General Movie Thread

[Sméagol]

Yeah, I loved the music, except for the standard orchestral fare in the 2nd half of the film. I also loved the sounds, or rather lack thereof. Seeing things starting to explode in the distance.. really works for building up the tension. And although they’re completely different films, I actually found the feel of the film (the tension to be precise) to be similar to Alfonso Cuarón’s previous film, Children of men. With both main characters on the run. I agree though, this is a film which must be seen on a large screen (i.e. a cinema), because the effect will be so much less on a small screen. Children of men also wasn’t that exciting on DVD on my television..

[Mokong]

Saw Gravity yesterday

 

AWESOME, loved it!

 

Cinematography was amazing too and the 3D worked so well. That and the surround sound of the cinema... definately a film that has to be seen in the cinema

 

How did they film that at all? Would love to see a "making of" for it. I assume it was mostly CG (like with then "floating" in the suits and stuff but damn you could not tell. Really well done.

 

So tense also, when "stuff" happens, I was holding my breath at serveal points

 

Was anyone else trying to figure out what countries were visible whenever Earth was in view? Was nice to see Ireland and the UK got a nice amount of screen time at one point, with nice clear skies too

 

Joy went in with me but she kinda didn't enjoy it as much cause all the spinning made her dizzy :P

 

 

EDIT

 

 

I was just googling to see if there was any info as to where Sandra's character "landed" at the end of the film... was just curious as I was trying to work out before hand where she was "above" on her final way down.

 

And I'm bloody surprised to see there seems to be a lot of people thinking that the whole final third was a hallucination and she didn't get back to Earth and actually died.

 

What is this trend with films lately where people seem unable to just take what they see on screen for face value? Same with The Dark Knight Rises and people thinking Alfred was dreaming at the end or something

 

Edited November 21, 2013 by Mokong

[dwarf]

Gravity

 

Wanted to like it so much more than I did. Visually amazing, great sound effects, but there wasn't enough silence and there were a couple too many Hollywood concessions. Gah! Irritating because it could've been the fucking shit. Instead it's 'just' really good.

 

I'll get into these now.

 

[Sméagol]

Had a good film day yesterday, which technically included The Hunger games: catching fire which I already posted about.

 

Rush

Was great. I forgot what the outcome was going to be, although I don’t think it would have mattered. The final race was genuinely exciting. But this film wasn’t all about the races, it was also a great story about the rivalry between these two racers, which were lovely performed by Chris Hemsworth and Daniel Brühl. And of course there was plenty of eye candy!

 

Het diner

I won’t bother you too much with this Dutch film, but I liked it. It starred one of my favourite Dutch actrices, and it had a nice twist. The plot is somewhat similar to Carnage, albeit far more dramatic.

 

The young and prodigious T.S. Spivet

A nice film from the director of Le fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain (this guy must love his long titles, the French title is even longer). Nice, but not great, I particularly found the ending disappointing. The story is about a boy who wins some award from the Smithsonian, and travels a long distance to accept it. It was nice to see Helena Bonham Carter do a non-Tim Burton crazy woman again. One thing must be said: Jean-Pierre Jeunet shot this film in native 3D. And he clearly had a lot of fun doing this. I complained with Thor: the dark world that the 3D wasn't much to write home about, well, this film being native 3D, does a whole lot to sell (native) 3D to the public. If you want to see how spectacular 3D can get (without resorting to animation *), then this is a great film to see. A lot of great or even spectacular shots that use the 3D effect to great.. ehh effect. The other side of this story is that a lot of those shots will do next to nothing (assumably) in 2D, if you choose to see it that way.

 

* A trailer of Frozen was shown before the film, and looked pretty spectacular, which got me hyped.

 

Prisoners

Wasn’t on my radar, but I heard good things about it, and it apparently was from the same director as Incendies. A good drama / thriller with some twists. About a guy whose daughter gets kidnapped, and he returns the favour to the guy who is suspected of the kidnapping, but gets released because there’s no evidence. I thought it was good, but I urge people who liked it to go see Incendies, because I think that one was better. Also, the next film of Denis Villeneuve sounds very promising, Enemy.

Edited November 21, 2013 by Sméagol

[Jimbob]

Flicked 2 movies on over the past few days, first was Pumping Iron. To summerise this one, it's basically a documentary-style movie starring Arnie returning to the bodybuilding scene to win his 6th Olympia and Universe titles after retiring.

 

The other was Olympus has Fallen. A movie i've been meaning to see, but didn't get around to it. It was a decent enough movie, good action etc.

[Ganepark32]

Went to see Nebraska earlier today. Didn't know much about it but thought I'd give it a go and really enjoyed it. I did find it a little weird it being in black and white, not quite sure what the idea was behind filming it like that, but other than that, I honestly couldn't fault it. I thought it was excellent. Very well acted, Bruce Dern is superb as is everyone else (even Bob Odenkirk who I've not really been a fan of in anything I've seen) and it was incredibly moving, particularly the ending which could have been really cheesy and tacked on but was handled brilliantly.

 

It's something a little different to everything else that's coming out at the cinema recently but I do wholeheartedly recommend giving it a watch.

