Movies

[Wolfman Von Jones]

Jeez, just buy the damned DVD's.

Nick

 

[witch]

so.. here I go to post some impressions about "the lord of the rings"
i found this movie a lil bit "slow" (sometimes I slept for a while.. fortunately I was home )
good backgrounds.. even if I thought that elvish language is disquieting
Think to wait the 2nd dvd for home vision (I don't really want to pay 8 euro to watch it on cinema )

 

[|ngenius]

Pssssstttt, wiiiiitch! There's also a specific thread dedicated to this the second part of the LoTR trilogy! Check it out.


|ngenius (Fighting against the disaster of a catastrophic confusion)

 

[Villain]

Back to anime:

I finally saw Spirited Away yesterday - and holy fuck it was great! Wonderful characters, awesome scenery and nice (although rather simple) story. Our anime/rpg -group hasn't been so unanimously undistracted for years - we would have sat there crying and laughing even if the house was on fire around us. An excellent movie, even better than Mononoke Hime (Studio Ghibli's previous anime-movie). I recommend Spirited Way to anyone with the slightest interest to spend an hour or two watching animation.

-Villain (going to see Laputa tomorrow)

 

[Ormir]

@Villain: It's a great movie indeed. I've seen it twice in the theatre this far.

 

[hyena]

i've been watching a great deal of movies recently so i feel compelled to post some short reviews. you'll know that i totally loved dogville, so i won't ramble on it here, although i've seen it a third time and still love it.

the rules of attraction, from the book by bret easton ellis, was a bit of a disappointment, as american psycho is. it tells the story of a few young adults in a college for rich people, enjoying their vices and having tangled lives. it seems that the "no hope" quality of ellis' books has much to do with the writing style - these short, sharp sentences that manage to express emotional void. the movie is not very interesting - there's sex and drugs onscreen, if you like that kind of thing, but the original feeling of the book is probably present in 5 minutes out of 140.

ken park, since i'm talking controversial movies, is hard to judge. it's about fucked up teenage skateboarders; they have very bad relationships with their families, two are victim of some form of incest, one sleeps with his girlfriend's mother, one becomes a murderer, and the film opens with a teen shooting himself. i used to be a larry clark fan (loved kids and liked bully), but this one didn't do the trick for me. maybe i've just grown out of features on teenage desperation, depravation and rebellion, or maybe i've grown into middle-class insensitiveness to explicit, inflamatory scenes (bu forbid)... some years ago i would have thought that the ending of this movie - not saying anything here in case somebody wants to see it - sort of meant that another world could be possible, but now i'm closed to the option, and almost fail to see the message. i would be interested in hearing opinions about it.

the diary of bridget jones is a funny comedy, but it's also a repertoire of clichés. i think most of you already know the story - single woman in her 30s goes through a crisis, falls for the wrong guy, gets dumped, finds (boring) dream man. the humor is good in some points, but it didn't get a real laugh out of me. good actors and all, but save your time and don't see it.

the italian film dopo mezzanotte (after midnight, but i don't know if it's going to be distributed abroad) had the remarkable feature of being shot in my hometown, and the lead character - a guy doing night rounds in torino's film museum - somehow reminded me of rahvin, which was cool. the storyline is this: a girl from the slums goes out with a car thief who cheats on her and treats her condescendingly, then she commits a minor crime, hides in a museum, falls in love with the night guard. when she returns to the outside world, she tries to go out with both boys (at the same time, and she even wants them to become friends). then she decides for one of them and the other is shot. i liked the characterization of the people from the slums, because of their funny and realistic way of talking, but the whole thing was a ripoff of the amélie film (i know this is not the english title, but i don't know it) and i didn't like that one to boot.

luther is tragically bad. it's meant to be about luther, of course, but it's a farce. it starts off interesting, seems a good historical film and all, and ends up like a soap opera. i'm not going into detail, just don't see it.

the passion of the christ is, again, hard to judge. the title is self-explanatory as far as the story is concerned. what you read on the papers is true: the violence is kind of extreme. being a christian, i didn't wince - i normally would have, if faced with the same intensity of blood and pain - because i basically knew all the details (the movie is very close to the scripture text) and i thought that it was good to get a stronger feel of what jesus might have suffered at the hand of his tormentors. i think that if seen from an agnostic perspective - that is, without thinking "ha, ha, ha, at the end he rose from the dead and won over all of these bastards!" - the violence could block most reflections. oh, and unlike you have read in the papers, it's not anti-semitic. it portrays masses of jews acting like idiots, but that's because they're masses, asking for the blood of whoever is unpopular on a given day, not because they're jews.

