Movie Tab II

Harvey
Henry Koster, 1950

I didn't really know what to expect of this before watching it, because all I really knew about it was that it was about an imaginary friend. Something that I did really love about this that I haven't seen done before is the voice recording of James Stewart before the movie even started with him telling about the role. You could tell that this was one role that he truely loved playing, but I can see why. James Stewart actually made it believable that there was a 6 foot, 3 and half inch bunny there. There's no doubt in my mind that James Stewart is my favorite actor of all-time, I mean I don't think I've seen one performance from him that hasn't been great. This was easily one of the best performances from him that I've seen, right behind Mr. Smith Goes To Washington and It's A Wonderful Life.

I think this is one of those movies that the younger you see it, the more you'll love it. I do kind of wish that I would've saw it when I was younger, but I still ended up really loving it, so I don't mind. This is one film that I'd basically recommend to everyone, because it's just a movie that I feel anyone can love.

MM, as you're on this 'old classics' kick, may I recommend throwing in a few David Lean films? I think you'd really like his stuff.

Alone Across the Pacific (Ichikawa Kon, 1963)



Fresh off the commercial successof An Actor's Revenge (Yukinojo henge, 1963), Kon Ichickawa recreated the inspiring true to life voyage of Horie Kenichi, who, in an ill prepared vessel, sailed from Japan to San Francisco.

A decade before Kenichi set sail, Japan saw the end of the Allied occupation and westwardly looked towards an individual state, free from its conformist past. Hence, it would not be too fanciful to read the film as a political allegory; yet it was perhaps Japanese society's withdrawals from the redefined sociopolitical climate that prompted Kenichi's quest.

Anyway, stepping away from the academic noodling, Ichikawa conjures a powerful hymn to the human spirit. As with something like Touching the Void (Macdonald, 2003), we become slaves to seamless wilderness. The ongoing battle between the human and nature remains the film's most prominent leitmotif. As Kenichi (a formidable turn from Yûjirô Ishihara) bounces towards his target, we witness how nature can corrupt the senses and more specifically how the sea isolates us from our comfortable capitalist existence.



However, perhaps the most interesting part of this underrated and largely unseen film, is Ichikawa's ambivalence towards Kenichi's motivations. He refuses to denounce Kenichi's hubris, yet is equally reluctant to accept his need to abandon his loving family. Even at the end of his journey, although the scope of his achievement is never overlooked, a greater emphasis is placed upon the family which he chose to ignore.

Stubborn individualism pervades Ichikawa's body of work but in Alone Across the Pacific it is more of a necessity than ever before. Japan's bewilderment over its cultural ambitions serves as the catalyst for Kenichi's rather random trip. While significance also remains in the fact that he looks towards America, the land of the free, the land where dreams can be transformed into reality. Alledgedly anyway.

Dawn of the Dead (Snyder, 2004) -

There's a lot of things I can easily say about this film, but I'm feeling a bit tired and if anyone really cares they can always ask me what my thoughts are. I will say that it's watchable (this makes the third or fourth time I've watched it), but it's still badly flawed and no amount of gore, explosions and high-speed zombies and filmmaking (not to mention the various in-jokes and references to Romero's original Dead trilogy) can really fix that.

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Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

Burn After Reading (Coen Brothers 2008)


I haven't been having much luck with the movies lately. I thought this was a silly little mess. George Clooney was the only bright spot in the whole movie for me. D

X-MEN Origins: Wolverine



...or whatever way round it is. Anyway, i'm sure most people picked up on the fact a unfinished workprint was released and had been getting a lot of bad rep. And i'm glad i waited to see it on the big screen as it was actually pretty good. It's no masterpiece and certainly doesn't scratch X2 though i'd say it was more successful than the X3, not that that says a lot. Much of it is similarly as subtle as a sledge-hammer and Jackman spends omst the film raging into the sky but Schreiber certainly enjoys himself chewing up the scenery. The side characters are, well, very sidelined. I'm sure this is where a lot of the comic fans jump in but not being one of them couldn't say about Deadpool. I liked what they did, think needed a bit more development in the middle but i find Ryan Reynolds highly charismatic and watchable so maybe hoped to see more of him. Not sure if the character is "big" enough in the Marvel-verse to warrant a separate film. Either way, liked what they did with the final fight, which for my money was well done. Gambit was another riseable one, i loved him in the cartoon and he was ok, not the actor i would have chosen but for the amount he's in it, was sufficient. Shame it's a prequel so can't continue straight from it because it had a good set up. The Prof X twist i saw coming but wasn't big deal. The CGI at times was bit dodgy, don't know why Wolverine's claws looked really fake, don't remember noticing that in the others :/ Anyway, if you like X-Men and the like, i wouldn't let the bad buzz put you off it since thought it was solid enough, overly cheesy moments aside. Good performances, even if some actors seemed bit wasted, couple nods to the "verse" and some decent action scenes, which is all you can ask for really.

