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Joined: Wed Jul 29, 2009 6:28 am Posts: 1761
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Bailiwick wrote:
In fact I rarely feel motivated to watch stupid comedies anymore. That doesn't mean I don't appreciate them when I do watch them, just that I'm not often motivated to spend my time watching them, at least no where near as motivated as I once was.
Well, I didn't mean stupid comedies. Never had a taste for them. I meant comedy in the Shakespearean way - a story with a happy ending.
Joined: Thu Feb 12, 2009 9:58 am Posts: 1904 Location: Halfway Down the Stairs
Gender: male
MBTI type: INFP
Enneagram type: 4w5 so/sx
Been brushing up on my movie history knowledge recently by watching a few silent movie classics. Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd's films were some of the better known highpoints (the friend I watched them with particularly liked Lloyd's 'Safety Last!'), but to be fair they were all worth watching.
Full list: -'The General' -'Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans' (decent film, but with some really strange jumps in tone from a really serious opening sequence, to a happy-go-lucky whimsical comedy bit in the middle, and then back to a really serious ending) -'The Kid' -'Safety Last!' -'The Gold Rush' (though technically this one wasn't silent, as it was a later edit with Chaplin himself providing the narration) -'The Passion of Joan of Arc' (that friend of mine adores this film, but then by his own admission he's a major fan-boy of the director) -'The Last Laugh' (weird ending on this one, with the makers out-and-out calling said ending a load of fantastical nonsense) - and 'The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari' (interesting Modernist visual style on this one, even down to the inter-titles).
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Also been entertaining myself the last few days by watching the Nostalgia Critic's reviews of terrible movies. Nerd-Rage is funny.
Some examples:
Spoiler:
_________________ What would the world be, once bereft Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left, O let them be left, wildness and wet; Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet. - Gerard Manley Hopkins
Joined: Thu Feb 12, 2009 9:58 am Posts: 1904 Location: Halfway Down the Stairs
Gender: male
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Watched a few animated movies this last week or so, namely:
5 Centimetres per Second (the first 'episode' was decent enough, the second I thought was really quite good, but the ending of the third one didn't do it for me at all). The Animatrix (kind of a mixed bag, as you might expect considering it's made up of about 9 different 'episodes' mostly made by different people. In short, I liked the 'Second Renaissance' episodes the most, and the 'Matriculation' episode the least. All the rest were about the same level to me). The Adventures of Mark Twain (weird, weird movie. The animation was weird, the story was weird, the whole tone was weird. Not bad, in fact I quite enjoyed it, just...weird). Angel's Egg (a very heavily symbolic film - I had to look up an interpretation of it on the net afterwards to get a handle on it all. Pretty good for all that though). The Princess/Thief and the Cobbler (probably liked this one the most out of all of them. Decent story, likeable characters, and some really inventive visual elements. Make sure to watch the 'Re-cobbled' cut if you're going to check it out though, the 'original' cut that was released back in the 90's is junk).
If I had to give them marks out of ten, I'd probably give them all 6 - except for Angels' Egg and The Thief/Princess and the Cobbler, which I'd probably give 7.
_________________ What would the world be, once bereft Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left, O let them be left, wildness and wet; Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet. - Gerard Manley Hopkins
Joined: Wed Jan 28, 2009 2:30 am Posts: 1718 Location: My happynin' place
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We watched the latest Sherlock Holmes the other night. Very amusing indeed, and the action sequences were beautifully done. I loved Robert Downey Jr's plummy english accent. So, I recommend it!
Joined: Mon Feb 02, 2009 6:58 pm Posts: 781
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A while back I bought a set of 50 sci-fi movies of dubious quality. Mostly older stuff, nothing past the 80's I believe. I've watched five of the movies so far (I've been pacing myself because I can only take so much horrible at one time), with one actually being pretty good (The Head); one not withouts its charms (Fists of Steel); and three which literally put me to sleep. Although one of those three, The Day Time Ended, had some unintentional humorous moments, but not enough of them to make it worth recommending to any but your worst enemy, whom you want to put to sleep.
Joined: Sun Dec 11, 2011 9:34 pm Posts: 47
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One of my faves is Fritz Lang's Metropolis - the Moroder version. It's really difficult to find, though. It's a 1927 silent film that was remastered in '81. It's about an oppressed mass of workers who live underground and run machines which make the overground city function for the rich minority. Amazing film.
