Movies you've just watched

[EmperorIng]

I had the opportunity to meet Frank Henenlotter over the spring in my local neighborhood - but I right fucked it up by oversleeping when he was supposed to host a sci-fi horror fest in my neighborhood. I've been kicking myself ever since.

[Leandro]

X-Men 1st class... I'm impressed by how good it is, I wish I've had seen it sooner

[EmperorIng]

I watched Streets of Fire last night.

Hot damn.

80s rock.
50s clothing.
40s cars.

It's everything I want in a single movie. And it has Rick Moranis!

The soundtrack is awesome too.

"Another Time, Another Place"
A place that is suspiciously like 80s Chicago, what with the neighborhood Elevated Train tracks, and steel girders everywhere. In other words, extra cool points. I can see why Japan loves this movie - it's practically live-action anime.

One thing that struck me was how great the use of color was on the sets. A lot of sets are doused in a moody blue, like this is a neo-noir film, and the lighting and shadows all-throughout are really something to marvel at. They did a fantastic job of turning Chicago/their sets into some other world, that at once is real - but unreal, too. It's a fantastic, cheesy, fun flick. With good guys, bad guys on motorcycles, beautiful women, crooked cops, and rock-n-roll. A love letter to the movies, and to a bygone age.

[jonny5]

Texas Chainsaw

So yet another 're-make/quasi sequel' of the texas chainsaw massacre. This one changed things around a bit, but overall was pretty shit. The lead girl was pretty fit, and there was almost a topless scene; a little nudity would have improved this movie I think. Nothing really too shocking in this, gore or scares. Perhaps it might have been better in the theater in 3D.

Worth a watch if you have nothing better to do, but the previous remake with Jessica Biel was much better.

[rapoon]

The Place Beyond the Pines

best movie I've seen this year. the trailer gives an impression that Gosling uses a dirtbike to rob banks to support his son. that's only a small portion of the movie. The remainder addresses the effects an encounter between Gosling and Cooper has on their families, specifically their sons. It's broken up into 3 distinct sections and spans multiple generations. good performances (especially Cooper), beautifully filmed and music written by Mike Patton.

[Ed Oscuro]

I watched Streets of Fire last night.

Hot damn.

80s rock.
50s clothing.
40s cars.

It's everything I want in a single movie. And it has Rick Moranis!

Best description ever. I've been meaning to see that for a while, now you've got me extra excited.

Currently trying to get through the extended cut of Gangs of New York, still at the halfway mark argh
Then need to go back and finish Highlander.

[jonny5]

Gangs of New York

Ha, Actually watched that again not long ago; hadn't watched it since it was new. Even better than I remembered.

[boagman]

Gangs of New York

Ha, Actually watched that again not long ago; hadn't watched it since it was new. Even better than I remembered.

I still like that one, *despite* not being able to stand Cameron Diaz (and true to form: she brings *nothing* believable to that role). DDL is still one of the most incredible actors of our time, and certainly of his generation, and you can see that DiCaprio is starting to benefit from hanging around with/being directed by Marty. The secondary characters (Diaz's notwithstanding) also add a great deal to it, and it comes together quite well.

[Leandro]

I watched Streets of Fire last night.

Hot damn.

80s rock.
50s clothing.
40s cars.

It's everything I want in a single movie. And it has Rick Moranis!

The soundtrack is awesome too.

"Another Time, Another Place"
A place that is suspiciously like 80s Chicago, what with the neighborhood Elevated Train tracks, and steel girders everywhere. In other words, extra cool points. I can see why Japan loves this movie - it's practically live-action anime.

One thing that struck me was how great the use of color was on the sets. A lot of sets are doused in a moody blue, like this is a neo-noir film, and the lighting and shadows all-throughout are really something to marvel at. They did a fantastic job of turning Chicago/their sets into some other world, that at once is real - but unreal, too. It's a fantastic, cheesy, fun flick. With good guys, bad guys on motorcycles, beautiful women, crooked cops, and rock-n-roll. A love letter to the movies, and to a bygone age.

I've yet to watch this movie to see it's connection to Final Fight... This post gave me more motivation

[system11]

The Woman - **

Uncomfortable film, I don't recall one featuring a more hideous human being - and it's not the woman. Let down a bit by the absolutely terrible choice in music during parts of the film, perhaps alt-rock is cheap to license. Intro is pretty poorly put together too.


Firefox - ***

Classic Clint Eastwood action thriller, I'd forgotten just how good this one is. The strength of the film is in the early parts where Eastwood was playing a man who is slightly out of his depth in hostile territory - rare in a role for him. The ending has a decent dogfight although it's not quite Top Gun.

[Moniker]

Rosemary's Baby (Polanski) - 5/5
Totally deserves its status as a film classic. Polanski manages the slowly building waves of disquiet perfectly.

