Movies at Home

Because I like to be current: I just finally watched The Prestige. My sisters and I do a movie marathon every year after Christmas, and our theme this year was "mysteries," and we randomly chose this one but didn't get around to watching it. I was interested, though, and got it from Netflix, and it's been hanging around my house for like a month and a half, and I finally watched it tonight.

I think this came out at the same time as the other magician movie, whose name I don't remember. The whole time I thought it had Jessica Biel in it, but that must be the other one. Didn't know it was directed by Christopher Nolan. If I had, I would have sought it out sooner as Memento is basically my favorite movie. I really liked it. Right up my alley. Good stuff.

Now I can return it. Interestingly enough, I had requested it from Netflix, and it didn't show up for a week, and finally I did "report a problem" and said it was lost, and they sent me another one. I got two of them, on the same day. Weird.

Christopher Nolan. I'm into it. Maybe I should finally see Batman.

Instant Monkeys wrote:I think this came out at the same time as the other magician movie, whose name I don't remember. The whole time I thought it had Jessica Biel in it, but that must be the other one.

The movie you can't remember is The Illusionist.  That's with Edward Norton in title role, and Jessica Biel is indeed in that one.  At the time, I remember I went to see it in the movie theaters because I was more interested in it (it's more of a love story) than the dueling magicians movie.  I think it's actually pretty good.  The Prestige is also good, but I found the whole reveal at the end rather dumb.

Since I generally prefer magicians and cracked-out plot twists to love stories I probably picked the right one then, hee. But I should see the other one too for completist reasons.

Not sure where to put this, but saw Snowpiercer last night. I thought it was ok (very ambitious scope, did not pull off execution). My husband loved it. We're both fans of Bong Joon Ho's other movies. On the internet, looks like audience reaction was pretty divided into the this-is-a-masterpiece and this-movie-is-ugh categories.

We watched Identity Thief last week. What a piece of shit that was.

We also rented Gravity as well, and as I suspected I found it very boring until the last fifteen minutes or so.

Disappointing, because I was hoping to convince my husband to watch The Heat if/when it comes to our cable system, but now I don't know if he'll want to.

Identity Thief is just so bad. I actually felt physical pain watching that movie. Those characters had zero redeeming qualities. The Heat, however, is delightful. Your husband should not hold Identity Thief against The Heat.

Good to know!

I was really surprised by Frozen. I mean, I'd heard great things about it, but I am just so happy that the true love that saved the day was

Spoiler:

Between this and Brave, I'm hoping Disney is realizing that it's not 1950 anymore and little girls need to do more than moon over a guy.

Some of the songs were superfluous, as was Olaf, but I can see why everybody's singing Let It Go.

I have to say, whenever I hear "In Summer", I start laughing and can't stop. Olaf wins just for that song.

I thought I was going to hate Olaf but I think he's my favorite character. I can't even describe it. "It's like a little baby unicorn!"

The trolls, eh...not so fond of them.

"Winter's a good time to stay in and cuddle, but put me in summer and I'll be a ..... HAPPY SNOWMAN!" makes me laugh every time. I also thought I was going to hate Olaf, but I found him utterly charming.

I think it's interesting that this is regularly referred to as the best Disney movie since Lion King, and to me it's the most feminine movie they've ever done. You can really tell that it has the writing and directing influence of a woman. Not just because the "true love" was between family, but because Elsa's storyline is all about insecurity, disliking part of yourself, hiding parts of your life from your family. I'm sure countless young women with eating disorders, depression, etc can overly relate. Also just as someone who grew up with sisters, the relationship rung incredibly true. (I know some people complain that everyone is making so much of the sister relationship when Lilo and Stitch had a sister relationship, but that was a very different, surrogate mother-large age difference relationship.)

Because I apparently like to keep the movies I watch on the weekend within a theme (a couple weekends ago I had an Oscars 2014 weekend), this weekend I watched the entire Man With No Name Trilogy. I had certainly seen The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly before, but the other two (A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More) I had never watched in their entirety. It's really interesting that while the movies basically have a "western" setting, they're very much atypical westerns, at least they were at the time they were made. I think what I liked about them best was the fact the movies are basically absent all the cliches in most westerns: the good and righteous sheriff/marshall, hookers with hearts of gold, or cringeworthy depictions of Native Americans. Instead, the fist film basically created the whole genre of antihero westerns basically on the force of Clint Eastwood's star power.