i would have more but i'm running out of waking hours. so i'll go to sleep.

do any of you have suggestions for gangster movies about the mickey cohen era? i've seen l.a. confidential years ago, although that wasn't a proper gangster movie, and i believe there must be a celluloid version of both black dahlia and american tabloid, but (a) i'm not positive about it (b) the world does not end with james ellroy books and i'd love to see more.

also, has anyone seen the purported shocker baise-moi? is it another softcore movie passed for an art film or is it anything objectively worth seeing?

thanks.

 

[Human Desert]

I saw Van Helsing on saturday. It was quite good! Better than i expected, and completely different to what i thought it'd be..i was positively surprised I'd say people should go see it.

 

[King Chaos]

I also saw van helsing, and I agree that It was entertaining, but It wasnt my cup of tea. It was somewhat mindless and the actin was cheesy as hell. I thought the special effects were excellent and the action set pieces were awe-inspiring but, unfortunately, they are all broken up by a pathetically presented narrative and characters that are so 2D I was cringing.

Now Troy was a good movie. I thought it was excellent how each and every character had his/her own moral decisions to battle with. Noone was really good and no one was really bad. The drama was grade A and the Fights were realistic in a way rarely seen in hollywood these days. I do reccomend it.

I think once The day after tomorrow and spiderman 2 hit our screens audiences will be saying Van helsWHO? These two films are gonna do excellent buissness. No doubt about it. Then again TDAT has been advertising since christmas, and with such a wide marketing scheme will surely do good buissness. Word of mouth will probably determine its success in later weeks of its release (it'll open big... very big) as critics have been quering just how good this films going to be. Expectations are high, although the producers put there money into effects and not stars, which is arguably a mistake, but then again Jake Gyllenhaal Is much respected now after his stunning performance in the cult independant pic Donnie Darko. After this film Im Possitive this young man will have made an impressive name for himself and will be worth big bucks for films in north america.

Anyone here into Japaneze horror movies? The Japaneze make better films than anyone IMO, and there horror movies are just mind shatteringly scary.

 

[Northern Lights]

@King Chaos: The only Japanese horror movie I've seen is The Ring, and it wasn't very disturbing when I saw it - but mein gott how that image of her climbing out of the well and walking towards the screen kept haunting me for days

I would also like to state that Love actually is actually a very good movie. See it!

 

[King Chaos]

The Working title films (such as love actually) are the only thing the British Film industry has going for it nowadays... which depresses me in so far as they often misinterprets the british culture (makes out we are all ponses, running around at our grandmothers tea party in our tuxedos, spilling coffee on every pretty woman we see). But yeah, the working title films (such as love actually, bridget jones diary, notting hill and four weddings and a funeral) are all very heart warming and I'd agree they are worth a viewing.

@Northen lights... Yeah the conclusion in ring is insane , but you should definately try see either "The Eye","Audition","Uzumaki","ju on","Bangkok Haunted","Dark water" or "Ichi the Killer" (I.T.K isnt really a horror, but it is teh horrific). Any horror fan would love the above movies, as they will one day be seen as legends in the innovation of suspense generating techniques.

 

[Caelestia]

Eh, Dark Water was okay. People kept telling me to watch for the girl's face and that was the only reason I continued watching. But I fell asleep (from fatigue, not boredom) and missed it. Grr. I want to see Ichi the Killer though.

And yes, Love Actually was wonderful *gush*

 

[Hiljainen]

In theory i like scary movies like the eye, but i have too much imagination and i scare myself them when i'm at home at night
like when i saw the eye, for who have seen it: that woman in the ospital was

Edit: @N_L : lol the climbing out of the well image haunted me too

Van Helsing was terrible, ok, maybe not terrible, but still a lot worse than what i expected, and i expected already a bad movie cause it was made by the same guy of the mummy (dear god). At least it was funny, but the girl was hateful, i wanted the vampires to rip her head off

 

[King Chaos]

The Elevator scene in the Eye disturbed me for weeks!!!!

