Yes, it is June and I am posting about movies I saw as far back as January. Trying to get caught up this weekend! We shall see…
This wasn’t much of a movie, I was really surprised to see it up for awards. Sure, Angelina was pretty and Depp played befuddled nicely… But the twist at the end was SO OBVIOUS and there wasn’t all that much that was very interesting about it. I’d see it for free, on a plane maybe. But I wouldn’t go out of my way. I certainly wouldn’t pay $ for the DVD.
Yes, it is June and I am posting about movies I saw as far back as January. Trying to get caught up this weekend! We shall see…
I had just watched 1-6 on DVD as I had only seen the first couple long ago… I thought this was by far the best film. But it is also the one I wasn’t quilting through the watching of, so… I liked when they were out camping on their own.
Some derivative moments though. Maybe it’s the movies moreso than the book, but there were so many times when all I could think about was Lord of the Rings.
I still prefer the Pullman books (His Dark Materials trilogy) to these, as I have all along– especially after watching these movies. These are entertaining, but seem much more formulaic to me and the story/ideas/execution seem less original than Pullman.
Small, quiet, kinda painful (emotionally).
I feel mixed on this one. You are seeing, at the same time, the very beginning of the relationship and the very end. So you have to sorta take it on faith that the middle was…better? worthwhile? not just loving (beginning) or fighting (ending)?
There’s a small secret there, spun out very slowly, that has an almost Memento-like effect of changing how you feel about things that happened earlier…
Shot really small and intimately, the sex scenes were kinda hard to watch: I felt like I was intruding on them! As if I had just walked into the room.
I also felt like this had a lot of (unintended) similarities to Wendy & Lucy. You could almost picture this as being the same character, a few years later (or, in the flashbacks, from around the same time).
I liked it and I’m glad I saw it, but…I didn’t completely fall in love with it.
Pretty fantastic filmmaking. Helena Bonham Carter was just lovely and understated, Geoffrey Rush was compassionate and perceptive, Colin Firth had much less patience than usual and it worked so well. The costumes, the settings, the subterfuge in arriving at appointments… I liked it all alot.
I didn’t quite love the film as much as others do, though. I know it was a big moment THEN, the King’s Speech and the committing to a World War AGAIN, and the fact that all those others (particularly Wallis Simpson and the abdicator) were so enamored of Hitler, is really powerful stuff. But I just kept thinking about today, and how little a king’s speech would impact or mean to almost anyone, and how we are right now in World War III even if no one wants to ever acknowledge it or even discuss the fact that we are still at war, these many years post 9/11. I couldn’t quite keep my mind focused on seeing this as the subtle big moment that it was and kept thinking on the small moment it seems NOW.
That said, I did really enjoy it, I did need kleenex at the end, and they are all certainly Oscar-worthy performances.
DadReaction chimed in to say he’s never liked Geoffrey Rush as much as he did in this movie. Such a calm, powerful performance.
Great performances. Christian Bale really steals the show (as that character would wish to), he’s practically unrecognizable. Wahlberg is obviously a good fit for the working class boxer boy, Adams is believable, the mom and dad were great, the sisters are just perfect, especially their reactions when they’re all crowded together in a space that would normally seat maybe 2 or 3 people.
And if you just want to see a pretty predictable but very well acted boxing movie, this will fit the bill.
But I thought it felt a little tired, a little “yup I’ve seen this before”. Not worth the hype.
There were some really funny moments in this movie (OMG the scene in the car, with the song. YES) and Seth Rogen and whoever played Kato had some great chemistry (that pseudo we’re in a relationship fighting between friends is often hilarious).
But I was extremely MEH on the 3D — I’m not sure what they thought it would be good for? — and I got very tired of Rogen’s shtick by the end of the movie. I would not have been as forgiving as Kato, after how he acted for about the last 45 minutes of the flick. Annoying.
If you are a huge Rogen fan, however, you will likely enjoy this just fine.
I thought Natalie Portman was really great and man I looooove ballet. I have always loved ballet. (I was a ballerina for much of childhood.)
