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What is the Last Film You Watched? - Part II


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Apocalypto.

I found to be absolutely engrossing and fascinanting. I can understand why many people might not enjoy the movie, but for me it was simply fascinating. Great work by the cast as well.

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Apocalypto.

I found to be absolutely engrossing and fascinanting. I can understand why many people might not enjoy the movie, but for me it was simply fascinating. Great work by the cast as well.

I loved the film. I thought it would be uninteresting and uninvolving....but it was fascinating and extremely involving.

Saw The Departed again. Third time. Fantastic movie. One of the best of 2006, it gets better each time I see it. The perfromacnes are really top-notch all around. Leo and Matt are great, and while I wasn't 100% sold on Jack the first time around, I think he is also great in it. Loved Martin Sheen, Matt Walburg, Ray Winstone, Alec Baldwin, and especially Vera Farminga, who had the role of 'the girl', typically a boring and slow part of these types of films (especially Scorsese's), but she was likable and interesting. I liked the music in the film a lot, both score and songs. Shore's score doesn't get too much play time, but every time the main theme or Billy's theme is used, it really packs a punch, Billy's theme in particular. The movie did have a pet-peeve of mine- bad end credits music. After a fantastic, sardonic last shot, it goes into the credit with this song, that I thought was totally out of place. The End Credits should have started with 'The Departed Tango', instead of gettign into it later. The perfect note to end the movie experience on. Same problem I had with Memoirs of a Geisha, where the end credits started with the Chaiman's Waltz, instead of 'Sayuri's theme'.

***1/2 out of ****. Kudos to writer Bill Monahan, who proved that he could do better than the theatrical version of Kingdom of Heaven (even though the Extended edition showed off a far better screenplay).

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Just caught Children of Men, and I was blown away. Terrific filmmaking by Cuaron. This one is certainly one of the best films of the year, if not THE best. I have to let it gestate for a bit.

Tim

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The Prestige. Again. It was still very good, which means I'm gonna see this again this week. And probably once more next week. And so on, and so on...

Karol

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I actually didn't find Superman Returns' special effects very convincing. They were too glossy. However, with Superman - The Movie I never think about the fact that I'm watching special effects. Donner filmed them realistically - he filmed them in just the same way as he filmed everything else. Take the example in Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith of the opening sequence, where the "camera" unrealistically tracks following the two Jedi fighters - there is no way a camera can do that, so it draws attention to the fact that it's not real. If they're FILMED realistically, i.e. as if they were filming them for real, it's easy to overlook a bit of less-than-perfect bluescreening. That's my opinion, anyway. ^_^

Not that I know anything about camera movement, but isn't being free of those kind of restraints one of the benefits of CGI? Being able to move the camera in ways that couldn't be done before?

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O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Unbreakable

True Lies

Three old movies I watched for the first time (even though I remember I already saw some scene of True Lies, so probably I watched part of it on TV many many years ago).

The first one is pretty good, a strange movie but enjoyable. I noticed there was a guy named Tommy Johnson who sold his soul to the devil for playing guitar. Reminded me a bit of when Bart sold his soul to Milhouse. :blink:

The second one is very weird, a really good movie with a simple yet detailed plot. The ending was the more (and possibly the only one) predictable, but a bit shoking too.

Bruce Willis is more and more my favorite actor (I have 10 of his movies on DVD) and Sam Jackson is outstanding too (I have 7 of his movies on DVD, including 3 of the 4 movies that feature both actors). They make an amazing couple.

The third one was good, with some hilarious moment (the whole horse-motorcycle ride just kicks ass) and some other normal moment.

Next will probably be Bad Boys II (of course I have the DVD, but it will be on TV on Wed. so I could keep the channel on it and listen to it).

And I still have to watch some of the last DVDs I bought.

Next DVD could be Snakes on a Plane. Anyone knows if the Region 2 will be a 2 DVDs set?

I wanna avoid buying it as a single disc as soon as I see it, and then seeing a double disc edition like 2 months later.

