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MOVIE COMMENT CATCH-ALL THREAD


jaedmc

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Alright, the whole Lone Ranger fiasco makes a LOT more sense now that I heard the "sorry, despite this movie costing about the same as Avatar, we don't have the capability to show you the kind of special effects that happen every week on True Blood"!  Of course, one wonders why they'd do something as silly as werewolves in what's essentially a straight Western.  (Did the Lone Ranger franchise ever really dip into the occult like that?  I wouldn't be surprised if they did it once or twice in some Very Special Episodes, but you wouldn't think there would be much of that sort of thing.)  Dumb damn studio interference, too many cooks ruins the broth, etc.  

 

 

The Lone Ranger is unwatchable for me, even though as a Dutch person I'm used to a shitload of casual racism.

Huh?  Please tell us more.  I don't know anything about Dutch racism.  

 

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang was awful. Downey blathering away forever as narrator gave me PTSD flashbacks to Iron Man 3. Super Val couldn't even save it. I remember something about a dog eating his finger, and not much else. Terrible shit.

...in your spare time, do you stomp on kittens, attend Nazi rallies, and trick people into decade-long indentured servitude careers in telemarketing?  Why must you hat EVERYTHING that I love.  (Silver lining: good on ya for trying some relatively independent movies which are a lil' more obscure than the typical big-budget Hollywood stuff I've noticed you tend to like. Baby steps, baby steps.)

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Also, since you poor folks need content badly, here's a few recent reviews I had lying around: 

 

Julien Donkey-Boy (1999): 4/10

This is the second film I’ve seen from independent maverick Harmony Korine (not including Kids, which he wrote but didn’t direct).  It’s a lot like the first one, Gummo: the kind of indy-artsy films that give indy-artsy films a bad name.  It’s a plotless, slow, opaque, inscrutable mess.  It’s essentially two hours of Weird Shit Happening with practically no rhyme or reason to any of the proceedings.  Odd people do inexplicable things for inscrutable reasons, all shot in a Natural Born Killers-style whirlwind of distracting camera effects, and this is pretty damn far from my idea of an entertaining night at the movies. 

 

Julien (Ewen Bremmer) is a middle-aged manchild with severe schizophrenia who looks kinda like Jerry Seinfeld with Down’s Syndrome.  He lives at home with his madly overbearing father (played by Werner Herzog; yes, that Werner Herzog), his weak and codependent brother Chris (Evan Neumann), and his pregnant sister Pearl (Chloe Sevigny).  And then… shit, I dunno even what to say, man.  Weird Shit Happens.  Julien wanders around being crazy, his asshole father berates him a lot, and everyone else mostly just mopes and broods and doesn’t say much.  All the dialogue is entirely improvised, and it shows.  A tiny smidgen of plot finally appears in the last fifteen minutes, but it’s far too little and far too late. 

 

This movie was made under the rules of the European film movement Dogme 95, which had a bunch of pretentious ideas about “purity” in cinema.  They’re stuff like using only natural lighting, no fake props or makeup, no guns; you know, all the things that make movies fun.  There are a few interesting bits here and there: a few people do some interesting Stupid Human Tricks, like an armless man who does card tricks with his feet and another guy who does a stunt with cigarettes that is so goddamned unbelievable that you’d have to see it for yourself, I can’t even describe it.  Ewen Bremmer as Julien is absolutely convincing as a man imprisoned in his own head by insurmountable madness.  And even when he’s stuck in a lot of pointless scenes, Werner Herzog has so much coldblooded charisma and has such a great reptilian presence that he makes his part work by sheer effort of will.  But the rest is an incomprehensible jumble of ponderous symbolism and other pretentious crap.  Finally, the way that Korine frequently exploits handicapped people in his movies in a “gawking at sideshow freaks” manner is really offensive and needs to stop. 

 

 

Black Death (2010): 4/10

What a bummer.  Black Death is one of those downbeat flicks that is in SUCH a damn hurry to reveal to us just how awful it was to live in the Middle Ages.  I’ve seen a few of these movies now (In the Name of the Rose comes to mind), and they’re always the most depressing thing in the whole goddamn world.  There is nary a spark of life, joy, or hope within the entire picture; it’s all blood and dirt and misery and despair.  I guess you could make a great movie out of that, like the best adaptations of Victor Hugo’s books, but Black Death doesn’t even come close to sniffing that level of quality. 

