What was the last movie you watched?

[AngusThermopyle]

Just watched All Is Lost, Robert Redford is great in this one. When it started I was thinking that it was a bit dry (no pun intended) and that it might be boring. However after a few minutes I found it was grabbing my attention and making me want to keep watching in order to see how it all played out for the principal (actually only) character in the movie. Redford gives a tremendous performance, he really is a great actor. The movie builds tension and a sense of dread without use of flashy CGI and sound, I would recommend it.

[Wilber]

Just got around to watching Rush. Excellent. A racing movie even my wife liked. According to Nikki Lauda the characters and story are very accurate, not at all the usual liberties movie makers take with true stories.

[Wilber]

Jennifer sure is a sweetie.

Here's an old classic known for its 'large' budget at the time. From 1956...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a04C5-znaYY

Good movie, also quite faithful to the historical facts.

[overthere]

Still not quite over the experience of watching A Serbian Film, maybe the ugliest, filthiest, most distressing thing ever made by anybody.

So as a painkiller, I watched Silver Linings Playbook.

I'm not a big fan of romantic movies, but I liked this a lot. Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper are excellent, and excellent together.

Mmmm... maybe not.

I thought this was wretchedly overrated and deserved little of the attention it got. Bradley Cooper is a marginal actor on his best day, and Robert Deniro was just kind of embarassing, again.

Worst of all was the hokey, pathetic script- a recycled mess IMO with an ending that you could call after 10 minutes of the start.

The saving grace was Lawrence, who did her best with a poor script.

I think they gave her an award to make up for the one she should have gotten for Winters Bone.

[overthere]

Small point: much of "Her" was actually shot in Shanghai, which gives it that weird sort of futuristic look.

But yeah, good movie. Interesting depiction of our evolving relationship with technology. A future where no one has to stand around staring at the screens of their smartphones sounds good to me.

I did not know that about Shanghai, thanks.

Im not sure what you mean about future relationships, since the story revolves around people staring at their smartphones whole they relate to AI software- not people.

After digesting this movie for a while, I've kind of changed my opinion. It is clever, and well done, but ultimately pretty creepy.

[overthere]

I just saw a terrific movie called The Past.(It's in French with English subtitles)

If you only like flicks that feature lots of action, blood and sex- stop reading now because this one has none of the above.

It's directed and written by an Iranian, Asghar Farhadi. He also did another superb, highly recommended and similar movie called A Separation a couple of years ago that won an Oscar and Golden Globe as Best Foreign movie.

The Past is set in working class Paris. A man returns to divorce his estranged wife, to find she is living with another man. There is a situation between the woman, her boyfriend and her daughter that causes immense strain on the relationship. The returning man tries to mediate. Dark secrets are revealed.

It is wonderfully written and acted by people I've never seen before. The child actors are so good I wondered if it was somehow a real family. It is dark and intricate, a tapestry of lies and hopes and half truths, with every wounded by their shared lives.

In the end, Farhadi is careful to leave some things unsaid. It was one of those rare movies where we talked about it for qute a while after we left the theater.

It is both raw and delicate drama, and worth seeing if you like something a little denser than Iron Man 7..

[kimmy]

I recently watched "The To Do List".

It stars Aubrey Plaza as a high-achieving but socially awkward valedictorian who is determined to gain sexual experience before she heads off to college. I was not familiar with Aubrey Plaza, but she's part of the cast of the Parks And Recreation TV program. This compilation clip seems to represent her style pretty well:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2_V1Y4ekkM

After seeing some of her Parks And Recreation clips, I figured she's a comic actress with a great deadpan delivery. But then after watching some of her interviews on talk shows, I started to wonder if she's actually acting or maybe she's just like that. Like, what if people thinks she's hilarious but she's actually got Asperger syndrome or she's somewhere autistic spectrum? It's hard to tell if she's being deliberately awkward for comic effect, or she's just that socially inept. It's hard to know whether to laugh or cringe. Anyway, that's more or less what she's like in "The To Do List" as well. The movie is built around her socially awkward character and most of the laughs come at her expense.

It's 1993, Brandy Klark has just graduated high school, and her two friends have convinced her that she needs to get sexual experience before she goes to college. Brandy is an A-list student and she tackles the task in the way she knows best: she turns it into a research project. She makes a "to do list" of all the things she needs to learn before the summer is over. The result is a series of humiliating misadventures. Brandy's summer job as a lifeguard at the community pool provides the setting for most of the shenanigans.

Brandy isn't the most likable protagonist... she's completely self-centered and oblivious to the people around her. But it's not because she's a bad person, she's just clueless. What I liked about Brandy Klark is that nothing ever really gets her down. She's somewhat aware that nobody likes her, but doesn't seem particularly concerned about it. No matter how badly things go, she's right back at the pool the next day to carry on, dauntless. No daunts given. Ultimately, her journey is less about learning to give a hummer, and more about learning about interacting with people.

