What movies did you watch this weekend?

deej

deej

Tol Eressea
(I've got some early meetings Monday morning, so I thought i'd get this in now. [;)])

I went to see 'The Fantastic Mr. Fox' this weekend with shuya, and would up liking this film a lot more than I had expected to. This was one of my favorite Roald Dahl books as a kid (next to 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory', and the contribution of Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbaug (who did 'The Life Aquatic with Steve Zizzou' together) was great. Also great were the voice talent - George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Bill Murray, Jason Swartzman, and Michael Gambon among others. Highly recommended.


Share your movie/dvd/tv reviews with us!
 
Cohen Brothers new film. Quite funny really, saw it at a local independant movie house. From what I've read online, seeing A Serious Man on a big screen already is as rare as having seen The Road already. Still waiting on that one.

On the small screen:
The Order -- still love this Heath Ledger film featuring two co-stars from A Knights Tale. Very different movie though.
Troy dc -- Bloom, Bean, Pitt, Bana, Cox, Gleason, O'Toole, and Byrne; what's not to love about this expanded epic, featuring more of Sean Bean than the theatrical release?

And some movie that escapes memory just now... must not have moved me.
 
That movie had been in my Netflix queue kind of lingering, my never being quite ready to have it sent. I was quite moved by Ledger's death and it was soon after that this movie crept up to #1 on the queue through my inattention and got sent. I really was not wanting to watch Ledger so soon. A Knight's Tale is a movie that brings me much joy and I just felt such sadness at his death. But The Order came and I watched it.

Wow. It really struck me to what depths Ledger was willing to go to play a role. He hit some really deep, dark stuff there and it seemed he was almost losing himself to it. Of course, this was some of the buzz about Dark Knight... that he had immersed himself too deeply. I don't know if he did or not - whether in Dark Knight or in The Order. But it was hard to watch him play this role (in the hindsight of his death) and I did feel that maybe he had committed more of himself to his role(s) that was healthy. I knew someone like that... someone close and they had died, in part, because they had lost touch with what was concrete and solid and real. They were too much in their head and they made bad choices. So I guess I projected some of that on Ledger whether it was appropriate or not.

A Serious Man - by the Coen Brothers.. not Cohen - was filmed in St. Louis Park MN... the first suburb west of Minneapolis. I was thinking I should see it just to see how many locations I'd recognize. My son's girlfriend's father - who is a classic car collector - was approached by the filming company about possibly using one of his cars. They never got back to him, though. How's that for a brush to fame?
 
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A while back, my husband and I attended a showing of a restored print of TGTB&TU with an extra 18 minutes of footage that wasn't in the American release. The guy who did the restoration introduced the movie, told us about how he'd gone about restoring it, and answered audience questions afterwards. TGTB&TU was released in different cuts for different countries because of the violence in the movie, different requirements for running time, and so forth. He'd found the missing footage in an Italian cut of the movie with dubbed Italian dialogue, and got Clint Eastwood and Eli Wallach to reprise their roles as "Blondie" and "Tuco" and re-dub it back into English. Lee van Cleef, who played "Angel Eyes," had passed away and was replaced by a voice actor who imitated him. (Clint Eastwood was reluctant to do the job since his voice has changed with age, and suggested using his son instead!) We asked about DVD availability during the Q&A session, but the restorer didn't know if or when the restored movie would be released.

Fast forward a few years. While travelling over Thanksgiving, we stopped for lunch and gas at a truck stop. My husband was poking through a rack of DVDs when he stumbled across the DVD of the restored movie! (And for a whopping $9.99!) Of course he had to buy it.

We had a chance to watch it this weekend. I really like this movie, especially the plot twists and turns as the three try to outwit and outmaneuver each other and find the hidden gold. The Mexican standoff at the film's climax is simply riveting. But it's a very brutal movie -- more so than I remembered.

The restored print looks great. The new 18 minutes include Tuco talking with his gang in a cave, Angel Eyes wandering around a Confederate camp, and a bit more that I've forgotten. It sounds different than the rest of the film, and not just because the three actors' voices are different -- they're recorded with modern sound equipment.
 
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Harry Potter and the half blood Prince - a hit with the Twits.
House - starting to be a bit samey
Born of Hope [again] - still good
Merlin - getting exciting now
Down with love - ah, Ewan... but only with dark hair
Rock 'n' Rolla - surprisingly enjoyable, I don't normally like this sort of film, but this was alright.
Role Models - you know what you're getting from the start, but quite amusing at times.
Spooks - still implausible, still watching it. Am starting to 'get' Lucas...
 
Flight of the Conchords, season 1... Meh. I always found their stage performances to be hilarious, but the scripted HBO show doesn't really do much for me. Maybe season 2 is better?

Watchmen... totally missed this when it came out, as I didn't have any time to see movies this past year. Wow, I can see how it earned its R rating. Very violent scenes interspersed with serious, soul-searching drama. The writing took the characters places that I didn't expect them to go. While it gave me crazy dreams, I still think it was an excellent film.

Pirate Radio... kind of... fluff. There was so much more they could have done with this movie, but it came off sort of vanilla. And then just some technical things that bothered me like, some songs they played, I wasn't so sure were accurate for 1966. That and some of the dialogue they used was definitely not something that fit the time period and kept taking me out of the story. But, all that said, I still had fun watching it and really enjoyed the casting choices.
 
that my favourite episode was the one with the racist fruiterer - especially the stand-off during the credits outside the Australian embassy. I hurt myself laughing!

