Movie Tab II

For a guy who's job it is to look for meticulous details and be cynical about everything, I can't buy that he is completely smitten by a hot woman (which happens in an instant).

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I don't know if it makes any difference to Meat, but I watched this with a class full of 16-18 years olds about 15 years ago and the giggled through every time he called her "baby" or "doll", the scene in the supermarket being particularly amusing to them, IIRC. Maybe that's what meat was refering to as, like mark said, there's not really any romance to speak of.

You never fail to amaze me, although I think you did give this a higher rating then you previously did before.

Let's take a look at the film though. It follows the horror movie rules. A character hears a noise out in the woods and goes to investigate. Isn't that half the fun of watching horror movies? Dumb characters investigating strange noises? Scream made fun of this aspect in the horror genre.

As for the acting, let's take a look at the cast...of people who've never acted before. Did you not realize that this is a film made by a bunch of friends on a next to no budget in the middle of the woods. All they had going for them was the love of making movies and the creative mind of Sam Raimi. I wouldn't say the film has terrible acting, just bad acting. I can live with a horror film that has bad acting, specifically one that is called The Evil Dead.

Jump scare to jump scare? Have you not seen the 2010 remake of Nightmare on Elm Street. Now that is a jump scare to jump scare narrative. The Evil Dead is not. The Evil Dead has this little thing called atmosphere. The possessed girlfriend laughing while sitting in the middle of the room is scary, not jump scary. Worst thing ever made? you clearly need to see more films, this is regarded as one of the greatest horror films of all time. I know and understand that you might not feel that way, but there are far worse out there. I would give my left kidney to go into the woods with some friends, make a film and have it come out a quarter as good as this.

The main objective is to cover the screen and objects in gallons of blood? Please, don't watch the second one then. You clearly do not like, or appreciated the horror genre. But what am I saying here, continue to dislike the good films because you like to go against the popular opinion.

You are the Armond White of Mofo.

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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

All the above may be true, but I don't disagree at all with meaty's rating. Call me Ishmael White.

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

Ratings aside. I didn't complain about what he rated the film.

I could disagree with rating RED a . It's better than that.

I think meaty gave it a or less last time.

Machete - This was just plain fun, and makes yet another case for Robert Rodriguez becoming one of my favorite directors. Don't go in expecting a serious film, and you'll enjoy the insane, funny action carnage that unfolds.

Predators - Mostly made me forget about the awful AvP series, and that's a good thing.

Saw - Okay, I was surprised to find out that the original Saw film is actually clever and well plotted, not just "torture porn."

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

https://shawnsmovienight.blogspot.com/

I genuinely love the first film and a lot of people who haven't seen it are passing on it because of what the series has become.

A solid flick with a great ending that has yet to be matched (in the series)



YES, that high.

The rest average out to about or

I would've thought that honour should go to Honeykid, but okay.

Come on you guys...Saw's screenplay is AWFUL. Full of holes and one of the most contrived and yawn-inducing police procedural hack jobs I have ever seen. Glover is ridiculously bad as he mumbles his way through the worst performance of his career, and the two detectives have the uncanny ability to induce a power nap at will.

I will concede the point that the first 20 minutes or so are pretty well done, but then the whole thing goes to hell once the flashbacks start...which are one of the main issues with the flick. Flashbacks need some point of reference. You know, like, someone needs to be having them. Instead, we are treated to flash-reveals, a cheap ass form of exposition really bad writers use.

Lee Whannel is such a poor talent, in both writing and acting, and his stamp is all over this piece of garbage. From his whiny, annoying performance in the locked room, to his mishandling of the screenplay, his work is sophomoric and amateurish. He had no idea how to expose his story as he told it, so he just shows the audience random scenes when needed. Some amorphous, God's eye perspective of events from no particular point of view.

At some point in post, these guys had to have figured out that they had destroyed any real tension with their lazy attempt at avant guard structure. Their solution to keep tension up was to insert a slew of silly editing tricks to grate on the nerves of the audience to keep them tense. Well, that worked. Too bad it was a terrible idea, and falls straight down into the basement of hack film making.

Last but not least, Elwes actually makes me embarrassed to watch some scenes, his acting is so ludicrously bad. Already a b-list talent, this film pulls him completely out of his range. Luckily for us, we get some great (unintentional) comedy to keep us from falling into a drooling fugue state.

I must say, LT and I have been watching really bad horror all month, cause it's Halloween and all. We have managed to sit through some pretty foul flicks during all this, but none of the flicks put us off like Saw...

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oh, i forgot. successful horror movies require smart people!

