Chaos Posted December 15, 2015 Posted December 15, 2015 Leo might stare at us indignantly until we rank all of his films at the top of the list. We will just have to wait and see, Leo. We will just have to wait and see! This thread can probably more appropriately be called "films I am embarrassed that I have yet to see."
SolidGoldBomb Posted December 15, 2015 Posted December 15, 2015 I loved Wolf Of Wall Street also. Nightcrawler keeps sticking in my head also as one of my most memorable films of the last 5 years.
Jingus Posted December 15, 2015 Posted December 15, 2015 Relax, Leo, you'll be pretty high on my list for Django at the very least. -How to Train Your Dragon 2: this is about as "meh" as I can feel about a movie that I technically liked. It starts off mediocre, then slowly improves until it gets shockingly good (the mother and father's reunion scenes) but then the quality sinks back down again until we finally get an ending which is a really poor retread of the previous film's big climax. Doubt it'll make my list. -13 Assassins is more likely to be on there, despite being really uneven at parts. I never got to know half of the assassins at all; they're mostly a bunch of guys who are the same age who are never given proper introductions or much in the way of character establishment, with the identical haircuts and identical clothing, and way too many of them just blend together into an anonymous horde of topknots and kimonos. Three or four of them stick out, but that's not nearly enough (think of how half the dwarves in the recent Hobbit movies are so hard to tell apart). And then they bring in that bizarro-world immortal hobo, who feels like he walked in from a completely different movie. It's so weird, watching director Takashi Miike's more outlandish tendencies fighting with his obvious desire to make a relatively straightforward samurai flick. At the very least, it gave us a truly memorable, shudder-inducing villain. The creepiest thing this guy did wasn't even all his horrific abuses of people; it's the way he eats dinner. He takes a carefully-arranged tray full of food which is loaded up with delicate little dishes containing various different gourmet foods, and... turns all the dishes upside down, dumps it all into one big mixed-up pile on the tray, tosses aside his chopsticks and sticks his face into the pile and proceeds to eat his food like an animal, not even using his hands. It might not sound like much, but the handling of the moment makes it so damn clear that this man simply does not give a fuck about even pretending to be a human being or about following any of the seemingly millions of rules about etiquette and propriety that are so important in Japan.
S.K.o.S. Posted December 15, 2015 Posted December 15, 2015 If anyone wants to make a case for Holy Motors, I'd love to hear it. Never saw it and currently not planning to, but so many critics rank it highly. 1
Chaos Posted December 15, 2015 Author Posted December 15, 2015 If anyone wants to make a case for Holy Motors, I'd love to hear it. Never saw it and currently not planning to, but so many critics rank it highly. Holy Motors is on my "I will watch for this list." I may share a good bit of that list in the next day or two. Another big one for me will be Kiarostami's Certified Copy, which I started late one night a few years ago on Netflix and fell asleep because I shouldn't be starting movies after 11:00 PM at night.
caley Posted December 16, 2015 Posted December 16, 2015 Holy Motors is also on my list! My To-Watch List (* = most want to see) A Field in England *A Separation A Touch of Sin Amour Another Year Before Midnight Bird People Blue Is the Warmest Color *Carlos Certified Copy Computer Chess Damsels in Distress *Force Majeure Frank Headhunters *Holy Motors How to Train Your Dragon Intouchables *Leviathan Lincoln Margaret *Meek's Cutoff Once Upon A Time in Anatolia Only Lovers Left Alive Poetry Secret Sunshine Selma Skyfall Starred Up Stories We Tell Submarine The Cabin in the Woods The Grey *The Guest The Hunt The Interrupters The Kid With A Bike The Loneliest Planet The Past *Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy Tom at the Farm Two Days, One Night *Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives Your Sister's Sister My Maybe Watch If I Can Track It Down List (i.e. not at the library/Netflix) Drug War Elite Squad: The Enemy Within Night Moves Post Tenebras Lux Tabu The Color Wheel Two Years at Sea
caley Posted December 16, 2015 Posted December 16, 2015 Oh, and no spoiler, but my #1 is quite easily by a beautifully filmed, golden hour sunset-y country mile with lots of big white clouds The Tree of Life Somehow this film is able to evoke a real sense of nostalgia, even though it is so period and setting specific. I did not grow up in Waco, Texas in the 50s, but watching the boys run around and be boys, grow up, love and fight and hate and be jealous and love some more reminds me so much of my own childhood. I love the fact that you can look at this movie through two entirely different lenses that completely reflect your own viewpoint/belief system and make the movie either a celebration or lament. It can be A. Almost like a hymn, an ode to God, and all that he's created. Everything is beautiful, everything hurts, but in the end we all end up in the afterlife together. B. Looking for God throughout one's entire life, but seeing no sign of him. All the characters talk to God, beseech him, but he never presents himself to any of them. And even the afterlife, in the end, is just a dream of Sean Penn's character. Or, it's something in between. I'm not a religious man, by any means, but this film is as close to a spiritual awakening as I've ever had, am ever likely to have, and it happened watching a movie in a largely-empty cinema of annoyed movie-goers (I vividly remember one guy saying "Uh-huh" then rolling his eyes as he left the theater) on a summer afternoon, not in a church. For days afterward, everything seemed different, it made me appreciate more than beauty in day-to-day life. There aren't many movies I can say that about.
