Movie Tab II

Actually, I can think of plenty of films that are farces.

Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant (2009)



Fun movie with numerous laugh out loud scenes... loved John C. Reilly as a vamp...

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Un lac (Philippe Grandrieux, 2008)



Wow...I'm not even sure what to say. Really cool night, too. I met the director (one of my favorites). But if any of you ever have the opportunity to see this, do it.

Hey Justin, now that the Wow Factor may have slightly worn off, can you give us some real reasons to watch Un lac? The reason I'm asking is that I'm going to try to post an update here, but as I mentioned elsewhere, I'm in quite a lot of pain here lately and I'm not sure I can go back to my older reviews until I get my body into a better shape. For example: please don't get too disgusted, but since last Thanksgiving and Christmas, my middle body has turned into something resembling a folded taco, at least when I'm sitting up in a chair like this one. I recommend you don't think about that too much, but it's quite painful. So, I'm going to redouble my efforts (hopefully temporarily) to get twice as much pith into my write-ups.

Let's see how far I can get now...

Coma (Michael Crichton, 1978) - Suspenseful sci-fi has pluses such as Genevieve Bujold taking a shower on screen, Michael Douglas becoming understanding at just the right moment, great cast including nobodies Tom Selleck and Ed Harris. It could be seen as a tad predictable, but no... Genevieve MUST die at the end! Why don't they make movies like this anymore?

The Goodbye Girl (Herbert Ross, 1977) - - I've loved this film ever since I saw it 33 years ago, but I'll admit that after watching it over 50 times that it's lost some of its freshness in the lines and in Marsha Mason's performance. However, Richard Dreyfuss can do no wrong and deserved his Oscar for Best Actor even if I would have given it to him that year for Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Revanche (Gotz Spielmann, 2008) - I want to thank Holds for referencing this flick to me. Although I'm not really fully into it, I do appreciate several things about it, although I can't say what they all are without spoiling it. First off, the film is very sexual, and I think that's a good thing. This is an adult film, so there's no reason for kids to watch it, but adults, I hope, will be adult enough to watch it. Although the flick is very low-key, it's also quite beautiful since most of it's shot in the countryside with lots of trees and water. I also appreciate the ending of the film, so maybe I'll come to my senses, Holds, and raise my rating soon.

Wild Bill: Hollywood Maverick (Todd Robinson, 1995) + - Wonderful docu about one of Hollywood's most-personal directors working within the studio system, William A. Wellman, who was a flyer during WWI barely out of his teens and therefore one of the best directors to make films about flying and war. His credits include Wings, The Public Enemy, A Star is Born (1937), Nothing Sacred, Beau Geste, The Ox-Bow-Incident, The Story of G.I. Joe, Yellow Sky, Battleground, Westward the Women, Island in the Sky, The High and the Mighty, Track of the Cat, etc. but, he's especially interesting when you watch his Pre-Code flicks in the early '30s. I'm probably underrating this flick.

The Solid Gold Cadillac (Richard Quine, 1956) + - Frothy entertainment set in a big business milieu which has lots of fun with its plot but what carries it into the realm of ultra-watchable is the incredible chemistry between Judy Holliday and Paul Douglas, but there are many other notable performances from all the funny scumbags on this specific company's Board of Directors.

Le Pointe-Courte (Agnes Varda, 1955) - Varda's first film is incredibly modest and resembles Italian neorealism much more than French New Wave. Phillippe Noiret is actually quite endearing as a baby face husband whose far-more-mature wife (Silvia Monfort) comes to his hometown to try to break off the marriage with him, once and for all. It's all very believable but how interested you are will undoubtedly vary.

The Broadway Melody (Harry Beaumont, 1929) - This is the second film to win Oscar's Best Picture and the first Talkie. It mostly gets by on lots of scantily-clad women dancing along to every possible song you can think of concerning Broadway. There is some nice chemistry between Bessie Love and Anita Page who play sisters, but the latter may will have been one of the most-beautiful women to ever liven up the Silver Screen.



Wild Stallion (Lewis D. Collins, 1952) - Totally cliched and low budget western which holds fans' interest because of the fact that it's in color and the cast is quite good: Ben Johnson, Edgar Buchanan, Martha Hyer, Hugh Beaumont, Hayden Rorke, etc. It's really not very good, but that white stallion and Johnson play off each other quite well.

