What was the last movie you saw at the theaters?
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The last movie I saw in the theaters was Role Models. Amazing. David Wain and Paul Rudd make a great writing duo.
its been a while since i've been to the theater just watch movies from the blockbuster queue. but the last one is seen was the mummy: tomb of the dragon emperor.
I'll do full reviews later, but over the last two days I saw three good flicks...
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Winning oddball fantasy about fate, love and the rigors of time - no matter which direction they're traveling. Pitt is very strong in the title role and he's backed by a great cast with Fincher at the top of his form. A romantic epic and visual feast, and a must to see on the big screen for its spectacle and sweep.
GRADE: A-
I've Loved You So Long
Well made character piece about a woman's secret and how she has imprisoned herself in an emotionless exterior. Kristin Scott Thomas is excellent as a woman in her forties who has just been released from prison after serving a long sentence. The crime and more importantly her reason for committing it are the secret that drives the plot, but it is the performances of Thomas and Elsa Zylberstein as her younger sister who welcomes her into her home and to her new family that make it special. Directorial debut of Philippe Claudel.
GRADE: B+
Doubt
John Patrick Shanley adapts his own award-winning play to the big screen with much success. It is opened up ever so slightly and credibly from the stage, but the core intensity of his parable about faith and the patriarchy in the Catholic Church remains. Perfectly cast with Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams and Viola Davis. A couple of minor alterations were made to the original text, alterations I don't really understand, but it still works and even if you guess where the piece is heading I don't think anyone will predict the reaction of Mrs. Miller (Davis).
GRADE: B+
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Winning oddball fantasy about fate, love and the rigors of time - no matter which direction they're traveling. Pitt is very strong in the title role and he's backed by a great cast with Fincher at the top of his form. A romantic epic and visual feast, and a must to see on the big screen for its spectacle and sweep.
GRADE: A-
I've Loved You So Long
Well made character piece about a woman's secret and how she has imprisoned herself in an emotionless exterior. Kristin Scott Thomas is excellent as a woman in her forties who has just been released from prison after serving a long sentence. The crime and more importantly her reason for committing it are the secret that drives the plot, but it is the performances of Thomas and Elsa Zylberstein as her younger sister who welcomes her into her home and to her new family that make it special. Directorial debut of Philippe Claudel.
GRADE: B+
Doubt
John Patrick Shanley adapts his own award-winning play to the big screen with much success. It is opened up ever so slightly and credibly from the stage, but the core intensity of his parable about faith and the patriarchy in the Catholic Church remains. Perfectly cast with Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams and Viola Davis. A couple of minor alterations were made to the original text, alterations I don't really understand, but it still works and even if you guess where the piece is heading I don't think anyone will predict the reaction of Mrs. Miller (Davis).
GRADE: B+
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"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra
"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra
Last edited by Holden Pike; 12-31-08 at 06:20 PM.
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Here's what I wrote about Ben Button over in The Tab...
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (David Fincher, 2008)
I saw this on Christmas morning with my family. It was a sold out theater and I'd be willing to bet I was the only person there who wasn't crying at one point or another during the movie. Everybody seemed to love it and they all thought it was so sad and beautiful and whatnot. I dunno, maybe I have no heart, but I was not blown away. It's an interesting flick with a solid gimmick, no doubt, and I was always mildly curious about where it would go next. But there's a big difference between being mildly curious about where a film's going next and being balls to the walls emotionally invested in it. Like I said, though, I'm the only one who wasn't in love with it so what do I know, really?
Last week I wrote that Milk flailed a little (as most biopics do) because it's so dang hard to condense a person's life, or part of their life, into one movie. I think, in essence, that's this film's fatal flaw. The scope is just too big and, in turn, the movie has long stretches that seem to drag on and on and on. So the flick's overlong and the lame framing story with Julia Ormond and Hurricane Katrina doesn't help. Outside of those hospital scenes, though, you can't really cut much else out of there, so I'd like to propose we all go back in time and push for a Ben Button mini series instead of a movie. This is a good story, but I'm pretty sure it would've been much better served in that type of format. It would've allowed for a tighter pace, I think, and a more satisfying, less rushed conclusion. But I don't own a time machine and I'm not the head of HBO, anyway, so that's probably not gonna happen.
It just seems like each chapter of Button's life is a movie unto it's own. Very episodic and very Gump-esque in that way. I'm sorry for that inevitable Forrest Gump comparison, by the way. I got pretty sick of every review for this thing mentioning Forrest Gump, but then I saw this and now I have a well and good idea of why Forrest Gump was mentioned in every review (Captain Mike!?). Benjamin Button is definitely the more cynical, ambitious, visually exciting film and it's unarguably more unique in both its story and its aesthetics. It also looks just about as good as Fincher's Zodiac (which is high praise) and it's more than impressive on the big screen. But the movie still can't help but come off as the Forrest Gump for adults. The similarities are too many to not be distracting and that's too bad. Amazingly, though, Benjamin Button's life is still more down to earth and believable than Gump's.
