MOVIE COMMENT CATCH-ALL THREAD

[Pete]

Was channel-surfing the other day and came across MEN WITH BROOMS. Strange Brew is still the most Canadian movie I've ever seen, but "Brooms" is close. Damn close. Funny, weird and Canadian... an excellent combination in anyone's book.

[Tromatagon]

The Conjuring was the shit

[Jingus]

Conclusion of the day: Nicole Kidman peeing on Zac Efron's face in The Paperboy is nowhere NEAR as lascivious or fucked-up as it's been made out to be.  I was expecting some Brown Bunny-style "whoa, I can't believe they WENT there" hardcoreishness and instead got a not-remotely-explicit scene that was played entirely for laughs.  

 

 

The slasher flick YOU'RE NEXT, which opens the same day as World's End.  It screened at one of the midnight shows at the Toronto Film Festival in 2011, people loved it, and then Lionsgate bought it and sat on it for two years.  I've been waiting all that time to see it.

That one kinda looks to me like just another one in the long line of home-invasion horror flicks we've gotten over the past several years.  And some of the posters were SO identical to the ads for The Strangers that it goes beyond "genre flicks do the same stuff" and into outright plagiarism.  

[S.K.o.S.]

 

 

That one kinda looks to me like just another one in the long line of home-invasion horror flicks we've gotten over the past several years.  And some of the posters were SO identical to the ads for The Strangers that it goes beyond "genre flicks do the same stuff" and into outright plagiarism.  

 

My understanding (which might be totally off) is that it's some kind of family reunion and there are a lot of people in the house.  And there are quite a few invaders too.  The family fights back, and both sides get kills, with a lot of gruesome/hilarious violence.  So it's not like two or three people trying to hide in a closet for the whole movie.

[jaedmc]

Conclusion of the day: Nicole Kidman peeing on Zac Efron's face in The Paperboy is nowhere NEAR as lascivious or fucked-up as it's been made out to be.  I was expecting some Brown Bunny-style "whoa, I can't believe they WENT there" hardcoreishness and instead got a not-remotely-explicit scene that was played entirely for laughs.  

That's the weirdest moment of the movie.

 

EDIT: Weird, I meant to say that WASN'T the weirdest part of the movie.

[caley]

Ay-yi-yi that nun in the swimsuit! So conflicted!

I thought about mentioning Kate Upton, but it was so brief!

When I went to see it in the theatre, it was all old people and little kids.  There was one group that came in that was obviously the men of four generations of one family that shared a love of the stooges, which was neat.

 

You can kinda tell that after advance screenings, audiences were pretty cool on it, so they decided to retro-fit it into a family film.  That ending sequence with the two guys pretending to be the Farrelly Brothers explaining how the gags worked was so bad, I can't imagine it was part of the initial script.

[Control]

That's the weirdest moment of the movie.

Certainly not as awkward as the pantomime prison blowjob.

[jaedmc]

Peculiar. I meant to say it wasn't the weirdest part of the movie. So that must have sounded confusing.

 

I really enjoyed that movie for its madness. All the actors went for broke, and you can add it to the list of recent Matthew McConoughey performances you should be checking out.

[Tromatagon]

If you want to see some info I compiled about the creepy doll from The Conjuring, check out my blog, Chop Heads Off, at chopheadsoff.blogspot.com, or click the link in my sig. Can't decide if the real Annabelle is creepier or not.

[Burgundy LaRue]

That's the weirdest moment of the movie.

 

EDIT: Weird, I meant to say that WASN'T the weirdest part of the movie.

 

I watched the movie after you mentioned it on the 3.0 board, and noooooo. . . the jellyfish scene was pretty normal and played for laughs.  As for Kidman's visit to John Cusack in prison. . .

[J.T.]

i will sing with the choir.  The Conjuring was fucking awesome! Equal to The Devil's Backbone as far as quality ghost stories go.

 

The little easter egg at the ending was pretty awesome, too.

 

I was surprised by the lack of chuckles in my theater when Lorraine Warren mentioned that they had been called in to investigate an "incident in Long Island."  I guess that The Amityville Horror is falling out of the pop culture zeitgeist

 

And yeah, when I was a kid I kept confusing the stories of Robert the Haunted Doll with Annabelle but they are two different stories, each of which are equally creepy. 

 

I think that is awesome that James Wan was so scared shitless by the occult museum and respected the Warren's philosophy so much ("People who are not prepared to deal with evil should not challenge evil." - Ed Warren) that Wan declined to visit the museum and did not use a more accurate representation of Annabelle in the film (she was actually a Raggedy Ann doll and not a porcelain one like the doll in the movies).