S.K.o.S. Posted December 16, 2015 Posted December 16, 2015 Jingus' review of 13 Assassins gives me some pause. I was planning to put it in my top 50 without rewatching, but I saw it long enough ago that I have no memory of either the hobo character or the eating style of the chief bad guy that he mentions. I remember "TOTAL MASSACRE" and a bunch of the stuff that happens in the village ambush (don't want to spoil). caley, Mommy is 2015 if we're still going by Rotten Tomatoes. It's a weird case, it definitely had public screenings in the second half of 2014, but I think most or all of those were in Canada. The majority of the reviews for it on RT are from 2015. We'll have to make sure that anyone who votes Leviathan specifies if they're talking about the 2014 Russian movie or the 2013 quasi-documentary about commercial fishing. I think it'll mostly be the Russian one, but both of those were highly praised. My to-watch list: After Tiller Animal Kingdom Another Year The Arbor Bastards Blue Is The Warmest Color The Color Wheel Fill The Void Four Lions Frances Ha The Hunt Kosmos Meek's Cutoff Melancholia Moebius Nebraska Pieta Point Blank (A Bout Portant) The Robber The Strange Little Cat Tabu Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy The Turin Horse Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives The Unspeakable Act My to-rewatch list (these are movies that I intend to put in my top 50, just feel that I need to rewatch to make sure): Happy, Happy The Ides Of March Into The Abyss Lebanon Margaret Scott Pilgrim vs. The World A Separation Weekend The Woman
caley Posted December 16, 2015 Posted December 16, 2015 Oh, somehow I didn't realize we weren't doing 2010-2015, rather 2010-2014. A couple of my to-watch movies are probably 2015ers (People Places Things for instance) which is fine, means less to watch for this...more to watch for the Best of 2015, which I hope to launch early January and run concurrently with this one.
Jingus Posted December 16, 2015 Posted December 16, 2015 Jingus' review of 13 Assassins gives me some pause. I was planning to put it in my top 50 without rewatching, but I saw it long enough ago that I have no memory of either the hobo character or the eating style of the chief bad guy that he mentions. I remember "TOTAL MASSACRE" and a bunch of the stuff that happens in the village ambush (don't want to spoil).Maybe I wasn't clear: by "hobo", I meant that weird hunter they found in the mountain, who joined their group and became the thirteenth guy. The one who literally fucked everyone in town. And the deal with the food was a ten-second throwaway, I just found it to be one of those tiny little background moments which totally illustrates a whole character if you're paying attention to it. Since we're all doing it, here's my to-watch list. A few of 'em are rewatches, many are probably not good movies but I'd be willing to take a shot anyway, and it's really long: dates according to Rotten Tomatoes 100 Yen Love 2014 21 Jump Street 2012 Absentia 2012 The Act of Killing 2013 Adore 2013 Agora 2010 All Cheerleaders Die 2014 All the Light in the Sky 2013 All's Faire in Love 2011 American Hustle 2013 American Mary 2013 An Amish Murder 2013? Argo 2012 The Artist 2011 As the Gods Will 2014? Attack the Block 2011 Away from Here 2014? The Babadook 2014 Bachelorette 2012 Barbara 2012 The Barrens 2012 Barry Monday 2010? Battleship 2012 Beasts of the Southern Wild 2012 Beauty and the Beast 2014 The Beaver 2011 Bedeviled 2010 Before I Go to Sleep 2014 Before Midnight 2013 Begin Again 2014 Bel Ami 2012 Big Eyes 2014 Birdman 2014 Black Rock 2013 Blue is the Warmest Color 2013 Boyhood 2014 Burke and Hare 2011 Byzantium 2013 Calvary 2014 Camp Dread 2014 Camp X-Ray 2014 The Canal 2014 A Cat in Paris 2012 Cat Run 2011 Catch .44 2011 Cave of Forgotten Dreams 2011 Children Who Chase Lost Voices 2011 Christmas at Cartwright's 2014 Chronicle 2012 Cloud Atlas 2012 Company 2011? Confessions 2010 The Congress 2014 The Conjuring 2013 Contagion 2012 Coriolanus 2011 Cowboys & Aliens 2011 Cracks 2011 Curse of Chucky 2013 The Damned 2014 A Dangerous Method 2011 Dead Man Down 2013 Deadheads 2011 Deadline 2012 Despicable Me 2010 Detachment 2012 Detective Dee: Mystery of Phantom Flame 2011 The Dictator 2012 The Drawn Together Movie: The Movie! 