Aside from Aubrey Plaza, the only people in this movie that I recognized were Clark Gregg ("Agent Phil" from the Avengers movies) as Brandy's overprotective father, and Rachel Bilson as Brandy's hilariously mean and stupid older sister.

Anyway, this probably isn't for everybody, but I enjoyed it.

-k

[overthere]

a couple more:

1) The Grand Budapest Hotel, You can stop here if you hate Wes Anderson movies. You should probably stop here if you don't know Wes Anderson. But if you know who he is, and can tolerate his movies, go see this one. It's smart and quirky and sly and gentle and funny, like nearly all the rest of them.

The Lunchbox. This is a small and gentle Indian movie, a romance of sorts but with a plot twist that might be unlike any other. It is centred on a mistake made by the incredible Mumbai lunch delivery system that gets two unlikely people into the most tenuous of relations. I saw my first Bollywood movie a long time ago(and I saw it in India!). I've pretty much hated the generic song and dance schtick ever since. This movie has none of that, though it has authentic flavours and accents of India throughout. No sex, violence or swearing and it's mostly subtitled but a high quality effort just the same.

Recommended.

Oh, and the lead actress is Nimrat Kaur and she is an absolutely beautiful woman.

[bleeding heart]

I actually understand why people don't like Wes Anderson movies, just as I understand why people don't like movies like Michael Haneke's Funny Games. (which I loved.) They are self-consciously movies, and lack (at least at times) realist conventions.

I didn't much care for Moonrise Kingdom, but I adored The Royal Tenenbaums. I'll check out "Hotel" for sure.

[overthere]

Good points about Anderson movies, bleeding heart. They are not for everybody.

Saw another decent one, The Railway Man with Colin Firth and Nicole Kidman. Based on actual events, it's a serious drama about a gent who was a POW in Burma in WWII and suffered greatly at the hands of the Japanese. The project is the same as that in Bridge Over the River Kwai, but the approach is very different. Both Firth and Kidman give very good, solid understated performances without glamour and always with a deep English reserve.. But the movie is kind of uneven, and the story that unfolds is predictable early. No surprises, but still watchable. I'd wait for it on cable or DVD, it won't be long before it shows up there.

[overthere]

One more, and this one has quite a bit of Oscar buzz already. Buzz this early is usually a death knell for movies, but this one is quite unusual. In fact, I have never seen a fiormat for a fictional story like it.

The movie is called Boyhood.

What is unique is that the director(Richard Linklater, who has an odd filmography of hits and flops, winners and complete turkeys) filmed it over 12 years. He picks up the story of the kid at age 6 and films him to age 18. It is long(nearly 3 hours) and has some flat spots, but overall he nails an often bittersweet, ragged childhood perfectly.

There are half a dozen actors including Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette who are there the whole story, and several others who drift in and out as the story unfolds. I guess the story does not unfold so much as the man is created........

Good one.

[cybercoma]

I heard about Boyhood a few years ago. It's done now?

Last movie I saw was Guardians of the Galaxy. Don't feel like writing up a full review, but suffice it to say that it's the best Marvel comic movie I have ever seen. Take that for what it's worth. If you like Marvel comic movies, it's amazing. If you don't, I still think it's a fantastic sci-fi film with a great comedic tone throughout. YMMV.

[overthere]

Yes, Boyhood was released in Canada a few weeks ago. It's good, though not for everybody. I could not help but recognize something of my own boyhood in it, and suspect others will feel the same.

I've grown bored with the series like SpiderMan, Iron Man, Avengers etc genre and tend to fall asleep in the middle of the CGI mayhem.

But your endorsement of Guardians will probably get me to the theater.

Just saw The Drop, and it is terrific.
It's a dark, small story about people living on the fringes of crime, from a Dennis Lehane short story.
Tom Hardy and James Gandolfini(his last role) are both really good here.
Not many smiles or laughs and it is filled with rising dread, but it does have a cute dog.

The movie won't get nominated for an Academy Award, but I expect Gandolfini might, and Hardy also has a shot.

[cybercoma]

I tend to dislike CGI effects that are done poorly. A lot of films which use a ton of it try to cut corners and save money. The result is shoddy looking CG that borders on cartoony. Guardians of the Galaxy is not that. Of course it uses CG, but it's done well, imo. I do like the idea of comic films; I just find that they often fail to deliver. The Avengers was quite good, even though I'm not a fan of the comics themselves. I thought Thor wasn't a bad movie either. The first Captain America was appalling. The Spider-Man movies have been a shit show. The Hulk--terrible. So I guess it's really hit or miss with me.

My wife wanted to watch Catching Fire the other night. This is the second movie in The Hunger Games trilogy, which is being made into 4 movies of course (gotta milk that cash cow). The Hunger Games I found to be a directorial disaster. The pacing was rushed. The camera shots were frantic and jittery. It was a chore to watch. Oh and let's not forget the parts where they used CG. It was one of those cartoony looking CG films. I guess the best analogy I can use is that it looked like it was filmed by a recent film-school grad who has been making amateur music videos for the last 4 years.