[Sméagol]

Saw The Hobbit and Frozen yesterday. The Hobbit was good, Frozen was excellent. Its been too long since I last saw a Disney film.. The last one before Frozen is Lilo & Stitch I believe. I'll be seeing The Hobbit a 2nd time because I'm going with someone else, and because I'll get it to see in Atmos, but I'll go see Frozen a 2nd time because I want to. The perfect Christmas film.

[bob]

Frozen is fucking excellent. I really want to see it again soon.

[Ashley]

Frozen was great, I really enjoyed it. Plus I'd forgotten Get A Horse was playing before, love that short.

 

Speaking of Kristen Bell....

 

 

 

<3

Edited January 4, 2014 by Ashley

[somme]

Gravity

Visually very good but whoever cast Sandra Bullock in the lead role should be fired. She can't hold scenes together when she's acting with another actor, let alone on her own and especially for such a protracted period of time. If a strong female actor had been cast then it would have been an amazing movie.

 

Before Midnight

I love dialogue heavy films and this franchise does dialogue impeccably. If you haven't seen the first two, Before Sunrise and Before Sunset then I highly recommend them. I'm not generally a fan of "romance" films but these are truly unique.

 

Cloud Atlas

I love films that are confusing for the majority its run and then all becomes clear at the end. Cloud Atlas certainly didn't disappoint in this regard. Like all the best films at the core of this film were the characters and the fact that the "known" actors were hidden behind prosthetics for the most part shows that this film was more about the characters rather than who was playing them.

[Diageo]

I think Sandra Bullock was amazing in Gravity. Very well cast in my opinion.

[Jonnas]

female actor

 

*Actress

 

[/pet peeve]

[Ashley]

Would you say doctress? Or manageress?

 

[/pet peeve]

[Jonnas]

Would you say doctress? Or manageress?

 

[/pet peeve]

 

Hey, I don't make the language, I just follow the rules

 

(Though Portuguese does have gender distinction for nearly every profession, with a few exceptions. For what it's worth, it's also a pet peeve when people force a female form into words that don't have them)

[Ashley]

Well from an English point-of-view, manageress and doctress are old-fashioned words used to describe female managers and doctors, but have fallen out of favour (thus why should actors be separated based on gender). It's more of a sociological point than a semantic one.

[somme]

And if you call any professional female actor an actress she's liable to thump you one.

[Diageo]

Didn't they change it to actor for everyone now?

[somme]

Didn't they change it to actor for everyone now?

 

Yeah. It's been that way pretty much since the 70's/80's but even more vehemently now. I work with actors all the time and they don't respond well to 'actress'. And in schools/colleges they don't even utter the word actress, except to say don't use it.

[drahkon]

Lars von Trier is has made a new movie and I only found out now.

 

Nymph()maniac

 

I won't post the trailer because it's quite, well, pornographic. Just look it up.

 

Since I love von Trier's movies I can't wait, but I will have to wait for a BluRay release because it probably won't be shown uncut in German cinemas

 

That reminds me...I have to watch Antichrist

[somme]

I hope Nymph()maniac is released uncut in the majority of UK cinemas. Apparently it's four hours long with an interval, which in will be novel, for a cinema release anyway.

[Ashley]

Have they not split it into two films here, on releasing in February and another in March?

[ReZourceman]

Yeah, it is two parts.

[Sméagol]

I personally didn´t like Nymphomaniac that much. Or Nymp()maniac or whatever. Some of the dialogue seemed forced / unnatural, and some of it seemed to be no more than a means to state the director´s opinion on a variety of matters in a not so subtle way. There´s some humour (like the spoons), and the story of Joe is somewhat interesting, and comes full circle in a nice way, and it would have been an ok film if it were left at that, but the director felt the need to end the film in a very inappropriate way. Maybe it was his way of giving his publishers the finger, I don´t know. I think the problem lies mainly with the "interview" segments.. I feel he could have left those out completely. I´m not at all a Lars von Trier fan or expert by any means, this is only the 2nd film I´ve seen of him, but I loved Melancholia whereas this film doesn´t do much for me.

 

Anyway, I´ll start a films of 2013 thread later, unless someone wants to beat me to it. I´ve seen around 130 films in a cinema last year, so I´ll have a big list. Some highly recommended films I´ll quickly mention: Frozen, Gravity, Thor: the dark world, La grand belleza, Ginger & Rosa, Halley, No, Trance, Stories we tell, Silver linings playbook and Blue Jasmin. But I´ve seen plenty films last year, a lot of them good, and I intend to post one-word reviews of them all

[Murr]

Saw American Hustle on Saturday night. Loved every minute of it, Jennifer Lawrence just... damn.

 

But was a funny film. Full of twists and turns and an awesome con film. Bradley Cooper was really good in it going from normal, happy, Mr Work to a guy with visible anger issues and no glory. Really good film.

[gaggle64]

Saw 12 Years A Slave. Absolutely stupendous. Go see it and take as many people as you can with you. It's really incredibly intelligent and enthralling film, I don't think we'll get a film of this quality on the same subject matter for another generation.