What MOVIE(s) have you been....seeing? watching? ARCHIVE

I was digging Inherent Vice as well. I got all excited when it busts right into CAN "Vitamin C" at the opening credits. I think the first face you see is Joanna Newsom which was cool as well. I really liked her first album. She was a little rough though but interesting casting anyway. I didn't think the film was perfect but it was still enjoyable and packed with cool 70's flavor. Phoenix was fantastic, no surprise there.

Man, hell yes, I loved the use of Can at the beginning. Some of the Jonny Greenwood underscore is really good too, particularly the paranoid pulsing synth and vibraphone thing that builds when Doc is walking around Golden Fang HQ, sees all the dentists, sees Japonica, and they all pile into her car. It was a sequence of scenes that would have just been kind of random and silly without the score layering some tension into the mix.

I think the weakest link in the cast was Reese Witherspoon. Phoenix and Brolin were both amazing, and yeah, the general doped-up 70s vibe of the movie is super evocative and wonderful. All the outlandish clothes, crazy haircuts, the swirls of spiraling smoke in every scene. My biggest problem with the movie was a stylistic thing: the incredible number of tight close-ups on faces, often from kind of a weird low angle, looking up at the actors. Those shots felt claustrophobic after a while.

The other great thing is that maybe--maybe--Inherent Vice will open the door for future Pynchon adaptations. They took one of his weakest novels and made a solid movie out of it, without really changing much in the way of plot or even dialogue. His most recent book, Bleeding Edge, is imperfect, but it's also a breezy detective story, but with a more interesting protagonist, a more compelling mystery, and a stronger sense of paranoia than Inherent Vice. Less tonally all over the place than IV, too. Some of his stuff is unfilmable, but Crying of Lot 49, Vineland, Bleeding Edge could all be turned into pretty neat movies if some care is exercised.

I only know Pynchon by reputation, unfortunately. On my huge laundry list of shit I should read. But yeah, hollywood definitely needs to dig deeper for material than fucking theme park rides. My cynical side is showing, sorry.

For weak links I'll pick on Owen Wilson, just to nitpick. Now, he wasn't necessarily bad but his character is tired. Outside of a Wes Anderson flick, I don't want him involved really. Man, I sound like a dick lol. It was a small bit though and I can see why they might choose him and Ms. Witherspoon to give a sense of familiarity or whatever to material that might be tougher to sell.

Welcome to the Fort, by the way.

Motorik wrote: Great idea, and one I'd like to do with Kubrick myself. I've never seen anything from his pre-The Killing work and I don't think I've seen Paths of Glory, either. Cassavetes and Peckinpah would also be interesting subjects for a bingewatch retrospective.

.

Paths of Glory is a little dated but it's still one of my favorite War Movies. Talking about it makes me want to watch it again. Enjoy.

Paths of Glory is in no way dated! It's a fantastic movie. The Ant Hill! I hate The ant Hill

Disgustipater wrote: It was probably better than the two sequels, but no where near as good the original. The tension is missing from this one. Instead of having different dinosaurs loose everywhere and the humans virtually alone, Jurassic World has one big dino running around, where they know where it is most of the time, surrounded by tons of people. No tension.

But overall it was a decent movie.

I agree with all of this. The dinosaurs in parts 1 and 3 were almost an extension of nature's role in the films: in the original they're running amok like the storm devastating the island, and in part 3 they've taken over the island much like the plants and weather are breaking down the man-made structures. I hated part 2 so I don't care what was going on in it.

The only remotely atmospheric bit in the new movie was the night scene near the end, otherwise I thought it was too brightly lit to evoke an ominous atmosphere. There was a good idea there when Owen was talking about the Indominus Rex's psychology regarding how it was raised in captivity, but the movie treated it more like a justification for its rampage rather than a theme to be fleshed out and explored. I liked the Mosasaurus, though.

I thought it was good, not great.