2010 Dredd 2012 Easy A 2010 Enter the Void 2010 The Equalizer 2014 The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele 2010 Faces in the Crowd 2011 The Fairy 2012 A Fantastic Fear of Everything 2014 Faster 2010 Faust 2013 A Field in England 2014 The Fighter 2010 Foxcatcher 2014 Frankenweenie 2012 From Up on Poppy Hill 2013 Frozen 2010 Fury 2014 G.I. Joe: Retaliation 2013 Game of Assassins (The Gauntlet) 2013 Get Him to the Greek 2010 The Ghost Writer 2010 Girl Most Likely 2013 A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night 2014 Glass Heels 2011? God Bless America 2012 God's Pocket 2014 Gone 2012 Gone Girl 2014 The Good, the Bad, and the Weird 2010 Goodnight for Justice: Queen of Hearts 2013 Grabbers 2013 The Grand Budapest Hotel 2014 The Grandmaster 2013 Grave Encounters 2011 The Green Hornet 2011 The Grey 2012 Hanna 2011 Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters 2013 Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai 2012 Hateship Loveship 2014 Haunter 2013 Here Comes the Devil 2013 The Homesman 2014 Horrible Bosses 2011 Hugo 2011 I am Love 2010 I Saw the Devil 2011 The Imitation Game 2014 The Innkeepers 2012 Interstellar 2014 The Interview 2014 Into the Abyss 2011 Iron Sky 2012 J. Edgar 2011 Johnny English Reborn 2011 Jug Face 2013 Kill List 2012 The Killer Inside Me 2010 Killer Joe 2012 The King's Speech 2010 Kisses 2010 The Last Rites of Ransom Pride 2010 The Last Stand 2013 The Legend of Hell's Gate 2012 Leonie 2013 The Letter 2012 Life of Pi 2012 The Lifeguard 2013 Lincoln 2012 Lizzie Borden Took an Ax 2014 The Lone Ranger 2013 Lord of Tears 2013 Love & Other Drugs 2011 Love Exposure 2011 Lovelace 2013 Lust for Love 2014 Made in Romania 2010 Maleficent 2014 The Man From Nowhere 2010 Maniac 2013 The Master 2012 Meek's Cutoff 2011 Midnight in Paris 2011 Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol 2011 The Moment 2014 Moneyball 2011 The Monitor 2012 Monsters 2010 Monsters University 2013 Mood Indigo 2014 Moonrise Kingdom 2012 The Moth Diaries 2012 Mother 2010 Night Moves 2014 No Strings Attached 2011 No Tears for the Dead 2014 Noah 2014 On the Road 2012 Ondine 2010 The One I Love 2014 Open Grave 2014 Outcast 2010 Outrage 2011 Pain & Gain 2013 The Paperboy 2012 ParaNorman 2012 Peacock 2010 The Perks of Being a Wallflower 2012 Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides 2011 Pitch Perfect 2012 Playdate 2013? Rango 2011 Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale 2010 Red Riding Hood 2011 Red: Werewolf Hunter 2010 Rise of the Planet of the Apes 2011 Robin Hood 2010 Rosewater 2014 Rubber 2011 Ruby Sparks 2012 Safety Not Guaranteed 2012 Save the Date 2012 The Secret World of Arrietty 2012 Seeking a Friend for the End of the World 2012 Seven Psychopaths 2012 Shadow Dancer 2013 The Shrine 2010 The Signal 2014 Silver Bullets 2011 The Skin I Live In 2011 Sleeping Beauty 2011 The Social Network 2010 Sold 2014 Somewhere 2010 Source Code 2011 South of Sanity 2012? Space Battleship Yamamoto 2013 Stoker 2013 Stonehearst Asylum 2014 Struck by Lightning 2013 Styria 2014 Summer Wars 2010 Take Shelter 2011 Takers 2010 Tales from Earthsea 2010 The Tempest 2010 Temple Grandin 2010 Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy 2011 The Town 2010 The Town that Dreaded Sundown 2014 The Tree of Life 2011 Trollhunter 2011 The Truth Below 2011? The Tunnel 2012 The Turin Horse 2012 Twixt 2012 Two Days, One Night 2014 Upstream Color 2013 Vampire 2013 The Victim 2012 Violet & Daisy 2013 War Horse 2011 The Ward 2011 The Warrior's Way 2010 We Are the Night 2011 We Are What We Are 2011 We Need to Talk About Kevin 2012 When in Rome 2010 Whiplash 2014 The Whisperer in Darkness 2011 The Whistleblower 2011 White Bird in a Blizzard 2014 Wild Target 2010 The Wind Rises 2014 Wolf Children 2012 WolfCop 2014 The Wolf of Wall Street 2013 The Woman 2011 Womb 2012 Wreckers 2011 Yellowbrickroad 2011 You Again 2010 Young Adult 2011 Zero Dark Thirty 2013 The Zero Theorem 2014