Carrie (De Palma) - 3/5
Didn't really age that well. It's still great in that grindhouse sort of way, and there's some really smart bits (not to mention the extreme slomo girl's locker room opening), but the mother's overacting just goes way way too far. It also felt like there was a lot of the story missing, which I'm sure there was. I'll have to read the book.

ParaNorman (LAIKA) - 4/5
Same studio that did Coraline. Source material isn't as strong, but these guys have chops. It's cgi enhanced stop-motion, and it's simply gorgeous. Like Coraline, it's not really a kid's movie that adults can enjoy, but sort of a young adult's movie that anyone can enjoy. Gets a little hammy now and then, but otherwise quite brilliant. Really crap title, though. I'd been assuming this was yet another phoned-in dreamworks or nickelodeon cgi film.

All on netflix, fyi.

[drauch]

I watched Streets of Fire last night.

Hot damn.

80s rock.
50s clothing.
40s cars.

It's everything I want in a single movie. And it has Rick Moranis!

The soundtrack is awesome too.

"Another Time, Another Place"
A place that is suspiciously like 80s Chicago, what with the neighborhood Elevated Train tracks, and steel girders everywhere. In other words, extra cool points. I can see why Japan loves this movie - it's practically live-action anime.

One thing that struck me was how great the use of color was on the sets. A lot of sets are doused in a moody blue, like this is a neo-noir film, and the lighting and shadows all-throughout are really something to marvel at. They did a fantastic job of turning Chicago/their sets into some other world, that at once is real - but unreal, too. It's a fantastic, cheesy, fun flick. With good guys, bad guys on motorcycles, beautiful women, crooked cops, and rock-n-roll. A love letter to the movies, and to a bygone age.

Hell yeah, man. Best movie ever. I think about it on an almost daily basis. Damn shame Michael Pare didn't do more action oriented roles. That voice makes me purr and question my sexuality.

[system11]

We Are The Night - ****

Tremendously enjoyable German language vampire film. Some holes here and there, but I enjoyed it from start to finish, great acting all round and good effects. Cast were very likeable too, I'd happily watch this again right now.

[Moniker]

I watched Streets of Fire last night.

Hot damn.

Hell yeah, man. Best movie ever. I think about it on an almost daily basis. Damn shame Michael Pare didn't do more action oriented roles. That voice makes me purr and question my sexuality.

Just watched this. Fucking aces. Gave me the vibe of The Warriors but more lighthearted. I need that soundtrack badly. I thought that the last song sounded like Meat Loaf, and it turns out Jim Steinman (Meat Loaf's songwriter) wrote a couple songs for the film.

[rapoon]

I watched Streets of Fire last night.

Hot damn.

80s rock.
50s clothing.
40s cars.

It's everything I want in a single movie. And it has Rick Moranis!

+ Willem Dafoe in black waders.

[EmperorIng]

His get-up was simultaneously extremely gay and extremely awesome at the same time.
Like he didn't care what anyone thought of his fucking bizarre leather wader outfit.

[CMoon]

Oh god...

Dune (extended edition) (1984): **/5

OK, a LONG LONG time has passed since I was in HS and both read the novel and watched the move. I remember loving the book then and not thinking much of the film. Deciding on a lark to reread the book (which in retrospect felt like a rather bizarre combination of wonky pscyhedelic sci-fi, semi-functional political intrigue and a healthy dose of good old fashioned schmaltz), I thought why not check out the film once more, seeing as it is David Lynch and there's a super long cut available now.

And holy fucking shit! Imagine watching a broad swath of actors all familiar to you, a director you respect, a cinematic period you're totally ape-shit nostalgic for, and even a soundtrack that seems like it's trying, all miserably fail. But, no no no, this isn't just a bad film, you can't walk away from it that easily, because of course every scene has something interesting in it (even if it is only morbidly interesting) and the wasted talent wrestles you back to the screen. You must endure!!! What I'm trying to squeeze into your brain here is that cinematic history is littered with films of utterly no significance whatsoever. Bad films grand and small are everywhere to be found, but few manage the sort of thing that Dune does so well. Dune makes you want to be a director, a script writer, an actor, hell even a producer, just so you could fix every fucking scene in this film.

There's probably too much to comment on, and that's part of the reason I say this is not the normal bad film. I have a total affinity for strange films that try hard, even if they rarely achieve what the creators had in mind. With Dune, it never even gets off the ground and suffocates under its own body mass like a beached whale. And this brings me at last to the best analogy for this film. If you can imagine that instead of Dino's Flash Gordon (1981), the same precise crew had decided instead to make a sci fi version of Moby Dick (and yes, Queen soundtrack intact), it would probably be this film--as inept, incomprehensible, terrifying and wonderful as that sounds. Even those who think they should see this probably shouldn't, but there it will be nonetheless, waiting for you to make the same mistake I did.