For the most part, the romance between Cate Blanchett's Daisy and Pitt's Button works. It's heartbreaking when it's supposed to be, it's obviously told in a different kind of way and it's superbly acted. Unfortunately, a lot of the rest of the movie seems forced or hokey and the majority of people who pass through Button's life are majorly uninteresting and feel like pointless sideshows. I liked Tildon's scenes, but again, that just felt like an episode of "The Benjamin Button Story".
So, yeah, to recap: "The Benjamin Button Story" could've been a great mini series or something, but as a feature length movie it falls short. It's got some parts that work, some parts that fail outright and ultimately it didn't do a lot for me. Bummer.
a very high
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (David Fincher, 2008)
I saw this on Christmas morning with my family. It was a sold out theater and I'd be willing to bet I was the only person there who wasn't crying at one point or another during the movie. Everybody seemed to love it and they all thought it was so sad and beautiful and whatnot. I dunno, maybe I have no heart, but I was not blown away. It's an interesting flick with a solid gimmick, no doubt, and I was always mildly curious about where it would go next. But there's a big difference between being mildly curious about where a film's going next and being balls to the walls emotionally invested in it. Like I said, though, I'm the only one who wasn't in love with it so what do I know, really?
Last week I wrote that Milk flailed a little (as most biopics do) because it's so dang hard to condense a person's life, or part of their life, into one movie. I think, in essence, that's this film's fatal flaw. The scope is just too big and, in turn, the movie has long stretches that seem to drag on and on and on. So the flick's overlong and the lame framing story with Julia Ormond and Hurricane Katrina doesn't help. Outside of those hospital scenes, though, you can't really cut much else out of there, so I'd like to propose we all go back in time and push for a Ben Button mini series instead of a movie. This is a good story, but I'm pretty sure it would've been much better served in that type of format. It would've allowed for a tighter pace, I think, and a more satisfying, less rushed conclusion. But I don't own a time machine and I'm not the head of HBO, anyway, so that's probably not gonna happen.
It just seems like each chapter of Button's life is a movie unto it's own. Very episodic and very Gump-esque in that way. I'm sorry for that inevitable Forrest Gump comparison, by the way. I got pretty sick of every review for this thing mentioning Forrest Gump, but then I saw this and now I have a well and good idea of why Forrest Gump was mentioned in every review (Captain Mike!?). Benjamin Button is definitely the more cynical, ambitious, visually exciting film and it's unarguably more unique in both its story and its aesthetics. It also looks just about as good as Fincher's Zodiac (which is high praise) and it's more than impressive on the big screen. But the movie still can't help but come off as the Forrest Gump for adults. The similarities are too many to not be distracting and that's too bad. Amazingly, though, Benjamin Button's life is still more down to earth and believable than Gump's.
For the most part, the romance between Cate Blanchett's Daisy and Pitt's Button works. It's heartbreaking when it's supposed to be, it's obviously told in a different kind of way and it's superbly acted. Unfortunately, a lot of the rest of the movie seems forced or hokey and the majority of people who pass through Button's life are majorly uninteresting and feel like pointless sideshows. I liked Tildon's scenes, but again, that just felt like an episode of "The Benjamin Button Story".
So, yeah, to recap: "The Benjamin Button Story" could've been a great mini series or something, but as a feature length movie it falls short. It's got some parts that work, some parts that fail outright and ultimately it didn't do a lot for me. Bummer.
a very high
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I saw Bolt in 3-D, that was meh, review coming later. In about a half an hour I'm going to see The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Seeing Doubt tommorow. Then see if my parents will let me pull off seeing Frost/Nixon and Slumdog Millionaire in the same day. Might fit in some Syndoche in the next three days.
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thanks for the review, swedish chef..i was waiting for someone to review benjamin button...we saw it yesterday am and i really didn't see the gump comparison until i read a review in my local paper and realized that there was one...
anyway...i really did enjoy the film...brad pitt and cate blanchett had wonderful chemistry on screen, but in my opinion the standout actor here has to be taraji p. hensen who played queenie...great acting all around....it is a far cry from f scott fitzgerald's short story, but both are good in their own right...the film is three hours long, but moves quickly in my opinion...
anyway...i really did enjoy the film...brad pitt and cate blanchett had wonderful chemistry on screen, but in my opinion the standout actor here has to be taraji p. hensen who played queenie...great acting all around....it is a far cry from f scott fitzgerald's short story, but both are good in their own right...the film is three hours long, but moves quickly in my opinion...