I think it has been brought up before, but Army of Shadows, about the French resistance, is really good. Great atmosphere, like an incredibly tense crime movie, but the French Resistance are sort of the gangsters, and the SS are, of course, the most brutal police imaginable. Oh the torture scene in that show still makes me shudder.
This review by Ebert is good:
www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-army-of-shadows-1969

"Melville, who was himself a member of the Resistance, is not interested in making an action film. Action releases tension and makes it external. His film is about the war within the minds of Resistance members, who must live with constant fear, persist in the face of futility, accept the deaths of their comrades and expect no reward, except the knowledge that they are doing the right thing. Because many die under false names, their sacrifices are never known; in the film, two brothers never discover that they are both in the Resistance, and . . ."

MAD MAX: FURY ROAD has broken the record for me as the movie I've seen the most in theatres. I saw it a fourth time today after seeing it a third time just yesterday.

Previous record was a 3-4 way tie between Phantom Menace, Sixth Sense and Gravity. There might be a fourth movie I've seen three times in theatres but I can't remember...

Anyway, I absolutely love Fury Road. The music just gets better and better each time, wish it was even louder in the movie. Each time, i see something I never noticed before. This fourth time around, I noticed how he gets the crossbow bolt out of his hand. Hilarious. Each time I see the movie, I crush out on a different breeder girl too.

Jurassic World - I thought it was a lot of fun and laughed more with it than at it. Great to see the park open and I liked all the nods to the first film. It seemed to ignore the previous sequels too which I think was a good idea. This is a lot closer to what I always wanted for a sequel to Jurassic Park. Has its flaws, but most popcorn movies do including the original. I know a lot of people are jaded on the franchise as its tough to bring anything new, but I was happy just to revisit Isla Nubar. So now we've had successful returns of Mad Max and Jurassic Park this year. Hopefully Star Wars is next.

Black Barney wrote: MAD MAX: FURY ROAD has broken the record for me as the movie I've seen the most in theatres. I saw it a fourth time today after seeing it a third time just yesterday.

My record has got to be the original Star Wars, since as a kid there was a bit of bragging rights how many times you'd seen it. With the re-releases over the years, I probably saw it in the theaters over a dozen times.

As an adult, the only thing that comes to mind is Team America: World Police. I love that movie beyond reason. I saw it by myself while on a short trip to Vegas, then the next day back in L.A. I had to take my friends, then few days later I was visiting Houston and made my other friends see it with me. Three views in about a week. Earlier this year, Alamo Drafthouse screened it as a quote-along, and I was right there, waving my little American flag.

Inside Out is easily the best Pixar movie since Toy Story 3, and the first one since even longer to create an interesting new original world, which used to be a standard for them. It was very funny, touching and clever. Reminded me a little of Wreck-It Ralph and Monsters Inc. in the way it establishes its unique world setting and perspective (in this case, the mind and emotions of an 11 year-old girl), but also was very much its own thing. Not sure how I'd rank it compared to other Pixar classics, but it's definitely one of the better ones.

Went to see Jurassic World tonight. That was a really cool movie! Never boring, even over the course of 2 hours.

Saw Jurassic World yesterday too. Thought it was ok, nothing more. It started WAY too slow, we didn't get introduced to Chris Pratt until like 35 minutes into the movie and the kids were beyond boring. Ultimately I liked it better than Age of Ultron because the action with the dinosaurs is like 10x better than the endless robot fighting superhero action. The script was not as good as Age, but I go to these movies for the action not the quips, so if I had to choose between the two...

I must admit that as I get older the "Spielburg family values" embedded in every one of his films gets more and more saccharine and makes me a little sick and disgusted. But I recognize that's primarily a change in me rather than his movies.

Also, attached to my film was the most disgusting trailer of US propaganda I may have ever seen, a dog movie called "Max." It would not surprise me if it was funded completely by the DoD.

OK, I watched the Max trailer. About halfway through I realized the trailer would be brilliant, if it were an elaborate bad joke. It's just really weird, like they wrapped up every cliche they could think of in a big bear-hug embrace.