And make no mistake, the reason the movies work is pretty much all on Clint (although the soundtracks are FANTASTIC). If you've ever watched him and the character he played on Rawhide, it's kind of amazing that he made A Fistful of Dollars while on summer hiatus. Rowdy Yates, he ain't. The character just exudes cool and badassery from the moment he appears on screen, and you just can't take your eyes off him. It probably helps that Clint Eastwood was crazy hot in the mid 60s through the 70s. I mean, I don't think any man has ever, or ever will, rock a poncho like that.

Honestly, the hardest thing about watching the movies is the super obvious dubbing. I found out later the movies were basically shot without sound, and then all the dialogue was re-recorded, which makes sense, but even sometimes the English speakers lines don't match up. But it's not hard to get past that and just enjoy the story.

If you've never seen them, they're well worth the 7 hours or so it takes to get through them. They're all streaming in Netflix at the moment too. Oh, and a fun fact: The Good, the Bad, and they Ugly is technically a prequel, so you can watch it first or last!

There are two thematic continuations of the Dollars movies, Once Upon a Time in the West and Unforgiven. They're both pretty good. Give them a watch too.

May I also recommend the original movie which strongly inspired A Fistful of Dollars, namely Yojimbo by Akira Kurosawa? It's an absolutely fantastic movie.

I watched This Is 40 last week. Holy hell, what a horrible couple. I have never disliked Paul Rudd so much in a film before. I also don't know why they spent soooo much time establishing how unhappy they were and then tried to wrap the whole storyline up in about ten minutes. And the yelling. Oh my GOD. Do people really yell at each other that much? Which is that a thing in TV/movie families now?

Way too long and way too crappy.

I was in the mood for something not that difficult to watch tonight and because I have oodles of iTunes credit (thank you surprise iTunes gift card), I decided to rent City of Bones - it was cheap. It turns out that 'not difficult to watch' is quite the lie about this film because it is fucking terrible. And I own Dracula 2001 on DVD AND I paid money to see Queen of the Damned in the cinema so really it's not like my standards are that high when it comes to the fantasy/sci-fi/horror genre.

I never read the books, but Clary is the biggest idiot I've seen committed to celluloid. She hasn't a spark. Not a lick of common sense and she has the retentive memory of a lamp. Apparently being in a comfortable place this week about my weight/hair colour/personality/marital status just means that my self-hatred comes out in other ways: I'm watching this thing to the end.

The only good bits are when Aidan Turner shows up. He has a nice "cop yourself on, Clary" attitude going on in their later scenes. God bless you, Aidan Turner!

Hunter Prey. It's a fun low-budget sci-fi movie from 2010. A trio of soldiers have crashed on a planet, and the prisoner they were escorting has escaped. Reminds me of Pitch Black, with an element of Clint Eastwood western. There are aliens, there are gunfights, there are fistfights, there is a good plot. All in all, I really enjoyed it. Sometimes IMDB ratings are no help at all. Anyone else seen it?

Anchorman 2 was wayyyy too long and wayyyy too unfunny. I don't expect much of my dumb Will Ferrell comedies but this was actually a chore to finish.

Finally got to see The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. It was very enjoyable. I liked Sam Claflin a lot as Finnick and thought Jennifer Lawrence and Josh Hutcherson was very good.

Liam Hemsworth was so-so, but it's not like he had a lot to be doing in this film.

The Way Way Back is great. Pitch-perfect performances from everyone.

I streamed The Big Wedding on netflix - expecting crap - and was disappointed. It wasn't good, but it...almost was? It had the potential to be a kind of adult-er sweet movie like, say, My Big Fat Greek Wedding except in regards to adoption/stepfamilies. But it wasn't. Instead of affection, it went for sexuality (but not sexyness) and used both adultery and alcoholism as punchlines that sort of invalidated any genuine characterization as real people. It was disappointing, because the cast was good and even the premise could have been okay...but no.

I will say, I've watched Robert DeNiro in some of his recent movies (also The Family) and while they have been bad, he's clearly in some kind of zen acting zone where he's really good in them, not good enough to make them not shit, but it's still very impressive.

I don't know if it was the fact that we are about to go on our own adventure, or the fact that Iceland was so heavily featured, but my husband and I both loved The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. I don't think it did very well critically or in the box office, which is a shame.

We watched American Hustle and I didn't find it to be anything amazing. There were funny parts, everyone played their parts well enough, but I don't get all the rave reviews it received when it was released.

My husband and I both got annoyed by Amy Adams' British accent about halfway through the film. It was so irritating.