caley Posted December 17, 2015 Posted December 17, 2015 First two movies off my To-Watch list, er, watched. Selma: It's funny, you sit down to watch this and see the scene of the woman trying to vote and think "Wow, how far we've come! To think that black people couldn't vote then!" and then a few minutes later, you hear speeches by George Wallace and other opponents of the march and you think "You know...I'm pretty sure I heard this exact same argument last week used to criticize the influx of refugees" and then you think "Man...we really haven't come that far at all." Anyways, this is a good, though I wouldn't quite say great movie, with a great performance by David Oyelowo at its center. I also felt like the film did a terrific job of showing that MLK was a great man, humanitarian and orator, but also that he was a pretty brilliant politican, as well. I thought the scene of them attempting to cross the bridge and the police standing aside and the rush of music and when they all drop to pray was really powerful stuff, but then the actual march was kind of done quickly via montage. A handful of weird things about the film: -Stephen Root as Col. Al Lingo is one of the more distracting bits of casting I've ever seen, largely because I know him first and foremost for comedic roles. Not that he's not a good actor, but when he's marshaling his fellow racist cops to go after the marchers, I couldn't help but think of Milton looking for his stapler, Jimmy James with another harebrained scheme, or Bill Dauterive's pre-military career. Unfair to him, but it would be like casting Joel Hodgson as a villain in a movie, I'm probably going to have a hard time watching it. -There is one scene where Martin Luther King talks to one of the other leaders of their movement and explains that he can't be present for the first day of the march and the other guy (I'm sorry to sound flip about a historical character, but I'm just not sure which one it was) says that he doesn't need to be there for the first day, he can come in later. And for some reason the director decides to fade some music into the background, that sounds like jazz flute, which is totally fine, except the flute (or sax or whatever it is) comes in so loud that I had the brief idea that MLK had just picked up the flute and begun playing it in the middle of the phonecall and imagined the guy on the other end going "Martin? Martin? Put down the damn flute, son, we're trying to have a conversation here."-I also thought it was really the worst thing ever that Ava DuVernay had to write NEW speeches for the movie, because the estate of MLK wouldn't let them use his original speeches because they want to save them for an unmade MLK biopic. The idea that they can't use historical speeches in a story of a man's life is completely insane to me. It would be like if you did a movie about Lincoln and had to write a new speech for him "Some eightyish years ago..." So, I liked it, I was impressed, but I don't know that it will make my final list.Also watched The Kid With the Bike and maybe I'm crazy, but I felt like it was a bit of a disappointment. I'm a big fan of the Dardennes' 'The Son' and 'L'Enfant' but this one just didn't really click with me. It's about a kid in a group home because his father has abandoned him, trying to track down his father and his bike and receives unexpected kindness from a local hairdresser who returns his bike to him, and begins to foster him on the weekends. The kid, having to deal with so much shit, is almost feral in that when he's threatened his first instinct is to bite. Now, I'm not one of these film guys who wants his movies to end depressing all the time, but I felt like this one came together much too quickly and easily. The performances are really great but the movie paled when compared to the previously mentioned Dardenne flicks. I also found the use of music (Which I don't recall any of in the two aforementioned films) really heavy-handed, like it was an audible "Cry now" cue. It's good, but it won't find purchase upon my list.