I've got the season 2 DVD but haven't gone beyond the second episode yet. I fear I'm underwhelmed the second time around.
 
The pilot episode of the new V TV series screened last week. It took me a good half an hour to identify the lead alien - she looks *way* different with cropped hair - and I'm so glad to see some familiar faces on screen from LOST and Firefly. But.. but... did the original TV series reveal so much so soon? Didn't it spin the suspense out, drawing people in with a vague feeling of 'wrong' instead of the new season's method of being so blinking obvious about it?

Having said that, I'll continue to watch the series to see how it plays out.

I also picked up the First Contact DVD over the weekend. It's still one of my favourite ST movies - especially with the spooky actress who plays the Borg Queen, as well as the Borg themselves (the best ST villains) - but after all these years the story seems a bit by the numbers now. Ah well.
 
My fiance chose for us to see Law Abiding Citizen at the cinema last saturday afternoon. A very good film with a huge twist at the end that I wasn't expecting. Even though I like action films and don't mind violence and gore, this is quite a man's film, as the fact that my fiance enjoyed it more than I proved!
In the evening we watched Hannibal Rising on dvd. It's quite a disturbing film, not for the faint-hearted. I had to ask my fiance to cuddle me at one point because I was scared! :D However it has an excellent script, cinematography and brilliant acting.
 
A Dog Named Christmas is one of those Hallmark-produced TV movies guaranteed to make you shed a tear or twenty. A mentally retarded young man adopts a loveable, uber cute yellow Lab from a shelter with the understanding that it’s just for the holidays. He goes on to convince many others in the community to do so as well. His father agrees to the temporary adoption with reservations, having previously been unable to fulfill his commitment to a dog he had owned long before (despite that particular situation being out of his control). He also worries about his son’s future and believes it’s important that his son learn about adhering to agreements one has made, no matter how difficult, in the face of a hard world. Will the young man’s father make him stick to their agreement to return the dog to the shelter on the 26th, or will he relent?

I’m not sure how No Country for Old Men got a Best Picture Oscar nomination, other than a few clever/wise pieces of dialogue and some good acting. Some guy finds a stash of drug money, and a psychopath comes after him and comes after him and comes after him with no resolution. Plot? What’s that? After a certain point, Ugly Troll pointed out that the psychopath was just another Terminator.

At least A Dog Named Christmas had a coherent plot and a point to make.
 
Loved that movie! I saw it just after reading the book, and I definitely agree about the acting; I was very impressed by Javier Bardem's job in playing the role of Chigurh. As far as the book goes, it wasn't my favorite of McCarthy's, but while it was rather predictable, the ending really did surprise me.

But I'm not sure that the lack of an original plot necessarily suggested the lack of a point. I think the novel was very wide open for many interpretations. I saw it as an almost apocalyptic story; there is a strong sense of utter hopelessness and despair brought about not only by Chigurh, but by the characters themselves. Chigurh goes around murdering people, but when he speaks, while McCarthy never lets him become too philosophical, he only states facts and never talks about himself, which makes him more of a messenger than an active characters. Yes, he kills people, but as he points out to the store clerk, everybody dies, and you're gambling your life every second that you choose alive, not just because you could die at any moment, but also because you make decisions every day that impact the rest of your life. Chigurh's spin on this is so morbid that it becomes almost satirical at times. It's depressing, it's apocalyptic, and it's simple, and you don't have to agree, but I do think that there is a legitimate point to the book, where a complicated or more moving plot wouldn't make the point (which, after all, is not supposed to be complicated or moving).
 
seeing Heath Ledger there, full of life, full of promise. The film highlighted just what a loss we suffered, strangers or not.

An interesting aside though, I saw Smoking Aces not long ago. The guy who plays the new Captain James T. (Chris Pine?) played an assassin; a sociopath even among assassins, he was a member of the Tremor Brothers gang. Anyway, in this role to me at least, the actor came across very much like Ledger. It was strangely comforting.
 
I watched "The Two Towers" and "Return of the King". I also watched Chronicles of Narnia late last night. It was a very fantasy filled weekend, and I loved it!

And even though it's not a movie, I watched the series finally of Monk.

I want to see "The Fantastic Mr. Fox" and "The Road" soon, but "The Road" isn't playing in any theatres where I live. I would have drive 20 miles or so just to see the movie. I don't know if I am willing to do that.
 
First, I ventured into Oscar buzzed movies:

Up In the Air - Excellent. No wonder Paramount is pushing this for Best Picture.

Precious:Based on the Novel Push By Sapphire - Very disturbing. Great acting but the content is really really shocking.

And now the bad:

Funny People - not funny and positively boooooooooooooooooooooooring once Apatow family gets the spotlight. Leslie Mann is the most grating actress ever. I couldn`t finish watching her scenes.

Carriers - for some reason, this road drama is advertised as a zombie movie. Not that there are any zombies or gore or horror. It`s less than hour and a half long apocalyptic cliche about deadly desease and a group trying to survive and doing stupid things in the process that decrease their number from 4 to less than 4.It all feels too loooong. The only horror here is thinking that more movies like this are where Chris Pine`s career would`ve gone had it not been for Star Trek.
 
From Christoper Orr's review at The New Republic. For myself, I admire the first three-fourths of the film, until the multiple endings, but prefer Fargo, which No Country somewhat echoes -- maybe I just prefer the warmer tone (ironically in a colder setting). Among the meanings of No Country I would suggest, "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity" -- but that comes from a different poem by Yeats than does the film's title.
 
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