Re: Movies at Home

naughty zoot Tue Jul 03, 2012 11:48 pm

I'm trying to watch My Week With Marilyn but Michelle Williams' voice/accent is very irksome.

inversed Wed Jul 04, 2012 12:15 pm

21 Jump Street was so much funnier than I expected it to be. Who knew Channing Tatum was so good at comedy?

Cynara Wed Jul 04, 2012 1:05 pm

Have you ever seen She's the Man? It is legitimately hilarious (really) and he is awesome. He really shouldn't do drama ever again.

katesti Wed Jul 04, 2012 3:31 pm

Yes yes yes on Channing Tatum's hilarity! We watched Haywire last night, which was not particularly good, and I thought it suffered from a serious lack of humor (among other things). Channing Tatum could have helped significantly, had they let him.

Putli Bai Wed Jul 04, 2012 4:18 pm

naughty zoot wrote:I'm trying to watch My Week With Marilyn but Michelle Williams' voice/accent is very irksome.

I've had that movie sitting here for a few weeks in its little red envelope and haven't been able to summon up the enthusiasm to watch it.

Kiran Wed Jul 04, 2012 5:45 pm

Channing Tatum also did an awesome parody of Dirty Dancing with Charlene Yi. I would youtube it, its fabulous.

ulkis Thu Jul 05, 2012 7:39 pm

21 Jump Street was so much funnier than I expected it to be. Who knew Channing Tatum was so good at comedy?

Yeah, I watched it last night because the people I was with rented it and I thought it was really funny. I didn't even think it would be horrible per se, it just didn't even really register with me. Glad I saw it.

also watched a bit of "Water with Elephants." Good, but nothing special.

Putli Bai Sun Jul 08, 2012 5:02 pm

Putli Bai wrote:
naughty zoot wrote:I'm trying to watch My Week With Marilyn but Michelle Williams' voice/accent is very irksome.
I've had that movie sitting here for a few weeks in its little red envelope and haven't been able to summon up the enthusiasm to watch it.

Quoting myself here - I finally watched it last night. Michelle Williams' voice didn't bug so much, but I did find Marilyn unsympathetic, at least for the most part. The characters in the movie were all tripping over themselves at her awesomeness, and I was all "God, woman, suck it up and go to work."

sagitare Sun Jul 15, 2012 10:35 pm

The Ides of March which, while very good, didn't seem to be quite the movie I was expecting. I guess I had it just a bit too hyped in my mind and at the end I felt somewhat "So, that's it then?" Ryan Gosling was great, and I quite liked Clooney's direction. As a whole, though, it just felt a little weak around the edges.

Unlucky Bear Sun Jul 15, 2012 10:53 pm

My husband was gone all weekend so I took the opportunity to clean out my Netflix queue. I rewatched a couple of old favorites, like Master & Commander (favorite) and The Patriot (Jason Isaacs being hot and evil).

I watched:

The Secret of Kells: LOVED this. The animation was so beautiful and now I want to get a white cat with mismatched eyes named Pangur Ban.

The Last of the Mohicans: This movie was SO GOOD. I have never gotten the hotness of DDL before this. Now I understand.

Michael Collins: This was a delightful tale of the love between Liam Neeson and Aidan Quinn before that homewrecker Julia Roberts shows up. There were also some politics involved. Snape was there.

Netflix kept recommending All Dogs Go to Heaven to me, and....no. I have a very strong recollection of watching that movie when I was 6 or 7 and sobbing my eyes out at the end while my parents laughed at me.

laddical Sun Jul 15, 2012 11:04 pm

Unlucky Bear wrote:Netflix kept recommending All Dogs Go to Heaven to me, and....no. I have a very strong recollection of watching that movie when I was 6 or 7 and sobbing my eyes out at the end while my parents laughed at me.

It's not a particularly good movie, either. Tvtropes (I won't link to it) has a category called "Big Lipped Alligator Moment" for whackadoo-out-of-nowhere scenes that have nothing to do with the plot named for this movie.

It came out before The Land Before Time became a direct-to-video juggernaut, but this was pretty much the movie that killed Don Bluth for me as some kind of "heir to Disney". He had something going with The Secret of NIMH and An American Tail (and while they weren't movies, I have a soft-spot for the Dragon's Lair arcade games) and then this movie happened just as Disney was kicking into its renaissance and all Bluth ever did after that was direct-to-video sequels. Except for Anastasia, which was released theatrically and probably shouldn't have been (awesome soundtrack aside - the movie itself sucked).

