MOVIE COMMENT CATCH-ALL THREAD

[Fat Spanish Waiter]

I don't actively set out to boycott Michael Bay movies. I've been doing that naturally for years anyway.

You are missing out. On a lot.

[BNosanchuk]

I was very surprised how much I enjoyed Pain and Gain. 

[Reed]

Every clip I saw for Pain & Gain made it look like Rock was so freakishly muscled he was about to, literally, explode.

 

WHY DOES MICHAEL BAY WANT ROCK TO EXPLODE?

[Lawful Metal]

By the by, has anyone here seen 'Upstream Color'? I just watched it and it kinda floored the shit out of me and now I'm wanting to discuss it. I'm entirely sure I don't understand it entirely, don't know what it symbolized if anything, but I'm not positive it's not my film of the year either. Anyone?

Saw it. Brilliant movie. Watched it again the next day to be sure. Still great. Makes you think, but it makes sense. No wasted movements.

[Jrag]

Nah, not really.  Once a director has a certain amount of cache, they can do no wrong.  Martin Scorsese could direct the next Justin Bieber concert film and people would go "He brings a really interesting perspective to performance of 'Baby'!"  I think you have a lot more people going "It's not fair to compare it to 'Goodfellas'." than you do people going "This is not Goodfellas".  Another great example of this is Tarantino.  Not so much around these parts, but in some places if you have the temerity to say "Man, 'Death Proof' was not that good",  you get some feverish angry responses.

 

 

Around these parts you would be more likely to hear "Man, Death Proof was not that good, trust me, I've seen the trailer."  Which is way more annoying than the other scenario.

 

You don't want to see The Wolf of Wall Street?  Cool.  Don't tell me why Scorsese is getting some sort of pass for it, though, because that's just not something you can say if you haven't seen the film.  Well, I mean we've had two pages of discussion almost exclusively between people who have seen the film and people who haven't, so I guess you can say whatever you want, but it doesn't make any sense to do so.

[Antacular]

FWIW, if it's bad rich people helping the poor with their money, wouldn't they be..."Good" rich people?

[S.K.o.S.]

By the by, has anyone here seen 'Upstream Color'?  I just watched it and it kinda floored the shit out of me and now I'm wanting to discuss it.  I'm entirely sure I don't understand it entirely, don't know what it symbolized if anything, but I'm not positive it's not my film of the year either.  Anyone?

Saw it back in the spring when it came out. I'm typing on some kind of suboptimal tablet thing here so I don't want to make this real long, but I saw it as being about scientists playing God or trying to copy what nature does, along with the idea that what we see as love, even what we feel for a person we see as our soulmate, is really just chemical reactions and pheromones and whatever. That "those are just words, they don't mean anything" scene still stays with me months later. Shane Carruth was relatively open about discussing it, I think, and there are interviews with him out there if you want to go looking for them.

[Chaos]

 

By the by, has anyone here seen 'Upstream Color'?  I just watched it and it kinda floored the shit out of me and now I'm wanting to discuss it.  I'm entirely sure I don't understand it entirely, don't know what it symbolized if anything, but I'm not positive it's not my film of the year either.  Anyone?

Saw it back in the spring when it came out. I'm typing on some kind of suboptimal tablet thing here so I don't want to make this real long, but I saw it as being about scientists playing God or trying to copy what nature does, along with the idea that what we see as love, even what we feel for a person we see as our soulmate, is really just chemical reactions and pheromones and whatever. That "those are just words, they don't mean anything" scene still stays with me months later. Shane Carruth was relatively open about discussing it, I think, and there are interviews with him out there if you want to go looking for them.

 

 

I still haven't watched it because I finally sat through Primer to prepare for Caruth's second film, and my brain is still partially melting in regards to that film.

It's on my lengthy list of stuff to watch for the inevitable best of 2013 lists. I hate being in South Alabama where a lot of the good end of the year stuff does not play.

[caley]

I was very surprised how much I enjoyed Pain and Gain. 

It was a lot of fun.  It was the perfect subject matter for a Michael Bay film: beautiful people doing bad things.  Really dark and really funny.  It was like 'Fargo', not as good, admittedly, but awful, dark things going on, but still making you laugh.  I might sneak it into my EOY list.  