[stiffshots]

Aside from WORLD'S END, is there anything worthwhile scheduled for the August burn-off?

KICK-ASS 2 could be worth a look too.

Ah, yes, totally blanked on that 'un. Pegg/Frost and Moretz/Mintz-Plasse are both perfectly acceptable summer-enders.

[Control]

i will sing with the choir.  The Conjuring was fucking awesome! Equal to The Devil's Backbone as far as quality ghost stories go.

 

The little easter egg at the ending was pretty awesome, too.

 

I was surprised by the lack of chuckles in my theater when Lorraine Warren mentioned that they had been called in to investigate an "incident in Long Island."  I guess that The Amityville Horror is falling out of the pop culture zeitgeist

 

And yeah, when I was a kid I kept confusing the stories of Robert the Haunted Doll with Annabelle but they are two different stories, each of which are equally creepy. 

 

I think that is awesome that James Wan was so scared shitless by the occult museum and respected the Warren's philosophy so much ("People who are not prepared to deal with evil should not challenge evil." - Ed Warren) that Wan declined to visit the museum and did not use a more accurate representation of Annabelle in the film (she was actually a Raggedy Ann doll and not a porcelain one like the doll in the movies).

High praise. Now I've gotta check it out.

[caley]

Watched

 

Fast Five: which was all right.  The scene with the vault being used as a battering ram was pretty awesome.

 

A Good Old Fashioned Orgy: which was also all right.  A group of friends who routinely throw themed parties at their friend's father's place plan on one last big bash before his father sells the place and decide on having an orgy. The funniest parts of the film are just Jason Sudeikis being himself and throwing out random jokes all over the place and his deadpan reactions to stuff going on.  Tyler Labine was irritating as hell, though.  The funniest joke in the movie is Will Forte/Lucy Punch's square married couple who show up to the orgy in feathered headdress because they'd heard the party was "Indian-themed" (Indian meaning the kamasutra).

[jaedmc]

Kenji Mizoguchi's Osaka Elegy(which is on the Fallen Women Eclipse set) was good stuff. I've seen three of his movies so far and he does a good job of creating situations where a character has to do something unpleasant. Here we have a daughter who's dad is a bit of a bum, and she's presented with the chance to be the head of a major company's mistress. Mizoguchi does a great job of implying motivations and allowing you empathize with a female who feels this is the only way for her to succeed. It's worth checking out, and if you get a chance hit up his other flick called Streets of Shame, which is a great movie about a brothel of prostitutes.

 

I also caught Spring Breakers which I feel compelled to write an essay about. Harmony Korine does a good job with how he pieces it together. I really love how he edits imagery from the future and the present and unites it through verbal repetition. It feels very Godard influenced in using a collage of sights and sounds to create a feeling. I think I most love how he approaches female empowerment in a very messy and complicated way. Often times stories about female empowerment features the women doing actions that are very noble and honorable, like Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Buffy is an idealized version of femininity by men. She's gorgeous. She's strong. She's funny. And she uses her powers for good. The Spring Breaker Girls are a very different breed. They're not the ideal, but it doesn't mean they're less empowered. Korine does a good job of making them both repulsive and admirable. The message doesn't really get across until James Franco's Alien shows up. Franco is great in this, by the way. Instead of going for irony, his character felt like a stupid, playful boy, that lost his way and thought this is the path men are supposed to take. To me, Alien is basically James Franco, if James Franco bought into the MTV Cribs era bull-shit of rims, bitches, and guns. LOOK AT ALL MY SHIT.

 

Also this short film by Korine starring Die Antwoord is worth watching and features some similar elements:

[J.T.]

If you want to see some info I compiled about the creepy doll from The Conjuring, check out my blog, Chop Heads Off, at chopheadsoff.blogspot.com, or click the link in my sig. Can't decide if the real Annabelle is creepier or not.

 

Great discussion post about the movie at your blog!

 

Wan suggests in an interview that the reason he did not use a more accurate representation of Annabelle (the Raggedy Ann doll) is because he did not believe that the Johnny Gruelle estate (the writer that created the character) or that Hasbro / Playskool (the company that currently holds the license for the character for toy manufacture) would be too happy with a movie prefaced with a story about how one of their dolls was possessed by a demon, so he did not want New Line to bother pursuing the purchase of the depiction rights of Raggedy Ann just for the movie.

 

Wan also says he used the opportunity to give Annabelle a human-like appearance because he thought it would be more unsettling.  I have to call bullshit on that.