Kiran Sun Jul 15, 2012 11:07 pm

Anastasia was FANTASTIC and I won't hear anything against it. I have so much irrational love for that movie. And I genuinely believe its pretty decent, despite the fact that it really does pervert history, but I just consider it more a remake of the 1950s movie.

Miss Moneypenny Sun Jul 15, 2012 11:11 pm

The Secret of Kells: LOVED this. The animation was so beautiful and now I want to get a white cat with mismatched eyes named Pangur Ban.

Did they explain the name? If not, that's a very cute Medieval Lit inside joke. (If they didn't, I will.)

laddical Sun Jul 15, 2012 11:11 pm

I think my problems were all on the Rasputin side of things. If they had stuck to actually being a remake of the 1950s movie and not had Rasputin and Bartok I probably would feel much, much different about it.

Which is odd, since the song that still gets stuck in my head to this day, decades after I last listened to the soundtrack album, is Rasputin's. It's a great number. It just feels like it comes from a completely different show than the whole rest of the movie.

Unlucky Bear Sun Jul 15, 2012 11:30 pm

Well, I knew I had heard the name before, so I looked it up on IMDB and was reminded of the poem. Apparently someone recites the poem in Gaelic over the closing credits.

ulkis Mon Jul 16, 2012 3:16 pm

Anastasia was FANTASTIC and I won't hear anything against it. I have so much irrational love for that movie. And I genuinely believe its pretty decent, despite the fact that it really does pervert history, but I just consider it more a remake of the 1950s movie..

I was 13 when it came out, and already in my "ugh I am too old for Disney now" phase (other victims of this phase were "Hunchback" and "Mulan") and also I already had a "any cartoon that isn't Disney isn't good" bias so it took me years to finally see it. I think I only decided to see it once I heard a version of "Once Upon a December". I do think it's an okay story/movie. Animation is kinda weird though, Dimitri and Anastasia look slighly fug.

I did skip all the Rasputin stuff. I still haven't watched the Gargoyle song in Hunchback either. I just can't, it's too cheesy/weird.

QueenSix Sat Jul 21, 2012 7:47 am

Screenclick sent me The Next Three Days with Russell Crowe and Elizabeth Banks. God, it went on forever and was just not good. The performances were fine and all that but the film was just hard to take. It went from being a portrait of one man's struggle with life while his wife languishes in prison, to him becoming a kick ass hardened criminal in a few scenes. I would have turned it off half way through, but my mother was watching it with me and she wanted closure.

sen3 Sun Jul 22, 2012 10:29 am

Mainlined The Bourne Trilogy on bluray. These movies are just so cool. Perfect way to pass time indoors during the Hottest Summer EVER. I'm ready for the new one!

Also watch Peter Pan (2003) for the billionth time. I have to just finally admit that it is one of the most satisfying, coming of age and romantic movies I've ever seen.

nikita Sun Jul 22, 2012 11:42 am

21 Jump Street. Good lord, that was a hilarious movie. I hope they make a sequel.

Spoiler:

sagitare Sun Jul 22, 2012 3:32 pm

Drive with Ryan Gosling - LOVED IT. I thought it was so well filmed and paced. Some of the shots were just gorgeous, to be honest, and I really liked that when there was violent actions they were short and to the point, not scenes that went on and on just for the sake of it. When

Spoiler:

There's also a beautiful moment in an elevator with Ryan and Carey, and the way it was done you really don't know if it actually happened or if it was something Ryan's character imagined happening, you know?

I can't imagine anyone but Ryan being able to pull of that character because he's so good at being able to pull back, to stop, to just be *still*. I think that's such a strength in an actor - to know when to wait, to be quiet, instead of filling every second and every bit of space with dialogue or movement. And this character is all about that so I thought he was such an excellent choice.

