Last Movie You Watched...

Watched Guardians of the Galaxy with the hubs and kids last night. Cute movie. Some cool effects. Had a hard time understanding the dialogue sometimes, but whenever I watch movies with captions, I'm too tempted to focus on reading them, even when I do understand what they're saying and I feel like it takes away from the cinematic experience.

Watched the Golden Compass.

Can anyone tell me if the book is much better than the movie? Cause the movie was meandering mess. Seriously the world building and characters popped up randomly. It was hard to get know any part of it well.

phantasy said:

Watched the Golden Compass.

Can anyone tell me if the book is much better than the movie? Cause the movie was meandering mess. Seriously the world building and characters popped up randomly. It was hard to get know any part of it well.

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I remember reading those books and enjoying them a lot. The problem with that movie was certainly not the source material.

phantasy said:

Watched the Golden Compass.

Can anyone tell me if the book is much better than the movie? Cause the movie was meandering mess. Seriously the world building and characters popped up randomly. It was hard to get know any part of it well.

Click to expand...

From what I remember of the books from when I was a kid, they were very well written and I certainly didn't notice any world building or character problems. The first book was definitely the strongest in my mind, though.

"The Beguiled", an old one starring Clint Eastwood and Geraldine Page. Wow...strange movie. Interesting, that's for sure.

I've just watched Birdman. and I love it! it's interesting because I was sure that I wouldn't like it. This movie is weird but the shooting and how actors play... it's amazing.

Found Birdman to be almost a pretentious bore. The acting was excellent, but the story and direction almost put me to sleep. How it won an Oscar...beyond my little mind, but whatever.

Watched Eraser. Nothing fancy, just Arnold blowing stuff up, but it was fun to see how things played out and listen for the atrocious one-liners. Henny Youngman was still better, though.

Speaking of Birdman, which I'm curious about because I like Michael Keaton, I watched all of 25th Hour the other night, also with Edward Norton. I'd seen parts before, but I thought it was great. Interesting to me that the MC is a convicted drug peddler on his way to prison, and yet I don't think anyone would have trouble empathizing with this guy. Could be the great script by David Benioff, or Spike Lee's direction, or just Norton's portrayal. Come to think of it, maybe it was because he was ratted out (he suspects it was by his girlfriend but we find out it was a fellow drug dealer played by Tony Siragusa of NFL fame) and so, in a way, Norton's a victim too, and so we can care about him? I don't know, but I liked the movie.

Two Men In Town, and the town ain't big enough for the two of 'em. Forest Whitaker and Harvey Keitel. It wanted to be great, it could've been great, not sure exactly where it missed, but it never really delivered. Still better than most things offered on PPV. The other one we were considering was Welcome to New York with Depardieu and Bissett. Maybe tonight.

Nightcrawler.
It was pretty great, but it defied my expectations. I thought Lou would be a sympathetic character pushed to extremes by his social/economic situation, but no. He is rotten to the core from the start. It made for a fascinating character study, but Damn, he freaked me out. 0_0
Also, peeps need to stop comparing "Taxi Driver" to "Nightcrawler". If anything, the character of Travis Bickle would be revolted by "Lou Bloom" and see him as just another part of the scum of the city. Nightcrawler is more like "King of Comedy", about a shallow, sad man who wants glory and will go to any extreme to achieve it.

Murder by Death. Wonderful cast. Funny stuff.

--Ken

Third Person, connecting vignettes with the common theme of children in danger, children lost, and their preoccupied, self-centered parents who were to blame. Simply outstanding! I can't remember the last time I saw a movie that had this kind of effect on me.

Fast 7.

The ending is kind of sad.

Big Hero Six.

Good but...I had a bit of an issue involving *spoiler*. The reaction was just too...pat.

Watched the third Hobbit movie. Considering the title, there was very little hobbit in it. It was pretty meh.

Grace Is Gone, with John Cusack. A right-wing guy who'd cheated on his vision test to get into the military, loses his wife and the mother of his two daughters in Iraq, and is in such denial and so afraid of telling his kids that their mother, Grace is gone, that he takes them on a road trip from Minnesota to Florida. That's it, that's the plot. There's nothing much that happens beyond that; but it doesn't matter. First, you have the tension of this secret hanging in the air, hovering over every scene, and second you have what I believe is impeccable writing and for me this is a great movie.

Run don't walk.

The Theory of Everything. Wow, what an amazing job by Eddie Redmayne. He definitely deserved the Oscar. Very emotional movie and better than most of the movies I saw in 2014.

It Follows

Very good film. More psychological horror with a seemingly endless amount of tension (instead of the usual jump-scares), and surprisingly human characters. I hate that ending though, but I won't downgrade the film because of it. After all, a movie would have to be very good for a bad ending to anger the audience (which it did).

jvc said:

Watched the third Hobbit movie. Considering the title, there was very little hobbit in it. It was pretty meh.

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Technically the title is "Battle of the Five Armies" so . . .

Re-watched ENCHANTED and GROUNDHOG DAY on the plane home from my trip. Good solid comedy and charm with both. A nice cozy feeling.

Drag me to Hell

The special effects are a joke, but I'm still not breathing quite right.
There was a kitten, so I was kinda crying my way through the movie. Good thing my cat Ravioli was on my lap all the time and let me squeeze him

For animal lovers who can't take that last yelp in a movie:
https://www.doesthedogdie.com/

Wild. I've watched it twice for last 3 days: Cheryl's path of self-awareness and acceptance touched me deeply. And Reese Witherspoon was just great there http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reese_Witherspoon

Been a while since I've been to the theater. The last movie I saw was an instant download from Amazon- Interstellar. The sound was funky, I have no idea why. Even with our TV cranked we could barely hear it.

So, from what I got, it was a good movie. lol

Interstellar. Just finished watching. Also with funky sound from Amazon. Had my ears next to monitor to hear it. That said. Wow. I loved it. The deepest themes of humanity, cutting edge science fiction, solid performances, Hans Zimmer score (what I could hear of it) a cosmic canvas, a bit long like all Nolan films. Nolan's 2001, I suppose. Yeah, wow.