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The Day the Earth Stood Still. It was okay. Not anything great, but not terrible either.
I just saw this one.... It wasn't nearly as great as I thought it would be.
Saw a couple of oldies at the Northwest Film Center in downtown Portland last night, part of their "Black Christmas", which is a series of classic and near-classic Noirs they've been screening at the end of the month. I saw...
Cry Terror!
1958, Andrew L. Stone
Decently staged B-movie potboiler elevated a bit by the cast and the use of New York City locations. It begins with a letter and phonecall alerting authorities that there are two small but effective bombs on a commercial airliner coming into New York. They are found without injury, but now the caller demands a half a million dollars or threatens that the next ones will detonate in air. A man (James Mason) at work in a mechanical shop sees the report on television and rushes home in horror: he built those bombs, but under false pretenses. An old Army buddy (Rod Steiger) approached him and claimed that if such a small triggering mechanism could be designed it would lead to a military contract. Instead he is a patsy, and not only that but he and his wife (Inger Stevens) and young daughter are kidnapped for further steps in the plan.
Steiger and his accomplices (Angie Dickinson, Jack Klugman and Neville Brand) hold the family in terror as they await the ransom money from the airline, with the police and F.B.I. racing against time to unravel the criminal scheme. It's all dated and pretty hokey (the biggest unintentional laugh came when one of the airline execs protests 'Do you know how long it would take to search every passenger, every piece of luggage?!? The entire system would come to a standstill!'), but it has some good moments and a couple unconventional turns, including that the wife, Inger Stevens, is used for the middle section of the plot and it is the father who is stuck imprisoned with the child. We get voice-overs at points from both Stevens and Mason's characters, and the bit in the elevator shaft pre-dates Die Hard by thirty years and the subway finale lays the groundwork for The Taking of Pelham One-Two-Three (1974). Steiger of course is perfect as the cold, calculating and vicious mastermind, and apart from the main players there are lots of good character actors in the law enforcement side too, stalwarts like Kenneth Tobey (The Thing from Another World, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, Airplane!), Barney Phillips (The Sand Pebbles, "The Twilight Zone") and William Schallert ("The Patty Duke Show"). Some good location work too, especially the drive Stevens takes with the ransom money out of the city up Riverside Drive.
Overall, a very watchable late-'50s genre piece with some thrills and a bunch of actors better than the material.
GRADE: C
The Night Has a Thousand Eyes
1948, John Farrow
Adapted from a novel by Cornell Woolrich (Rear Window, Black Angel) this is a suspense yarn with a supernatural twist, starring the great Edward G. Robinson. He plays a carnival magician, who with his team makes their modest living playing mystic prognosticator who can tell the future of the audience members. Of course it's just a stage trick, but soon this Mental Wizard is getting actual visions. Sometimes they're useful, like the outcome of horse races or stock tips, but more often they are visions of accidents and deaths. When he feels he can no longer control the darkness and is powerless to change the outcomes, he quits and sequesters himself in the middle of Los Angeles, trying to avoid contact with any other people so as not to illicit visions of their fates. He leaves his two partners - one of whom was his fiancé who's death he foresaw. She dies anyway in childbirth, and when twenty years later he has the urge to see the man and child he has a vision of his former best friend's demise in a plane crash. He tries to alert the daughter in time to save him, but it is too late. Even worse, he has now seen HER imminent death, in some great detail. Will anyone believe him? Can he outwit fate this one time? Is there something more sinister afoot?
Robinson is terrific, as always, and while the rest of the cast really isn't up to his level (at least until William Demarest shows up) it is a nicely paced story and the suspense of that final night of doom builds well. Plus there is some very good L.A. location work, especially the famed old Angels Flight Railway that used to climb the Bunker Hill neighborhood downtown. Silly, but very entertaining.
GRADE: B-
Cry Terror!
1958, Andrew L. Stone
Decently staged B-movie potboiler elevated a bit by the cast and the use of New York City locations. It begins with a letter and phonecall alerting authorities that there are two small but effective bombs on a commercial airliner coming into New York. They are found without injury, but now the caller demands a half a million dollars or threatens that the next ones will detonate in air. A man (James Mason) at work in a mechanical shop sees the report on television and rushes home in horror: he built those bombs, but under false pretenses. An old Army buddy (Rod Steiger) approached him and claimed that if such a small triggering mechanism could be designed it would lead to a military contract. Instead he is a patsy, and not only that but he and his wife (Inger Stevens) and young daughter are kidnapped for further steps in the plan.
