I engage with a film on a emotional level by finding a character that is either good enough to root for or bad enough to root against. Here I am presented with two central characters who are both at once sympathetic and repulsive. One is a manipulative liar. The other a drunken, vicious brute. But that liar also happens to be mentally ill and has suffered some pretty traumatic things in her life. And that brute is forced to endure a houseguest who constantly looks down on him and judges him for being "common" and a "Pollack." And DAMN IS THAT BITCH ANNOYING - to the point where it's almost tempting to forgive his violence against her, but he takes it to such a disgusting level of brutality that it simply can't be forgiven.

To that end, both performances are really excellent. A young Marlon Brando brings a raw sexuality and sense of danger to the screen and makes me understand without question why Stella would be so drawn to him. (Holy crap he was hot back then!) Vivien Leigh infuses Blanche with glamour and a fragility that almost makes me forgive HOW DAMNED ANNOYING she is, but not quite. I'd be lying if I said her character didn't take away from my enjoyment of the film.

Still, it was a well made film with characters that actually had dimension and I'm glad I watched it.

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