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What Is The Last Film You Watched? (Older Films)


Mr. Breathmask

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Tom Robinson was falsely accused and convicted because of a racially corrupt justice system, and he knew an appeal would probably not overturn his sentence. He had nothing to lose by trying to escape from jail, and was shot in the process, probably by people who would have been all too eager to kill him in the first place even if he just sat there minding his own business. So no, questioning it wouldn't do any good, even if he was killed in cold blood.

The "tacked on ending" brings closure to the Boo Radley story for the children. They spend the whole movie misunderstanding this mysterious person who they're afraid of, and it turns out he is protecting the children because he's really a nice person and wants to be their friend. He actually ends up protecting them against the deranged father of the rape "victim," who is so upset at this white man for insulting him and his daughter by calling them liars when he defends a black man -- who Ewell and most of the whites in the town wanted to be guilty just for being black -- that he takes out his anger on Atticus' defenseless children. In a way, Ewell's death brings a small measure of vindication to the dead Tom Robinson, and teaches the children a lesson or two.

I think it's both a wonderful book and movie.

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Peck is great, but I prefer him as a villain in other films. Brock Peters is always enjoyable. I have no problems with the main adult actors.

I find the story contrite and apologetic and not a bit sincere.

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So no, questioning it wouldn't do any good, even if he was killed in cold blood

Really?

It's OK if he was killed by redneck cops, they were gonna fry him anyway?

Really?

Such a loathsome sentiment.

You're too idealistic. Do you think the story was set in 2012 Netherlands? Or even 1992 Los Angeles? When an all-white jury sent an innocent black man to jail in the deep south of the 1930s, long before civil rights became a whisper, who was going to save him? The appeals process takes years to work its way through higher court. Atticus' frustration in the system -- nay, that Tom even attempted to escape, rather than wait for the appeal process -- reflects in the anger he had when he tells what happened.

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I appreciate your passion for the film Wojo, wish I could share it.

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I don't hate it. Hate is too strong a word, hate requires and investment of time that I don't have. I just don't find the love for it.

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The Fly

One of my all-time favorites. Come for the gore and makeup, stay for the heartbreaking love story. The actors are all great, and Goldblum was cheated out of an Oscar nomination.

Score's brilliant, tied with Ed Wood for my favorite Howard Shore work. Big, bold, emotional, some superficial Herrmannisms but never an imitation.

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I have the set with Christopher Young's score for the sequel. It's good, if not as "tight" as Shore's.

I prefer Shore's The Fly. It's operatic sensibilities appeal to me. But both scores are great.

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Thor - 6.5

50/50 - 8.3. deeply moving, hilarious at times and a brilliant performance by gordon-levitt.

The Terminal - 8.5! must be like the 15th time I've seen it, and I could easily watch it again tomorrow.

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One day, you're gonna have to tell me how you can give grades such as 8.3, 5.6, 7.2 to films!

Seriously, I'm surprised no one picked that up earlier! You keep on giving these weird grades, and nobody ever reacts to that! I thought it was about time for me to do something about it.

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One day, you're gonna have to tell me how you can give grades such as 8.3, 5.6, 7.2 to films!

Seriously, I'm surprised no one picked that up earlier! You keep on giving these weird grades, and nobody ever reacts to that! I thought it was about time for me to do something about it.

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1980 Flash Gordon: hot babes, whipping scene and cat fight on the bed. Plus, FLASH! AH AHHHH! (Y)

Spielberg's War of the Worlds: I've warmed to this one a lot since watching it on home video. Actually, I think I downloaded a bootleg of this 2005'ish and found that it was much better than I remembered it in the theater. It isn't perfect, but I think Spielberg captured a pretty great performance by Tom Cruise and created a gripping story tightly focused on the family coming together amid some brutal annihilation. This is also one of the last movies in the 2000s to really impress me with visual effects, it being so difficult to do that anymore. The aliens look like shit, some scenes can drag a bit and that really grainy over-exposed look gets old in the first couple minutes. Still, it is very entertaining, cinematography, peanut butter sandwich tossing and all, and I just dig Cruise and Williams' score. It's one of the most genuine feeling performances from Cruise. Williams also seemed to give more of a shit.