Joined: Thu Feb 12, 2009 9:58 am Posts: 1904 Location: Halfway Down the Stairs
Gender: male
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Enneagram type: 4w5 so/sx
Saw Disney's "Tangled" the other day, and I'm happy to say I really rather enjoyed it.
Pros: It was funny, often very funny, especially during the first two acts. The characters ranged from genuinely likeable to inoffensive, with stand-out efforts being (IMO) Rapunzel (loved how they captured that particular brand of teenage energy, excitement and wild mood swings), Maximus (hilarious in every scene) and Mother Gothel (entertaining, and felt like a genuine person with real motivations and not just some cardboard cut-out stock villain).
Neutral: The songs were rather forgettable, but inoffensive, and often surprisingly short. The male lead (Flynn) was a bit bland (just your regular 'lovable rouge with a heart of gold' type), as were his two foes who didn't really have anything resembling back-story, character or motivation beyond "We're bad guys". The chameleon side-kick seemed completely tacked on simply for the sake of having one in the film, but for the most part it was fairly unobtrusive (apart from near the end, more on that below though) and it did get a few laughs out of me.
Cons: The ending - for a while there it looked like they were going to be as brave and original as they had been the rest of the movie, but then they seemed to bail out at the last minute and went with the same-old same-old instead. I also didn't like the rather random appearance of the chameleon side-kick during the big climax, much like the rest of its appearances during the movie it didn't really seem to have any reason to be there other than to be there. Aside from that any other things i disliked were pretty niggly (like a bit of narration at the beginning that felt to me like it was trying a bit too hard to be clever).
Overall, a lot of fun and definitely something I'd recommend. I'd give it probably about a 7 out of 10.
_________________ What would the world be, once bereft Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left, O let them be left, wildness and wet; Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet. - Gerard Manley Hopkins
Joined: Thu Feb 12, 2009 9:58 am Posts: 1904 Location: Halfway Down the Stairs
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Watched (or more accurately re-watched, I've seen it a few times now) Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan the other day, a movie I feel doesn't get quite the credit it deserves from non-trekkies.
Pros: The story is exciting and expertly paced, and far more mature than people tend to think, dealing (often very cleverly) with themes ranging from ageing to self-renewal, obsession, madness, revenge, and self-sacrifice. The movie really knows how to ratchet up the intensity and drama, thanks in no small part to its excellent soundtrack, and the effects were superb for their time and still hold up really well today. The character development, dialogue, and interaction are all top-notch, with really good performances all round, especially from Ricardo Montelban as Khan.
Neutral: There are some minor plot holes scattered through the movie (such as why Scotty takes the dying crewman to the bridge instead of straight to sick-bay, and how come Star-fleet - an inter-planetary and inter-species organisation dedicated to exploring the cosmos - fails to notice that not only has an entire planet in a previously explored (if virtually uninhabited) star system exploded, but said star system also happens to be the place where Kirk marooned one of the most dangerous men to ever live), but they don't really get in the way of things. Oh, and perhaps the first act of the movie might be a bit slow for action fans.
Cons: Probably the thing that weakens the movie the most is that, despite the fact they keep referring to Khan as having the "superior intellect", we never really see that displayed in the film - sure he takes over the starship Reliant with all of about 2 dozen people armed with little more than rocks, but the only time he really ever gets the upper hand on Kirk is during their first encounter, and that's due purely to a glaring error on Kirk's part, from then on Kirk more or less runs rings around him.
Overall, this is more than just 'a Trek film', I consider it easily one of the best action-oriented sci-fi films out there, and a damn good movie in it's own right too. At least a 7 out of ten for me, and maybe even an 8.
_________________ What would the world be, once bereft Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left, O let them be left, wildness and wet; Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet. - Gerard Manley Hopkins
Joined: Thu Feb 12, 2009 9:58 am Posts: 1904 Location: Halfway Down the Stairs
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Had another silent-movie mini-marathon recently, taking in a couple more Chaplin movies (The Circus, and Modern Times), a Harold Lloyd film (Grandma's Boy), and a film that didn't have anything to do with any of those guys called The Last Command.
To spare people who don't feel like reading walls of text on the subject, I'll just give them a score out of ten and hide my more detailed thoughts on them in spoiler tags below.
The Circus - Easily a 7, maybe even an 8. Modern Times - 7. Grandma's Boy - 7, maybe a 6 if I'm feeling less than generous. The Last Command - a solid 8.