 

The story is set in medieval England, in the opening stages of the horrifying epidemic of bubonic plague.  As entire nations are being quickly depopulated by the hideous disease, a young monk named Osmund (Eddie Remayne) lives in an abbey and is secretly in love with a girl, Averill (Kimberly Nixon).  When Osmund learns he is being sent on an urgent errand near his old hometown, he sends Averill to hide in the woods near there so they can be together and safe from the sickness.  The journey involves guiding a knight named Ulrich (Sean Bean) and his men to a mysterious secluded village, where rumor has it that there is no plague… but there might be witchcraft and demons.  Various gruesome shit ensues. 

 

One big problem with the movie is that we’ve simply seen it all before.  If you’ve watched The Witchfinder General, The Wicker Man, or Flesh + Blood, then you’ve pretty much already seen all of Black Death.  And the movie’s unrelentingly grim and pessimistic tone really got on my nerves.  The heroes never really achieve anything, never win any important victories; every time it looks like they might succeed, they’re merely kicked in the nuts once again.  Yet, all of their enemies and opponents (and even all the innocents they meet) aren’t happy either and generally come to miserable ends.  This continues all the way to the finish, which pissed me off with the most unbearably unhappy ending you could possibly imagine. 

 

One odd thing is how a lot of people in this movie are typecast in roles which are similar to their best-known parts… which hadn’t happened yet!  Eddie Redmayne’s sensitive star-crossed intellectual is awfully close to his Marius in Les Miserables, Sean Bean’s gruff no-nonsense soldier with a hand of steel but a heart of gold is damn near a palette swap for Ned Stark on Game of Thrones, and the actress who plays Melisandre on the same show is once again here essaying the role of a mysterious and seductive witch of uncertain powers.  Yet, Black Death was made before all of the above.  Strange, huh?  The actors are all trying very hard and some of the production design is pretty sweet, but the story is so fucking depressing that it’s not worth watching. 

 

 

Haywire (2011): 6/10

Gina Carano sure can kick an ass or two.  The chief pleasure in Steven Soderbergh’s Haywire is simply watching her beat the everliving shit out of various villains with a dizzying array of lightning-fast kung fu and MMA-inspired grappling.  I was about to say that she could easily stand toe-to-toe with the great cinematic female warriors like Michelle Yeoh; but, hell, she could probably keep up with Jet Li just as easily.  She is absolutely believable in every scene as a world-beating secret agent, which more than makes up for the fact that she’s apparently such a bad actress that they had a different woman dub all her dialogue (which, thankfully, is pretty seamless). 

 

Hokay… how am I gonna describe this plot?  The biggest problem with Haywire is a stupidly overcomplicated storyline, much of which is told out of chronological order.  Carano plays Mallory Kane, a freelance operative with a for-profit secret agency that outsources government black-ops jobs and is headed up by her ex-boyfriend (Ewan Macgregor), with whom she’s still cordial.  Mallory is considering retirement after a recent botched job, but her boss talks her into going on One Last Mission to collect a final paycheck.  But then Mallory is framed for murder, and is quickly pulling a Jason Bourne as she’s hunted across the world. 

 

We’ve also got a damn fine supporting cast: Michael Fassbender, Antonio Banderas, Channing Tatum, Michael Angarano, and Bill Paxton as Mallory’s dad (who looks WAY too visibly young for the part, but oddly in real life he could easily be Carano’s father).  They all do about as well as you’d expect, especially Banderas who finally gets a subtle little dialogue role to show off his less melodramatic talents.  But maaaaaan, that plot is confusing as all hell.  I know it sounds fairly simple the way I described it, but in practice it’s bewildering.  The story is told in a nonlinear fashion, jumping back and forth like mad between various seemingly unconnected plot points; there’s a massive exposition dump at the end to explain several loose threads, but I’m still pretty sure that I couldn’t pass a test on who did what or why.  It’s nowhere near as clear and comprehensive as for example The Limey, another film from the same filmmakers which was told in nonlinear out-of-order fashion and made much more sense. 