Steiger and his accomplices (Angie Dickinson, Jack Klugman and Neville Brand) hold the family in terror as they await the ransom money from the airline, with the police and F.B.I. racing against time to unravel the criminal scheme. It's all dated and pretty hokey (the biggest unintentional laugh came when one of the airline execs protests 'Do you know how long it would take to search every passenger, every piece of luggage?!? The entire system would come to a standstill!'), but it has some good moments and a couple unconventional turns, including that the wife, Inger Stevens, is used for the middle section of the plot and it is the father who is stuck imprisoned with the child. We get voice-overs at points from both Stevens and Mason's characters, and the bit in the elevator shaft pre-dates Die Hard by thirty years and the subway finale lays the groundwork for The Taking of Pelham One-Two-Three (1974). Steiger of course is perfect as the cold, calculating and vicious mastermind, and apart from the main players there are lots of good character actors in the law enforcement side too, stalwarts like Kenneth Tobey (The Thing from Another World, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, Airplane!), Barney Phillips (The Sand Pebbles, "The Twilight Zone") and William Schallert ("The Patty Duke Show"). Some good location work too, especially the drive Stevens takes with the ransom money out of the city up Riverside Drive.
Overall, a very watchable late-'50s genre piece with some thrills and a bunch of actors better than the material.
GRADE: C
The Night Has a Thousand Eyes
1948, John Farrow
Adapted from a novel by Cornell Woolrich (Rear Window, Black Angel) this is a suspense yarn with a supernatural twist, starring the great Edward G. Robinson. He plays a carnival magician, who with his team makes their modest living playing mystic prognosticator who can tell the future of the audience members. Of course it's just a stage trick, but soon this Mental Wizard is getting actual visions. Sometimes they're useful, like the outcome of horse races or stock tips, but more often they are visions of accidents and deaths. When he feels he can no longer control the darkness and is powerless to change the outcomes, he quits and sequesters himself in the middle of Los Angeles, trying to avoid contact with any other people so as not to illicit visions of their fates. He leaves his two partners - one of whom was his fiancé who's death he foresaw. She dies anyway in childbirth, and when twenty years later he has the urge to see the man and child he has a vision of his former best friend's demise in a plane crash. He tries to alert the daughter in time to save him, but it is too late. Even worse, he has now seen HER imminent death, in some great detail. Will anyone believe him? Can he outwit fate this one time? Is there something more sinister afoot?
Robinson is terrific, as always, and while the rest of the cast really isn't up to his level (at least until William Demarest shows up) it is a nicely paced story and the suspense of that final night of doom builds well. Plus there is some very good L.A. location work, especially the famed old Angels Flight Railway that used to climb the Bunker Hill neighborhood downtown. Silly, but very entertaining.
GRADE: B-
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I just went and saw Bedtime Stories on Christmas day....
It was a cute movie. I don't know if it was worth the 8 bucks to get in but it was def a cute Adam Sandler movie. I miss his crude humor. And you can tell that man is getting older.
On another note,
If you were born under a rock, I'm sure you haven't heard, but did you hear about the guy that shot the other guy in the theater for talking during the movie.
Now my thoughts are this:
Its a very very wrong and cruel thing to do, but how many of you have gotten to the point, where it would be nice to think about it. And by me saying this, does NOT make it right by any means, or that I'm going to do it.
But if I am gonna pay 8 bucks, and in bigger cities, its a lot more, to see a movie, I'll be darned if I'm gonna listen to some teenager or some big hairy guy talking throughout the darn thing. What do you guys do in this situation?
In the back of my mind, I was truly wondering why it took so long for this to happen.
It was a cute movie. I don't know if it was worth the 8 bucks to get in but it was def a cute Adam Sandler movie. I miss his crude humor. And you can tell that man is getting older.
On another note,
If you were born under a rock, I'm sure you haven't heard, but did you hear about the guy that shot the other guy in the theater for talking during the movie.
Now my thoughts are this:
Its a very very wrong and cruel thing to do, but how many of you have gotten to the point, where it would be nice to think about it. And by me saying this, does NOT make it right by any means, or that I'm going to do it.
But if I am gonna pay 8 bucks, and in bigger cities, its a lot more, to see a movie, I'll be darned if I'm gonna listen to some teenager or some big hairy guy talking throughout the darn thing. What do you guys do in this situation?
In the back of my mind, I was truly wondering why it took so long for this to happen.
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Good movie, although I can't say I wasn't a bit disappointed. I never really connected to the story for some reason.
Good movie, although I can't say I wasn't a bit disappointed. I never really connected to the story for some reason.
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Good movie, although I can't say I wasn't a bit disappointed. I never really connected to the story for some reason.
Good movie, although I can't say I wasn't a bit disappointed. I never really connected to the story for some reason.
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I saw the movie Slumdog Millionaires. It was a good, well-done film, but it hit like a ton or two of bricks, if one gets the drift.
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