 

The fact that he researched the topic thoroughly yet declined an open invitation to visit the occult museum and see the real doll for himself speaks volumes.  I think deep down, the actual Annabelle and the history behind the doll scared the shit out of the guy so he avoided using an accurate depiction.  Filmakers don't like to admit it, but they are just as superstituous now as they ever were.

[Tromatagon]

That's pretty hilarious about him not wanting to even go to the museum; I'd totally go check it out if I was in the area, but I do shit like that a lot.

 

Thanks for the kind words on the discussion post, which we plan to do more of in the future.  This week, Mike is going to see Miami Connection for the first time, which I've seen a ton of times, and we're going to discuss it like we did there, in a format I blatantly stole from SomethingAwful's WTF D&D series.  I love the movie, but I might be the only one of us who does.

[J.T.]

That's pretty hilarious about him not wanting to even go to the museum; I'd totally go check it out if I was in the area, but I do shit like that a lot.

 

I can't blame the guy for not using a Raggedy Ann doll in the movie.  I have a healthy respect for the unknown so I wouldn't just go pissing off Annabelle for no reason.

 

I wouldn't want to come home from a day at the editing room and find "PUT MORE FOOTAGE OF ME IN THE MOVIE!" scrawled on the walls in red crayon.

[BEN!]

Spring Breakers would've been a lot better as a 15 minute art film.

 

Girls moping around dorm...girls robbing cafe...girls partying at Spring Break...girls attacking gangsters...masks floating in water with "Spring Break, Spring Break, Spring Break forever" VO...FIN.

 

Look At All My Shit would've been another fine short.

[caley]

Watched Compliance but it just didn't feel...right.  Something about it just felt off.  A guy calls into a fast food joint pretending to be a police officer, tells the manager that one of her cashiers has robbed somebody and instructs her on how to search said employee.  I mean, I know it's all based on true events, but the way the people reacted still seemed too...stupid to me (And, as any good creative writing teacher will say, just because it's the truth doesn't make it realistic).  But, it wasn't just that.  It felt kinda sleazy, too.  Like maybe if the girl in question wasn't really hot so that you weren't completely looking forward to taking off her clothes, it would feel more wrong...more of a violation.  But also the way the girl in question reacted, like it was a mild annoyance, not a complete violation of her rights.  But she barely objected.  In fact, she objects more strongly (in the film) to her purse being searched than she does about taking her clothes off!  Also, if I was the manager in the film, aside from being, let's be honest, profoundly stupid, I'd also be upset about the little introduction that tries to suggest that maybe the manager is so quick to strip her employee (metaphorically and literally) of her rights because she's ticked off because said employee made fun of her behind her back.  I dunno.  The whole film just didn't sit right with me.

[BNosanchuk]

30 Minutes or Less I remember liking the trailers for this movie, then hearing some "not that good" reviews, but I thought it was pretty funny. I think this was my first proper introduction to Aziz Ansari. Guy's hilarious. Still can't stand Danny McBride though.

Knowing this was somewhat based on true events (that ended much differently than the movie) I remember being curious how this would turn out. I thought it was going to be pretty dark while the trailer looked like another Pinapple Express-like comedy. I had low expectations going in and ended up really enjoying it. Easy $5 Blu-ray buy for me. 

[The Natural]

Official petition by 2000AD to get a sequel to Dredd:

 

http://2000adonline.us5.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=a6e40236aa24d482cfff600d2&id=62906ebdcc

 

I watched Dredd at the cinema and bought the DVD on release. Hope Dredd gets a deserved sequel.

 

EDIT: Signed it.

Edited July 25, 2013 by The Natural

[J.T.]

Also signed.  I have been asked by my co-workers to bring my copy of DREDD to the office in time for big Ulchi Focus Guardian joint maneuvers exercise with USARPAC and the ROK army (my organization will be training the US and Korean logisticians).

 

I have a feeling DREDD will get watched a million times by the techs here over the next 30 days of exercise.

[Newb82]

Kevin Smith is REALLY exited about his not retiring and instead writing a new script called TUSK, which is about a man being forcibly changed into a walrus.

I'd ask what he's been smoking, but I already know.

[Lazlo Woodbine]

Official petition by 2000AD to get a sequel to Dredd:

 

http://2000adonline.us5.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=a6e40236aa24d482cfff600d2&id=62906ebdcc

 

I watched Dredd at the cinema and bought the DVD on release. Hope Dredd gets a deserved sequel.

 

EDIT: Signed it.

I signed as well, I'd dearly love another Judge Dredd film. There's just so much they could do within that world.

 

EDIT- If you're a Judge Dredd/2000AD fan you might like this, I posted it in the new movies thread the other day, an excellent fan-film featuring Judge Minty.