 

Director Tarsem Singh, talked about how Michael Bay is an auteur here

 

 

An auteur is someone just being true to their nature and you can recognize their work from a mile away. I think Michael Bay is as much as an auteur as my friends [David] Fincher and Spike [Jonze]. I happen to adore Fincher, Spike, and Michael’s films, who’s a classmate, but he’s as much an auteur. You can see him in his work

 

And Bay's stock has been big things happening with beautiful people, so 'Pain and Gain' is really even more in his wheelhouse than anything he's done in years.  Because the main characters are bodybuilders, he can just train the camera on pumped-up Wahlberg, Mackie and Rock and people working out and it's so very Michael Bay but not in a distracting way like a random camera angle up underneath Megan Fox in tiny jean shorts in 'Transformers 2'.

 

 

 

By the by, has anyone here seen 'Upstream Color'?  I just watched it and it kinda floored the shit out of me and now I'm wanting to discuss it.  I'm entirely sure I don't understand it entirely, don't know what it symbolized if anything, but I'm not positive it's not my film of the year either.  Anyone?

Saw it back in the spring when it came out. I'm typing on some kind of suboptimal tablet thing here so I don't want to make this real long, but I saw it as being about scientists playing God or trying to copy what nature does, along with the idea that what we see as love, even what we feel for a person we see as our soulmate, is really just chemical reactions and pheromones and whatever. That "those are just words, they don't mean anything" scene still stays with me months later. Shane Carruth was relatively open about discussing it, I think, and there are interviews with him out there if you want to go looking for them.

 

I've toyed with whether or not to read those interviews because on one hand, it might be quite illuminating, but on the other, I'd hate to have him say it's about one thing and have it be the opposite of how I'd figured it out and ruined it.  From what I've gleaned, he also gives out somewhat contradicting info in different interviews, in one he said that the Sampler and the Thief didn't know each other, however in another he suggested there was a lot of mentoring going on between the two.  I'm not sure there's been a prettier film this year, though, even when awful things are happening.

[Tabe]

FWIW, if it's bad rich people helping the poor with their money, wouldn't they be..."Good" rich people?

No.  Al Capone helped poor people, to name one.

[caley]

 

 

By the by, has anyone here seen 'Upstream Color'?  I just watched it and it kinda floored the shit out of me and now I'm wanting to discuss it.  I'm entirely sure I don't understand it entirely, don't know what it symbolized if anything, but I'm not positive it's not my film of the year either.  Anyone?

Saw it back in the spring when it came out. I'm typing on some kind of suboptimal tablet thing here so I don't want to make this real long, but I saw it as being about scientists playing God or trying to copy what nature does, along with the idea that what we see as love, even what we feel for a person we see as our soulmate, is really just chemical reactions and pheromones and whatever. That "those are just words, they don't mean anything" scene still stays with me months later. Shane Carruth was relatively open about discussing it, I think, and there are interviews with him out there if you want to go looking for them.

 

 

I still haven't watched it because I finally sat through Primer to prepare for Caruth's second film, and my brain is still partially melting in regards to that film.

It's on my lengthy list of stuff to watch for the inevitable best of 2013 lists. I hate being in South Alabama where a lot of the good end of the year stuff does not play.

 

It's streaming on Netflix Canada, I'd presume it might be on US Netflix...?  I liked it a lot more than 'Primer' which felt to me like a filmed math/physics class.

[Antacular]

 

FWIW, if it's bad rich people helping the poor with their money, wouldn't they be..."Good" rich people?

No.  Al Capone helped poor people, to name one.

 

 

Not paying your taxes is as American as apple pie and baseball. A model citizen.

[ebbie]

Watching a Friday the 13th marathon on Movies!.. Part 8 just finished. Having not seen it for a few years, all I got to say is this:

 

Those sure were some flammable kids in that movie.

 

 

Part 3 is on now.

[Swift]

Olympus Has Fallen Shockingly violent. I mean, that whole storming the White House sequence was genuinely terrifying because of it. It felt as though these random people's deaths were real because of the blood, rather than just some extras falling to the ground because they were supposed to. A mostly worthwhile movie, until it dropped off a cliff in the last 15 minutes...

 

The whole time the President is saying "Don't worry, he'll never get my secret code", and then just like that, the bad guy has his code. Also, only three people in the entire world have these super top secret codes to engage this system, but there's only one code to disengage it and it's available to pretty much anybody in govt. Totally dumb.

 

Also pretty weird at the end when the president and the agent are leaving the White House, cracking jokes whilst stepping over the bodies of multiple people.

