Movies at Home

I saw I Give It a Year on Netflix, and loved it! I've wanted to see it since I saw the trailer, but it wasn't released here in the US. Rafe Spall and Rose Byrne are so funny. Stephen Merchant, also hilarious. I did think that

Spoiler:

but the movie was really enjoyable still. It was interesting that the other love interests played by Simon Baker and Anna Faris were both American characters. Kind of a spin on the "British villain" character in American action movies.

I just watched Seeking a Friend For The End of The World and I loved it! I thought it was the perfect combination of sweet and sad. I really love Steve Carell and even though Keira Knightley was a textbook Manic Pixie Dream Girl I loved her character anyway.

I missed it when it played in theatres; maybe I can look it up on Demand/online in the next few days.

The Kings of Summer was an absolute delight. Very sweet, very funny. Nick Offerman was a magnificently sardonic bastard and the 3 teenage boys were wonderful.

I watched Don Jon and as with most thing JGL related I liked it a lot, a very nice first writing effort if a more static directing one, but I appreciated the thought that went into intimacy in the social media and digital pornography age.

We watched The Way Way Back last night, and I loved it so much. Sam Rockwell was awesome as always, Steve Carell plays an excellent asshole, and Liam James was just the right touch of sweet and dorky.
It also made me really, really mad all over again that Ben and Kate got canceled. Sigh.

I watched The Princess and the Frog for the first time and was fairly underwhelmed but the one really great thing about it is the villain song. Keith David is fantastic.

Since I've been on a break from work (I always save vacation days for the end of the year) I've been re-watching movies I haven't seen in a while, and I decided to watch King Arthur. I had completely forgotten what a festival of hot guys that movie is. Yeah, I remembered Clive Owen and Ioan Gruffudd, but I had also forgotten that Hugh Dancy, Mads Mikkelsen, Ray Stevenson, and Joel Edgerton are ALSO in that movie. Sure, the "knights" bear no resemblance to the characters in the traditional King Arthur stories, and there's no real triangle between Arthur, Lancelot, and Guinivere, but there are plenty of nice looking men to ogle. Even with the crazy hair that most of them are wearing.

I also sat down and watched all eight Harry Potter movies in a row since I received the box set for Christmas. It was really interesting watching the Trio age over the course of the films. I really came away feeling bad for Rupert Grint who really was marginalized at the expense of giving more screen time to Emma Watson. That said, I think the films are really good adaptions of the books, even though I know people disagree about that. There was a LOT of stuff in the books that was NEVER going to get in the films, and film is a different medium so changes were bound to be made. I get that. I don't agree with all the changes they made, and there was stuff that was left out that disappointed me (the trip to St. Mungo's being foremost for me), but the fact they were able to basically keep the SAME group of actors for all the films is such a huge plus. I'm sure in 20 years someone will do an epic miniseries of the books, and it will be interesting to see how they handle having multiple Harrys, Hermiones, and Rons.

Someone needs to use "festival of hot guys" on a movie poster. lol That's the best expression. *checks Netflix for King Arthur*

Everybody stop what you are doing right now and rent The To-Do List with Aubrey Plaza. If life were fair this would have made Superbad levels of money. Since life is not fair you are all going to have to discover how awesome it is via Netflix and me telling you this. Also--bonus Bill Hader, Andy Samberg, Rachel Bilson, Clark Gregg, and Connie Britton, who are all freaking perfect.

Morning Angel wrote:Someone needs to use "festival of hot guys" on a movie poster. lol That's the best expression. *checks Netflix for King Arthur*

I would definitely go see a movie billed as "A Festival of Hot Guys", although I just realized that that descriptor could refer to a whole genre of movies that, uh, aren't aimed at my demographic.

The festival of hot-guyness is the only saving grace of that steaming pile.

Morning Angel wrote:Someone needs to use "festival of hot guys" on a movie poster. lol That's the best expression. *checks Netflix for King Arthur*

That would be about the only reason to see King Arthur. God, that movie made me SO STABBY! Why are you calling it King Arthur if you're not actually TELLING some semblance of the story of King Arthur???? Don't open with a title card about some bullshit how "new research" shows that this might have happened (said Skippy the Summer Intern). Don't tease me like that. They fired right into my wheelhouse too -- hot guys with swords and horses and possibly pirate ships. If they'd called it anything else, and named the guys Rolf, Phil, Lamar and Chester, I'd probably still be watching it. The Monty Python guys told a more faithful rendition.

All that was missing was Tico Torres.

Troy is a good example of the Festival of Hot Guys genre--not worth much beyond the prettiness. But the prettiness is vast and deep.

Carrie Ann, do you like movies about gladiators?

Spent New Year's Eve watching Black Snake Moan, AKA the one where Samuel L Jackson chains Christina Ricci to a radiator to cure her nymphomania. It also starred Justin Timberlake and Neil from Once upon a Time. Yeah. It was weird.

Elysium felt like a lot had been left on the editing room floor, but I was still entertained. Sadly the dystopia doesn't seem that far out of the realm of possibility these days.

The Great Gatsby. I feel like there was an actual good movie somewhere in there. Parts of it worked really, really well. It was very pretty. But overall, it was mostly meh for me.
Also, I am pretty sure that movie is longer than the amount of time it takes to read the actual book.