Prisoner of Azkaban: Is this definitely the most entertaining Harry Potter? Just about everything seems to work for it aside from some corny extras and maybe some things that should have been explained more. The cast feel most at home in the roles, it's fun (but isn't too jokey), it isn't too serious or boring (see: later movies), paced well, it feels magical and it has a pretty kick ass score. There seems to be more Malfoy and Snape in this one, which later movies were seriously lacking to my memory. These are great characters. I love when Snape has Gary Oldman at wandpoint and tells him he's giving him up to the dementors.

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There were a few moments when I felt PoA assumed that we as an audience would be able to infer the relationships of the characters, specifically the sudden bond of Harry and Sirius Black. I think this is an instance when the score really kicks in; I don't really feel anything about them from the visuals or the plot or the dialog, but the sad longing of the "A Window to the Past" just emotes so well Harry's desire for family and how he regards Black. Basically, I think the score steps in and fixes some of the film's flaws. It's the best Potter film, to be sure.

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Saw The Hunger Games. Even an outstanding performance by the lead and some grotesque Roald Dahlesque stylings of the futuristic rich and repugnant couldn't allow me to overlook some terrible composite work and shoddy cgi. Couple the bad effects with a a bloated and rather tedious hour long setup, clichéd plot contrivances; and a movie which gets frustratingly close to greatness ultimately comes off as the work of an undeniably capable but undisciplined director who should still be congratulated for delivering a solid thriller with a fairly decent stab at social commentary which gets away with its heavy-handedness due to fairly assured grasp of OTT style. 3/5

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Easily the most original comedy of the last couple of years and just a lot of silly fun in its own right. I don't think I've ever known warmth and gore to be such bosom buddies before, and it's surprisingly a very pleasing mashup. 4/5

Hmm, I may need to rewatch The Hunger Games. The sleep on it test seems to have been beneficial to my judgement of it, since I keep thinking about it in spite of my initial disappointment. Or maybe it's just the superb performance and presence of its lead, whose character may yet become something of an icon by the time the cinematic trilogy completes.

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Started Paranormal Activity 2 last night. Sorry had to shut it off after the baby started floating. Will try again tonight.

Then to lighten the mood I put in Moulin Rouge. This really is a masterpiece of a work. The songs segue well and Ewan and Nicole do so well as musical leads. Roxanne is hands down the best song of the movie. Wonderful climax. 5/5

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The Hunger Games surprised me very much ( perhaps even the surpise of the year). I expected a modern paced SFX fest but it turned out to be a strong atmospheric movie that put a serious effort into making a palpable and unique world. Its aftertaste last surprisingly long. And since the director of Pleasantville is not going to return, I'm actually genuinely worried and concerned for the sequels.

hunger-games-president-snow.jpg

Alex

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CABIN IN THE WOODS - 2012

Somewhat entertaining, in that lowbrow-i'm-half-asleep way. Self-conscious stuff like this is awfully hard to pull off and CABIN veers dangerously close on getting high on its own cuteness in the Richard-Jenkins scenes (it goes over the cliff like the Road Runner in an especially unfortunate pratfall with Sigourney Weaver's cameo) - but i'm propbably the wrong person to review it, since it has been made as fan service for horror fans, so.... But still, it isn't offensive and i liked the gag with the merman.

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Do...it is decidely too whitebread american to ever venture into nutty depths of the likes of SHAWN OF THE DEAD (at least when it was new), but it's diverting enough for 90 minutes.

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I didn't like Hot Fuzz nearly enough as Shaun of the Dead. Though the friend who I borrowed the DVD from, that's his name, so I adopted Liz' sing-song way of saying hello to him each time I saw him, which has been well over a year since I last did.