[emphatic]

^^You're crazy, Dune is superb.

[Skykid]

I've never seen Dune.

I do have Legend Directors Cut sitting to one side at the moment, too.

[Ed Oscuro]

Well, when I started watching Gangs of New York again this evening I had about an hour and fifteen left to go, and was looking for inspiration to carry me through. I knew the confrontation between Bill and Vallon was coming; a while after that, it seemed like typical hero-building stuff, with the characters' cinematic destinies foreordained by the needs of the scripting. (Still fantastic stuff; Day-Lewis' take on the character is a fine rendition of a cult leader, or perhaps a member of that new generation of gansters that the Bowery Boys and its successors would eventually train - guys like Al Capone.) I also knew that this wasn't a film which portrayed events as they could happen in real life; its take on history a little too indiscriminate and closed to the viewer for the sake of portraying society butchering its own for a few scraps of meat, a society which surely rarely existed. But then something happened in the scene at the Chinese Theater in the fire-breathing scene, and I stopped watching the clock and started watching the film again.

I can't tell if it's good propaganda or good storytelling, even a good introduction - or reintroduction - to history. I've read about the Draft Riots before watching the film, but nothing plays with your certainty in facts like this montage of riot scenes, interspersed with period sketches and true-to-life narration of wireless dispatches. It was a much better effort that the hilariously mangled fake newspaper Tweed hands to young Vallon in the election proposal - what gave them the idea to write "despatches" in the English fashion? You may spot a section of type cut off at the right-hand column and a variety of other computer-aided errors in that paper. Such is what you get when you outsource an American film to the mongrels. Some of the events and even major themes of the film - gunboats in the harbor firing into the city, the "shared struggle" solidarity seen between blacks and Irish at some points in the film - were wholly incorrect even if the points they tried to raise seem noble to us. (It's possible the real Bill the Butcher would have been a better friend to the blacks, or at least a gentler foe, than the highly Irish immigrant makeup of the mobs responsible for many lynchings during the riots. Other sources read some questionable merits into the film's intent, like an essay on the Lew Rockwell site which asserts the film reveals the results of a tyrannical Lincoln Presidency.) The Five Points were also damper and unhealthier, in terms of disease, than the dry, ancient cellars of the film - still, I'm sure Dickens could have found some merit in its depiction of the squalor. In reality, life in the Five Points at this time would have been simply more controlled by disease than by scheming forces. Surely Lincoln would raise an eyebrow at the film's unsympathetic view of the Five Points-area reformers he approved of, who ultimately did help all the populations of the area (one of the victims of the riot was an orphanage for blacks). After the Draft Riots, the black population in New York City was at its lowest point in forty years.

Even if you don't agree wholly with the film's take on New York history, it brings the blood back into history. Even if the gunboat attack is a fake, and the wealthy publisher of the Times not attacked in his home on Fifth Avenue, the Times' publisher did defend his building with a Gatling gun on the steps of said building. You can see that blacks were made scapegoats; you can feel the secessionist sentiment that carried from the freshest immigrant to the office of Mayor Wood; and you can count the number of times the vote tally was respected. I was very impressed to hear The Butcher given words close to his famous parting: "I die a true American." "Good-bye, boys" in the original, "Thank God" in the film.

The ending is at once unsettling and comforting. One of the first times I saw the film's name was because it features one of the last appearances on film of the World Trade Centers, here seen from a bluff at the edge of crumbling cemetery plots. Darkness, credits: As "The Hands That Built America" fades out, you hear police and fire sirens. Then more silence, and the sounds of daily life resume once more.

[GaijinPunch]

^^You're crazy, Dune is superb.

Kyle McLaclane will never top his performance in Show Girls.

[Skykid]

^^You're crazy, Dune is superb.

Kyle McLaclane will never top his performance in Show Girls.

Hahaha!

[CMoon]

^^You're crazy, Dune is superb.

I could see not being as critical as I am, but it is OBJECTIVELY not superb. Massive pacing problems (last hour is effectively a montage sequence), horrible acting (often by good actors)--as if there was only time for one take???, dropped plot lines (introduced early on, but apparently forgotten during the making of the film), and a soundtrack which unfortunately isn't long enough for the movie, hence going on repeat during the last hour or so.

There are plenty of other things which IMO clearly hold the film back from being 'superb', but those things above should be clear to everyone. It is a deeply faulted film.

Edit: Oh dear, I just realized there are THREE versions of this film. WHY!!???

[rapoon]

^^You're crazy, Dune is superb.

I could see not being as critical as I am, but it is OBJECTIVELY not superb. Massive pacing problems (last hour is effectively a montage sequence), horrible acting (often by good actors)--as if there was only time for one take???, dropped plot lines (introduced early on, but apparently forgotten during the making of the film), and a soundtrack which unfortunately isn't long enough for the movie, hence going on repeat during the last hour or so.