 

Finally, the MPAA gave this film a really undeserved R rating “for some violence”.  Yeah, there are several beatings and shootings, but it’s no different than you’d see on every single episode of 24, let alone the really ultraviolent shit like The Walking Dead or HBO original programming.  There’s no sex in Haywire, no nudity, no drug use, and I don’t even remember much if any cursing.  I think they simply rated it R because the fight scenes are somewhat realistic and gritty rather than being ridiculous and spectacular.  As always, the MPAA thinks it’s their sacred duty to expose children to plenty of silly consequence-free violence that looks like it doesn’t hurt (but in real life would be agonizing), while bravely shielding them from the reality of what actually happens when two people try to kill each other.  It’s an offensive and useless double standard which probably has something to do with why America’s kids are such desensitized little sociopaths, but it sadly ain’t changing anytime soon. 

 

 

Grave of the Fireflies: 9/10

Why are some of the greatest works of art also some of the most depressing?  Because while Grave of the Fireflies is possibly the greatest feature-length anime movie that I’ve ever seen, it’s also probably the most depressing.  The whole thing can be summed up as “Watch two children starving to death while nobody helps them!”.  By the end of the movie, you’ll pretty much feel like killing yourself in the most quickly-available way, like a character from The goddamn Happening.  But after you get over the “What. The FUCK. Was that?!” shock, the movie almost feels kinda inspiring.  Rather like the greatest tragic plays and novels, the sheer nihilistic brutality of the story makes you ultimately feel almost uplifted. 

 

The setting is in Japan, in the latter days of World War II.  14-year-old Seito and his 4-year-old sister Setsuko are in a tight spot.  American bombing raids are a near-daily fact of life, almost like hideous foreign dragons that mercilessly Godzilla the living hell out of everything in their path.  The kids’ father is overseas in the Japanese imperial navy and has been incommunicado for some time, and their mother has recently been maimed beyond recognition by a firebomb.  The children stay for a while with a cold and uncaring relative, but are eventually kicked out onto the streets.  And despite Seito’s best efforts to find food and Setsuko’s almost inhuman ability to remain ever-cheerful… bad shit happens.  Bad shit happens forever

 

This movie is adapted from a semi-autobiographical novel by Akiyuki Nosaka, who wrote the book to try to exorcise the horrifying memories and guilt he had from surviving the war when so many others did not.  Despite its obvious power as an anti-war message, the movie version is oddly not intended to be that; animation director Isao Takahata has explicitly said that it’s not supposed to be anti-war, but is rather a Message Movie directed at the Japanese teenagers of the 1980s, when that country saw an explosion in juvenile delinquency.  It’s supposedly “shut up and be thankful for how great your lives are, you young punks!” rather than “bombing the living shit out of civilians is wrong”, although most viewers would immediately spot the second moral and totally miss the first one. 

 

As an anti-war movie, it’s hard to think of anything that could possibly be more effective or moving.  Which is odd, when you remember that the Japanese Empire was possibly the single most evil government in the history of the planet.  They killed a LOT more people than the frigging Nazis did, making the Holocaust practically look like a domestic disturbance in comparison.  They killed SO many innocent civilians that we still don’t know HOW many, because the number was so unfathomably huge that it’ll never be properly counted.  But Grave of the Fireflies is all “hey, no matter how evil their leaders were, how many poor helpless women and children were blown to smithereens or burned alive by Allied bombs?”.  And it’s right.  War.  Huh.  Good god, y’all. 

 

EDIT: one last odd postscript.  This film was produced by Studio Ghibli (one of its few productions which was not a colorful upbeat fantasy), and was in fact originally released in Japan as a double-feature with, of all goddamn things, My Neighbor Totoro.  Anyone who’s seen that fluffy piece of ecstatic escapism is probably already open-mouthed in shock, because it’s nearly impossible to think of two flicks that have less in common.  Imagine if E.T. and Schindler’s List were originally released as a double feature, it’s THAT fucking weird.  