Spoiler:
Both the Chaplin movies were good, but I have to admit I preferred the less well-known The Circus over the critic's fave Modern Times. It seemed to have a more cohesive narrative to me, whereas Modern Times seemed more like a series of loosely connected episodes.
True, Modern Times does have that impressive opening act that deals with the way the machine-age (particularly in the form of the factory line) can rob people of their independence and humanity, but after the opening act that theme never really gets mentioned again (as far as I can tell anyway). The Circus is more of a standard rags-to-riches (and back to rags again) story with a love interest story-line in there too, but for all that (or perhaps even because of that) it told a story I just found that much more engaging. Perhaps that's why I felt The Circus' ending seemed to have that much more pathos about it than Modern Times' did, though to be fair both endings were pretty nuanced.
I also felt that Modern Times suffers a little due to it actually being only semi-silent. It was made during that transitional period between the silent era and the talkies, where nobody was really sure how to go about things. So you have things like Chaplin singing in one scene, but all his spoken dialogue still being delivered through the use of inter-titles - which to me just added to the feeling that the movie lacked the cohesiveness The Circus possessed.
Spoiler:
'Grandma's boy' seemed like pretty typical Harold Lloyd fare to me, which is to say that it was funny, featured inventive comic routines, and had a likeable protagonist. It also features actual character development, which was a relative rarity at the time for films of that type. Unfortunately that character development only extends as far as Lloyd's protagonist, none of the other characters exist as anything more than one-dimensional plot conveniences ("The Antagonist", "The Love Interest" etc. - in fact, on the subject of the love interest, every time she and Lloyd's character were on screen together I kept thinking "Kick her to the kerb son, you can do better." ).
I suppose its biggest weakness (if you see it as a weakness) is that it's just a light-hearted comedy with a really simple and straight-forward message about believing in yourself - no more, no less. It's fun, but it doesn't have any of the kind of complexity that film buff types like to get their teeth into.
On a side note, apparently this was Lloyd's first full-length feature film with him in the starring role and was a big hit in its day, launching Lloyd onto the same film-comedy superstar level as Chaplin and Buster Keaton.
Spoiler:
The Last Command was an altogether different beast from the other films I saw.
Emil Jannings' performance in the lead role won him an Oscar back in the day, and rightly so IMO. He's captivating, not only able to give you essentially two different performances whilst maintaining a continuity within the same character, but also able to generate sympathy for a character who at times acts like a downright scoundrel. I feel no shame at all in admitting that a had a very sizeable lump in my throat at the end of the film.
The camera-work is also of a very high quality, particularly the panning shots. Other positives are that Natalie (the female revolutionary/love interest character) is pretty interesting in her own right, existing more than simply as a plot convenience, and the role is acted pretty well too, even if the actress in question (Evelyn Brent) does lapse every now and then into the overly melodramatic style that tends to be associated with silent cinema.
Also, the pacing of the movie is very sound, particularly in the second act where the simmering tensions between the different characters and groups slowly builds before finally boiling over into the chaotic and heated scenes of revolutionary uprising. There are even some special effects in there that hold up quite well too, especially considering the movie is something like 84 years old now.
If I have criticisms, it's perhaps that some of the other characters don't feel fleshed out, particularly Lev (the male revolutionary/love rival/director character)- who never really gets the screen time necessary to really develop much in the way of depth - and the 'adjutant' character, whose back-story and motivations are so ill-defined (if they're even mentioned at all) that the movie doesn't even bother to give him a name.
_________________ What would the world be, once bereft Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left, O let them be left, wildness and wet; Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet. - Gerard Manley Hopkins
Joined: Wed May 09, 2012 1:19 pm Posts: 8
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So nice to gather a whole list of new movies to see and old movies to see again
This is my personal list of favorite movies:
La Vita E Bella, A Christmas Story, Love Actually, Nunta muta (Romanian, brilliant), We are Marshall, The Secret of Santa Vittoria, Finding Neverland, Dream for an Insomniac, Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, In The Mood for Love, My Blueberry Nights, The Painted Veil, The Duchess, Easy Virtue, 50 first dates, Like Water for Chocolate, The Kite Runner,
And some of my favorite TV shows: Sex and the City, Two and a Half Men, The King of Queens, Dharma and Greg (I think I should update the list though, I've been watching many new shows lately)
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