God, I KNEW I shouldn't post when I'm sick with a cold. Just ignore me, please.

Cynara wrote:Everybody stop what you are doing right now and rent The To-Do List with Aubrey Plaza. If life were fair this would have made Superbad levels of money. Since life is not fair you are all going to have to discover how awesome it is via Netflix and me telling you this. Also--bonus Bill Hader, Andy Samberg, Rachel Bilson, Clark Gregg, and Connie Britton, who are all freaking perfect.

Yes! I forgot to post about this movie. I watched it a few weeks ago and loved it. As Cynara mentioned, the cast was great. Clark Gregg is a particular highlight, but I love him so perhaps I'm biased.

bloomtoperish wrote:

Cynara wrote:Everybody stop what you are doing right now and rent The To-Do List with Aubrey Plaza. If life were fair this would have made Superbad levels of money. Since life is not fair you are all going to have to discover how awesome it is via Netflix and me telling you this. Also--bonus Bill Hader, Andy Samberg, Rachel Bilson, Clark Gregg, and Connie Britton, who are all freaking perfect.

Yes! I forgot to post about this movie. I watched it a few weeks ago and loved it. As Cynara mentioned, the cast was great. Clark Gregg is a particular highlight, but I love him so perhaps I'm biased.

The preview made it look all right, but I couldn't get past how little anyone in the cast looked like a teenager. I mean, it would be a stretch for me to buy them as even in their early 20s. Is it less distracting in the movie itself?

Miss Moneypenny wrote:
The preview made it look all right, but I couldn't get past how little anyone in the cast looked like a teenager. I mean, it would be a stretch for me to buy them as even in their early 20s. Is it less distracting in the movie itself?

I remember reading that it was on purpose - I think they did that as some sort of homage to 80s movies, where the teens are all 40 IRL, maybe? (I've had a lot of wine tonight, so I can't find it, but I swear I read something about it when it came out.) Anyway, we just watched it tonight, and it's funny. The wine helped, but it was funny.

I thought everyone in The To-Do List was hilarious except Aubrey Plaza and I usually love her. She just seemed really miscast as a Type A overachiever since she mostly only seems to know how to do deadpan weirdo. A lot of her acting involved just sort of awkwardly twitching around. I also was annoyed by how old everyone was, but there were a few jokes about how terrible it would be to be "like, 30," which made me thinking all the casting of people in their late '20s was intentional.

Finally saw Man of Steel. I have no idea which movie the critics watched, because they were criticizing all the wrong things. Snyder is a weirdly terrible and yet awesome director. His sense of style is pretty excellent, but Christ-on-a-cracker, that man can't pace a movie worth a damn. I seriously never need to see another shot of Kal-El or Zod parting asphalt like water. Or hitting a building and have it fall sideways. The fights were just.. interminable and repetitive, like much of the movie. Oh, look, ANOTHER flashback where the same thing happens. Here's Lois. She's falling. Again. Apparently she's the only one capable of pushing a USB stick into an alien device. Except when she isn't, and some random guy can do it instead. Yay, exposition-Zod. "I WAS MADE FOR THIS AND YOU TOOK IT AWAY AND NOW I HAVE TANTRUM. JUST SO YOU UNDERSTAND."

*sigh* This movie had a lot of potential for awesomeness, but I think it was bungled and messy. I have no objection whatsoever to Superman killing Zod, which seems to be a huge issue for a lot of people. I also think the Christ allegory was pretty apparent, so good job there. But, overall, I'm not pleased.

I'm sure in 20 years someone will do an epic miniseries of the books, and it will be interesting to see how they handle having multiple Harrys, Hermiones, and Rons.

I don't think they'd necessarily have to do that. There are teen actors who can play young teens and older teens. Megan Follows, who played Anne from 12 to 16 in the Anne of Green Gables series comes to mind.

xyzzy wrote:*sigh* This movie had a lot of potential for awesomeness, but I think it was bungled and messy. I have no objection whatsoever to Superman killing Zod, which seems to be a huge issue for a lot of people.

For me the rantable moment was when he didn't save his father, not him killing Zod. I didn't buy for one second that he'd just stand there and watch his father get taken away by the tornado. I mean, I have no horse in the Superman canon race (I don't read the comics, I don't know the storylines, etc., I just go by what's on the screen) so a confrontation with a character threatening to destroy the entire planet ending in that character's death? Sure, I'll totally buy that. But his father? Nope.

I agree that the fight scenes were just ridiculous, but that's the norm now for big budget action movies. Before we even get to the confrontation between Superman and Zod we have to go through his....minions? Lieutenants? Whatever they were, walking around destroying everything. Christ, it was just pointless and boring because they were characters I had no investment in and didn't care one iota about. And *then* we get to the big battle and by then I was completely battled-out, you know? We've all seen these sequences, moves, and effects so many times before, and so often they involve minor characters that, as I say, you care nothing about because the movie hasn't bothered to make them anything like real people. And you know nothing happens to the major players anyway until the end but you have another set of fight/action scenes to get through before then. I am just so over that reliance on effects and fight after fight after fight.