Lacelle Posted December 17, 2015 Posted December 17, 2015 There is Searching For Sugarman, & then some other movies.
Jingus Posted December 19, 2015 Posted December 19, 2015 Oh yeah, good job Jingus, NOW is the perfect time to fall in marathon-love with a new TV show. Curse you, Outlander, why must you be the most bewitchingly gorgeous and lyrically entrancing program on all of television?! But I did try to watch... uh... The Drawn Together Movie: The Movie. Sadly, I had a gimpy copy and it kept skipping so badly that I gave up after about twenty minutes. I used to be a fan of the show and I laughed at some of the jokes here, but overall it was clearly not-list-worthy so I won't be trying to watch it again for this project.
Chaos Posted December 19, 2015 Author Posted December 19, 2015 Oh yeah, good job Jingus, NOW is the perfect time to fall in marathon-love with a new TV show. Curse you, Outlander, why must you be the most bewitchingly gorgeous and lyrically entrancing program on all of television?! But I did try to watch... uh... The Drawn Together Movie: The Movie. Sadly, I had a gimpy copy and it kept skipping so badly that I gave up after about twenty minutes. I used to be a fan of the show and I laughed at some of the jokes here, but overall it was clearly not-list-worthy so I won't be trying to watch it again for this project. I'm in the same boat. I've been catching up on 2015 stuff too. I have the new Mission Impossible, Man from U.N.C.L.E, and Clouds of Sils Maria from Redbox.
Jingus Posted December 20, 2015 Posted December 20, 2015 Birdman: nah, probably not on my list. I suppose it's "good", technically, but it rubbed me the wrong way in several areas. Why does so much of the film look like an actor's demo reel, with so many monologues? Why are the seams in the not-really-that-long takes so obvious? And what the HELL is the deal with the several million subplots which are brought up and then forgotten like a Russo undercard angle? The entire first half of the movie makes it look like the whole thing is going to be a contest of wills between Keaton and Norton's characters, but then Norton practically vanishes out of the entire second half. If there was ever an actual point to the whole "Riggan has secret superpowers" bit, then I missed it. And NEVER trust a movie which indulges its actors in a "the main character gets so emotional that he tears apart an entire room", everyone's been copying that shit since Citizen Kane did it and I've never seen it done where it didn't feel like a hey-look-at-me moment of pandering for the performer.
caley Posted December 21, 2015 Posted December 21, 2015 And NEVER trust a movie which indulges its actors in a "the main character gets so emotional that he tears apart an entire room", everyone's been copying that shit since Citizen Kane did it and I've never seen it done where it didn't feel like a hey-look-at-me moment of pandering for the performer. You're wrong (Seriously, though, I LOVE 'Birdman'. Sometimes I just like watching a bunch of good to great actors just acting the shit out of their roles, and even the peripheral characters (the girlfriends, the producer, the critic) are good actors turning in perfect little performances. But, also, it's funny, it's affecting, it has a great score, and has the crazy manic energy that keeps it from ever getting boring. To be fair, though, any movie that opens with a Raymond Carver quote (my favourite author, bar none) and bases its entirepremise around an adaptation of a Raymond Carver short story is going to resonate with me).
Jingus Posted December 21, 2015 Posted December 21, 2015 Walk Hard agrees with me, it was mocking all the times that movies try to pawn that off as a serious moment. Shit, even The Room did it. And my reaction was damn near the opposite of yours, because: -I've got no love for Carver. I was repeatedly forced to study his work when I was an English major, and absolutely never saw the big deal about him. He felt like the lite beer version of Flannery O'Connor's pure-grain whiskey, to me. -I kinda hated the soundtrack. It was cool at first, but what's essentially a two-hour-long drum solo quickly got pretty damn tiresome. -And much of the time, I don't even think it was that energetic. Afterwards I wanted to wash the taste of NYC indy cutesiness right outta my mouth, so I threw in Expendables 3. And ya know what? Even though it's easily the worst entry in the trilogy and likely shan't appear on my list, Expendables 3 entertained me a hell of a lot more than most of Birdman's "Fellini by way of Woody Allen" routine did. E3 also charged forward with a hell of a lot more kinetic power, which is impressive, considering its cast of characters (all too many of whom get sadly neglected by an overstuffed script) is about triple the size of BM's. And finally, Birdman's weak attempts at trying to comment on entertainment media really rubbed me the wrong way. I thought they could've done a lot more with the meta-knowledge that Keaton single-handedly kicked off the modern superhero movement, the movie never really did much to mine into that. The scene where he hallucinates the big action sequence was wrong in two different ways: 1.I thought it actually looked cooler than the real movie, which is never a good thing (NEVER have your fake story-within-a-story be better than the main plot: we call that The Number 23 Syndrome) and 2.Birdman's annoying narration over the explosions was the weakest, most banal possible condemnation of said action. He's basically using Kevin Nash's logic of "hey man, I just give the people what they want to see!" and that's really shallow. Same thing with that awful scene with the snooty critic lady, who (like practically every critic in every movie ever) is a joyless humorless old dried-up prune who hates everything that is fun and is always wrong. Hey Birdman, maybe you shouldn't be copying characters and plot points from Lady in the Water.