I didnt think the face of the girl was that bad (In Dark Water)... it was just the build up to it. I nearly died of terror! Ive seen it like three times and every time it sends chills down my mother fookin spine.

 

[Human Desert]

At least it was funny, but the girl was hateful, i wanted the vampires to rip her head off

The girl reminded me of myself. She was just like me.

 

[rahvin]

and the lead character - a guy doing night rounds in torino's film museum - somehow reminded me of rahvin, which was cool. the storyline is this: a girl from the slums goes out with a car thief who cheats on her and treats her condescendingly, then she commits a minor crime, hides in a museum, falls in love with the night guard. when she returns to the outside world, she tries to go out with both boys (at the same time, and she even wants them to become friends). then she decides for one of them and the other is shot.

[insane sarcasm]i can't even begin to imagine why the lead character reminded you of me, given how the plot doesn't remotely resemble any part of my life at all[/insane sarcasm]

 

[hyena]

nah, nowt to do with the plot. just the character.

i watched bowling for columbine tonight, after having heard a lot about it.

the thesis put forward by the director, i. e. fear breeds violence, is something that is kind of plain to me - try going at punk shows in the right clothes for a while and then accidentally passing a bunch of kids in line for a punk show while in a business suit, there's no need for mass shootings to know that if you imagine a group of people may react maliciously to something that you do, have or wear then you're more prone to violence.

so, i guess that the movie was good in that it insisted on something which is very true. it also had, at least in the first half, less rhetorical moments than i would have expected, and the way he put the whole thing together was interesting.

only, i ended up not really seeing the point. the only articulate theory came from south park's creator, discussing the lack of perspective of high school kids, and implicating the need to let them see that what happens in school does not forecast exactly what will happen later on in life. but the rest... ok, the availability of weapons does not induce violence directly, because canadians have guns, but they shoot moose instead of men. video games and heavy metal do not induce violence directly, because otherwise the japanese and the swedes would be the most vicious populations around (well, the movie didn't mention sweden, but anyway). poverty does not induce violence directly, because the poor are everywhere. so what's the answer to the question posed by michael moore? an old and weary charlton heston says that ethnic diversity induces violence directly, possibly implying that people are more prone to shoot people from other races, and he comes across as some sort of fascist... but still, that would be a reason behind the fear explored earlier in the movie; not a reason to be commended, but still a reason. the director himself offers no reason, and we're left with that.

any comments from people who've seen the film?

 

[King Chaos]

Michael moor is trying to make out, primarilly, that it's the availability of guns which is causing so much violent crime in America. I think he offers that as a reason but never really concludes this as his findings, which in a way spoiled the film a little bit for me as it feels as though the big question was left unanswered (then again the dramatic interview with that "gun cunt" was mega climactic and probably the best full stop for the documentary).
I found much of the film very harrowing, although the first 30 mins were pretty boring for me. The Animated breakdown of America's history is totally hilarious. If you havn't seen the documentary its worth watching for this part alone.

I saw "Eternal Sunshine for the spotless mind" tonight. Im a big fan of Charlie kaufman (writer/screenplay on Adaptation and being john malkovich) so I was bound to totally love this film. Its head fucking wierd in an awesomely entertaining way. It really gets you thinking (like most kaufman movies) and is also funny at the same time. There are also some very psychological scenes in it, which Im sure will take most audiences off their guard. If your not in the mood to have a cerebral enema... don't watch this movie. If you are prepared to have your thoughts twisted in knots then circum to this films might, and be not dissapointed.

 

[DE]

Last film I watched was Goodbye Lenin!... a very touching and moving film.


@hyena: BFC was such utter crap. There's a site called "Bowling for Truth" that explains all the blatant lies Michael Moore told in the film, tis an interesting read. Michael Moore pisses me off so much, especially his new film.

 

[Caelestia]

I really want to watch Eternal Sunshine... and yes, Goodbye Lenin was great. I cried, but I cry too easily. The last flick I saw was Shrek 2, which made me laugh like an arse.

 

[lumitalvi]

Has anyone seen a movie called Secret Window?
I saw a preview from it before seeing the Cabin Fever, but after that the movie has vanished. Hear, hear, specially you all finnnnnnns