Happened once with Pulp Fiction (bought the single edition, the only available at the time) for 7.90 € and then 3 months later I found the 2 disc edition for 9.90 €. Lame.

I also tend to wait for a DVD price to decrease a bit. New DVDs here costs 16 to 20 € (I did an exceptions buying the newly released Final Destination 3 - 12.90€ for 2 DVDs)

I buy them some months later for 9.90 € and I got most of my old movies DVDs (like the 3 Beverly Hills Cop) for 7.90 €.

And now it's dinner time. Period.

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Unbreakable is a terrific film. O Brother Where Art Thou is also very good.

The more I think about The Prestige, the more annoying it is. It should have been great, and it was a very big dissapointment, probably the most dissapoitning film I've seen this year. James Barrarrdinelli captures my feelings pretty much exactly in his review, especailly in his first couple of paragraphs:

Watching The Prestige is like observing a magic act where the magician's sleight-of-hand isn't deft enough. The trick almost works, but not quite… With its mechanical twists and turns and lack of heart, the movie often resembles Sleuth in superficial ways, except The Prestige resorts to cheating while Sleuth relied on cunning and guile. As is too often the case with narratives that try to be oblique to the end, the film's climax is strangely predictable. The Prestige goes to a great deal of trouble - including a triple time-line - to protect secrets that aren't all that surprising or hard to guess.

With a pedigree as splendid as the one behind The Prestige, the movie's inability to captivate consistently must be considered a disappointment. In the sweepstakes for best 2006 movie about conjurors performing circa 1900, The Illusionist is a few steps ahead of The Prestige. While one could argue that both films telegraph their third-act surprises, The Illusionist is less ponderous and more enjoyable. There are times when The Prestige bogs down and the needlessly convoluted way in which director Christopher Nolan elects to present the story doesn't help. Maybe he was looking for inspiration from his brilliant non-linear Memento.

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Old??? :blink:

Yes, a sad state of affairs when movies from 2000 and 1993 are concidered old. I wonder if TJ is aware that there were movies made as early as the 1980's(!)

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I use the term "old" because most of the times people here discuss of movies they see in theatres, and I thought that movies from 6 and 12 years ago were not as new as the more recent.

But I think movies are always new if you never saw them. :blink:

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Saw Master and Commander: Far Side of The World. Haven't seen it in a while. It won me over all over again. A magnificent film, I find it rather amazing that it was made at all, much less made that well. Weir is one spectacular director. Great performances immeasurably help anchor the film (no pun intented). Film looks great, sounds amazing. One of the most impressive films of the last few years. ****/****.

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In my view, it would have been a much worthier Best Picture winner than ROTK. And the same applies to several technical categories.

Well, IMO the LoTR films did deserve some serious accolades...but, yes, M&C is probably my favorite film of 2003.

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Master & Commander was easily my favourite film of 2003. The Return of the King comes in second, followed by... umm... probably Lost in Translation.

Wow, 2003 was a terrible year for films.

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"Children of Men" is a f---ing great movie. My main reason for going was Clive Owen. His dreamy eyes took a back seat to the exciting story and riveting filmmaking. Alfonso Cuaron continues to impress.

I don't want to ruin the experience for those who haven't seen it, but the way many of the scenes were staged had me in absolute awe.

Is it the best film of 2006? Hmmm. Maybe. I haven't seen everything. But this would be in my top five.

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Master & Commander was easily my favourite film of 2003. The Return of the King comes in second, followed by... umm... probably Lost in Translation.

Wow, 2003 was a terrible year for films.

Better than 2000, though. And, like any crappy year, it did have a few rays of sunshine, like M&C, RoTK, Mystic River, Matrix Revolu....oh, never mind.

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Unbreakable is a terrific film. O Brother Where Art Thou is also very good.

One of the many reason why I love Unbreakable is that its ending is not central to the film. I liked The 6th Sense as much as the next guy, but it would lose a lot if it weren't for the ending. When I saw Sense's ending, I though (with a gasp) "So thats what was going on." When I saw Unbreakable I thought "This is how it has to be."