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Dutch Racism - google "Zwarte Piet"

 

Lone Ranger Werewolves - Supernatural stuff has never been a part of TLR, and I think they were trying to draw in the teen Twilight audience because without them, you've just got a few old people watching Johnny Depp play a panto Indian.

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Dutch Racism - google "Zwarte Piet"

(does so)

 

...so in Holland, Santa Claus has a black sidekick?  And people dress up as him, including blackface.  That's pretty harmless.  I know exactly why the American tradition of blackface has garnered such an incredibly-well-deserved low reputation, but the Dutch equivalent sounds like it's more clueless and naive than anything else.  (How many black guys is your average European going to know personally?  They probably only see them on television...)  There's gotta be more to this Dutch Racism meme than just that.  

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Haywire (2011): 6/10

 

This movie would have been a lot better were it not for the Vegas lounge music score during action scenes.  I read that the movie's disjointed plot was made ambiguous to try and put the audience in the mind of the main character and show how confused she was at the several layers of subterfuge going on around her.

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EDIT: This had paragraphs and lines breaks and stuff in it when I wrote it. My knackered old computer, the boards ignores it's enter button.

I watched Unstoppable last night, and I'd watched Man On Fire a bit ago as well, so I'm all about how good Tony Scott was at getting good performances out of Denzel (not that there are many films Denzel is shit in, though). Someone should put Chris Pine in a movie with Paul Walker to see who can be the least memorable bland white prettyboy.

What else? Forgetting Sarah Marshall was just a bit lame - kind of suffered from the lack of sympathetic characters, because the guy you're supposed to identify with spends the whole movie being a sad wierdo. And they cast the girls the wrong way round, with the blandly pretty but forgettable blonde playing the unnattainable ideal of female perfection while the world's most beautiful woman plays a charming girl next door type. It's like the Twiglet movies* have these two cute boys fighting over Miss Moodypants when she's standing next to the far better looking and more interesting Scott Pilgrim's sister. I liked how the surfing instructor didn't recognise him and accidentally gave away that his whole sympathy routine was just schtick though.

Get Him to the Greek was much better. P Diddy doing a better job of being outrageous than Russell Brand was unexpected.

I saw the Informers. Hard to get into. I liked the sudden death bit though. Then I saw another film with Amber Heard in, and didn't recognise her with her clothes on.

There's something else I liked recently, but I'm forgetting it. I've been up for 21 hours.

* Which I've not seen. It's great being a Dad when you've got a son and you don't have to put up with them watching all that intolerable Priness shit.

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I haven't watched much lately (Gotten into Homeland, and rewatching Freaks and Geeks and Chappelle's Show) and keep straying from watching movies

 

I did see

Side Effects: Which is an entirely different movie than it is presented as in trailers.  Rooney Mara is a woman who tries to kill herself and is prescribed anti-depressant drugs by her psychiatrist (Ewen McGregor), then, under the influence of drugs, she does something worse.  As she tries to figure out what's going on, McGregor sees his reputation and career destroyed in the backlash as he searches for answers.  It's got some good twists, and a completely unnecessary make-out sequence with Catherine Zeta-Jones and Mara.  Channing Tatum kinda steals the film, whenever he's on.  Entertaining, if fairly forgettable afterwards.

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Just watched Spring Breakers, interesting doesn't begin to cover my thoughts on this film.  I was hooked by the concept of James Franco as Alien (Riff Raff or Dangeruss, whoever they want to say inspired the character) not sure about everything else though.  90's Justin would have thought this movie was awesome.

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I haven't watched much lately (Gotten into Homeland, and rewatching Freaks and Geeks and Chappelle's Show) and keep straying from watching moviesI did seeSide Effects: Which is an entirely different movie than it is presented as in trailers. Rooney Mara is a woman who tries to kill herself and is prescribed anti-depressant drugs by her psychiatrist (Ewen McGregor), then, under the influence of drugs, she does something worse. As she tries to figure out what's going on, McGregor sees his reputation and career destroyed in the backlash as he searches for answers. It's got some good twists, and a completely unnecessary make-out sequence with Catherine Zeta-Jones and Mara. Channing Tatum kinda steals the film, whenever he's on. Entertaining, if fairly forgettable afterwards.