Jingus Posted December 21, 2015 Posted December 21, 2015 And to be fair, I should clarify: I didn't hate this movie. I thought most of the actors were awesome; it even managed to put Emma Stone in two-handed scenes with Ed Norton and she looked entirely comfortable and able to hold her own, which is a small miracle all by itself. But when you've got the label of THE OFFICIAL BEST MOTION PICTURE OF THE ENTIRE YEAR tattooed onto a movie's forehead, you expect a lot more from that movie than the average flick. I thought 12 Years a Slave perfectly met (or even exceeded) such expectations, just to name one example. Meanwhile, Birdman was probably my least-favorite Best Picture winner that I've seen since Crash.
The Natural Posted December 21, 2015 Posted December 21, 2015 Chances are I'll be pimping films based on comic books more than any other as I'm a big fan of them and comic books. Let's start with these two... X-Men: First Class (2011). I didn’t have much interest in X-Men: First Class when it was first announced even though origin tales are a favourite of mine and how the last two X-Men films turned out. The reviews were very positive for the film. I bought X-Men: First Class on DVD and enjoyed it. The best thing about the film was the relationship between Professor X and Magneto, James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender. Dredd (2012). Dredd is a well done violent comic book action film, I really enjoyed it. The three leads: Karl Urban as Judge Dredd, Olivia Thirlby as Cassandra Anderson and Lena Headley as Ma-Ma were great. The look of the film from the Judges costumes, Lawgiver, Lawmaster, Mega-City One and the special effects deserve praise, so does the soundtrack. The judges’ costumes are one of my favourite ever comic to film translations. One of the few 3D films I watched when it was worth the format. Shame it didn’t perform better at the box office for the sequel to happen. 1
Chaos Posted December 21, 2015 Author Posted December 21, 2015 Alright, I'll post my rewatch/revisit list at a later date. I also know that I am missing stuff on my below list (probably mainly in the foreign and probably documentary film categories), thus, I will probably edit and update this at a later date. 13 Assassins A Kid With a Bike A Prophet A Touch of Sin Act of Killing Amour Animal Kingdom Another Earth Bellflower Black Swan Blue is the Warmest Color Blue Ruin Broken Circle Breakdown Carlos Certified Copy Cloud Atlas Computer Chess Cosmopolis Dangerous Method Dogtooth Enter the Void Force Majeur Frank Holy Motors In a World Incendies J Edgar Leviathan (Both Versions) Life of Pi Like Someone in Love Listen Up Philip Martha Marcy May Marlene Meek's Cutoff Melancholia Memphis Mood Indigo Night Moves No Once Upon A Time in Anatolia Only God Forgives Oslo, August 31st Rust and Bone Safety Not Guaranteed Tale of Princess Kaguya The Arbor The Color Wheel The Double The Great Beauty The Grey The Hunt The Ides of March The Interrupters The Loneliest Planet The Secret World of Arietty The Tillman Story The Turin Horse To the Wonder Two Days, One Night Unbroken Uncle Boonme: Who Can Recall Past Lives Upstream Color War Witch Win Win Winter Sleep
stro Posted December 21, 2015 Posted December 21, 2015 Is there anything that is really better than Whiplash?