Duel in the Sun (King Vidor, although you could say producer David O. Selznick, 1946) - Rewatching this again after a few years, I feel the need to buy this one to add to my collection. Even in 1946, this was called "Lust in the Dust", and it's certainly one of the most-sexual westerns ever. That's kinda funny thinking about it; Greg Peck played two horny guys in this and Yellow Sky. I have a gift card and can buy this easily enough so I'll always have the beautiful technicolor, the awesome cast and the way-ahead-of-its-time sexual chemistry. This flick has almost as many classic-looking scenes as Selznick's Gone With the Wind, but since it's quite a bit shorter, it doesn't really quite have that many. I'm under the impression that many people haven't watched this "classic", so I'm going to list the cast, which is to die for: Jennifer Jones, Gregory Peck, Joseph Cotten, Lionel Barrymore, Lillian Gish, Herbert Marshall, Walter Huston, Charles Bickford, Harry Carey, Tilly Losch, Butterfly McQueen, Otto Kruger, Sidney Blackmer, etc.

Amelia (Mira Nair, 2009) - Amelia Earhart is one of the most-interesting personalities of the 20th-century, but unfortunately, this flick leaves her an enigma and gives her little reason to do the big things which she attempted other than a few words she left behind. The otherwise-capable Hilary Swank cannot capture what made Amelia tick and what we're left with is basically a white-washed romance which didn't happen. It looks pretty good, but this film doesn't come anywhere near giving you a reason to be enthralled with flying the same way that Avatar does.

Rocky II (Sylvester Stallone, 1979) - Stallone (in his second directorial effort) concocts such a shamefully-preposterous plot to this Rocky sequel (most people will see it for the remake it mostly is) that it almost becomes part of the fun to go along for the ride. After all, Rocky II is a documentary compared to most of the other sequels, but this one has Adrian pregnant, give pre-mature birth and then go into a coma, all before Rocky can decide whether or not to accept Apollo Creed's silly but guilty rematch. Creed feels less than a man because he didn't tear apart Rocky in the first flick, but Rocky feels more of a man when he has something to fight for, namely a family.

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

12 Rounds what a mistake. To think I actually thought this had even a bit of potential, boy was I wrong. Renny Harlin has had his fair share of silly action adventures, killer sharks, yippy ki ah's, pirates and god knows whatelse but here he falls flat on his face. You Know your in for it when He saves the dog but blows the sh%t out of the plumber.

Rolling Thunder (John Flynn, 1977) -

I'm not sure I can accurately judge this film on account of the incredibly poor quality of the ancient VHS tape I watched it on, but for the most part I thought it was a pretty solid and probably worthy of a higher rating under better circumstances, but this'll have to do for now.



The Hurt Locker (Kathryn Bigelow, 2009) -

Yeah, I saw it. The tense sequences were brilliant, everything else - not so much. I originally considered giving this a but then again...hmm, I don't know. It could still change, but right now I'll stick with this.



The Room (Tommy Wiseau, 2003) - (Camp rating: )

Oh, man. Star/writer/director/producer Wiseau crafts what may just be the definitive guilty pleasure of the 2000s. It's got basically everything you could ask for in a terrible movie - horrible writing, acting, filmmaking, etc. I don't really need to say anything other than it's all very bad, but that just makes it all one very sweet chocolate-y birthday cake of a crap movie, full of unintentional hilarity.

"Oh, hi, Mark."



Harold and Maude (Hal Ashby, 1971) -

Another re-watch, this time I ended up reflecting on some of the more negative criticism I've heard directed towards the film since my last viewing. Granted, it did actually take a bit of fun out of the film, but it wasn't enough to drastically change my opinion. Harold and Maude is still fun to watch, at least for me anyway.



Showgirls (Paul Verhoeven, 1995) - (Camp rating: )

Yep, Showgirls. Another notorious so-bad-it's-good "classic" that doesn't really need much in the way of introduction. Just a good couple of hours of trashy fun with some ham-fisted satire of Vegas show business thrown in for good measure.