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One of the many reason why I love Unbreakable is that its ending is not central to the film. I liked The 6th Sense as much as the next guy, but it would lose a lot if it weren't for the ending. When I saw Sense's ending, I though (with a gasp) "So thats what was going on." When I saw Unbreakable I thought "This is how it has to be."

Indeed. The ending is so meaningful, integral, and to me, at least, heartbreaking.

I saw Jonathan Demme's concert film of Neil Young: A Heart of Gold a few weeks ago. I was never familiar with Young, and only a couple of songs sounded the least bit familiar to me, but this was still a really powerful concert film. I can only imagine what it would be like if I was a fan, and knew Young's life and work. It's a remarkably personal concert film, the close-ups are incredibely powerful. And, it's got me listenign to some of Young's songs. I've been listening to 'Heart of Gold' and 'Old Man' pretty much non-stop.

I also finally finished seeing the last Bond film in my recent mini-marathon, The World is Not Enough. A good Bond film, but it just didn't totally click with me. The villains, mostly. Interesting, sure, but I just wasn't too engaged by them. The action scenes bog the film down a bit, but it is pretty well-paced Bond film. Denise Richards is positively one of the best looking Bond girls, and one of the worst in every other regard. Aside from the obvious casting logic (or lack-there-of) of putting her as a nuclear scientist, she just reads the lines so stiffly and uttely unconvincingly. Though she does have one of the best lines in the movie- "You wanna put that in English for those of us who don't speak Spy?". Robbie Coltraine is terrific, I would have loved him to be a regular. He also has one of the best lines- "Can't you just say "hello", like a normal person?". I wish they also would have made Michael Kitchen a regular. He livens up proceedings here and in Goldeneye.

The score is not particularly impressive in the film...a few noticable parts, but nothing spectacularly thrilling.

***/****.

And I saw The Last Saumrai again. While it is too Hollywood-y too often, I feel it's heart is in the right place. It is a very good movie, very engaging, and while whenever it seems like pure kitch whenever it focuses on Cruise, it is pure gold whenever it focuses on Ken Watanabe, who gives a wonderful performance. This is particularly interesting in Watanabe's death scene- whenever we see Cruise's face, it's fake, whenever we see Watanabe's, it's very real. Very interesting in that.

Nice cinematography, good costumes, spectacular sets. Very good score by Zimmer.

***1/2 out of ****. It's good parts are great, while it's bad parts are only bad because they're overly Hollywood. It gets an extra half a star, again, for the heart.

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Yes, naturally, but when you go over-the-top it's unconvincing. It all comes down to how you use the CGI.

Well of course. I just never considered it applied to camera movement. If CGI is used to create say a horse (or a giant honking lizard for that matter), either it looks like a horse or it looks fake. What's a camera movement supposed to look like? I mean, they did it. So it's real enough. It just goes beyond what a traditional camera can do. Of course there's what could be considered bad or sloppy camera work. But not liking it just because a traditional camera can't do it seems, I don't know, a bit shallow? I guess that's just where I'm ignorant and/or where opinion varies.

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Yes, naturally, but when you go over-the-top it's unconvincing. It all comes down to how you use the CGI.

Well of course. I just never considered it applied to camera movement. If CGI is used to create say a horse (or a giant honking lizard for that matter), either it looks like a horse or it looks fake. What's a camera movement supposed to look like? I mean, they did it. So it's real enough. It just goes beyond what a traditional camera can do. Of course there's what could be considered bad or sloppy camera work. But not liking it just because a traditional camera can't do it seems, I don't know, a bit shallow? I guess that's just where I'm ignorant and/or where opinion varies.

To me, having a camera track behind two Jedi starfighters, following them exactly, swooping around, flying straight through explosions - that just draws attention to the fact that its fake. I don't really know how to explain it...

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I have no problems at all with the tracking shot that opens Revenge of the Sith.