I tell you what, though - talk about a trailer that *completely* misrepresented the actual movie. I remember reading complaints about that when it came out and thought, "Well geez, how different could it be?" Wow, a *lot* different. In this case, though, it worked out well for me because I loved what the movie was instead of what it was advertised as, i.e. an actiony/car chase/shoot 'em up type of movie.

wenchsenior Tue Jul 31, 2012 3:17 pm

sagitare wrote:X-Men: First Class which...was not as good as I was expecting. The whole thing seemed to be just small, short scenes edited together. Nearly the first hour was spent jumping around to various places and briefly meeting different mutants. When they finally come together at the CIA you think 'aha, *now* something's going to happen!' but kind of doesn't? I guess I felt there should have been some sense of urgency at times but there didn't seem to be anything. Like when they're preparing to stop the whole Cuban missile crisis thing, everyone just seemed so laid back the night before, like they were going on a road trip to the beach or something. The weirdest part was when Shaw and his band basically destroy the compound and kill a whole lot of people to get at the young mutants...and then seem fine when only one of them agree to come with him. Like, this big build up, big fight scenes, etc. etc., and then he spends two minutes on his pitch and is satisfied when the chick with the wings joins him. That seemed really WTF to me.

So yeah, the whole thing was just oddly paced. McAvoy and Fassbender, however, were terrific. I wish the movie would have spent a lot more time with them. Their scenes had real strength and interest. The other part I liked were those scenes that dealt with the position of the mutants vis a vis the rest of humanity, and the whole backstory to Magneto, why he and Charles split etc.

January Jones was terrible.

The Wolverine bit was hilarious.

It feels lame to have nothing to add. But: what you said. I have nothing to add. More McAvoy and Fassbender scenes were needed!

wenchsenior Tue Jul 31, 2012 3:20 pm

blixie wrote:I thought John Carter was a really well executed, and fun sci-fi family movie with a couple of wonderful female characters that I really appreciated. I loved that the soundtrack so frequently and unabashedly recalled Indiana Jones and I felt like half the cast of Rome was in it too.

We also like John Carter at my house, though I thought it was hilarious how Lynn Collins, who is actually a really good and underused actress, had to do all the heavy lifting in every scene with Tayler whatisname, who was pretty bad. It was especially funny how hard she sold all her scenes, given her awesome bikini-princess outfits.

wenchsenior Tue Jul 31, 2012 3:25 pm

Agent Sculder wrote:Today I had myself a romantic movie marathon, with all the movies based on favorite books: Jane Eyre (the miniseries with Ruth Wilson & Toby Stephens), Persuasion (Amanda Root & Ciaran Hinds), Emma (Gwyneth Paltrow & Jeremy Northam), and lastly but not least Bridget Jones' Diary. I had not watched a couple of them in a while, but by the end I remembered why these are among my go to movies any time I need a pick me up.

Now if I could only find myself a man that is combination of all the guys in those books, I'd be all set . . . .

Funnily enough, I just watched the new version of Jane Eyre, which was decent, and beautifully shot, and had a gorgeous score, but which suffered as usual from being essentially just a mad Cliff Notes dash from one dramatic scene to the next. That story really needs the miniseries format to work, IMO. So the next day, I too, rewatched the BBC one. It is SO DAMN GOOD.

ActonBell Tue Jul 31, 2012 3:55 pm

Ooh, I will have to watch the BBC version. I really liked the film version -- Fassbender made a great Rochester and I liked how atmospheric it was -- but agree that there were far too many plot points to cram in in the amount of time they had.

wenchsenior Tue Jul 31, 2012 4:12 pm

ActonBell wrote:Ooh, I will have to watch the BBC version. I really liked the film version -- Fassbender made a great Rochester and I liked how atmospheric it was -- but agree that there were far too many plot points to cram in in the amount of time they had.

I liked Fassbender too, and I liked Mia ? ok, but the problem with the film versions is that they usually lose all the humor. I mean, a poorly cast Rochester will just be broody and dour, but a well cast one, with a longer script to work with, will usually bring out the humor and the sort of sardonic self-awareness. This movie version was missing the 'zippiness' of the Jane/Rochester interactions. Toby Stephens and Ruth Wilson have so much chemistry, and are just so FUN in a lot of scenes in the BBC version. It rocks.

However, in the movie version, I did like that Fassbender periodically gave off this subtley rapacious vibe. It emphasized the power difference and the age difference, and created the impression that Jane was walking a potentially fine line...because this version is very condensed and things move so fast, she could really be risking her virtue and future. When Judy Dench's housekeeper suggests that she guard herself, it really carries more weight than in most versions. Also, Fassbender was really good in the scene where Jane leaves him. That was one of the few scenes that I wished they'd kept more faithful to the book in the BBC version.

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