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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - The Sign of Four (TV)

Alright, so it's not precisely cinematic, but i reckon the running length and period detail let it past the stage door. Not that it's great. But Jeremy Brett's Holmes is the best i've seen, so i was happy to to get drawn in.

What sits up highest here is the evocation of Conan Doyle's world. The foggy streets of horse-drawn London get the full camera-pan effect, while 'The British-Raj' can't help but infect the more lavish proceedings. UK TV stalwarts like John Thaw turn up to regally pad it out, but padding has always been the downfall of this incarnation. It's like CSI powered by horse-dung.

Doyle was a nutter who thought Houdini was subconsciously possessed with spiritual powers, so it's no wonder that he bedecked this story with cannibalistic protagonists and other outlandish 'wonders'. If you can get past the fact that someone still saw fit to make this in the 80s (and if you can live with RADA urchin-kids & a tiresome steamboat chase), this still has some cultural flavour to deliver.

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Virtual Reality chatter on a movie site? Got endless amounts of it here. Reviews over here

Brazil
Terry Gilliam, 1985

You know, I'm really just starting to get into sci-fi movies now. I've been watching them for the longest time, but I've just really started getting into them recently. For now I'd probably say that this would make it into my top 3 favorite sci-fi movies, behind Donnie Darko and maybe Close Encounters Of The Third Kind. For this though, it's something really different that you really don't see that much. It really reminded me of V For Vendetta, with how the goverment was, and sort of about having someone stand up against it. This movie just comes to show you how bad the goverment really can get, and it really makes you think. My only real complaint would be with the sort of unresolved ending. I don't know, but it was just really weird to me. I mean at one point you think it's going to have a happy ending, but then it just turns, but it doesn't turn to a sad ending.

Another minor complaint is that I wished Robert DeNiro could've gotten some more screen time. I just thought that he was going to have a much bigger role in it than he had. He ended up only actually being on screen for like 15 minutes, if that even. The movie focused around Jonathan Pryce though, so I can see why he didn't have that much screen time. I only wish that I could've watched this sooner than I did, but I'm still glad that I got around to watching it. I'm sure I'll get around to actually buying it sooner or later, probably when I get some extra money.

Idiocracy (2006)

Not bad for a few laughs. Justin Long's cameo cracks me up everytime. [Laughs] Right, kick ass. Well, don't want to sound like a dick or nothin', but, ah... it says on your chart that you're f*cked up. Ah, you talk like a fag, and your sh*t's all retarded. What I'd do, is just like... like... you know, like, you know what I mean, like...

Alien -



Heard lots of good things about this, don't get me wrong, this is a really good movie, but i didn't like it as much as i thought i would.

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Never Cry Wolf (1983, Carroll Ballard)

"I think over again my small adventures
My Fears
Those small ones that seemed so big
For all the vital things
I had to get and to reach.
And yet there is only one great thing
The only thing
To live and see the great day that dawns
And the light that fills the world."

- Old Inuit Song

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"Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."

Jerry, you gave it a 4.5/5 and you didn't like it as much as you thought you would? A 4.5 is a grade A movie, they don't come much better than that.

Of cource they do. A+.

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I used to be addicted to crystal meth, now I'm just addicted to Breaking Bad.

He's livin in the matrix!!!

I guess I'm one of the few who don't really enjoy Brazil , I like most of the ideas put into it - but the film itself isn't very enjoyable to me. I'm still glad Gilliam is out there making these detailed nightmarish insane films.

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Day of the Dead (Romero, 1985) -

For reasons unbeknownst to me, I really felt like watching this again and I wasn't going to sleep any time soon so I decided to watch this. I'm not sure how many people here have seen it or even like it, but it's definitely a vastly underrated film, especially compared to its predecessors in the Dead series (and still superior to those that followed).

The relatively original plot - revolving around a small handful of survivors living in an underground bunker while zombies have more or less overtaken the earth - is a good one, focusing on a scientific outpost's attempts to try and study the zombies (with the hope of teaching them to be obedient) and the tensions it causes with the soldiers that are also posted at the bunker. Combined with some more of Tom Savini's impressive gore effects (what puts the work in Day of the Dead over something like the Dawn of the Dead remake is that I still look at it and wonder how they did it, whereas with the latter I can spot the CGI more often than not - in addition to the fact that the makers were working on a relatively low budget) and some delightfully over-the-top performances (who can forget Joe Pilato's Captain Rhodes, a villain so nutty and scenery-chewing he makes Gary Oldman look normal?) and I still find it to be a rather entertaining film, although the original Dawn is probably still my favourite in the series.

And I didn't even mention Bub, possibly the best zombie "character" ever created.

I absolutely love Day of the Dead, Iro. Has the best zombies of any of them, if my memory serves me right (and yeah, Bub tops 'em all). For a while I thought Day of the Dead was my favorite film from the best zombie series ever, but I watched the trailer a few days ago and I think I will have to get it and watch it again to see if that's actually true. It's been years...

I have to rewatch it too, but I don't think I'm going to think it's all that good, unless I've changed my mind about Romero as much as I have about later-end Fellini and Bergman.

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It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. - John Wooden
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