That leads me to wonder what successful horror movies do feature smart people as victims. I'm sure there's a few.

I Am Love (Guadagnino, 2009)

I wanted to see this movie because Tilda Swinton is in it and now I wish I'd seen it when it was playing at the local cinema. Swinton plays the mother of a big super-rich Milanese family who goes through a personal crisis and eventual growth that's sparked by two of her children. This could have been a cliched tragedy about sex and isolation but it keeps you guessing with its full emotional range. The camera starts off almost impersonal with an introduction to the family house where all the shots are composed to emphasize the architecture of this impressive interior, but quickly slides into an ambiguously personal frame where you sometimes don't know if what you're seeing is what's happening or what the person you're watching is fantasizing into existence. It's all so fresh and unique that you can almost miss all the clever and astute film-references on the first viewing. One of my favorite scenes is when the main character falls in love for the first time, which is a direct reference to Ratatouille, of all movies. Which makes this another great movie about cooking, among other things.



Dersu Uzala (Kurosawa, 1975)
Rob Roy (Caton-Jones, 1975) +
Youth of the World (Riefenstahl, 1936) -
Doctor X (Curtiz, 1932) +
Only Angels Have Wings (Hawks, 1939)
The Return of Doctor X (Sherman, 1939) -

A few rewatches:

I'm Gonna Git You Sucka (Wayans, 1989) -
Van Helsing (Sommers, 2004)
Curse of the Were Rabbit (Box, Park, 2005)
Spirited Away (Miyazaki, 2001) -

Taxi Driver

To be perfectly honest, I was disappointed with this. I wanted to like it. I liked the moodiness and look of the film. I liked the cast. Some of the imagery was really powerful. But, as I have found with a lot of other highly acclaimed films, I simply could not connect. I couldn't really find a way empathize with Bickle and found myself rather disinterested in his fate. Maybe that was the point, I don't know, but this movie just didn't work for me.

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The Three Musketeers (1973)/The Four Musketeers (1974)(both directed by Richard Lester) both


Alexandre Dumas' epic romantic adventure The Three Musketeers is perfectly brought to the screen by a wonderful cast and a director at the height of his imagination who is willing to provide tons of offbeat humor to the rip-roaring tale. The only reason it's two movies is because they were faithful enough to the plot and George MacDonald Fraser's humorous adaptation that it took three-and-one-half hours to film the whole thing. It's basically non-stop Joy and easily the best version of the novel or any other swashbuckler for that matter. (Well, unless you think that Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark are actually swashbucklers instead of westerns .)

The first film establishes all the characters and the plot and ends up with the good guys winning. Yes, in that way it's reminiscent of the first Star Wars. The casting is really incredible, David Watkin's cinematography is spectacular, Michel Legrand's score is gorgeous, and there are far too many memorable scenes to get into or try to spoil. However, the relationship between Michael York's D'Artagnan and Raquel Welch's Constance is at the forefront. Charlton Heston as Richelieu and Christopher Lee as Rochefort are two of the greatest villains in screen history.


The wonderful The Four Musketeers really does live up to the trailer's assertion that it has more action. That is probably true. It's also much darker (as is The Empire Strikes Back, and remember, these films predated Star Wars). The centerpiece of this flick is the past relationship between the heartbroken Athos (Oliver Reed) and the treacherous Milady (Faye Dunaway) and how it plays out in the context of the rest of the famous plot. Lalo Schifrin takes over the musical duties and composes a haunting theme for Milady, who certainly qualifies as what was that other thread? Favorite Female Sociopath? If you haven't seen these films, you really owe it to yourself to see how a romantic swashbuckling adventure comedy SHOULD be done. To quote Mr.s K & H, "A splendid time is guaranteed for all!"


Candyman (Bernard Rose, 1995) - It's still a solid horror flick but in some ways (the script), it's lost a little luster. However, the art direction, cinematography, Phillip Glass score and sound design are spectacular.

Being Julia (Istvan Szabo, 2004) - Highly theatrical but entertaining tale about Annette Bening cheating on her husband (Jeremy Irons) with a young Brit in 1930s London. It's a comedy, a social satire and a soap opera.

The Tripper (David Arquette, 2006) - Here's another social satire which takes on Ronald Reagan and incorporates his policies into a serial killer farce with Jason Mews, Pee-wee Herman and Thomas Jane. It'a all just a little too one-note to be effective, but there are some moments of sex, gore and comedy. It's just extremely thin and behind the times. I actually found the biggest joke to be that a bunch of stoned teenagers in the early 2000s recognized Ronald Reagan from a lousy mask.