Gummo (Harmony Korine, 1997) -

Ah, Gummo - a strange film that consists of ninety minutes worth of seemingly random and shocking imagery with virtually no plot save for a handful of disparate characters who happen to appear more than once throughout the film. On one hand I have to give it credit for trying something completely out of left field - on the other hand...well, that's just it. Gummo is just one of those films that can be loved or hated for more or less the same reasons - I'm probably closer to hating it than loving it but overall I just think it's a vaguely interesting cinematic exercise, if not actually a "good" film by any stretch of the imagination.



Angel's Egg (Mamoru Oshii, 1985) -

An early piece from the director of Ghost in the Shell, it's also got a similar feel yet being completely different. Short (clocking in at about 70 minutes), slow and favouring imagery and symbolism over straight storytelling, it's a fairly decent attempt at arthouse animation, if not exactly the best film.

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Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

As You Like It

Shakespeare from...you guessed it, Kenneth Branagh. Astoundingly he doesn't appear in this film, though heaven knows which character he'd play.
Much as I like Branagh, this film is pretty so-so. For starters, it's not that great a play-sorry Shakespeare. It's what you'd call a pastoral comedy- a comedy with a rural setting that promotes the values of pastoral life, and the plot is pretty slight. The two previous attempts to film it failed, mainly because the play is not cinematic. It's theatrical.

Secondly, for some bizarre reason they set it in 19th century JAPAN, despite the fact that nothing looks Japanese and pretty much all the actresses and actors are white (yes, Orlando and Oliver are played by black actors but that's not a problem). There's some excuse made at the beginning about the setting (something to do with English merchants coming to Japan) but let's face it, the setting is purely there to make things like pretty. Branagh might as well have set it in a Northern supermarket. Even the 1992 film of the play, which set the action in an urban dump in London, had some strained political reason for the choice.

Adrian Lester is quite good as Oliver (he played Rosalind in an all-male production of the play- now that would be interesting) but everyone else is either competent or almost competent (Romola Garai as Celia is pretty bad). Rosalind doesn't look or act like a man at all which makes the one funny bit of the play fall flat and the actress has no chemistry with the actor playing Orlando.

In Much Ado About Nothing, everybody looked like they were genuinely having fun. Not the case here.

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You cannot have it both ways. A dancer who relies upon the doubtful comforts of human love can never be a great dancer. Never. (The Red Shoes, 1948)

I saw 44 Inch Chest a couple of days ago and thought it was pretty fantastic. I don't really go for gangster films 'cause the dialogue always seems a bit too exaggerated. I did see 'Sexy Beast' though and thought that was really fantastic, especially for Ben Kingsly so that's what interested me in this film as it's the same writers.

It's not your typical 'gangster' film as I felt it came across as more of a stage play for it's single setting and actions. Fantastic performances from John Hurt, Tom Wilkinson and Ray Winstone who can sometimes be a bit of a one trick pony.

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instrumental rock band that I am in.

There isn't much plot, but it involves a family living in the middle of the forest, barely getting by each day, until a stranger shows up inexplicably one day and changes everything.

But the plot isn't what makes Un lac so unbelievably powerful. Grandrieux uses images and sound to their fullest. Sometimes, he is even shooting in near-dark, almost pitch black, but he manages to "bring the audience into the film". Grandrieux has repeatedly utilized out-of-focus shots, murky imagery, a handheld aesthetic, and sound to trance the viewer into a whirlwind of confusion and beauty. Alexi, the central character, suffers from epileptic fits, so Philippe brings his illness to the audience, where he shakes the camera violently towards the sky. Un lac, like his previous films, is both surreal and avant-garde, but with a narrative. Of course, he doesn't make this easy for us.

He spoke afterwards concerning his desire for these particular aesthetics, which he compared to how a child views and interacts with the world. With minimal dialogue and a film based around touching and feeling, Grandrieux nearly eliminates the use of dialogue as a method of translating feelings, as opposed to how we actually communicate. One very interesting sequence is when Alexi's sister, Hege, sings a song to Alexi, while Schumann is playing on the soundtrack. Considering the minimal dialogue, this sequences stands out. Yet another form of communication that is not quite the same as verbal.

Un lac is still a film with terrific performances. Dmitry Kubasov and Natalie Rehorova sold their roles. In the end, many will be left wondering what has happened, and what will happen to Alexi, but the ambiguity is both sad and beautiful. Grandrieux has fashioned a masterpiece, in my eyes, and given time, it might be one of my favorite films of all-time. I had been waiting for over a year to see the film since I saw Sombre and La vie nouvelle, and finally seeing it, along with the director discussing the film afterwards, made it worth the wait.

