Movies at Home

Touche, Miss Moneypenny, hee!

We watched The Queen of Versailles last night. It was so uncomfortable at times - the older son talking about his (non)relationship with his dad, David's utter contempt for Jackie, the "mooches" at the time-share seminars, the poor animals everywhere. *shudder* I really wanted to feel sorry for Jackie, but I can't help but feel she chose a life of willful ignorance when she married that jackass and set herself up for this bullshit. I mostly just felt sorry for the kids (though the oldest daughter, Victoria, seemed like she was figuring it out), the animals (the poor lizard!), and the nannies.

Watching a ton of stuff now that I have Roku set up.

Beasts of the Southern Wild seeing Hushpuppy, Wink and The Bathtub so soon after Les Miserables, it felt weirdly like a modern magical realism take on similar themes.

Detachment which was very flawed and yet still really good? Tony Kaye is very talented, and Brody gives a nice performance.

Rampart excellent character study of a completely horrible yet still sort of compelling human being. I know there are a lot of great lead actor parts this year (there are always such a dearth really amirite) but I think Woody being left out completely in Award season would be a major crime.

Killer Joe OMG it was awful, amazing, hilarious, gruesome, and is in your face crazy from the word go till the over top ending that features

Spoiler:

. There is a total Wooderson-esqe moment that I hated myself for loving so much. Word of caution if you have pretty much any triggers about....anything. Don't watch this movie, it earned the shit out of it's NC-17.

blixie wrote:Aww, I LOVE Stake Land I wish more people would watch it. Sean Nelson is in it, that kid is still an A+ actor, and his lack of work as an adult annoys me. I found it weirdly life affirming, and it had an amazing amount of realism for what was essentially a zombie apocolypse, so much better than the Walking Dead. Also it's score was entirely reminiscent of Serenity. Um, yeah I love the movie, and it's totes on my Christmas List to own.

This was a GREAT recommendation, thank you. Connor Paolo was terrific in this; I like that he has the trick of being a quiet actor.

I agree with you totally about Rampart but it came out in 2011, so its not eligible this year. I think Woody did get a couple of award noms for it (Independent Spirit? I think). Its by the same director who did the Messenger and he really does create some amazing roles for him.

Ah I wasn't sure, I thought it got released in February, still wish he would have got more talk than he did.

This was a GREAT recommendation, thank you. Connor Paolo was terrific in this; I like that he has the trick of being a quiet actor.

Yeah I've loved CP since he was Starr's adorable Hobbit boyfriend Travis, on OLTL. He's been so wasted on GG and Revenge, but I think his height probably kills him when he goes out for movies.

My Week With Marilyn was just meh. Michelle Williams was superb for sure, but the story was flimsy and uninteresting.

Also Jeff, Who Lives at Home was funny but also ridiculous. My eye-rolls never stopped.

I lasted about 40 minutes into Looper and realized A) I didn't give two shits about any of these people, and B) I was bored out of my skull.

I love JGL and think the premise sounds excellent, but I can't get over how distracting his face is with all the prosthetics so I haven't been able to make myself watch it.

He looks like a video game version of JGL.

I liked the premise, too, and was surprised at my reaction. Maybe I just wasn't in the right mood.

Nah. It was a bad movie. I think I ranted about it when it came out. It's time travel rules make no sense at all and yeah... the characters were completely void of personality. To hear so many people gush about it being "brainy" sci-fi makes me feel smashy.

I really liked it. It happens, people have different taste. I did think it was interesting and intelligent.

Eh, I was being hyperbolic with the "smashy" comment. I'm certainly not about to make a thing about it with anyone. But I don't hate many movies that I see - I tend to know enough about them beforehand to avoid ones I know I'm just not going to like at all. But Looper is one I just haaaaaaaaaaate.

I think we all have films like that. Mine is The Ugly Truth.

I was only stating I liked it in case Wtd was thinking about watching it or if Mri tried a rewatch. I've talked to a few people and they all seemed to have vastly differing opinions on that film. I enjoy Rian Johnson though. I quite liked Brick as well but again, that was another love it/hate it film.

I just finished watching We Are Legion, the documentary about the hacktivism group known as the Anonymous. It was really informative, and I was fascinated learning about the group's origins from trolling on 4chan to their recent exploits with bringing down Visa/Mastercard/Paypal for the WikiLeaks thing.

Another doc I just watched is about punk band members growing up and becoming fathers. It's called The Other F Word, and it was really heart-warming and also pretty sad. To hear about so many guys being abandoned by their dads and wanting to make up for that when they had their own kids really touched my heart. Flea just about killed me when he's there wiping away tears and talking about how his kids gave him a true purpose. I also kinda have a crush on Jim Lindberg from Pennywise after watching that movie, too. Not only is he good-looking, but he's such a dedicated dad and seeing him struggle to balance a crazy long international tour with his fatherhood duties just turned me to mush.

