Movie Tab II

The Star Chamber (Hyams, 1983)



A fairly low-key affair, The Star Chamber examines the frustrations of a judge that finds himself letting criminals go frequently due to technicalities. he begins to lose faith in the law and meanwhile another judge offers him a position on a secret panel of judges that have taken matters into their own hands. Some good character actors in this one.

The Experiment (Scheuring, 2010)



Based on the infamous Stanford Prison experiment of 1971, this film examines the relationships and forces in a panoptic prison environment. Since I am currently reading Foucault, I found this film fascinating. It was fairly well done, even though Forest Whitiker does his best to stink up the proceedings. An interesting film, if not particularly good. This film is a remake of 2001's Das Experiment.

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Erm... What now? One and a half? Are you sure you watched it?

so what would you rate it, hk? i have to admit i feel kind of honored to be stealing your contrarian thunder on this one, though i did manage to sit through the whole thing

meanwhile, the last few that i've seen:

The Soloist (Joe Wright, 2009)
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (Michael Bay, 2009) -
Wall Street (Oliver Stone, 1987) -

For the last couple of weeks my computer has been not working and Plainview is in the middle of watching The Sopranos so I have''NT been able to watch alot of movies but here is what I have seen lately.

Ferngully: The last Rainforest 1992

Almost Famous 2000 Cameron Crowe I think I think have seen this movie aleast 4 or 5 times.


The Major and the Minor 1942 Billy Wilder


King Arthur 2004 Antoine Fuqua


Wedding Crashers 2005 David Dobkin

Oh Ferngully!!! Such nostalgia.

I loved that film so much as a kid but I haven't seen it in at least 15 years probably. Will need to revisit it someday

Ya I have kids so I get to watch all the animated movies and it was pretty cool watching Ferngully again, It was my favorite as a kid.

Have you had to watch any films over and over again that you used to love but the repetition has killed them for you?

I've always thought that if I have kids I'd have to ban them from watching any Pixar films or classic Disney. Can't have them ruining them for me. Just give them some rubbish to watch!

Rango (Gore Verbinski,2011)

Another Year (Mike Leigh,2010)

Jane Eyre (Cary Fukunaga,2011)

Hidden/Cache (Michael Haneke, 2005)

Close Encounters Of A Third Kind (Steven Spielberg, 1977)

Leon: The Professional (1994, Luc Besson) +

Casablanca (1942, Michael Curtiz)

Superman IV: The Quest For Peace (1987, Sidney J. Furie)

Scarface (1983, Brian De Palma)

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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."

Belle de jour 1967 Luis Buńuel

Honestly I had a hard time rating this film because I'm not sure what I think of it. Its a great film and I enjoyed watching it but the ending really confused me.Bell de jour is about a married women who loves her husband but spends her afternoons as a prostitute. Its defiantly worth a watch its just a weird ending.

I've already decided to stop posting "reviews" in here. It's not really anything to do with you guys, but I'm a Big Mess. It's so much pain (after the fact) to just sit up in this relatively comfortable chair. But since I have a brief amount of time, I'll start with Oscar-nominated films. At this point, it's difficult for anyone to say anything original, but I'll try.

Black Swan (Darren Aronofsky, 2010)
The King's Speech (Tom Hooper, 2010)
The Fighter (David O. Russell, 2010)

These are the latest in my most recent batch of Best Picture nominees which I've seen. My rating for Black Swan probably is not a surprise to those of you who know me. On the other hand, I realize that many people here give it which I find silly. Now, sure, you go ahead and love your movies which you love, but this movie has almost no back story... it has but they go out of your way to cover it up and that makes it silly. It presents itself as a film about various women who all have ruined lives in one way or another and then it proceeds to ruin their lives even more. Why are their lives ruined in the first place? No one knows. Why do the things happen which happen in the film? Again, they don't happen for any logical or even illogical reason. They just happen because the writer/director has conceived of a spectacular finale which is basically a psychological horror film a la Polanski, but Polanski would never allow such obvious plot points in his films. Even so, the flourishes during the last part of the film do transport the flick into a solid horror film and make it worth watching.

The King's Speech has similar problems which apparently carry more weight with younger viewers and less weight with older ones. However, there is no getting around that The King's Speech is very entertaining, especially if you have a sense of humor. Since I consider the film a full-on comedy. it's easy for me to like it, but I wonder if people younger than I am even think it's funny at all - I'm correct, it obviously is and mostly because of the brilliance of the acting. However, I guess i can see why many think it's too old school and uncinematic. I'll be the first to say that I don't comprehend how Hooper snagged Best Director, multiple times.

The Fighter is the film which grabs me emotionally of these three. If I had to choose from these three, I think I'd go for this one. First off, I've never considered Russell to be such an emotional director, and when I use that word emotional, I use it in a good way. I'm not sure how I can separate Hooper from all the solid performances in The King's Speech from Russell and The Fighter, but ultimately I feel the cast of The King's Speech would have been stellar no matter who directed them (no, it didn't direct itself, but... ). The Fighter had several surprising performances to me, and they were all completely lived in. I suppose they could have faked me out with some superficial crap, but I just don't see it, and the performances, all of them, were incredible. So, based on these three flicks, I'd vote for The Fighter as the best, but since I've already seen other films which were nominated, let me bring those up again.

Inception

The Kids are All Right

127 Hours

The Social Network

Toy Story 3

-
Winter's Bone

I still haven't seen the new True Grit

I also have over 25 other films I probably won't tell you about because you don't really care.

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

A Clockwork Orange (1971, Stanley Kubrick)

Dr Strangelove (1964, Stanley Kubrick) +

Three Colours: Blue (1993, Krzysztof Kieslowski)

City Of God (2002, Fernando Meirelles)

See what I mean.

EDIT - Tyler, I'm happy that you're watching art house/classic films, but I seem to find almost ALL your ratings upside down. The best films, easily in my opinion, are Close Encounters, Dr. Strangelove, Casablanca and A Clockwork Orange.

I've watched Cache several times and it doesn't add up, no matter how much you believe the BS ending at the stairs they try to explain. Scarface? You and honeykid are funny guys...

Micmacs

Much like some of director Jean-Pierre Jeunet's other work (Amelie, Delicatessen), Micmacs is a very quirky and visually arresting film with interesting characters and a very original (if not entirely believable) storyline.






The King's Speech

Despite my love of both Geoffrey Rush and Colin Firth, I found myself not enjoying this movie quite as much as I'd hoped to. Which is not to say that there was anything lacking in either performance, but I had a bit of trouble connecting with its central character, the king. However, that may be - at least in part - to blame on the fact that I watched it during a rather hectic vacation and as a result it took me several sittings to get through it.

+




The Princess and the Frog

Cute, but mostly forgettable. Also the various musical numbers were a big reminder of why I am not a fan of classic Disney.

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That seems a shame. While most of us clearly aren't at your level in terms of movie knowledge, it's always interesting (for me at least) to hear your views on films I'm not particularly familiar with. It's made me interested to track down a few of them

And Midnight Cowboy for example. While not an obscure film, as I said it was a film I was aware of but never got round to watching. It was partly your love of it that I read about in your top 100 that made me think a few days ago, "yeah you know what, I'll give that a go today." And while I didn't feel quite as strongly about it as you it was definitely a film I'm glad to have seen now.

Sorry to hear that Mark

I care

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Health is the greatest gift, contentment the greatest wealth, faithfulness the best relationship.
Buddha

What's wrong, Mark? You sound a bit blue...

explain yourself mark !

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