Jingus Posted December 21, 2015 Posted December 21, 2015 Dunno. Haven't seen it. It's on the short list. I love me some growly scenery-chewing J.K. Simmons, and it had one of the better trailers I've seen in years. I have, however, now seen The Homesman; and it'll definitely find a place somewhere upon my list, probably in the middle-ish. Tommy Lee Jones stars in, writes, and directs this pitiless Western. In the Nebraska territory sometime in the 1840s, three different women have coincidentally all gone completely fucking crazy, driven insane by the rigors of Western life. A headstrong spinster (Hilary Swank, giving maybe the finest performance of her career) and a pathetic drifter (Jones) are tasked with taking the women back east to an asylum. What follows is awfully episodic; but that's no complaint in a Western, Stagecoach was an episodic travelogue as well. It's fun for those who like their frontier mythology grounded in reality and dripping with despair, a picture which would be no damn fun whatsoever if it weren't for Mr. Tommy providing such a surprisingly funny character (and unlike most of his roles, he's the butt of the jokes; Jones takes some real risks here, making himself look downright feeble at times). The movie does suffer from taking a HARD left turn in the last act, smacking us right in the goddamn nose with a sucker-punch of a plot twist that we couldn't possibly see coming and which still feels kinda contrived and unfair. The film is far less steady in its final moments (things such as having James Spader show up with a cartoonish Irish accent are NOT helping) and it ends on such a note of anti-cathartic hopelessness that, I dunno man. But hey... that's art. You take your chances if you wanna make art. And it turns out that, as an auteur, Jones is indeed a first-rate artist. His editing still needs a lot of work (the scene transitions are so jagged that it feels like he just forgot to shoot a lot of the connecting footage) but his cinematography is GORGEOUS, with some of the most beautifully perfect symmetrical framing this side of P.T. Anderson. Very highly recommended to those who enjoy some Cormac McCarthy-style anti-Westerns, and I'd actually argue that it's a better picture than No Country for Old Men and a better star performance from Jones to boot.
caley Posted December 22, 2015 Posted December 22, 2015 Walk Hard agrees with me, it was mocking all the times that movies try to pawn that off as a serious moment. Shit, even The Room did it. And my reaction was damn near the opposite of yours, because: -I've got no love for Carver. I was repeatedly forced to study his work when I was an English major, and absolutely never saw the big deal about him. He felt like the lite beer version of Flannery O'Connor's pure-grain whiskey, to me. Well, I see Carver as part of understanding the whole movie, I think. I mean, first of all you have Riggins adapting a short story into a play. But he only takes part of the short story, really less than a third of the short story and turning it into something else. If you read 'What We Talk About When We Talk About Love' the story of the guy who beat up his girlfriend and shot himself is about 4 pages of a 15 page story, the bulk of the actual short story is the real focus of the What it is when we talk about love (The elderly man who is depressed, not because of his and his wife's injuries, but because he can't see his wife through his eye-holes). But Riggins throws that whole part of the story away, to focus on the more dramatic part. The fact that he adds a dream sequence and a big confrontation/suicide to the play runs countermand to Raymond Carver's whole raison d'etre: minimalism. Carver was known for writing a piece, then paring it down, and down and down, until he had the absolute bare-bones required to tell a story. There's no flourish, no extra description, he was interested in getting down to as little as possible: real gritty realism, real minimalism. Carver would have been totally against adding a dream sequence to one his story. So it's clear that Riggins is doing exactly what the critic says he's doing, trying to win over critics with a play he doesn't really understand. Why does he choose Carver? Simply because Carver once offered a nice review of one of his performances. He doesn't understand Carver, but he wants to. -I kinda hated the soundtrack. It was cool at first, but what's essentially a two-hour-long drum solo quickly got pretty damn tiresome. I loved the score. It gave the film such a kinetic energy and just a completely different feel from everything else out there. And finally, Birdman's weak attempts at trying to comment on entertainment media really rubbed me the wrong way. I thought they could've done a lot more with the meta-knowledge that Keaton single-handedly kicked off the modern superhero movement, the movie never really did much to mine into that. The scene where he hallucinates the big action sequence was wrong in two different ways: 1.I thought it actually looked cooler than the real movie, which is never a good thing (NEVER have your fake story-within-a-story be better than the main plot: we call that The Number 23 Syndrome) Well, I think that's the whole point, isn't it? Riggins wants to be accepted as a serious actor, but it's boring work. The fantasy is so much more exciting, the whole concept of being Birdman is always going to be more exciting than being the character actor grinding it out in plays. It's the two sides of him battling it out. The end seems to suggest he's somehow now found a way to balance the two halves: he's become famous doing good work by a complete accident which also is a fun call-back to the source material in that the man in the short story actually botches the suicide attempt and lives for a few days in the hospital afterwards, much the way Riggins botches his own accidental suicide attempt I mean, obviously, we're not going to see eye-to-eye on this one, and probably never will. I kinda feel like I went into this one completely ready to embrace it, largely because of the Raymond Carver angle, while you kinda went into it ready to hate it (phrases like NYC indie cuteness and your dislike of Carver give me that indication). Who knows, if it was a film framed around another author's work, you might have found yourself more ready to like it, while I would have felt the opposite. 1