It happens, people have different taste.

Agreed I watched Looper last night and liked it a lot. I love time travel shit especially when the movie says up front I'm not gonna sit here explaining time travel shit to you. Hee. The basics of it seemed as consistent as they were in Back to the Future,12 Monkeys, and Terminator or even My Science Project. It felt like a mash up of those movies themes with Wanted/Minority Report, while not feeling like a rip off of any of them. The characters were on the thin side, but this was the rare instance where I thought the plot and the actors really made up for light characterization, and at root it was scifi action movie.

I will say JGL did look Uncanny Valleyish and I'm glad to know it wasn't just contacts but prosthetics too. I'm like he looks so different, still hot, but in a really different way!

Looper got nominated for a 2013 Writers Guild Award for Best Original Screenplay. I haven't seen it myself but people I know who've seen it either liked it or hated it. I will watch it though when it's out on DVD.

I saw it two nights ago, I loved it. I thought, 'thank you, Rian Johnson for making a real science fiction movie. Not about chasing cars, things going 'splodey, or massive and incredibly detailed robots that are only giant mushes of digital noise in my field of view.'

I haven't seen Looper, but maybe they should have had Keanu play the adult version of JGL so there would have been less of a need for prosthetics?

I just watched - well, in one case, tried to watch -- three movies I brought home from the library over winter break:

Arthur Christmas, which was cute but not something I'd put on my must-watch list at future Christmastimes.

Dark Shadows, FINALLY. Given my love of the original goofy soap opera, I'd put off seeing this in the theater when the trailer turned me off to it. After seeing it, I don't even know what to say. It was sort of...all over the place, I guess. A bit schizophrenic in that sometimes it seemed to be fairly serious and other times just straight-out campy. I didn't HAAATE it, but I didn't much like it either. And to be honest, I didn't think Johnny Depp worked at all as Barnabas Collins. On the bright side, though, it was so cool to see Jonathan Frid (the original Barnabas), Lara Parker (Angelique), Kathryn Leigh Scott (Maggie), and David Selby (Quentin) show up at the door as party guests! That was a nice nod to the original, and sweet given that Jonathan Frid passed away soon after that.

John Carter. Well, this is the one I tried to watch. I got bored almost immediately and made it through maybe 20 minutes before I hit the eject and gave up.

Watched We Need to Talk About Kevin first thing this morning and man. That was hard. Tilda Swinton was amazing (as usual), but I think the structure and tone of the film were even more powerful in adding to the sense of dread and inevitability. With a different score and a few changes in the direction, this could have easily been a horror movie, but the fact that there weren't any jump cuts or screaming scenes made it that much more terrifying.

I watched Little Birds last night, and mostly liked it. It's the guy's first movie, and it was a little aimless in parts I guess, with a cliche or two, but there aren't a lot of buddy movies about two teenage girls, the performances were good, and also? I would have forgiven the movie anything because of the glorious cinematography/locations that I wanted to eat. Beautiful desolation.

So I watched two tales of infidelity:

Take This Waltz which I loved in SPITE of Luke Kirby's hipster rikshawing and skinny manpris, and a weird unnecessary last 20 minutes. Michelle Williams is such a wonderful actress and Polly did a nice job making you understand

Spoiler:

But still, costumers, please it's a special man indeed who can overcome the maligning of the manpris.

Deep Blue Sea which was sad, and super gorgeous, but kind of remote.

We watched Deep Blue Sea over the weekend. Remote is a very good word for it, but then I felt like all of the main characters were remote. Perhaps that was part of the point, given the time period.

Roger Ebert commented on the drabness of the sets and the drabness of everyone's clothes. That said, damn Rachel Weisz is gorgeous.

mrinsouciance wrote:We watched Deep Blue Sea over the weekend. Remote is a very good word for it, but then I felt like all of the main characters were remote. Perhaps that was part of the point, given the time period.

Roger Ebert commented on the drabness of the sets and the drabness of everyone's clothes. That said, damn Rachel Weisz is gorgeous.

I was unimpressed with Deep Blue Sea. I felt like I was missing a big chunk of the story. I mean, I kinda get why

Spoiler:

I chased it with Bernie, which I liked far more than I expected to, especially since Jack Black usually finds my last nerve.

I think it helped that he wasn't so Jack-Black-y in this one.

blixie wrote:Deep Blue Sea which was sad, and super gorgeous, but kind of remote.

Yup, for a second there I totally thought you were talking about the shark movie.