Now the tracking and landing of Obi-Wan flying into the Invisible Hand, jumping impossibly high, doing a salto, and landing perfectly to slice some droids in half... that looked fake to me.

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Yes, but there's no denying there are some great effects in there too.

And some of them are technically very well executed, just clumsily integrated into the story.

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I have no problems at all with the tracking shot that opens Revenge of the Sith.

Now the tracking and landing of Obi-Wan flying into the Invisible Hand, jumping impossibly high, doing a salto, and landing perfectly to slice some droids in half... that looked fake to me.

I know! I hated that. I think they got pre-Empire Jedi movements just about right and believable in TPM, though Obi-Wan falling that far from the platform and not suffering any pain or injury during the final sword fight sort of made it into First Blood levels of verisimilitude. But they just went overboard and crazy in ROTS.

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Went for a double feature at the local cinematque. One of the best movies of 2006 for the second time, and a film classic (and rightfully so) for the first time.

First off was the former- Little Miss Sunshine. Wonderful, wonderful, heart warming film, that is so good because it rarely, rarely spills over into kitch. Performances are wonderful, Alan Arkin is particularly notable as the grandfather. Mychael Danna's score is excellent in the film. Again, one of the best movies of 06'. ***1/2 out of ****.

And secondly, Francois Truffaut's The 400 Blows. I've only seen one other Truffaut film, Jules et Jim, and didn't like it. But this one was marvelous. Best coming of age film ever, although, concidering what is concidered a coming of age flick in recent years, that is really selling it short. It is a very funny and entertaining films, yet it carries tragic undertones.....if at any point, any older person in this kid's life would have made the smallest effort, he probably wouldn't have ended up where he did.

It's an intensly personal film by a French director made over 45 years ago, and yet I recognised so much of my childhood in it....It really got to me.

****/****.

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To me, having a camera track behind two Jedi starfighters, following them exactly, swooping around, flying straight through explosions - that just draws attention to the fact that its fake. I don't really know how to explain it...

I think I can understand that. I'm just giving you a hard time. ;)

Now the tracking and landing of Obi-Wan flying into the Invisible Hand, jumping impossibly high, doing a salto, and landing perfectly to slice some droids in half... that looked fake to me.

What? You don't believe Ewan McGregor actually pulled it off? :lol:

Actually, that stunt seemed a bit out of character for Obi-Wan. You'd think Anakin would be the one to do something crazy like that.

But they just went overboard and crazy in ROTS.

I believe on the DVD commentary Rick McCallum said the "I've always wanted to do that" factor was pretty high for this movie. So, that explains a few things.

Well he is a Jedi.

And that right there is the answer to everything.

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Saw the holocaust film Fateless. Didn't like it at all. It never drew me in, I never connected with it at all. I think the whole episodic approach to it was all-wrong. And while the cinematography was nice for another film, I was never convinced that what I was seeing was real....a real dud for me. One bright spot was Morricone's score. His main theme captivated me from the very begining, I watched the main titles over and over again just to hear it again and again. I think that the Lisa Gerrard vocals didn't work, were far too big for the images...but I guess they might have if I liked the movie. Still, all-in-all, a terrific score. As for the film, **/****.

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The album of Morricone's Fateless is terrific. I haven't seen the film, and after reading what you have to say, I probably won't bother. It sounds like a score for a good film, so I don't want to shatter the illusion. :music:

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The album of Morricone's Fateless is terrific. I haven't seen the film, and after reading what you have to say, I probably won't bother. It sounds like a score for a good film, so I don't want to shatter the illusion. :music:

Hey, a lot of people loved the film. Maybe it just rubbed me the wrong way, I don't know. But I can't wait to get the album. I'd buy it just for the main titles, and I'm sure there's more good material to reveal itself on the album.

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Saw Unbreakable. Excellent, sad, thought-provoking film. ***1/2 out of ****.

Also saw Terms of Endearment. Wonderful, one of a kind film. Michael Gore's score is terrific, the main theme is beautiful in a down to earth kind of way.