caley Posted December 22, 2015 Posted December 22, 2015 Watched three films for this, but only one was on my to-watch list. The Guest: This was bad-ass. Which is this weird thriller/horror hybrid where a family meets an ex-soldier who used to serve in the same unit as their deceased son. The mother welcomes him instantly, while the rest of the family gradually warms to him as he ingratiates himself in their day-to-day lives. And that's where the turn comes from, but it's impossible to discuss really without spoilers so... what makes the film so fascinating is that you really want to like him even after it starts to reveal that he's the antagonist of the film. Like, after he helps the bullied son, or knocks around the sister's friend's abusive ex, you're all rooting for this guy. Then, when he kills the sister's friend, I still found myself going "Well, he was going to sell him a gun...so he's not that good of a person he killed" then when he frames the sister's boyfriend I went "Eh, he was a drug dealer". Then when he kills the father's boss and girlfriend I found myself going "Well...that's harder to excuse but maybe they were evil in some way that hasn't been explained yet" and then when he kills the mother I sort of had to go "Ah, well, I guess he's not...the good guy." It's a fun exercise in how far your audience is willing to go to support your lead before relenting. I think there will be some people who will still be making excuses for him even late in the film. Anyways, I loved the John Carpenter-y score, and the way it became almost a slasher film. This will almost definitely make my list somewhere. Cold in July: I have to apologize to whoever it was I was discussing this movie with on here. I complained about how I wanted it to be a straight-up revenge film with Michael C. Hall and Sam Shepard, and was disappointed when it went in a different direction and never actually finished watching it. So last night I went back to it, and it's actually really good, and I was completely wrong. Hall plays a father who finds an intruder in his house and kind-of accidentally shoots and kills him. The man is identified, Hall feels bad and goes to the funeral, and is confronted by Shepard, playing the father of the deceased, who starts to terrorize the family. But, soon, Hall realizes everything might not be as it seems, that the man he killed looks completely different from the man whom he was identified as killing, and it becomes a much different film, especially with the introduction of a private investigator, awesomely played by Don Johnson. This is a good partner to the previous film, as it has the same synthesize-driven score, and plays with some similar issues of masculinity and the like. This will probably be on my list, too. Tucker and Dale vs. Evil: From the box art and previews, I basically thought this was going to be a sorta redneck Evil Dead. It's not, it's more of a horror comedy that is more comedy than horror. Tucker (played by an actor I previously really disliked in Tyler Labine, but who is not bad here) and Dale (the always great Alan Tudyk) are two good ol' boys who go out to the woods for a vacation, only to be mistaken by drunk college kids for evil hillbilly killers and the way that the kids end up getting bumped off are one of the more enjoyable parts of the film. There's lots of gore, and how Tudyk and Labine responds to it is probably my favourite part. I felt like the plot was a little too convenient and pat in parts, but it was mostly enjoyable. Won't make my list, though, there are just better comedies.
Jingus Posted December 22, 2015 Posted December 22, 2015 I mean, obviously, we're not going to see eye-to-eye on this one, and probably never will. I kinda feel like I went into this one completely ready to embrace it, largely because of the Raymond Carver angle, while you kinda went into it ready to hate it (phrases like NYC indie cuteness and your dislike of Carver give me that indication). Who knows, if it was a film framed around another author's work, you might have found yourself more ready to like it, while I would have felt the opposite.It's entirely possible. But I didn't know anything about the setting or Carver's inclusion before I watched it. All I knew was "it's about a washed-up actor who famously played a superhero, and oh yeah it's THE BEST PICTURE OF THE YEAR" and I was kinda disappointed on both of those fronts. Not TREMENDOUSLY disappointed; Birdman's got nothing on the disgust which I felt while watching The Reader and various other terrible movies which were unworthily nominated for the big Oscar prize. And Lord knows there's plenty of NYC indy-cute movies that I absolutely loved (from Manhattan to Ms. .45), although I do admittedly find myself rather grumpy with Rent-ish movies that just won't shut the fuck up about how New York is the greatest place in the world.
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