But as I’ve been telling people all week Black Swan:ballet::The Wrestler: wrestling. [Same director, in case you weren’t aware.] In many, MANY ways, this is the same movie all over again. And while I love ballet, I HATED THE WRESTLER. Hated.
Aronofsky seems stuck on this entirely FALSE proposition that in order to really truly excel at your art (whatever that is, even wrestling) one must commit to the point of suicide via your art. Not only do I think that’s an entirely erroneous point of view, I think it’s a dangerous one to be promoting.
The trope of “being too technically perfect but unable to show emotion” is indeed a true one in ballet, but it’s also a very tired out, been there done that, trope in cinema, particularly when it comes to females. And the whole “she has to get a little crazy sexually in order to show emotion” stereotype also bores me to pieces. Not true, stupid, irritating.
The REAL story in this movie, and the one that should have been explored, is the relationship with the mother. A movie on that situation might have been truly interesting and the performances in those scenes were far more interesting than the rest of the movie.
I should say it is really effective as a psychological thriller. Some great shocks to the system — when you know who comes to the door to say “you were great” and Portman thinks that person is you know what? Yeah, that was great. When you know who does you know what in the hospital? WOAH.
But none of that changes how I felt overall.
Really fantastic. Bridges blows the top off the barn, Damon is HILARIOUS, the girl is great, Brolin didn’t even annoy me to his usual extent. The setting is wonderful, GOD I LOVE WESTERNS (hey! I grew up on this stuff!).
This one’ll win a lot of awards and it does indeed deserve it.
Is it just me, though, or is Jeff Bridges not totally channeling Kris Kristofferson (both here AND in his role in Crazy Heart)? In that first scene, where you hear the drawl before you see him… Wow. (Not to take anything away from Bridges’ amazing performances.)
DadReaction chimed in to say that while he also loved the movie, it made him go back and re-read the book and the snake pit scene is a LOT WORSE in the book. He even had a hard time turning the pages! You’ve been warned!
I really (REALLY) liked this movie. I thought it was beautifully filmed and acted and got its point across really poignantly.
And then I got in the elevator with a ton of people who were in the same theater as me and they all HATED it.
Yes, it is really REALLY, I mean REALLY, slowly paced. One might call it glacially so. There were a couple times when I did find myself wondering “So is the camera (and the actors in the scene as well!) not going to move for an entire….song? Should I be watching the edges, is someone going to jump into the frame?” But hello, it’s Sofia Coppola, what are you expecting? This isn’t a Michael Bay film.
The film stock is all faded and dusty and super vignettey around the edges — I kept wondering if they had to treat it to achieve that effect or if they found some boxes of film that expired in the ’70s in an old warehouse and used that — and it just serves to reinforce the point.
Remember that horrific (not that I saw it and I certainly hope you didn’t see it) movie my former boyfriend Joaquin Phoenix and Casey Affleck made last year about the disintegration of celebrity and how empty and shallow that life is? Yeah, this film tells that story in a very different (and actually artistic) way. All the booze and drugs and access to ladies doesn’t make for a LIFE.
Also the ending is completely open-ended, you have to decide how you’re going to take it, and where you think he is.
Stephen Dorff is surprisingly great. (Not in that I thought he was bad previously but in that he’s never been on my radar as someone particularly good.)
Really depressing because it’s all true. Everyone knew there were no WMDS; Bush et his cronies just did not want to hear that and got rid of anyone who insisted on telling them that. Everyone that NEEDS to see this (and to see all this blatantly shown) is exactly the everyone that would never go to this movie anyway. Which is sad.
This was pretty powerfully done, good performances all around (Sam Shepherd has just a bit role but totally nails it, of course).
I also really liked that they included clips of the real Plame in the credits.
But I never quite believed them as a couple. It seemed like they styled Penn older than he is and Watts younger than she is or should be for the role (esp after seeing Plame in the credits) and it annoyed me a little. (Not that I didn’t think they were both v. good, I just occasionally had a “I’m not really believing them as a couple” moment.)
Note that my fellow moviegoer completely disagreed with me, loved their chemistry and loved the movie.