Catching Fire on the other hand had much better pacing and none of the ludicrous camera angles and jitteriness. There's still some CG, but it's handled a lot more professionally than it was in the first film. The overall tone was much darker, which could be attributed to the original story of course. However, I found the filmmaking was just orders of magnitude better on this one. It was, believe it or not, nearly enjoyable. For what it is, Catching Fire is done well and well beyond what was offered as a movie for the first book in the series, The Hunger Games. The ironic part about it is that the director of the second film actually was a music video director. Go figure.

Edited September 16, 2014 by cybercoma

[AngusThermopyle]

Actually I've heard quite a bit about The Drop. Its one I want to see as it sounds pretty good. But...a cute dog? Say it aint so! Thats a Pit Bull. One of those horrific killing machines. The movie actually used three of them during production. Tom Hardy took turns taking them home with him after shooting for the day. He said he had to take turns because they'd become despondent if he didn't. What's really surprising is that the handler allowed him to do that. In most cases the animals are considered too specialized in their talents to allow such things. Tom Hardy is a dog lover though.

[overthere]

The Drop is of the same urban noir genre as Killing Them Softly, which also coincidentally had James Gandolfini.

[kimmy]

I saw Guardians Of The Galaxy a few weeks ago, and really liked it. At first stuff was going by too quickly and I didn't really get into it, but before long I felt completely charmed by the characters and felt like was bonding with them even as they were bonding with each other. I don't think many movies have juggled adventure and comedy and feels this successfully.

I recently saw How To Train Your Dragon 2. I liked the first one, but this one was pretty meh, IMO.

I also recently saw Divergent. The premise is that in a post-apocalyptic city, the peace is maintained by a "faction" system. There's a faction for smart people, one for kind people, one for honest people, one for brave people, and one for selfless people. The heroine is a "divergent"-- a small minority who are considered a threat to the system because they are-- wait for it-- two things. She bonds with another person who is secretly Two Things. But in a shocking display of TwoThings-ism, the smart people and brave people ally with each other in an attempt to seize power and wipe out the Two Things people once and for all. The premise was too stupid for me to get past, and I couldn't really enjoy the show as a result. I kept waiting for it to start making sense, but it just kept getting stupider.

And I saw X-Men: Days of Future Past recently. It's kind of a time-travel story... Wolverine's consciousness is sent back from a war-torn future into his younger self-- in the early 1970s! --to convinces the X-Men to stop an event that leads to a disastrous chain of events and a horrifying future. It was ok entertainment. The highlights:

-the general 1970s retro atmosphere.

-a scene involving a goofy teenager named Quicksilver-- whose super-power is Ludicrous Speed. When he's doing his thing, everything else around him is almost frozen in time... and seeing it from his perspective-- set to "If I could save time in a bottle" by Jim Croce-- is one of the coolest things I've seen in a while.

-Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen. These two became best friends back in the 1990s while playing Charles Xavier and Magneto in the first run of X-men films. They return to those roles in the "Future" scenes in this film (the 1970s Xavier and Magneto are played by James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender).

I don't think this was one of the best comic book movies to come along, but it was fairly entertaining.

-k

[Michael Hardner]

Two Danish Films:

The Hunt - excellent character exploration and examination of the issues around child sexual assault, directed by the superlative Thomas Vinterberg. He will be well-regarded by film history, even if he's relatively unknown today.

Adam's Apples - dark humour, very dark, the best kind.

Both films have Mads Mikkelsen in starring roles, a lesson in acting.

[cybercoma]

kimmy, Divergent was a teen novel that gained popularity following the end of Twilight's run. That's probably why it was painfully stupid.

[overthere]

Mikkelsen is terrific in The Hunt. Groupthink gone mad...

I'll look for Adams Apple.

Another decent Scandi movie is The Headhunter, a good adaptation of a Jo Nesbo book.

[overthere]

Another new movies I'd recommend, now in theaters: the Skeleton Twins.

It's a dark drama/comedy.

[GostHacked]

The Signal.

Very well shot movie. Direction and cinematography are very good. No shakey cam stuff here. Solidly framed shots.

[Michael Hardner]

Another new movies I'd recommend, now in theaters: the Skeleton Twins.

It's a dark drama/comedy.

Did you see Adam's Apple ?

[Mighty AC]

Another new movies I'd recommend, now in theaters: the Skeleton Twins.

It's a dark drama/comedy.

It was much better than I expected. Hader is far more talented than his SNL persona...he and Wiig are really good in this.

[overthere]

Did you see Adam's Apple ?

No. Is it worth $12 and two hours? I'll watch anything, any genre in a theater if they meet those two metrics.

It was much better than I expected. Hader is far more talented than his SNL persona...he and Wiig are really good in this.

A couple small things I really liked were the lighting/music, and the way that everybody just looked like ordinary people with minimal makeup and bad hair.

Oh and of course the fine acting and writing.