There are plenty of other things which IMO clearly hold the film back from being 'superb', but those things above should be clear to everyone. It is a deeply faulted film.

Edit: Oh dear, I just realized there are THREE versions of this film. WHY!!???

Riding giant worms! Glowing blue eyeballs! Killing people with your voice! Spice! Sting!! STING!!!! Who needs acting?!

Awesome movie.

[lilmanjs]

For those of you who think dune is great, once you read the book, you'll realize why the author himself hated the movie. He saw a workprint version(all the special effects and music weren't done) and loved it. After going to the premiere of Dune, he said it was a movie that made zero sense to him and hated it. Also, the directors cut is longer, but still is a mess of a movie as well. If you want something that tells the story of Dune, find the mini-series that Sci-Fi(sy-fy now) put out. You can find it brand new really cheap and it is better done.

[system11]

Evil Dead (2013) - ***

Is it as good as the original? No. Did they get through a whole swimming pool of blood? Yes. A modern watered down horror film this is not. Minor lull near the end before a full-on assault of the senses in the final minutes. Horror fans should try to catch this at the cinema, to send the message that yes - we *do* still want horror films with a real budget.

[CMoon]

For those of you who think dune is great, once you read the book, you'll realize why the author himself hated the movie. He saw a workprint version(all the special effects and music weren't done) and loved it. After going to the premiere of Dune, he said it was a movie that made zero sense to him and hated it. Also, the directors cut is longer, but still is a mess of a movie as well. If you want something that tells the story of Dune, find the mini-series that Sci-Fi(sy-fy now) put out. You can find it brand new really cheap and it is better done.

Yeah, I was actually trying to steer clear of the book vs movie problem, but it is a valid point. Personally though, if you were to single out the most significant fault, it is how they pulled Lynch off the film and he wasn't allowed in the final cut. It is ultimately why he has essentially disowned the film. Now Lynch is no Orson Welles, but I'm glad I can watch Touch of Evil the way Welles wanted it. As things stand, I think Dune is a godawful mess with no one at the helm. You're welcome to like it, and in many ways the film is fascinating (I don't disagree with the 'blue eyed warriors riding giants worms = cool' argument), but it is so badly broken that you could almost make up valid criticisms without having even seen the film.

Also, I've found some talk that a fan edit of the film (alternate version redux?) is the best version to see. I definitely did not like the cut I saw last night (extended edition)...horrible narration, dropped plot lines, just one gigantic garbled mess.

[rapoon]

For those of you who think dune is great, once you read the book, you'll realize why the author himself hated the movie.

I've read the book. Yes, the pacing is terrible and Lynch crammed a tremendous amount of information into 2 hours. The 3 hour cut is even worse. The prologue is hilarious. For all it lacks, Dune is highly entertaining and Lynch's interpretation (the baron, the appearance of harkonnen, the space guild and guild navigators etc) of locations and people are very well done (and bizarre at times). But the authors opinion of the film is nothing more than a footnote (I thought Herbert liked the movie...). Burgess disliked A Clockwork Orange because Kubrick omitted the events in the 21st chapter. King hated The Shining, etc, etc. I agree with you and CMoon, the book is light years better.

As things stand, I think Dune is a godawful mess with no one at the helm. You're welcome to like it, and in many ways the film is fascinating (I don't disagree with the 'blue eyed warriors riding giants worms = cool' argument), but it is so badly broken that you could almost make up valid criticisms without having even seen the film.

I agree w/ you 100%. The condensed plot turned out to be such a disaster, you have little idea of what's going on if you haven't read the book. Even then, you're still lost half the time. I don't blame Lynch from backing away. He knew what a fuckup it had become. For all it's thousands of faults, I still love it.

"It is by will alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the juice of Sapho that thoughts acquire speed, the lips acquire stains, the stains become a warning. It is by will alone I set my mind in motion"

[Moniker]

Gotta come down on the side of sanity here and say that Dune is total rubbish, except as a great bad movie. Really, I can't think of anything redeeming about it.. maybe that scene where out of nowhere Harkonnen is spinning in midair screaming. Oh, and Sting. Can't hate Sting. Interestingly, the film highlights the book's chief failing: excessive internal monologue. I'll have to check out the miniseries sometime. Love me some Wm. Hurt.

[boagman]

Oh, and Sting. Can't hate Sting.

Really? I've learned to. He *forced me* to hate him with his ultra-douchiness. I mean, when he's with The Police? I guess they're able to keep his ego under control and he writes, plays, and sings a quality of music that's three-to-four letter grades better than the crapfest he writes, plays, and sings as a solo artist.

My favorite Sting acting role? "Goldsting" on Saturday Night Live back in the 80's or early 90's. Great stuff.