So...Movie...Last One You Saw...Go. Vol XXII

I have to disagree. It's so new still, but for me, it may be the most underrated animated movie in the last 15-20 years. I found it to be note-perfect brilliant.

 

thanks for killing the movie

 

I agree completely. I wasnt nearly as engaging as I wanted it to be. It didnt keep my attention and it definitely didnt keep my kids attention and they usually key in on good children's movies.

It wasnt bad but it could have been much, much better.

 

Really? I've gotten in trouble for that before. Just delete my quote from your post.

 

The Silencers (1966)

Dean Martin in a spoof of James Bond that was the basis of the Austin Powers movies. Matt Helm is a government opposite-of-secret agent who is brought out of semi-retirement to destroy the terrorist organization Big O which has the following plan:

1) Take over US missile test and crash it into US nuclear test, causing nuclear devastation.
2) Twist resulting arguments between US and USSR to bring about World War III.
3) ???
4) Profit.

This movie oozes 60's. It reminds you of an era when people didn't wear seatbelts when driving, and when women with big hair poured liqueur for her man... when driving. The movie is really light and has some good humor, but it is incredibly slow and heavily influenced by nightclub culture. This could be edited down to a cracking 30-minute story.

 

Lots of fun, with a ton of great cameos.

 

another snow day, another movie:



Devil - A surprisingly but refreshingly short flick about the devil being among 5 people stuck in an elevator... I thought it worked, though i think it would've worked better had i seen it at night in a darkened room instead of the bright living room at noontime...

 

Easy A

Most of it was what ever, but I like Emma Stone and her family. Couldnt stop laughing when the dad asked the son where he was from

 

I'm sorry, but if the devil is so weak that he can get stuck in an elevator just like the rest of us, I don't think there's much reason to be afraid of him.

 

pretty sure he chose to be in that environment, so as to close in on his target... he left when he felt like leaving...

 

Just watched it myself. Liked it.

 

Gantz (ガンツ) [2011]

Kei and Kato are two young men waiting for a train in a subway station. They knew each other in grade school, but have since gone their separate ways. Then a drunk falls into the subway tracks. They climb down and push him out. They are then run over by the subway train and die. The end.

Except that they then appear in a Tokyo apartment with other people that have just died. The only thing in the apartment is a black sphere. Which then opens up to reveal a large cache of sci-fi combat equipment. The sphere ("Gantz") then gives them far too little information on their assassination mission, sends them off in a slow and disturbing version of the Star Trek transporter, and gives them a game score when they come back. If they come back. They can then resume their lives until Gantz calls them for another mission.

This movie is only the first half of the story - part two will be released this spring. The movie is based on the wildly popular (both in Japan and in the US) Gantz manga. As the manga is at 29 volumes in Japan and not done yet and the movies are 4 hours combined, clearly some things need to be cut. That was mostly in the action scenes - the number of people teleported into the room have been cut and the number of bad guys in each mission have been reduced. The movie roughly corresponds to the first three missions in the manga and the TV series. Some things are switched around a little - we get a couple characters in the movie that we don't see in the manga until far later.

So mostly we see Kei (and a little Kato) outside of the missions living their lives with the crushing realization that everything is different but no one outside the select knows or can know. The manga Kei is athletic and more confident, and takes to the new reality quickly, but movie Kei is so slight and retiring that I thought they picked the wrong actor for the role until the final mission, when he turns things around mentally and seems to gain 3 inches.

But that doesn't mean the action isn't there - it is and it looks fantastic and convincing. The real parts perfectly fit the CGI parts so much that you can't tell where the two meet. I'm still not sure how much, if any, of the bad guys were real. It's just that the action scenes are so different in feel to western movies. If Americans were given a Gantz mission, they would go out shooting first and asking questions never, but the Japanese in the movie were frozen in inaction much of the time. This is part of the manga, but in the manga you can breeze through those parts (which makes Gantz the fastest read in all of paperdom) while you are stuck in the movie almost to the point of frustration.

The notable gore of the manga is here, but the missions all take place in barely lit darkness so you don't see that much. Still a few exploding heads, though. It was dubbed in English, which is good for the action scenes, but some of the secondary characters were way overplayed according to type. I prefer subtitles.

I'm sorry I keep comparing the movie to the manga, but the manga is so iconic I just can't help it. You don't need to know the manga to enjoy the movie - in fact, it might help a little not to have preconceptions.

It didn't help that the theater I watched the movie in for this one-night-only event was geek central. I swear those people made me look like The Fonz. We got a running commentary by people who probably think 4chan is the height of culture and who laugh hysterically at anything (Person dying? hilarious! Girl spilling out her feelings? hilarious! Cityscape serving as a segue between scenes? hilarious!). I should've given those dweebs wedgies.

 

Highly recommend "The Fall".

It's about a 1920's stuntman being treated in a hospital where he meets a fellow patient, a young girl who he tells a story to in order for her to help him out in return. Very well put together and some of the visuals are brilliant.

 

Salt



Objectively speaking, it's a well-made thriller. The problem is that we have seen it already, several times over even. It borrows elements from Enemy of the state, the Fugitive, Bourne Identity, ... Only it's inferior to all of those movies.

And I have to talk about Jolie. She has lost so much weight that she hardly looks like the same person. With how she looked in this movie fresh in my mind, I just checked the trailer to the first Tomb Raider movie and it is truly hard to believe it's the same actress. She looks more like the "corpse bride" than her former self.

The supporting cast is good though.

 

She's not aging well at all. There's a photo from the GG of her and Catherine Zeta Jones standing next to each other, and the comparison is dramatic. There's no way you'd guess that CZJ has about 7 years on Jolie.

 

And that is if you believe CZJ's official age.

 

Shutter Island: Well worth the rental. They did a good job keeping up the suspense and doubt about what's really happening on the island.



Demolition Man: Still has it.

 

Iron Man 2 (2010)

Entertaining, but nothing special. Thought the villian was weak in motivation and execution. And it seemed as if RDJ was just going through the motions - he seemed much more involved with the role the first time.





When in Rome (2010)

Thought the leads where charismatic, but the plot, script, etc. was horrendous.

 

It seems to be anorexia, not age.

 

I'm just going to pop on with the best films I've seen since I last posted in this thread, which has been a LONG time.



The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes by Bill Wilder

I'm not a big Wilder fan and have often claimed he never made a great movie. Oh man was I wrong.

 

The Right Stuff - I wish the movie art showed Yeager, too. Good film.

EDIT: here's another with Yeager too.

 

This. Jolie was stunning in Tomb Raider, but the past few years she's really lost alot of weight, its unattractive. She's really really gaunt.

just watched Jurassic Park for the first time in years, it's still magical considering I was 5 years old when it first came out. i saw it as a 8 year old on VHS, and it was a great experience.

I can only imagine what it was like seeing it in theatres for the first time! Some of its special effects look more convincing then some of the effects used today.

 

The Fountain (2006). If there was a story there, I think I missed it. Was there a point anyway? Sure anyone with some training could do nice visuals on a relatively low budget.