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I saw Hell in the Pacific the other night. Think Cast Away - but instead of Tom Hanks it's an American and Japanese soldier stranded together during World War II. The pacing was a bit slow, but I found it to be quite entertaining and some of it rather hilarious. It was fun imagining what Toshiro Mifune's character was saying, as there were no subtitles.

I also caught The Karate Kid Part II on one of the Hi-Def movie channels. Wow. What an improvement over that fuzzy VHS recording I used to watch it on (it looked especially great on a 140 inch home projector - I'm sold on Hi-Def). The movie wasn't quite as good as I remember it - a bit on the cheesy side. But I still liked it a lot. I especially liked Bill Conti's score, even if it is a bit repetitive - especially when standing alone. There's that particular motif that reminds me a lot of the Force theme, not so much by sound but application. They're used very similarly in their respective films to denote something deep and spiritual. And on top of everything else, Mr. Miyagi simply owns. He and Yoda.

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The Pursuit of Happyness, with Will Smith. Probably his best performance to date, which is saying a lot. I don't mean that as a knock on his acting ability. I actually find him pretty fun, given the right role, but that's the main issue with his career. He hasn't exactly had a ton of serious dramatic work. Perhaps a few dramatic scenes, but the only movie I can think of where he played a down-to-earth tone was in The Legend of Bagger Vance, and that was a supporting role. In The Pursuit of Happyness, he finally has the opportunity to create a believable character with real-world problems, in an acting style that is very home grown, so-to-speak. The movie, overall, is very good. I was shocked. Most of the success of the movie has to do with the dialogue, via narration, and amonst the characters, and also the relationhip the Smith character was with his son, which is played by his real son, Jaden Smith.

So all in all, I was shocked by this movie. I didn't expect it to be as good as it was. Kudos to the cast and crew.

Tim

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Quick hit of stuff I've seen.

Empire of the Sun

Surprisingly strong performance by the young Christian Bale along with some great cinematography. Liked it but I'm not sure if I liked the length.

Watching second season of Deadwood again, still amazing on a second run through.

Max-saving Nixon, Boogie Nights, Die Hard's 1-3, 24: season 3, ROTK:EE, and the James Bond Collection Vol 3 for when he goes back to college tomorrow

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I thought he was pretty good in Ali.

I thought he gave one tremendous piece of overacting in an extremely boring movie.

Empire of the Sun

Surprisingly strong performance by the young Christian Bale along with some great cinematography. Liked it but I'm not sure if I liked the length.

First time? The film does grow on you, I find. So does the score. I used to not be a big fan of either, but just yesterday I was walking outside, listening to the score, and I was surprised how magical it was, and how I was thinking back to images from the film (particularly the field of furniture and, of course, the stunning scene when Jim sees the Japanese planes....that is one of the most striking scenes Spielberg's ever done, and Williams matches it perfectly).

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Children of Men, *****

I just spent a good chunk of time writing a "review" over at Spielbergfilms on its parrellel thread. I could copy and paste... but I don't feel like it.

Well, I guess I could comment on what was actually my "last" film watched, the plot-hole filled Lake House. I only have a question about that one. If Kate told Reeves not to try to find her becuase he'll get hit by a bus, then nobody gets hit by a bus right next to 2006 Kate, so she can never warn Reeves not to find her, which means he does get hit by a bus and we get a paradox (don't think I explained it too well, oh well...). Very Annoying.

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First time? The film does grow on you, I find. So does the score. I used to not be a big fan of either, but just yesterday I was walking outside, listening to the score, and I was surprised how magical it was, and how I was thinking back to images from the film (particularly the field of furniture and, of course, the stunning scene when Jim sees the Japanese planes....that is one of the most striking scenes Spielberg's ever done, and Williams matches it perfectly).

The film was amazing when I saw it first time several years ago, but now seems so unremarkable. It has something to do with Spielberg in general that detracts me from many of his films.

The score didn't grow on me just yet. But it's certainly very good. I just don't listen to it.

Karol

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