Transformers 3 Dark of the Moon

I saw this on Netflix because it was offered. I saw the first film in the theater, skipped the second entirely, and decided to watch this one because the "Transformers on the moon" premise of the trailer intrigued me. I don't think I missed anything in the second movie that the third movie doesn't explain quickly enough -- the relationship with his first girl ended badly ("she was mean" as they wrote Megan Fox out for some new hottie who can't act well but we let slide because she's British, which makes her infinitely more sophisticated), some people get promoted (who cares?), and Shia Witwicky gets two little Autobot pets.

The little Autobots foreshadow the whole plot twist when they're watching Star Trek and one says "Aw, shit, I seen this one. It's the one where Spock goes nuts."

Leonard Nimoy voices the new autobot and quotes Star Trek II? Cool!!! Buzz Aldrin plays himself? Cool! Alan Tudyk's in another science fiction movie and doesn't get impaled? Cool!

I don't really see how bringing a large planet that appears to be twice the size of Earth into a position well inside of the lunar orbit would not have ripped our planet apart due to extreme gravitational forces, unless they're going to say that since Cybertron never fully materialized through the portal, it was never really "there" to have an effect. Ok...

There are a few other minor plot quibbles that I missed, like how serving Decepticons for two generations results in fantastic financial gain, but I'm not going to call them plot holes because I largely don't care.

The movie was far too long and overly ambitious because it tried to shoehorn way too many places and plot elements, and the final plot twist (the Decepticon "liaison" mentioned above) seems too coincidental and contrived -- stealing my girl = bad guy; got me a job = good guy; betray Earth = bad guy again. Duh.

By the end, it was one giant video game and I could have walked away or turned it off, as I was already falling asleep. Though the effects were really impressive and it was refreshing to a city not named New York get destroyed so utterly and totally. (Willis Tower? Does anyone really call it that?) I really hope that when they reboot this franchise, they leave the boring humans and their stupid life decisions of school, parents, girlfriend, and job out of it, and concentrate on the giant fricking robots -- you know, like why they call this franchise "Transformers?"

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Watched a few films during a transatlantic flight a few weeks ago - including:

This Means War - excellent cast on the surface of it but utterly awful plot that really is so unbelievable it is almost laughable. I'd give it a 3/10 - probably the worst film Tom Hardy will ever perform in.

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol - enjoyed this, great action movie with just the right amount of humour injected by the typically brilliant Simon Pegg. The score by Giacchino was nicely exuberant and really suited the style. 9/10

Man on a Ledge - awful cast, awful plot, pretty dire and forgettable soundtrack by Jackman (although he's only starting out). More holes in the plot than This Means War and the entire premise of the movie is horrendously flawed in numerous ways. 3/10

Battleship - a surprisingly captivating action thriller, strangely based on the game. Unfortunately you can't take the alien characters seriously and they are portrayed in an extremely cliched manner reminiscent of War of the Worlds. There are some great visual effects though, and who could miss a Neeson film? Soundtrack was quite standard from Jablonsky, nothing special that couldn't have been done by any other contemporary composer (Tyler especially). 6/10

Those were watched on the outbound and inbound flights by the way - I didn't watch 4 films consecutively :P

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Battleship - a surprisingly captivating action thriller, strangely based on the game. Unfortunately you can't take the alien characters seriously and they are portrayed in an extremely cliched manner reminiscent of War of the Worlds. There are some great visual effects though, and who could miss a Neeson film? Soundtrack was quite standard from Jablonsky, nothing special that couldn't have been done by any other contemporary composer (Tyler especially). 6/10

I really want to enjoy that movie on cheesy ID4/Transformers 1 terms. Are you saying it instead takes itself quite seriously? Because that's a bloody stupid shame if it does.

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Do...it is decidely too whitebread american to ever venture into nutty depths of the likes of SHAWN OF THE DEAD (at least when it was new), but it's diverting enough for 90 minutes.

I hope it's different than Shaun Of The Dead because I didn't really enjoy that one. I don't understand why everybody loves it. Zombies are a serious matter. Nothing to laugh about.

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