Unfortunately, Un Lac seems unavailable through my normal means of acquiring films. I have it saved in my DVD queue, though.

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8MM

I'm picking back up where I left off in my Phoenix marathon. Though not exactly a masterpiece in film, this is a very entertaining movie with a nice blend of creepiness, mystery, and a surprising bit of humor - most of the latter provided by a blue-haired, pleather and dark make-up wearing Joaquin Phoenix as porn store clerk "Max California."

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Getting behind again... Oh, well. Here's a few more.

Heaven Can Wait (Ernst Lubitsch - 1943)

Thanks to Mark's wonderful write up of this flick awhile back, I couldn't wait to see this. Man it was good. Another excellent film from the 40's. What a decade in film the 40's was. I don't have anything really interesting to say that Mark hasn't already said here. So check that out and then go find this movie. I plan to watch People Will Talk very soon too. Can't wait.

Batman Begins (Christopher Nolan - 2005)

Haven't seen this in awhile and really thought it was quite good. Better now in tandem with TDK, which I watched right after...

The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan - 2008)

I still think this flick is really pretty spectacular and am still completely baffled at how it was basically left out of the Oscars last year. Now with Avatar getting all this weird pub and accolades, I'm even more bitter that a truly great film like this basically gets the cold shoulder and Avatar may very well win Best Picture. I'm so confused...

Places in the Heart (Robert Benton - 1984)

I liked a lot of this movie as well. Sally Field, like Meryl Streep, just has it. Doesn't she?

Bitch Slap (Rick Jacobson - 2009)

This was a lot of fun. Unless you want your B movies to have good acting and stuff like that. I enjoyed it muchly because I don't want my crappy B movies to be good. I want them to make me laugh. This one did a few times. I didn't enjoy this as much as last years Hellride which was better mostly due to the fact that that movie actually had some actors in it. The cast in this one was nobody I'd ever seen before. Also: Zoe Bell did the stunt coordinating for this flick and she has a very small fight scene as well. I was hoping to get a little more of her, so that was a bit of a bummer but, no biggie.

Smokin Aces 2: Assassins Ball (P.J. Pesce - 2010)

Thought this was pretty enjoyable for the most part as well. Two words. Exploding. Clowns. Nuff said.

Meet Me in St. Louis (Vincente Minnelli - 1944)

Loved it. I think in the back of my drug addled mind I knew that Judy Garland was Liza Minnelli's Mother, but now I really know it. What a wonderful film.

Roman Holiday (William Wyler - 1955)

Wow. I wish it hadn't taken me so long to get to so many of these great flicks! What a wonderful romantic film. Audrey Hepburn is just cute as a little shiny button is she not?

Good Will Hunting (Gus Van Sant - 1997)

One of my favorite films and always will be.

"You're not perfect, sport, and let me save you the suspense: this girl you've met, she's not perfect either. But the question is whether or not you're perfect for each other."

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We are both the source of the problem and the solution, yet we do not see ourselves in this light...

The Yards

It's a sad state of affairs when I, the viewer, feel far more emotionally connected to one of a movie's "bad guys" than I do to its protagonist. Such is the case with James Gray's The Yards.

As a die hard Joaquin Phoenix fan, I want to like this movie, I really do, and - to his credit - Phoenix is in top form here (both in terms of his performance and physically he's never looked better) but co-star Mark Wahlberg is so infuriatingly wooden that I just can't bring myself to care. Everytime I watch this movie I find myself so disengaged and distant that I struggle to even finish it.

One of my least favorite films on Joaquin Phoenix's resume.

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Man, am I behind on posting here!


If I had to guess, I would say that this isn't one of the better book to movie adaptations. I say this because the characters lacked a lot of depth in my opinion. With the exception of a few scenes, we don't really get a clear of idea of how their feeling or what they're thinking. For all the time travelling and going back and forth, the storyline is pretty easy to follow. The screenplay isn't bad either, but don't expect much amazing dialouge. It does serve its purpose of being romantic and I didn't mind sticking around until the very end. Eric Bana and Rachel McAdams' chemistry is the highlight of their performances. Overall, it was entertaining and felt like time decently spent. But if you want to leave this one to the teenage girls of the world, you won't miss too much.