The Human Condition, Part III - A Soldier's Prayer (Masaki Kobayashi, 1961) +; Art House Rating: - Having watched all nine hours of this film, which I believe both Harry Lime and Holden Pike believe to be one of the all-time greatest, my main comment is that it's watchable but that it's also maddening. It does cover a lot of ground in the life of the protagonist, but I can't help believing that some of the time could have been spent with a few more lighter moments. Look, I agree with what this film says: War is Hell, it should be abolished and people should find a way to truly communicate with each other. It's a very significnt film. I just wished I liked it as much as Bondarcuk's War and Peace which I'm watching now. I'd call The Human Condition "War and More War".

The Card (Ronald Neame, 1952) - Another wonderful Alec Guinness comedy, one of his lesser-known, about a guy who really seems to have a knack for taking financial advantage of his situation in life. He really is a nice guy so he doesn't really break any laws, but he seems to be someone whom Fate shines down upon and provides with many happy returns. The female cast is most attractive and includes Glynis Johns, Valerie Hobson and Petula Clark (yeah, from "Downtown"). There are some really bizarre scenes which just add to the overall entertainment value of this forgotten winner. I watched it streaming on Netflix.

How to Train Your Dragon (Dean DeBlois & Chris Sanders, 2010) - Thoroughly-engaging 3-D animated flick about how the Vikings needed to kill dragons to be fulfilled in life. (Who knew?) That is, until the Viking Chief's son discovers a dragon no one else has ever seen and treats him as a pet, which pays off bigtime for him and his clan. The film does provide plenty of humor, action and aerial dynamics, as well as some heart-rending moments. It's a totally class act and my second fave Dreamworks animated feature, just a tad behind Kung Fu Panda. The voice cast is wonderful.

Quintet (Robert Altman, 1979) - I really think this IS Altman's worst. Besides being mind-numbingly boring, it's ridiculous, laborious and borderline incomprehensible. However, like the Everready Bunny, it just keeps on going and going and going. How many times can somebody watch Paul Newman walk up what appears a snow-covered mountainside? Where is he going? Why does he always end up back in what's left of civilization? What is the point of, of... anything? Fernando Rey's "Tuna Mint"?

More soon...

I actually find this a reasonable response after one viewing. There are just so many maddening things about the film. I'll admit that I've warmed up to it in my Old Age, but 34 years ago, I didn't even give it as high a rating as Miss Vicky just did. I still think my problems are legit but the overall look and sound of the film is great and the acting is good, even if I still find some of the characters and their motivations suspect.

3/5 is still a good rating, I was expecting you to hate it.

I am glad we kept our promises before the month-ends.

3/5 is pretty low for Taxi Driver. For me at least. I'd give it a 10 easy out of sheer love. It's not perfect, but I love the film dearly. It's fascinating on a technical level---incredible Hermann score, awesome cinematography (stunning tracking shots)---a narrative level (epic before/after structure), a philosophical level (what it means to be a revolutionary), and a personal level (I can relate to Bickle's loneliness).

But I am glad you didn't hate.

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"Loves them? They need them, like they need the air."

Maybe, but there has to be some restraint somewhere. Like when a demonic voice yells "join us" and then you walk out into the pitch black forrest with no clothes on by yourself (even though your character goes apes**t scared merely when her friends listen to the audio recording of the guy chanting from the book).


Personally it's one the most effective things in scaring me, to have actors that are genuinely traumatized and tense, not just screaming loud.

The atmosphere I get is annoyance and grotesqueness. I guess this is something I can point to, where you are unnerved by his girlfriend sitting there, I am laughing along with her. I really doubt I'm the only one who doesn't think of Evil Dead as truely scary. It's like watching Three Stooges with blood and guts (and clay) flying around.

Example : Everytime Ash kills anything all the gore lands right on his face.

Even after the demons are running around the house, or just blatantly sitting there on the floor. Raimi still has these moments where Ash walks really slow towards something and then BAAAAAAAAAAA !!!! There are a LOT of jump scare moments in there and it's only 80 minutes long.

Mulholland Drive, The Shining, and Psycho are stuff I consider to be real horror movies. Not that I'm an authority on horror movies, but I've seen a lot and these are really the only ones that I can't watch by myself in the dark. Constant unease and tension, The Shining being my favorite example.

= dislike, gotcha

Even to a guy like me, that's cold.

Planet Terror - I have seen this numerous times, and it's still funny as hell. I think that this and Death Proof would have been more successful if they had run in Drive-in theaters, they seem to be tailor made for that.