JUDE LAW!
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JUDE LAW!

Oh man it was Jude Law!  I should've figured it out because I was thinking "Hmm, McGregor's fake American accent didn't bother me nearly as much this time around".  Makes sense.  So yeah, take my paragraph and substitute McGregor with Jude Law.

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Man, I love Forgetting Sarah Marshall.  Easily the funniest and best movie of the entire Apatow and/or friend catalog.

 

Diddy is great in Get Him To The Greek though.

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Holy shit...

 

What?  It's a serious question, I honestly don't know.  I have no idea what the racial demographics of continental Europe are when it comes to the numbers of people of other races who live there.  I assume it's a much lower percentage than you'd get in America (our country was the ultimate destination for the majority of the slaves in the genocidal meat grinder that was the Triangle Trade, and far fewer Africans were kidnapped back to mainland Europe), I just dunno what the actual figures would be and am curious.  Legitimately, if the country has problems with racism against black people, how likely is it that your average Dutch person actually knows a black person on a close basis?  

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What?  It's a serious question, I honestly don't know.  I have no idea what the racial demographics of continental Europe are when it comes to the numbers of people of other races who live there.  I assume it's a much lower percentage than you'd get in America (our country was the ultimate destination for the majority of the slaves in the genocidal meat grinder that was the Triangle Trade, and far fewer Africans were kidnapped back to mainland Europe), I just dunno what the actual figures would be and am curious.  Legitimately, if the country has problems with racism against black people, how likely is it that your average Dutch person actually knows a black person on a close basis?  

 

Do you know an Asian person? Percentage-wise, there's more black people in the Netherlands than there are Asians in the U.S.

 

Keep in mind that this is probably the most well-known dutch person amongst members of this board (Well, him or Bas):

Posted Image

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Alright, I stand corrected.  I have no idea what the racial demographics of the Netherlands are (nor Belgium nor Luxembourg), it's just not the sort of thing that they ever mention in school or on the news.  In history class, they mostly tend to talked about the American slave trade and kinda skip over its effects on the rest of the world.  I've never known anyone from the Netherlands, never been there, never known anyone who's told any stories about going there.  (No, not even the standard college stoner trip to Amsterdam.)  Sorry, wasn't trying to sound racist, I just didn't have the tiniest bit of education on the subject and honestly thought the country might be overwhelmingly fishbelly-white and that's why I asked the question.  

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In fact... heeeey, wait a minute.  

 

Do you know an Asian person? Percentage-wise, there's more black people in the Netherlands than there are Asians in the U.S.

Uh, according to my Facebook friends list: no, I basically don't.  (For purposes of this discussion, let's say the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East count as their own separate things and not technically "Asia".)  Out of 259 people: TWO Asian dudes, both casual acquaintances I don't know well, both met in the last couple of years at my college (which has a booming exchange-student program).  It's certainly not intentional on my part, I won over the South Korean guy by being able to discuss some of his country's recent horror movies, but I've just never been around Asian folks very much.  I know that there really are locations in this world which are overwhelmingly dominated by honkies, because I've lived in them for the majority of my life.  I'm familiar with more Asian actors I see in movies than Asian people in real life.  

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Mary-Louise Parker says she is "retiring" from acting.

 

The reason? The internet is mean.

 

"The world has gotten too mean for me, it's just too bitchy. All the websites and all the blogging and all the people giving their opinion and their hatred … it's all so mean-spirited, it's all so critical,"

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Alright, I stand corrected.  I have no idea what the racial demographics of the Netherlands are (nor Belgium nor Luxembourg), it's just not the sort of thing that they ever mention in school or on the news.  In history class, they mostly tend to talked about the American slave trade and kinda skip over its effects on the rest of the world. 

 

Is it fair to assume that's what the average American knows?

 

Shit, Portugal basically invented mass slave trade in the 16th century.

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Is it fair to assume that's what the average American knows?

 

Shit, Portugal basically invented mass slave trade in the 16th century.

 

I think it is safe to assume that most Americans* don't know dick about slavery, or worldly affairs.  America is too busy hating on the Black folks here to give a rats ass about what foreigners are doing. 

 

 

 

 

*This includes Black Americans

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