 

Lethal Weapon movies It's a pity Mel Gibson went off the rails, because I forgot how likeable and funny he is as an on screen presence. He and Glover have some great chemistry too. But for me, the star of these films is Joe Pesci. It's amazing to think that he's this hilarious guy here, a bumbling fool in the Home Alone movies, and a scary motherfucker in Scorsese's movies. Poor Leo Getz though. He's so eager to help out and does everything they ask (even breaking a couple of leads for them) and they treat him like crap throughout.

 

Richard Donner sure liked to publicize issues he felt strongly about - the first movie has anti-Apartheid stickers in the background, the second deals with South African bad guys, the third has anti-fur slogans, and the fourth has anti-NRA sentiments.

 

Crazy moment of casual racism in the fourth movie - a Chinese bad guy dies, and Gibson's character, who up til this point has befriended Asian characters, says "I sure will miss the old gook"

 

We Bought A Zoo Completely formulaic movie, and it knows how to tug at the heartstrings and yet it worked completely for me. Really enjoyed it, though it may have had something to do with the Jonsi/Sigur Ros soundtrack.

[EVA]

Got damn, Technology.

So I'm watching this movie FINDING FORRESTER. Anybody remember that one? It's got Sean Connery as a reclusive legendary author and the guy who played Delmond on TREME as the poor inner city kid he mentors. Anyway, it's probably exactly the movie you expect it to be based on that setup. But there's this one scene that was just hilarious to me: The kid takes Forrester to Yankee Stadium as a surprise for his birthday.

Forrester asks, "How did you know it was my birthday?"

And the kid responds, "I looked it up in the almanac."

I died. This movie came out in 2000, and already this kid sounds like somebody from the Dust Bowl to me. I mean, barring the unlikely event that this poor kid from Brooklyn had an almanac laying around his apartment, there was some degree of effort required to find out that information. He had to at least make a trip to the library for that shit.

If this movie came out in 2013, when Forrester asked him that, the kid would've been like, "Uh...I typed your name into my phone, bitch."

[Fat Spanish Waiter]

Wasn't that You're The Man Now, Dog: The Movie?

[Phantom Lord]

Wasn't that You're The Man Now, Dog: The Movie?

 

Yes it was. It's a shame Connery retired after his experience filming League of Extrodinary Gentlemen. He probably could have done some fine cranky old man who beats the shit out of people movies like Michael Caine has the past few years.

 

The other night I watched Kuffs with Christian Slater on Netflix since it was in my list and it's apparently expiring today. I honestly hadn't seen the movie since it came out (video rental back in the day). They did a lot of breaking the forth wall stuff in it that probably would have fallen flat if it were anyone else but Christian Slater.

 

There's a hilarious scene with him and Tony Goldwin where they are dropping Fuck's left and right and they all get bleeped with a sound affect. At the end of the scene they let one "Fuck you" get by since that's the MPAA's rule. You can have one fuck for a PG13 rating. Have more than one and it's R. The movie was dumb and it's clear they were trying for a Beverly Hills Cop type vibe. I mean hell they even had a rip off of the Beverly Hills Cop theme in the movie.

[Reed]

The Lethal Weapon movies get harsher in hindsight when you realize Mel Gibson isn't only just pretending to be insane.

[Curt McGirt]

What happened on League to make Connery retire? 

[nate]

What happened on League to make Connery retire?

I'd almost be willing to consider the onset of dementia. Something about his interviews in the media about the movie, esp. the ongoing statements that he just didn't "get it," i.e. the story, the concept, make me think this. I could be totally off-base though.

[ebbie]

The Friday the 13th movies.. I hope the guy who directed part 3 got slapped. He was all feeling it when he got stabbed and shit. What kind of bullshit is that? Compare that to Part 8, no mas man. No mas.

[Brian Fowler]

 

What happened on League to make Connery retire?

I'd almost be willing to consider the onset of dementia. Something about his interviews in the media about the movie, esp. the ongoing statements that he just didn't "get it," i.e. the story, the concept, make me think this. I could be totally off-base though.

 

 

As I understand it, he passed playing Gandalf because he didn't understand the script for LOTR, and then got pissed at himself because they had offered him a cut on the back end, so he lost millions.  When another kinda geeky script he didn't understand came across his desk, he signed on, not wanting to make the same mistake.  He wound up hating the experience of making it, hating the finished film, and it bombed and he didn't get his sweet, sweet money, so he said fuck this, I'm out.

[Fat Spanish Waiter]

IIRC he would have earned Quarter of a Billion dollars for Gandalf.

Quarter of a Billion.

[Brian Fowler]

And would be getting even more now from The Hobbit movies!

[Raziel]

I'm not sure how much I would've liked Connery as Gandalf.