The Time Traveler's Wife:


The very beginning of the film is rather intriguing, but it moves a little slowly at first. Once the conflict gets underway, however, it gets pretty tense. I'd recommend you watch this movie for two reasons: the direction and the cast. The direction from the very beginning intrigued me. Throughout the rest of the movie I noticed interesting techniques and camera angles. The cast including Henry Fonda, Walter Matthau, Frank Overton, and others are terrific and everyone turns in sincere and rather impressive performances. The script starts out quite witty with a few laughs, but then when we deepen into the drama, the dialouge is somewhat forgotten. Of course, the technology is almost laughably outdated, but the message is still important today. I must say though, if you don't like sad endings, skip this one.

Fail Safe: Between and


I was the only one in the house who stayed awake through this entire famous film. The plot of this movie is great with an intricate storyline. Plenty of little scenes of tension that build up to the great climax. Cagney shows why he'll always be "top of the world" when it comes to playing villians such as Cody Jarrett. The script as well was classic and enjoyable. If you're a classic film fan, I'd definately tell you not to miss this one.

White Heat:


The movie starts out with some good laughs from buddies Caan and Duvall. Then, the action gets gritty, and you're drawn in with some surprise. Then, the action kind of tapers off as we watch Caan's slow recovery. This was most likely added to show how much he had to go through, but I think it could've been cut just a little. Soon, Caan and his allies are pit against Duvall by Arthur Hill's character, and that's when all the real action begins. Caan's a great lead, and when Duvall is on screen, he's particularly ruthless. However, I found Burt Young's performance to be the most impressive as his character tries to explain to Caan why to get out of the business. Hill is notably good as their double-crossing boss. The screenplay has its better moments with a few more laughs toward the end. Plus, it's got some old-fashioned cheesiness to it for those who enjoy it. An overall good action flick, but I'd be careful if you turned it on in front of the kiddies. The PG includes a fair amount nudity as well as violence.

The Killer Elite:


Mystery and suspense abides throughout this flick. John Grisham has provided us with a clever and tightly wound plot that filled with little climaxes. However, after a nail-bitting scene toward the end, I must admit that the thrills tapered off as everything was cleared up. Julia Roberts and Denzel Washington are both excellent, even though I found myself getting kind of annoyed with Roberts' character at times. Contrary to what I expected, there isn't much romance throughout the movie. This isn't until the very end when you're ready for the nearly two and a half hour movie to be over and it gets sort of sentimental. Interesting points in direction as well. Watch this one for the good performances and exciting storyline.

The Pelican Brief:

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What did you think of Tucci ?

IMO he's the best thing in this movie. its a bit slow in a few sequences but overall I still enjoy it, as well.

Love the fact that your going out your way to find lessor know Peckinpah films. The part where he's recovering, I can see where your coming from. For me it works. First you feel it (the length the time) and then you see and feel the betrayal and the brutal outcome of all that pent up anger the revenage.

Tucci did make a terrific assassin. I'd hate for you to think that I did a lot of going out of my way to find The Killer Elite. It was a free OnDemand flick from my cable provider that I happened to cross. A lucky deal

Defaintly lucky. I'd also include going out of your way in actually giving the film a fair shake. Most people seem to pass this one up for more well know Peckinpah's. You always here people talking about The Wild Bunch, The Getaway, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia and Straw Dogs. It's nice to know some of his lessor known films being mention randomly and still being watched.

I'm not sure what movie you guys watched but The Killer Elite is an abomination. I'm surprised that anybody could find anything to like at all in that muddled piece of crapola, let alone some of the acting. Anyway, that's fine. It's just that Bad Day at Black Rock and the original Flight of the Phoenix are supposed to be that much crummier than The Killer Elite, a film even Sam's mom would probably disown?

So would you say that people aren't going to be that upset with the remake, mark? A film that's ripe for it, perhaps?

I really know nothing about the remake but I assume it will be a straightforward film. The Killer Elite was made at the end of Peckinpah's most-personal cycle of films where he went out of his way to edit the thing right into the ground if you ask me. Nowadays, people seem to better appreciate Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, but I find all three of them to be basically the worst flicks he ever made (at least for a mass audience).